--- Paul Richard Corrigan <corrig11@pilot.msu.edu> wrote:

[Paul -- As will be revealed in the fourth part, this was actually written from
the perspective of someone living towards the end of the 24th century, not the
30th. He has a clone in the 30th century, though, and *he's* answering you.]

it were fought from the beginning of open hostilities in April of 2001

until

the final use of nuclear weaponry in July of 2078.

   Please remind me just which conflict broke out in April 2001; at the time
Earth would have been torn by war and civil war beyond belief, even if there
had been no "Third World War."

I believe that my progenitor was probably refering to the "Spyplane Squabble"
between the Chinese government and the United States. While it was a minor and
by most lights quickly resolved situation, it did clearly point up the tensions
between the two power blocs.

   The Lady Mercury, from whom I learned what little I know about physics
during my studies at the University of Crystal Tokyo, would not be amused at
use of such jargon. Perhaps it reflects her great age, but she was the one
who
taught me to speak in volumes and libraries, even if paper manuscripts are
almost unknown in our age.

What can I say? My gamete donor was, I recall, quite sincere about his
opposition to paper-usage; ironically so, as it's only because his manuscript
was printed out that it survived the centuries after his death. To edit his
words to fit our own era's prejudices would be grossly hypocritical, as part of
the reason that I'm releasing this document to comment on the increasing
triumphalism in our era's history texts, a theme he deals with later. 

   Recall as well that the PRC's theoretical dedication to socialism was in
fact a dead letter in practice by the turn of the century;

While that may have been true, they underwent a dramatic increase in preaching
if not in practice after the public relations disaster of the '04 Olympics.

   (Breaking character for a moment, Chris, assuming such anti-trust
attitudes
like we see in the US to exist everywhere's a bit provincial. That, and I
hardly expected such American provincialism here. You're from _Alberta_. ^_^;
Of course, I don't know what stance Canada has generally taken towards
monopolies.)

(Generally, unless they're run by the government, pretty dim. That's changing,
though.)

   (Breaking character for what I hope is the last time--you'll have to
remind
me of the references for the names not from anime.)

(You haven't read *Heinlein*? <sigh> Hie thee to the library and pick up _The
Past Through Tomorrow_ if they have it; if not, look for the collections _The
Man Who Sold the Moon_, _The Green Hills of Earth_, and _Revolt in 2100_. That
should cover most of it. Then look up C.L. Moore's "Northwest Smith" stories
for shambleau.)

     On May 27, 2025, an earthquake measuring 8.0. on the Richter Scale

rocked

the Kantou plain, devastating Tokyo. Aftershocks ran up and down the

Pacific

Rim
of Fire, causing brief eruptions from the volcanos on the remaining

Hawaiian

islands, tital waves along the Australian coastline, and secondary quakes

from

Alaska to Mexico. The death toll reached nearly three million worldwide, a
third
of that from Tokyo alone.

   What source do you cite?

(The BGC role-playing game, for both Richter rating and Tokyo death-toll.)

Unfortunately, the original author wasn't a geologist, and hadn't realized that
een into the 2040s there was as much debate as to why *this* quake was as
damaging as it was as there had been as to the cause of Tunguska or the
Grantville incident. And even if he had been, he wouldn't have found out about
the Cthonians, whose activities intensified the quake damage as part of a major
effort to raise sunken R'lyeh from its watery depths.

   Much of it acquired, I take it, from those investors in GENOM that had
previously been active in the milleniarian grup SEELE, whose membership
contained a disturbing number of the world's best and brightest, I recall.

Even today, there's no *conclusive* proof that Rosenkreuz was associated with
SEELE, and most of the evidence we possess about their activities was only
revealed after the Jyurai started talking with us in the 28th century. Whatever
CD-I knew about them, he kept it fairly quiet, for good reason. Consider that
there's much more evidence that Kihl Lorenz was *intimately* involved with the
creation of the branch of UFP Starfleet Intelligence usually known as Section
31.

     All over the world, that is, except in the United States. From 2026
onward,
Senator John Connor (Lib., CA) (1985-2043) had been waging intense battles

in

the senate and in the media to outlaw the importation of cyberdroids.

   My knowledge of the Senator's career is not what it should be. I do know
that death at age 58 was to die a rather young man even by the standards of
the
2040's, never mind by the standards of our own blessed age. Was foul play
involved?

Only in a sense; he was seriously wounded fighting against the Boomer uprising,
and died from complications two years later, survived by his children -- one of
whom married a gentleman named Edward Ripley. Their grand-daughter achieved a
certain degree of infamy in the 22nd century.

   Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main line of the LP held up the
reconstruction of Tokyo as a model of free-market solutions to problems of
urban planning and renewal. I dimly recall hearing that Los Angeles seriously
considered contracting out reconstruction to GENOM in case of a similar
disaster.

Very true.

   I have forgotten who were the fourth party in US politics in the period.
The
Democrats, the GOP and the LP make three.

The Technocratic party, established in 1992. As with the Libertarian party, the
mainline were all for importing as many boomers as they could, but there's
enough evidence to suggest that the change in Connor's policies were strongly
influenced by evidence that a rogue member provided to him and his advisors. 

It's not surprising that you've forgotten them. Aside from garnering 2% of the
popular vote in the 2000 Presidential elections for their candidate, Alexander
Luthor, they had remarkably little impact on history. 

   You mentioned that boomers were cost effective enough to make them
affordable to even small forms even by the 2020's.

Initially, yes, but he also pointed out that most of these were sold at a great
loss for Genom in order to popularize the technology. Such deals were only made
with potential buyers with business licenses -- the family market seems to have
been ignored. (For the best, I think.) And prices actually increased over time,
as "advances in technology" -- most of which had been developed in prototype a
decade before -- were made available.

   You mentioned what attractions the Martian ruins were for tourists; there
at
least were economic incentives to preserve the ruins, given the revenue they
might have provided for the developing Martian economy. The destruction of
the
ruins must have been controversial at least at the time. A few words are in
order regarding why so little effort was made at preservation.

The "tourism" only evolved after the majority had been demolished by workers,
who were -- according to diaries -- spooked by them. Even later, after the
establishment of Graviton City on their remains, the city administration was
less interested in the potential economic benefits of tourism than they were
afraid of the potential publicity disasters should any of their less than
ethical operations be discovered.

   I dimly remember from Lady Mars's lectures on the history of the period a
brief mention of something called "Galatea," a sort of superboomer that had
been created by Stingray. Mars conjectured, if I recall correctly, that it
was
Galatea that destroyed Dr. Stingray along with his lab. But perhaps her
conjecture is without merit?

Lady Mars, while a charming and merciful lady, was pulling your leg. "Galatea"
was a character in the 2140 video-drama _Bubblegum Crisis_, which was the most
distorted adaptation of the careers of the Knight Sabres since Dumas' _The
Three Musketeers_ and sequels described the career of Charles de Baatz, Sieur
D'Artagnan.

I thank you for your commentary, of course, Professor Kiryu-Miyazawa, and I
hope that you find the subsequent sections of the manuscript more to your
liking.

C. Rachel Davies.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
	     .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'