They repurposed I-90 into a massive people-processing line, putting you through checkpoint after checkpoint. This one for DNA scan, the next one for ID verification, the next for health assessment–the list seems endless. You stand under the afternoon sun, sweating (is the sun getting hotter already?), shuffling with the line and lugging your allocated 50 kilos of personal belongings that you quickly stuffed into a backpack.
Your first real glimpse of a K’toaran is when you get to the destination allocation desk. You’ve seen them on TV, but that’s different. Seeing one up close is kinda … freaky. You try not to stare at the big flat head–does this thing even have eyes?–as the big, sewage-colored alien silently offers you a token with one of its many hands. You take it and trundle on, a little shell-shocked. Maybe the extra hands are what make the K’toarans so efficient. Maybe the big head contains a really big brain. Or maybe it’s just because they seem to breathe out their ears.
You turn the colored token over in your hand. It’s made of a dull red metal and shaped like a house, and stamped in some language you can’t read. You shuffle off toward the next checkpoint. Not too far ahead of you, where the toll booths used to be, are the Bridges. It looks like someone built a Roman acqueduct across the highway and put a different world in every archway.
Last checkpoint.
Another K’toaran takes your chit and puts it in a brown blob that you assume is a computer. It spits out a wrist-band made of that same dull red metal which you strap on. The word “REFUGEE” is embossed on it in several languages, some of which you don’t recognise.
A warm, female voice comes out of the blob. “Please ensure you wear your wrist-band at all times. In addition to carrying all your identification and biological data, it maintains your credit balance and any other information needed by your adoptive government. Please follow the red line.”
Looking down at your feet you see a red line painted on the ground leading to one of the archways. As you approach, you can see a room through the Bridge, much like a waiting room at a hospital or a government office, with people sitting half-bored, half-expectant on moulded benches. You take a deep breath as you have one last look at the Boston skyline, then step through the Bridge to your new home.
On another planet.
So, whats on the other side of the bridge?
What rights will you have as a refugee?
Are they populated worlds with their own problems and stresses?
Did people buy/bribe their way to the ‘better’ worlds?
Is it the end of the human race as new planets force evolutionary differences amongst people?
Does Refugee = Slave?
What about the people left behind…
An interesting idea for a game. I likes it!
I think a lot of those questions remain to be answered 🙂 I wrote the post as a way to get myself and others hooked into the world, so that I’d write more.
The idea is that on different worlds, refugee means different things. I’ll post another article in the next week or so which gives a better ovierview of the game.
You saw I added some stuff on the Ideas section of the Wiki? I was wondering whether or not we still had copyright on our own genome? Whether corporations or governments here would have been aggressive in monopolising the new changes for the future. How mobile phone networks, computer software and other such things would be completely obsolete…
I’ve not looked at the Wiki since last year. I’ll go look now.
Don’t bother. Not much there. I’d written a pile of notes before, after we last chatted the other night. And read an interesting premise which would be inspiring.