Well, I’m back to work. I wish I had been more productive on my unwanted vacation, but I did okay.
With this wordy page, we’re rapidly coming to the end of this chapter. It feels surreal. One more short scene (3 pages, I think) to go, and I think you’ll find it surreal also.
↓ Transcript
Lola: I'm glad a young woman like you joined the project, Caera. I worry about what the younger generations think about us. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We wanted to save the world, and we succeeded. Although the tactics we used were...distasteful. We did what we had to do. We left behind a world that was free and prosperous. I worry that isn't enough. Every younger generation curses their elders. No matter how hard or nobly we fought. But...with you here, it feels that maybe for the first time in history, our generation did something right.
Caera: Thank you for admitting me into the project, Lola. It is an honor to be the first of my generation to join. I hope that I can help wash away your shame and failure. You did not unite the world, despite your...brutality. You would have been forgiven if you had succeeded. The west has always been like this. Using violence to dominate the planet, but denying it to the developing world. And ultimately, failing the younger generation. Now you have given me license for unlimited violence. So I can make this world right for the first time in history.
Lola: But I'm rambling, I --
Caera: I'm sorry, what were you saying?
Lola: Hmph.
Caera: Thank you for admitting me into the project, Lola. It is an honor to be the first of my generation to join. I hope that I can help wash away your shame and failure. You did not unite the world, despite your...brutality. You would have been forgiven if you had succeeded. The west has always been like this. Using violence to dominate the planet, but denying it to the developing world. And ultimately, failing the younger generation. Now you have given me license for unlimited violence. So I can make this world right for the first time in history.
Lola: But I'm rambling, I --
Caera: I'm sorry, what were you saying?
Lola: Hmph.
Anyone else expecting Lola to lose her head to a sword slice on the next page?
I doubt it, even Caera isn’t that nuts. And she probably has a “just in case” genocide suitcase that would kill her. No-one makes super-soldiers without leaving themselves a back door or two.
This scene made me giggle to be honest. I read it back and forth as a conversation, then when I realised they were both monologuing I couldn’t help but smirk. And wow, Genocide!Caera looks scary deadly.
Good, Matt40000 — that’s the effect I was going for. 🙂
They were hoping for a new Jacob…they seem to have gotten someone closer to Joey.
With a dash of Fascist.
Okay, so either Lola is in heavy denial because she can’t accept that her hand in killing a billion people didn’t make the world a better place. Or Caera is like those people who think that the Vietnam or Iraq wars were worse than either World War.
Every generation thinks it can do better than their parents, very few ever do. The problem is that the nut jobs in charge pick their successors, who are just as nuts as they are. Every so often you get an unexpected apple that overturns the barrel. Reagan and Obama are the most recent apples in America’s barrel. Doesn’t mean they’re any better, just that they weren’t what their leaders expected.
Caera is the apple in Lola’s barrel, wonder which way she’ll overturn it?
“No-one makes super-soldiers without leaving themselves a back door or two. ” Like a small nuke/power supply? It’s about the only thing you could use that would be small enough and guarantee a kill – both of the rogue agent and the case, with as little of a kill zone as possible. It wouldn’t do screw that up like ‘gene-cement man’. Anyone who’s seen Neon Genesis Evangelion or similar stories knows there’s also the deliberate weakness method. Say, air-to-ground lasers or bombs designed to get hot enough to boil iridium. You give your super soldiers incredible reflexes and then get them too reliant on their physical strengths.
Oooh…women.
Another Madame Mao…power went to her head, a white boned devil…
will also likely hang herself in her bathroom…