Still not sure what the answer is to yesterday’s question, but I did realize something else. The answer to the question as asked is “nothing.” There’s no way to convince everyone. There are still nutjobs out there that insist the moon landing was faked, there’s people who are convinced the World Trade towers were blown up by demolitions by government forces, any number of people who deny the obvious and believe the preposterous.
Which might be a big chunk of my answer.
While there will obviously remain skeptics out there until probably well into Jihad (even as the US government falls in Crusdade, I’m sure there are going to be lots of people who believe Beelzebub and the other demons to be humans with a great schtick), all Daniel really has to do is convince a significant percentage of the population. In fact, if you look at how few people actually vote, a group big enough to get the DTF formed and for immortals to be taken seriously doesn’t even have to be a majority, at least at first. When Susan’s story breaks, a lot of people are going to think it’s an elaborate hoax. But all Daniel and Susan have to do is tip the scale just enough so that the “immortals walk among us and meddle in our affairs” meme moves from the fringe into the mainstream. Recently Rachel Maddow pointed out after an interview with Reverend Rick Scarborough that it doesn’t take much for ideas that start among the kooks to make it into the national discourse as though they actually made sense (Scarborough is against the Matthew Sheppard hate crimes bill because he’s afraid it will lead to the prosecution of Christian ministers who declare homosexuality to be a sin).
So unlike the original book, this doesn’t have to be a sweeping overnight revelation that changes the minds of everyone forever. It just has to get to the other side of the fringe. And as such I think it would be a good idea to establish that there are already people out there who believe in angels and demons as real, living creatures. In fact, I might make Jeff Frankel one of those people so we can see the kook perspective on immortals right up close.
I also think it’s important to deal with the fact that while I’ve got immortals in the guise of angels and demons everywhere, noticeably lacking in the book is any sign of God. In the original draft, all three of our major human characters were secular humanists much like the author and the presence of beings that may well have been the actual basis for a lot of biblical lore didn’t lead to any, ahem, soul searching about what this meant about a supreme being. This needs to be addressed in a big, big way in the new telling, and I think Susan pretty much has to be a devout Christian.
So, where does this leave me? I know they don’t have to convince everyone, but that they do have to convince an influential percentage of the overall population that immortals exist. Susan is going to have a database of demonic identities (again, possibly leaked to them by a demon who’s looking for some real chaos) and they’ll have the lost gospel that they find in Iraq. A lot of this is going to be built around enhancing and strengthening the arguments of a currently “fringe” group of conspiracy nuts who believe that angels and demons are exactly what they turn out to be: immortals playing chess with the human race as pawns.
That said, I think Susan’s proof is sufficient.
Okay, we have the proof. We have a demon database and the lost gospel. Where did each come from, and how do they come to our heroes?
3 Comments
Here’s another thought: what if people misperceive the angels and demons? Isn’t the problem that if you have a demon of sufficient power, then it can zip around the world performing miracles and such? Isn’t it more difficult to convince people that this Immortal is good and that Immortal is bad?
I mean, Americans may have been convinced that somehow, Saddam was behind the WTC attack, but in general, most people realize the attackers were Middle Eastern looking, no? Only a small nutjob few actually think the Jews/CIA/Mafia orchestrated the whole thing. I think the problem isn’t so much that compelling evidence of demons exist (or not). The problem depends on the powers they have. It may or may not be easy to believe demons and angels exist.
I don’t know what powers you are giving them. If they are like the Highlander sort of immortals, then I can see how they will be well hidden and people will be skeptical of their existence. If they are essentially of the gates-of-hell variety, with ability to fly, shoot heat rays from their eyes, etc, then I think the problem becomes public relations.
It would be interesting to see what you come up with in terms of the demon database, lost gospel, and… bloggers
Imagine if you have bloggers on opposing factions eviscerating the Immortal du jour? Sort of like the red and blue political commentary in the USA but in an Armageddon sort of way. =)
Jeff,
Todays posting seems to me to hold the seeds of the solution to your plot problems and I think a lot also depends on the central theme of your story. Haven’t read the current version however.
You wrote:
‘While there will obviously remain skeptics out there until probably well into Jihad (even as the US government falls in Crusdade,’
-Solution: Redo your world and re set the time line to be in the USA after Balkanization- a breakup into several smaller, regional nation states and well into Jihad. Make it a survival oriented, dangerous world, where calm rational thought is nearly impossible because death and danger is everywhere.
Your plot has religious themes but in a good economy and in a non chaotic war time, secularism dominates and fewer people turn to God or spiritual guidance and spiritual themes are less believed and more actively debunked.
Now look at Lebanon in the 1980’s(all the religious militias armed with Kalashnikovs and RPGs) or Yugoslavia during the 19990’s (all the ethnic & religious armies of newly formed nations armed with Kalashnikovs and RPG’s). You can bet a lot of rhetoric couched in religious themes was used to recruit and motivate troops on all sides in those conflicts. (But all that is as well a repeat of rhetoric of the the original Crusades) See the non fiction book”War is a Force That Gives us Meaning’ by Chris Hedges(2002) for more on how that works.
-Write what you know.
You mentioned once that your protagonist is a paramedic, but are you now or have you ever been one? I suppose the idea of literal life saving and religious soul saving is the cross over you seek, but in a battle to the death with the Devil personified, he’s toast. Even with a +4Staff of healing or whatever.
You were once in the air force right?
Write what you know.
Make the protagonist an ex Airforce Flight Surgeon or ex USAF Search and Rescue medic.
Perhaps he was flight qualified until -irony- a medical problem kept him out of fighter jets. But he still wanted to fly, so off to medic school and SAR training for jumping out of helicopters into hot LZs.
Also if he needs to cover a lot of ground fast from one end of the US to another, or across the world, as a qualified pilot, he can hotwire an F/A18 or Harrier or whatever and fly himself there.
Similarly- the religious angle can work because apparently some pilots will hallucinate during high G force turns as gravity deprives the brain of blood and oxygen. So he can hallucinate any revelations as needed, as long as he turns sharply while dogfighting
This provides a secular/medical explanation for ‘divine’ revelation.
-The Demon Database.
The answer is simple. Mormons.
Or the Vatican(But that’s too Davinci Code)
I’m not a Mormon, but I understand they constantly conduct ancestral genealogical research on just about everyone and have a huge database inside a hollowed out mesa in a nuke proof bunker somewhere in Utah. When they convert someone, they retroactively bring in all the dead relatives of that person into the Church of Mormon.
So what if a eccentric old librarian type inside the mesa has been secretly keeping a Demon Database of Lost Souls who seem to have very few branches on their family trees but reappear here and there in many records overtime and he realizes, they’re the Immortals connected to old scratch himself?
But no one believes him, because he is an eccentric old coot.
Until the dawn of the Internet and usenet and blogs and chatrooms.
On these he yammers away and gets the interest of a reporter who promises not to tell anyone. But who has trouble keeping secrets.
And an Immortal vanity google searching himself who finds a message board posting from the coot on a conspiracy ‘board or old usenet alt.kooks.conspiracy group
Then it becomes a race between the Immortals and your protagonist to find the librarian and his database (which may or may not actually exist a la the Maltese Falcon)
The Lost Gospel/The Last Gospel
-Not sure why you want to bring Iraq into this (it would quickly date the book) but the ruins of Babylon or Ur before that offer some possibilities.
We know that early on in the current conflict, our troops were guarding the Iraqi Oil wells, Oil Ministry (and probably the gas stations)
but not the Museum of Antiquities where old tablets with dead scripts and possibly untranslated ancient/pre christian(and therefore pagan) rites and rituals (or grocery lists for all we know) were recorded. So maybe one of these is a Tower of Babel encryption key for summoning Charon across the river Styx to carry off ‘good’ souls, and another is a cipher key to call for the collection of ‘evil’ souls and the Immortals want the Evil key, the Protagonist wants the Good key and only a rappel from a hovering helicopter into a hot Iraqi LZ can extract the needed tablet.
But the protagonist was told it was The Last Gospel/The Lost Gospel he was extracting. So actually he was duped and lied to.
By a sexy Immortal named Delila Lilith who is a British Tabloid reporter of Iraqi heritage who is full of hot air but with a hot body built for Sin. The protagonists downfall begins when she cuts off his ponytail/samurai topknot and starts calling him Samson
But it is your story after all. Hope this helps. I’m the one with perpetual writers block
Wow, lots of great ideas here.
The immortals don’t really have powers, per se. They only thing that makes them different from humans is that they heal hundreds of times faster than we do and they never age. They can be injured, but such injuries heal almost instantly. In the original book, and in this one for reasons I don’t want to get into right now, let’s just say I know where the immortals came from and I ain’t telling, the only way to kill them is to completely destroy the body and burn the pieces. As it happens, an RPG does this nicely.
But most of that is for the next two books, Crusade and Jihad. In Revelation, all we know and all Daniel & Company find out is that a select group of immortals has been stalking us for longer than recorded human history, guiding our behavior. There are two opposing groups of immortals, one calling themselves angels and the other calling themselves demons. Their names match up; the leader of the angels is named Michael, his second in command is Gabriel. They seem to be the basis for Abrahamic myth of angels and demons, though they don’t have wings or perform miracles.
That said, to some more specific points:
Finding the gospel in Iraq will date the book? You actually think that will be a peaceful country in the next two decades? (by which point lots of other stuff will date the book) Heck, I’m not even sure US troops will be out in less than ten years.
Trying to find that Chris Hedges book. Wish eReader carried it. Or even Audible.
The “Revelation” of the title is very much reality-based, no hallucinations needed. Daniel is most definitely not a man of faith.
While I was never an EMT, I’ve never been a paratrooper either. In any case, I’ve gotten emails from real life EMTs who loved that look at Daniel’s work life in the original book, so I must have gotten it right. And in any case, Daniel is only an EMT for the first few chapters. Then he’s a fugitive from the law. I refuse to comment on whether I have any personal experience in that area.
I love the idea of Mormons stumbling on evidence of the immortals. And as for old kooks and bloggers, got ‘em. More to come on that…
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