Tuesday, July 28, 2009

End of phase 1 - Outline is established

Well with all this put to paper I feel that I have a broad outline defined. This is something that I will be working on for a bit and would love your feedback.

I really hope that no-one see's this as an attempt to dissuade you from your beliefs, nor is this an attack against any one particular religion or scientific endeavour, this is simply a fantasy story with a point that I would like to get across.

God, no matter what you see him/her as, is the one true power within the universe that is unable to defeated. In the same story I wanted to incorporate all the most fantastic potential side plots and stories that I could imagine, which is why I've set it in the future.

People who know me will understand the Sci-fi look and feel, but I believe this gives us the advantage of telling a story where anything you need to "have available" is plausibly available to the characters without having to compromise their particular situations.

It comes down to a fast paced action, slow lamenting and thought provoking thriller and eventuates into a feel good story that will have you glad that you sat through it in the end (and yep, I'm hoping to make it into a movie and rake in the big bucks at some point in the not too distant future :))))) )

The "Outcomes" portion seems a little rushed atm. This is because I didn't have a good think about what the outcome I wanted to show and just put together the most logical outcome that I could think of at the time. I most certainly will be developing that further!

Outcomes

Essentially this is a story of people trying to find meaning in faith as it applies to them. The movie Stigmata said it beautifully when they coined the phrase, “lift a piece of wood and you will find me”. Faith is as diverse here on Earth as it sure is to be throughout all intelligent life in the universe. Faith is a means by which people can connect with God, in whatever manner is right for them.

God does ask something of us, but those rules and laws put forth by religion are simply to administer the masses rather than divine law as set by God himself.

The story takes us to many points of view, from the scientific team that is as diverse as human culture is itself, to the religious zealots ready to die for their cause, through to the eyes of the scientific purists whose view on life is that everything is a methodical system within nature and that they are defined and set, so too is the manner of God and finally on to the way the mass hive brain works.

My point with this story is to show that how a minority of people with whatever beliefs, influence the masses of people and have a responsibility to them when doing so. The hive brain does not think, it reacts, and as such those who control it should do so with care. I believe that this is not being done and have decided to put my feelings into story form.

God is for everyone, no matter what faith you believe in!

The eventual outcome is as follows. God sends just one single battalion of angels to protect the twelve scientists as he has faith in all of humanity (in all of its forms) that people will do the right thing, eventually. The angels defend against the demons that attack knowing that if they fail, there is no returning to heaven, they simply are erased from existence.

So this is a personal sacrifice for the angels (and the demons – which are ordered by Satan so they really didn’t have a choice to start with).

The scientific team’s discovery is only the first part of further six revelations. These revelations show the true meaning of life and its purpose. It also defines what God is and to what extent his power is.

With the first revelation, humanity is put into a panic. The scientific team need to use knowledge, wisdom and ethics to determine what and when the masses are told of the subsequent revelations, as each revelation holds a significant amount of power, a power that in the wrong hands can destroy everything.

The team discover that the only way for a reasonable decision to be made about these revelations is only when all seven revelations are considered at the same time, within context of each other. Without the others, each of the seven revelations holds power and destruction for all mankind, to which end man must understand why God exists in the first place and what level of responsibility man has to have when dealing with power on this scale and magnitude.

In the end, the one scientist whose opinions were discounted readily, puts all the pieces together and discovers the eighth revelation. This revelation gives him the ability to feel the power of God, to be as close to touching God as is possible. With this power he then shows each of the others how the pieces fit together resulting in their own epiphanies, resulting in a wondrous feeling of love and content spreading throughout existence.


The demons are then shown a better way and some convert and some do not. God then issues one final demand of Satan, “Surrender your forces, or be banished into nothingness, forever.”

Satan refuses and his forces are banished, never having the ability to forge their ways upon humanity again.


God sends word to the remaining angels, “tell man of his new purpose, tell him that they are now aware of the truth, and that the truth will set them free.”

God then instructs his angels to deliver peace to the universe, and all mankind live forever more in a state of love and harmony.

Timeframe and Scenario

We are in the 24th century. This places us somewhere between 2300 and 2399. Earth has become a space faring people and we have since discovered that we are not alone in the universe. We have established relations with several species and have been working together for many years.

We have discovered that the base structure of all alien life is hominoid. Though language is certainly different, our basic composition, chemistry and constituent makeup are the same.

This comes from a late 21st century discovery that all life in the universe evolved in a manner similar to the way it evolved on Earth.


The conditions required to make life as identical to our own have been discovered to be very common throughout the stars and that we all share the same basic requirements for life.

With a way to easily communicate established, Earth starts to venture out into the universe and colonise worlds far beyond what we once imagined possible. Our future was never to stay with Earth, but to go forth and prosper. Earth will always be our home, though to survive as a species, we needed to venture to other planets as Earth only has resources for so many!

Finding that we have similar backgrounds also suggests that we also share similar beliefs. Similar stories such as the bible have been found on every new world that we’ve ventured to, telling the story of "some people" or race who found faith in God and that God would one day deliver the faithful.


Religion took this principal and extended the version of creation to incorporate this, and have come up with the New Creation Theory. This theory supposedly describes why other hominids were discovered, and sums up everything pretty much within the same seven day creation cycle.

This allows religion to be shared by many different worlds and the numbers of people devoted to these "mass media" religions has grown into the trillions. Churches have once again become powerful entities just like they did on so many planets during the “dark ages”, and have built a mighty fleet of space craft to “assist” with their conversions.

As with any mass of people, there are always those who take things too literally. Religion is about finding that meaning for you. God states, “don’t just believe me, make it true for yourself” showing that you should take the words in the bible as a guide, and that you should make it true for your own situation and faith.

Plots and Goals

Plots

Firstly there are four sides to this battle, God and his angels, Satan and his demons, purist scientists who typically are pacifists though fully capable of deploying technologically advanced weapons against the masses and finally we have the religious zealots who are determined that their message is the truth and is God’s will.

Actually there are five sides, the general public that are being slaughtered, misguided, misinformed and typically used as cannon fodder.

Goals
God and his angels are trying to show the general public, the scientists and the religious zealots that the discovery made is for everyone. That every person is entitled to the discovery and that each person is allowed to draw their own conclusions from this discovery.

No answer is correct, only the one that you hold true to yourself.


Satan and his demons are trying to dissuade everyone, no matter who they are, in a hope that an all out war between the scientists and religious zealots ensues eventually involving the general public on whole and causing everyone to fall victim to Satan’s overall masterful trap, to cause the scientists to not believe in God and therefore go to hell, to cause the religious zealots to fall for foolish and obviously false prophecies in the name of God so that their misguided belief will cause them to sin and go to hell.

The general public will then hopefully see that God does not exist and to not believe in him causing as many souls as possible to go to hell where Satan will one day become powerful enough to finally destroy God himself and rule the heavens and the Earth.


The scientists are trying to eradicate all religion stating that it is nothing but a fool’s paradise whereby the ignorant believe that they will go to heaven when clearly there is no heaven, nor is there a God (or Satan for that matter). These scientists are purist in nature which by all definitions, state that if God cannot be proven then God cannot exist.


The religious zealots are faithful people, typically good natured but very susceptible to the suggestions of their religious leaders whose own personal agendas cause them to misuse the trust and authority that has been given to them. These people are adament that God should not be “defined” by man and that man has no right to pry into matters of God. This point of view therefore rejects everything to do with the discovery and only serves to fuel the passion behind these beliefs.

The team of scientists responsible for the discovery are a group of diverse beliefs and backgrounds. Some have been brought up in religious households and have found that religion does not sit with their current beliefs, until now! Others are from a strictly scientific background where only physical proof can sway them, though they now have the massive task of analysing their results, their "physical proof" and having to integrate this new information into their belief structure. This conflict between their own personal beliefs causes a rift in the team which eventuates into the leaking of information to the general public. Only this team has the ability to take both sides, both arguments and produce a result which could potentially become the new basis for religion and science in the future.

General Overview (Big Picture)

This is a story of an epic battle between God and Satan. This story begins with a futuristic space faring race that is in turmoil with itself (ie. us) and the other dominant space faring races within the Milky Way.

God is sick of false prophets who claim that the end of the world is near as the continuing embarrassment for those who follow these false prophets, turns more and more people away from what God calls his "true church".

Science has proven so many things over the years, but has yet to determine the answers to the most asked questions of all time. Then one day a very simple experiment attempting to prove something completely unrelated, uncovers a strange behaviour of certain atoms at the quantum level, which defies some long standing scientific principles.

The implications of this discovery could lead to an all out Holy War, one the likes of which have not been seen for many centuries. The team of scientists who made the discovery question whether it is ethical or not to release their findings to the general public without concrete proof as this is only an inital discovery and would need to be validated within the community in general.

Though just like any other ground breaking discovery, it is soon leaked to the public. People are dubious about its meaning and its authenticity, they are scared of its implications and soon start forming sides. Both sides have very strong cases, but the simplistic truth of the discovery explains that the real truth is outside the scope of the petty squabbling that the masses play against each other.

Knowing that the truth could possibly unite everyone, thus bringing science and religion together finally, God authorises the deployment of a band of angels to help protect the scientific team against an onslaught from Satan’s demons.

Both the angels and demons struggle against each other while the small human contingent tries to unify the two sides of science and religion but can the angels maintain their safety for long or will Satan finally find a way to stop the unification of mankind and continue to drive a steak between humanity and keep them at war forever more?

Prior Art and Copyright

I'm also posting this online as a form of prior art for copyright issues that "may" come to play at some point in the future.

I just want everyone to know that this is completely original concepts from my brain to your PC. Anything that I put in that is similar is completely coincedental and I will ensure that nothing of anyone else's copyright gets into my work.

Introduction

Hi everyone, thanks for your interest in my authoring adventures.

My goal here is to allow my creative process expand upon all areas of the story that I have come up with, but also to help me get feedback from who ever wishes to, hopefully allowing me to formulate a better story along the way.

I appreciate your feedback and promise to take it with humility :)

I'm going to break this down into smaller posts to allow all facets of the story to be consumed by people easier.

So, here goes with the Introduction.

Firstly I am a computer programmer. For me, documentation typically is dry and methodical, though I do enjoy having the ability to explain my documentation to non-technical users so I have the ability to, waffle on a bit :)

This story is my first attempt at writing anything serious. I have written small excerpts in the past but my mind (as people who know me) tends to wander, so I figured if I had smaller chunks that I could come back to over time, it might hold my attention long enough to put something together.

Since (I believe) the storyline and plots are very exciting and interesting, I feel that contributing to this will be easy. I just have to get past the "start"ing blocks and go from figuring out what to do, into actually developing the characters and storyline in detail.

So welcome on board, I hope that you enjoy the story and are willing to contribute your feedback whenever you get a chance!

Cya
Bradley q:)

PS. BTW, PLEASE forgive any gramatical or punctuation errors. I will get around to fixing them soon :)