Hey all, sorry not sure if this should go here but i've written the start of a short story wouldn't mind some opinions on it.
*Disclaimer, uh being half white and half asian with possible AS i'm obviously not someone who could logically approve of euginics, the following story is a cautionary tale about the dangers humanity could face. I wrote this stuff a while ago. Still obviously sorry if anyone is offended no harm intended.
The basic plot: Follows the life of one Alois Hitler, and his work on an alternate world in which hitler was never born. Like all those alternate history stories were the nazi's one ww2 but this time ww2 never even happened.
The idea was too show what a slippery slope genetics can be, in the story humanity would have worked to create a "perfect" race. After years of working on it they designed and then raised the "perfect generation".
Thing is, they did it on the backs of a society which wiped out the genetically inferior (or what was considered to be). So when the "perfect generation" grew up. They turned around and did what they obviously should do. They removed those genetically inferior too them... their parents. Thing is, this race while not being perfect wasn't like their parents either. After they killed their parents (though saving a hundred of them and sending them to other worlds too warn people) they took their parents ideal of "perfection" to it's ultimate course. They fought, survival of the fittest, as was what their parents considered the ideal. So in the end their was just one left, the last perfect human on that earth. And of course thusly the human race died out.
I haven't really thought too work AS into the story, i wasn't sure i had it when i wrote this sypnopsis and i'm not sure if it's really relevant.
anyways here's the start of the story. read or not as thou wish.
Come sit down stranger, would you like to hear a tale? a story, a fable, a yarn... a truth.
please sit.
And so I sat, and so the fire burned and so the old man, he told me his story, his fable, his truth.
"Did you know son, that there are many universes, oh call them what you will, universes, worlds, dimensions, levels and planes of reality. If you could see them, one connected to the other hanging in the space between realities like a fractal made of pearls of light".
"There was jsut one once but for reasons we still dont' know it split, it seems linked to well choice, choice and life. Everytime a descsion is made a chance exists for that choice to spawn a new world, exactly like the one before it, except this time they choose differently. It becomse so that when something must decide, this or that, up or down, left or right, the wharp and the wheave, a dimension is born.. Sometimes a nation might be destroyed it's peoples butchered, it's land salted and the world doestn' split, but then the multitude paths a bee could take from one flower to the next could send of a myriad meileiu of new realities tumbling into existance.
I'm from one of those worlds dear boy, one not so different from this. In fact, i think i can place the difference, oh not the exact moment but i know what happened here that didn't happen to my world.
Ahh now, i see the look of disbelief on your face, you think i'm pulling your leg, or crazy, or drunk... but what is it to you if i tell the truth or not? All you need know, is that this could have happened, you'll either be pleased by my tale or not, if you wish to get up and leave halfway through then by all means, for you'll believe it... or not. Something which i don't believe matters a great deal. For it could have happened here too, and that is all you need to know".
"So then dear stranger, lets start at the beginning shall we.. an introductyion, an irony, my name... Alois Hitler the third, ahh i see you wince at that... i'm starting too lose you already, but boy don't you see it's the grandest joke the fates ever played. ahh Of all the worlds for them too have sent me too... but then, perhaps they knew. Regardless, my boy, my name Alois Hitler the third. My father Alois Hitler Junior was half-brother to your Adolf Hitler".
"In your world, he wrestled control on a nation and using it he commited a great evil which changed your world forever, and in my world? he died in WW1. He's my uncle, so of course i know how he died. None of the others would have, that's the joke you see. A hundred of us, and i land here. ahh. Sometimes i wonder, what about the other worlds where he died, did it turn out the same way as ours, did they make the same mistakes, is there perhaps another version of me telling this tale, to some other passerby. But what does it matter? huh? we can only live the life given, and sometimes tis better not too ask why"?
"But i digress, i'm getting old, old and tired, my mind wanders a little more than it used too. So why don't i bring you up to speed then sonny? Show you what i think was the cause, oh it's not the blame, but it was the spark.
Now i can't be sure exactly what lead us down the path we did but i can see what stopped you. In the 1930's in both our worlds a form of social philosiphy was starting to gain acceptance. Eugenics; selective breeding of humanity for the benefit of society. It's an old idea, Plato himself was a proponent, however it gained a modern distinction with a cousin of Charles Darwin. Noting that humanities newfound ability too care for the sick and provide enough food for the weak, man had stopped evolving, survival of the fittest, the new paradigm of understanding was being thwarted by humanities new condition. Now those which would have previously perished in nature where kept alive by modern medicines and social conditions, and in fact it was noted that those of a less desireable nature (most notably the poor and unintelligent) where having the most children while those of higher class were having the least. A sort off downward spiral was imagined whereby humanties gene pool would degenerate as the weaker parts of it would begin to outnumber the stronger parts leading to a stagnantation of the race. So in 1937 in both our worlds governments all around the world, including europe, america and asia started to pass eugenics laws. Laws promoting what where considered "desireables" to breed and laws preventing "degenerates" to breed. Our respective governments even carried out hundreds of thousands of forced sterlizations on those deemed "unworthy". In my world that continued into the late 80's, on this one it was the 70's. We stopped for different reasons though."
"On your world, it became unpopular, that great evil that my uncle committed, all those atrocities bound so tightly to the nazi party, and it's policies, it's polcies of eugenics. It became i think almost synonymous with evil on this world. On mine, it became policy. "
"I could bore you with the differences, the other things that changed between this world and mine cause of that one little person.
But instead i do believe i will start this show... we say that too."
"1972. 3 years after the great war between the communists and the allies. The nuclear bomb dropped on dresden, had ended that war. Russia pulled it's troops out of germany and offered unconditional surrender. Borders were redisigned, europe changed shape, there isn't even a country called Germany anymore, It's austria, or part of france or luxemburg. The US had finally broken it's isolationist policy and had been vital in the development of the bomb that ended the war, japan was still dealing with civil rebellion in china and I was in college, studying to be a bioligist."
"it was an exciting time, the great war had driven the technological advance of what came to be called computers. Initially used for encryption purposes during the war they had started to see use in universities and some government officials where apparently very excited about what it could do for eugenics. "
08 Dec 2006, 11:47 am
And it's still topical even to this day. We still haven't learned from our past mistakes. But I digress.
