Superhuman World 2025: The Immigration Trial!
Judge Joanna Witten presiding.
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Highlights:
(Wyatt P. Ferguson) I am an immigrant here, from the SW10 earth. I've contributed to your economy. I can testify about these others.
Our world was dying. We were huddled around the Yellowstone Cauldron for the last remaining warmth in our Global Cooling crisis. I went on missions across frozen terrain to find remaining drugs in pharmacies. At the end, people took injections to help them hibernate. Our acting President Trump was among them.
My own relatives and I found other ways out and places to go. I still don't know where half of them are. But I do have to compliment Powernauts on building a brave new world - even if my relatives and I stayed behind until the end.
Now we have new migrants. At least hear them out.
(Judge Witten) You say "new world". Is this literal, or figurative?
(Wyatt) Both, in a sense. They diverged their Earth from my former one, and "raptured" our population to form its own. This Earth is now known as SW12. You could ask Professor Powernaut for details. Even your Professor Psychovant gives lectures about that.
(Judge Witten) We'll invite them to testify. But back to the matter at hand... There were apparently saucer aliens alongside you. What is their role?
(Wyatt) They were tourists. They felt your planet to be hostile to tourists after their most recent visit. So they left.
(Wyatt) My involvement with them is on record. I have records into this decade (https://www.eilertech.com/stories/2011/page.php?fn=2022_annual.txt ), both SW10 and Powernaut directories.
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(Timothy T. Thompson, a.k.a. Red Vigil) We came from that dying world to which you refer as SW10. We have a proposal to renew it, through geothermal power partially from off-world sources. We merely ask to stay here while we can invite willing people to come with us.
(Judge Witten) Mr. Thompson, what *is* your proposal?
(Red Vigil) We shall go there and warm our part of the world. Eventually others shall form around us.
(Judge Witten) If you can engineer such a thing, why hasn't that been done before now?
(Red Vigil) You did not have the technology of the year 2136. My tower has that.
(Judge Witten) Others shall review your engineering proposal. What is your proposal for a legislative and justice system?
(Red Vigil) Of course I shall administer it, just as for any new colony in American history. New systems shall arise as the population wishes.
(Judge Witten) I gather you have already lived for centuries since 1858. What is to prevent you from becoming a God-Emperor?
(Red Vigil) My own will to serve my people. Plus I think you underestimate the will of American frontier settlers. Those who come with me will be that by definition.
(Judge Witten) Their will might not function when they are dependent on your structure for sustenance... Obviously I do not have jurisdiction over your new colony world. But (slams gavel) I declare an injunction against people approaching your structure in our world to support your theory until it undergoes engineering review.
(Red Vigil) Theory it of course is. But we shall depart as soon as possible.
(Judge Witten) In that case, you have two days. (gavel) Court is adjourned!
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(Wyatt Ferguson) And so the Red Vigil and his tower left our Earth, alongside about half as many followers as could fill his tower dwellings. Hopefully he built gardens and pastures somewhere around his tower first. Or maybe his tower has replicators from the future whence it came.
I wonder if his tower can create portals the way the Powernauts did to populate their own world. It can obviously teleport itself.
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Author's Note: Yes, migrants and a supposedly benevolent but unfettered ruler. And an effective judiciary in between. Welcome to Power City!
And as General Ross from Marvel Comics of the 1960s would say, it is ding-dong well about time this happened.
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