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This particular story has a rather strange origin. Those who have read my original draft of this story would have noted a stark resemblance to the basic plot line of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars conflict, which was the basic battle between environmentalists and terraformers on Mars.
This irritated me to no end. As the plotlines for my Mars stories developed, I looked at our last Cold War, and the current trend of religious genocide in world politics [Chechnya(probably spelled wrong), Kosovo, North Ireland, all over the place] and figured that our next big Cold War would be one of religious governments, each acting independently, versus an alliance of secular nations. Hence, I wrote this in.
The actually writing of this story was...um...well...stressful. I had been sitting at dinner, and my parents and I started discussing my writing.
This discussion quite quickly turned into a full-blown argument. My mother gave me an assignment, to write x or y within a week, and I went off to my room to think.
Half an hour later, it was done.
This is, I'm sad to say, one of the best pieces of my career. I like it. It has a flow to it that I like quite a bit. It does still need some work, but I'll get it done one of these days.
A word on the lights. The first two lights will have drawings up sometime. They will be a male/female symbol and a cross(sorry to be so westracentric, but do you have any idea how hard it would be to draw anything else for me?). As to the third light...well, what do you think it is?
One last thing. As I said before, this is a story of religious governments vs. secular. Let us hope and/or pray that this never comes to pass.
Because really, although I like my stories, I'd rather not see them come to pass.