Sunday 1 October 2006

Pic of the day: Angels and resurrection from the anime Kamisama Kazoku (The God Family). Not quite the same, but the closest at hand.

"Rez plz" fic

As Robert J. Sawyer pointed out, ideas are cheap. Even if he got no more of them, he claimed, he could still write books for the rest of his life. I use to say that they are like stray cats: Take home a few of them and treat them well, and soon your house will be full of them, everywhere. Still, some of them are so trivial as to not mention. Some of them are (in my biased opinion) fairly awesome. Some are in between. This one, I think, is worth jotting down in case I want to work on it later. I doubt it will be used for this year's NaNoWriMo, though. I already have a story for that, about a cat who turns into a young man and back from time to time. This is rather different again.

I haven't read many resurrection fictions. One by Philip Jose Farmer, I believe only The Fabulous Riverboat (although I may have read part of To Your Scattered Bodies Go when I was younger and thrown it in the garbage. This is a common reaction to Farmer, since he comes up with awesome ideas and doesn't quite manage to pull them off.) One by A.A. Attanasio (The Last Legends of Earth). This wasn't very good either, kinda crazy. The third would be To the Land of the Living by Robert Silverberg, although it does not really qualify, as the land where Gilgamesh finds himself is not of this world but rather a kind of disturbing afterlife. There may have been a fourth, but I think it was not, but was rather my own, told by myself to myself during my long walks. This one is neither of them.

***

The plot of the story is simple enough: A high school boy is killed in a school shooting, but wakes up immediately afterwards in a large village somewhere in the countryside. He finds that all there are resurrected people, all of them teen or young adults. Each day a couple of softly glowing man-like creatures appear with another person, who is brought back to life. Then they disappear, seemingly into thin air, without speaking a word.

The people themselves speak, although many of them don't understand each other. They are from different times and different places within the same geographic area, in this case the Nordic countries. Although those who lived far apart in time or space may be unable to understand each other, there is somehow always one or more who have lived between them and can understand them both. In this way, as long as everyone cooperates, no one is left out.

The village is surrounded by bountiful nature in perpetual harvest time, but they have to build their own homes, which is a work that never ends since new people arrive at a pace of one per day. The shining people have left tools of high quality, but not particularly modern; the tools are immediately understandable for everyone: Axes, spades, knives and saws. There are no tractors or washing machines or TVs: All technology is simple, although of extremely high quality.

The Christians, who at least for now are in majority, identify the resurrectors as angels. But they are dismayed to find that they are not really in Heaven, just a new and improved instance of Earth. Neither God nor Jesus has showed up to greet them, and the angels are entirely too businesslike. And why are they surrounded by strangers rather than their loved ones? Most damning of it all, there are pre-Christians and even a couple modern atheists (though these have turned substantially more agnostic since their arrival...) Combined with the lack of anyone dead from old age, it seems more likely to be a second chance for those whose lives were cut short. Yet there is one thing not consistent with that either: Their bodies are healthier and more energetic than in their first life, but the genitals are entirely non-functional. While they may have erotic feelings (and these will feature prominently in the story) they can't have sex, much less children. What's up with that, if this is a new lease of life?

For the duration of the story, no one has outlived our main character. This is rather suspicious in itself, and contributes to his alternative theory: That they are not alive at all, but just artificial intelligences in an awe-inspiring virtual reality, inside some supercomputer of the future. If that is the case, the shining people are not angels but perhaps GMs... Game Masters of some super advanced role playing game. Possibly even non player characters, mere software robots.

This theory is hotly denied by everyone else. Partly because they are not familiar with modern computers and the explosive growth in computing power, partly because it offends their religion, but also partly rational: If not for divine power, how would anyone be able to resurrect them with their memories intact and with bodies eerily similar to those they had before, just better?

Perhaps there is developed some tool that makes it possible to look into the past. Or more disturbing than anything, perhaps their memories are not real. After all, if they are in a computer simulation now, they are already basically Artificial Intelligences. So why wouldn't their memories also be artificial, generated from background information about the times and places they seem to come from? After all, "I think, therefore I am", but "I remember, therefore I am me". If their memories are created too, they may not even have lived before at all. Perhaps they are not in a massive multiplayer game, but in a far future version of The Sims!

Disturbed by these thoughts, our hero tries in various ways to challenge the system, but fails. His new behavior makes it hard for him to fit in with the others. At the end of the story I would like him to have learned the lesson that it doesn't really matter that you can never know all the truth, you have to do the best you can as the one you are. I think. I am not at all sure it would come out like that if I actually write the full story, though. My characters may be constructs themselves, but they certainly seem to have a will of their own sometimes!

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The expression "Rez plz" is frequently used in most massive multiplayer online games, where usually some characters have the power to revive their fallen comrades. If only this was so in real life too!