CPR Entry - Technogrammaton

[Corone]

I may well change my mind when I discover this doesn't work but...

So its a few years in the future and humanity is connected through advanced internet systems.
Religion remains strong, and has grown in many places despite the technology.

However a new heresy is beginning to creep into the system.
People keep saying they have spoken to God on the internet.

Has the ephemeral nature of the net actually found an abstract way to touch heaven?
What is God trying to say?
Why is it that Hebrew characters used in webspace are having almost magical effects?

Your characters are charged with rooting out this heresy,
but as men of faith can they ignore the evidence in from of them?


Thats the basic concept.
I'm toying with it being an Islamic empire as well.
In my world Christianity didn't hold Europe together after the fall of Rome and the Muslims managed to take control.
Hmm, Christian terrorists perhaps? Have to think about that one.

[Rob Lang]

Ah, god in the machine. Some of my favourite themes mix religeon with technology. Religeon has a capacity of being much more hard line than corporations can be. Belief is more powerful than greed.

[kumakami]

[misterecho]

I really wish I could comment on some of the excellent ideas and thoughts being shared. But due to my involvement in the contest it wouldn't be appropriate. But I can say

[SheikhJahbooty]

My main problem with this entry is that the title is so amazingly awesome that it sets the bar really high for the rest of us.

This doesn't even need to be alternate history with Germany worrying that the birth rate among ethnic Germans is so low and the immigration rate from Turkey is so high. Turks could conceivably eventually exert more influence in their democratic process, just by having a large population in Germany.

And Christian terrorists in the real life are fascinating. The IRA? That's crazy. It makes no sense. The Irish are such beautiful people.

Alternate history is cool too. Does anyone else find the history of Spain to be a sad story since the fall of Grenada to the Christians? Plus if you make it so that Christianity never unites Europe, you could make it so that Christianity itself never unifies, that the variations of Christianity (many of which had different Bibles) still survive without being absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church. And you could play with variations on Islam as well. The Muslims that take over from the Spanish end of Europe would be different from the Muslims that would take over starting from Turkey.

OMG! Turkey! You absolutely have to have Cyborg Janissaries!

And Hebrew characters do have magical power, at least on P2P networks. They let you find cool obscure Israeli music, like Avtipus.

Now I'm also thinking about how the new world would be different if it were explored by Muslims. Many native American societies were despotic a cruel. Muslims would have seen no reason to practice any restraint against them. The Powhatan, The Natchez, The Huron... Muslims would have just wiped them out.

The Cherokee clan system however does an excellent job of caring for orphans and the elderly. Popular support for conquering or exiling the Cherokee people would be harder to get from a Muslim population. And since the Cherokee weathered European diseases better than many other native American nations, the southern Appalachians might be home to a cyberpunk Cherokee nation. They might have their own religion which is similar in many ways to Zoroastrianism, or they might have converted to Islam, or they might have a religion that combines the two. Because the Cherokee are born into their mother's clan (not the father's), they might have female imams, like the Hui Muslims in real life China.

[Corone]

Thanks guys, you are made of awesome.
Now I have to justify the faith in the idea...

[BlaqueSaber]

Very original

[Thought]

[Rob Lang]

This really has to exist as a game. If it doesn't, I'm going down to the end of the garden and I'm going to start executing the pixies, one by one.

[Corone]

Well, I'm done.
Well, sort of...

I've got as far as I'm able to, and just about fulfilled the criteria,
but the game is far from finished.
These last months have just been too busy with other project and deadlines.
and I'm off on holiday at the weekend so my time is up.

Still, it isn't too shabby an effort and I wanted to produce something,
so here it is, more as entertianment than entry as it won't really stand against a complete entry:
http://www.corone.co.uk/Technogrammaton.pdf
But hopefully one day I'll come back and finish it properly.

Can someone tell me which bit of the site I should upload it to properly?
Is it the same as the usual upload or is there a special competition bit I should add it to?