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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 17, 2010 23:11:34 GMT -5
That was very good. The plot thickens. I like the prophecy angle.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 17, 2010 23:14:53 GMT -5
In the next part she will learn what Sara did for them and promised them.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 18, 2010 2:27:38 GMT -5
There were hundreds of people of all ages on a hillside, all of them showing some kinds of effect from radiation and bioagents, genetic problems passed down over more than a generation.
Everything from small animals to vegetables were cooking over fires, some danced while others sang or sat silently. Then at the bottom of the hill Dellum appeared at the table set there for him. The crowd fell silent at his raised hands and people began to find places to sit.
Two meals were on the low table. Tara came forward and the crowd began to chatter. Who was this? Are the rumors true?
She sat along with Dellum and nibbled on some of the vegetables on her plate. Dellum ate more readily but quickly, for he meant to talk through this meal. Most had already eaten a sparing dinner but nobody usually ate enough. This occasion was a good excuse to eat well.
"A little more than four years there was nothing here but those barely living above the animals. Everyone fought each other, everyone hid or ran and had no-one to watch their back while they slept. We had nothing..." he told them. He had their undivided attention.
"Then one day a girl, Sara, came through here. She saw how we lived and she decided to help us. This was not her destination, this was not her goal. Out of her goodness she stayed" The audience made noises of approval until Dellum raised a hand.
"Sara brought those of us with our intact minds together and began us building the wall. We have shelter without worry about the mindless ones killing us in our sleep. She taught us to plant vegetables and grow fruit. She taught us how to use and maintain weapons for hunting and for defense. Then she created the council that kept all of the factions among us united"
The crowd made loud noises of approval.
"Some among us came to her and thanked her for these gifts that civilized us. We asked, though, why? Why does it really matter since we have no hope for the future. What can a small group of people with their minds do?" he continued with his story "She asked what we couldn't do instead. Could we share this knowledge with others until it spread around the world?"
He ate a few bites more and took a drink from his metal mug.
"We asked about the plague. What is the point of it all if the plague continues to destroy our DNA and that in another generation or two there would be no more children. What kind of future is that?" he said. The crowd was silent. "She told us that there would be another. She did not know how long it would be but another girl without blemish would come among us. She will also be headed for the ruins as was Sara. That this girl didn't have the cure but that her appearance meant that it was near."
Another hand was raised to silence the raucus crowd.
"Sara told us that while we here are birthing civilization that she had to leave. She said that it was the ruins where the spacers and slavers will be fought and stopped. Sara told us all these things and some of us believed them. Today I think we all do!"
"She left us two years ago. We do not know what happened to her but she told us the girl would not appear until Sara was dead. So tonight we can celebrate the short life she lived because th prophecy has come true. The girl Tara has come among us" He indicated Tara.
Tara meanwhile was deep in thought. 'She's dead? She had to be dead if I was here? Why is that? If I am going to where she went and its not to meet her, then why am I going? Fight the slavers? There are just too many questions'.
Dellum raised his battered metal mug and announced "The human race on Earth is entering its rebirth. One day we will fight and stop the slavers from space. One day we will rebuild this quarantined planet and we will once again take our rightful place as caretakers of the world where man was born!"
The feast did not end until near the middle of the night and Tara was able to sleep well. Gax and some of his soldiers had been ordered to guard her quarter. In the morning she approached Dellum.
"Master Dellum. I am not staying. Not two years, not two weeks. I have a mission, and I am to go to the San Diego ruins."
He was not surprised or angered. "I expected this. You are much like Sara, you even look like her but she had more patience I think".
"It is like a quest. I am called, no, pulled toward where it was that Sara went. I don't understand everything but I know that I will find answers to many of my questions there."
"We will help you to get there. I will have Gax and his men accompany you as far as the outskirts of the ruins where the rubble piles begin." he offered.
"That is more than is necessary"
"It is a dangerous world young Tara and we all have a vested interest in your success" he smiled. "But not today, it will take time to prepare. You should rest, later you can talk to Gax about the last part of your journey."
"You are very generous Master Dellum, I will try to repay your kindness"
He laughed. "If you succeed at your task, that will be repayment enough"
Having no idea what that task was going to be, Tara returned to her quarter. She removed the disc from the pouch and looked it over. It was bigger and thicker than the media discs of old times but Tara didn't know what it was suppose to contain.
Again she found herself wondering how she even knew what an old media disc looked like. Why did she have such knowledge and memories (?) from a time approaching a century before.
So many questions.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 19, 2010 16:18:32 GMT -5
The human race survives on other worlds. This is one of the best things about spreading across the stars, not every human can be wiped out in one basket. Earth is a wasteland, much of it a radioactive ruin, human DNA and deformaties are common. The planet was quarantined. Space is vast and lawless, this has allowed everything from pirating to slavery to thrive, there are even settled planets-since they rule themselves - where slavery exists.
Tara knows pretty much nothing about the rest of the galaxy because the computer in the underground chamber where she came from was put there before the last world war. So it would not know of the League.
The League is a loose organization that tries to enforce laws in space but it relatively weak and its assets are almost a joke. While there are 140 worlds occupied by humans there are only 90 full member worlds and the rest are just more loosely associated with it, because they find some benefit to a weak alliance to prevent wars.
She would not know of a boy who grew up on Roma, a world where women are property and do not even get the benefit of a name or clothes. While the laws forbid cruel treatment to women and even bans them from being sold more than once in 10 years the men of the world obviously have different ideas than most people on other worlds. It is even considered a pariah to most other planetary governments.
The boy Greyson was a lonely child until his father bought him a companion. The girl was his playmate, she cleaned his room, she helped him practice his swordsmanship-much prized on Roma, she cleaned his room, she bathed him, she served his meals.
At 20 he killed another man with a sword and was exiled from his homeworld, his companion went into the custody of his father as did the son she had bore him. This enraged the bitter young man and he joined the crew of a pirate vessel. Later he commanded his own crew and one of the businesses they were in was enslaving people on Earth who were normal enough to have once been on the rescue list for the League.
Suffice it to say that Greyson had met Sara.
So there is some of the back story.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 19, 2010 18:22:36 GMT -5
Awesome. I absolutely love the savior/prophecy aspect of the story mixed in with the post-apocalyptic and sci-fi. The backstory adds a cool space-opera element to it as well. Mixing of genres is a very good way to go.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 19, 2010 18:34:28 GMT -5
Greyson is obviously going to be "the bad guy" huh?
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 19, 2010 18:36:19 GMT -5
Thats what I thought.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 19, 2010 18:41:22 GMT -5
For a while in the Roman empire girls weren't even given their own names, they would just get a feminine version of the fathers name. Julius would have a daughter named Julia and all his daughters would have the same name. From what I read there were 17 basic male names or something like that. Good thing they didn't have a phone book.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 19, 2010 18:52:33 GMT -5
I never knew that.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 19, 2010 20:00:19 GMT -5
That sort of gave me the idea. Another idea was Roma had some problem that they couldn't have daughters and cloned (wrong word, since they're made to order- women your way- lol) them instead. They didn't trust these "manufactured" women and thus they were given no rights.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 19, 2010 20:01:17 GMT -5
But I already used the idea with Kita where they had very very few male children, so I changed it a little.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 19, 2010 20:18:18 GMT -5
I like the cloning idea. You could also write about how this cloning technology has fallen into the hands of some bad people, things like clone soldiers which are brainwashed to be fanatical and treated as expendable.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 20, 2010 11:34:50 GMT -5
Didn't that happen on Star Trek?
In my idea though it only worked to make females. Which I guess doesn't mean they couldn't be soldiers or assassins. They are very compliant after all. They aim to please. heh.
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Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 20, 2010 17:39:19 GMT -5
That could work. In real life, the dictator of Libya has an all-female guard detail (strange for a muslim country but I digress), so its possible warlords of the future could have Amazon brigades of clone women.
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Post by Floyd Looney on Jun 20, 2010 18:36:15 GMT -5
So after another day there Tara departed with a phalanx of guards in tow led by Gax. A couple of them had firearms while another had a bow and arrows. Two other carried packs with food for their trip.
"There are others who have marked territories and this road is always watched" Gax told her "If you follow it you should reach the ruins. We will try to watch your back"
Gax told her the journey would take at least 3 days and while they thought there might be a lot of danger, nothing happened on the first day.
"Maybe things have changed in the past year" Gax said as they looked for a place to spend the night. Finally they found an old tunnel that once emptied rainwater into a ravine. "I have heard that the slavers come often but they are less and less satisfied with what they find".
Tara slept reasonably well in the concrete tube with the guards on both sides. What gax said ate at her mind and something did not sound right.
The next morning when they were setting off again on the highway she asked him "If the slavers aren't finding healthy enough slaves, then why do they come back? Space travel must be expensive and wasting money would seem to be a bad business move. Are you sure they are coming for slaves?"
That left Gax speechless. "I don't know anything about money or space. All I know is the Planetary League put a quarantine on Earth a century ago and rescued as many healthy people as they could find. I guess their money ran out because not everyone was rescued and that is when the slavers started coming".
"The League doesn't enforce their quaratine?"
"Sometimes they have a ship in orbit and sometimes they do not. I guess they don't have the resources to keep slavers away" Gax told her "Or those who come to hunt people or look for anything worth stealing".
The highway in front of them sloped down into the ground, leaving high ground on either side. They chose to stay on the high ground.
"Last fight I was in out here was with the Mongrels. That is what they called themselves. Like a pack of wild animals and they lived up to it. They worked to become like wild animals." Gax told her "We killed them all. They were killing and eating people out here".
"They were trying to devolve?" she asked.
"If that means trying to become wild beasts, yes"
There were people now and again but they were just simple homesteads, if you could call them that. A rusted out truck served as a home for one family on a former exit ramp. Others were living in even worse conditions, burned out car husks or under tarps stretched over fallen light posts.
They were all dirty, their hair matted thickly. Tara felt bad when she saw that there were children in some of these places. All of them were deformed in some way but sometimes it was slight. As if the Planetary League really didn't want anyone but the most undamaged of DNA being rescued.
Here and there were green fields and small trees. The life of the world was still fighting to assert itself. One of the guards had tried to chase down a miniature deer of some sort but it lost him in a small thicket.
While resting underneath a broken bridge to keep out of the hot noon sun a "zombie" attacked. He threw large rocks and acted as if would charge but a few shots from Gax scared him off.
A half an hour later the zombie returned with a few friends and they carried clubs and chains. Gax and his guards were forced to shoot and kill them.
"Zombies" Gax said
" Maybe. They were not totally mindless though. He went and got his pals and brought them back. That could be considered thinking" she told him "Of course pack animals could act that way too".
They slept in one of the small wooded thickets that night. Tara had a hard time sleeping though. She kept having an image of a man and seeing his age shift from his 40's to his 80's and then an image of a chamber much like the underground chamber she had awakened from in the desert.
It was a strange thing. The only words she could hear is when he was talking to another man. Something about stopping the "slide" before it hits. Then she saw herself lying in a clear chamber from someone else's perspective.
Then nothing. She didn't know what it might mean, it was all too disjointed and unorganized. Some weird dream that felt like someone else's memory. Then it crossed her mind that the girl in the tank hadn't been herself but maybe Sara.
If Sara had made as big an impression in the ruins as she did at the Restoration village then someone there would remember. Tara wanted to know as much about Sara, this "third" as she needed to figure out some mysteries.
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