Chris

The Life of Chris

Note: This character does not have complete freedom. You must follow the order of events listed in your Hagaddah. Other than that, feel free to embellish in any way you like.

You've seen the world to come, and it isn't pretty. You have come back from the future to prevent your future from becoming reality.

The world is already in hard times, and it's going to get worse. A few cities have been lost, but in the next few decades most of the world's coastlines will be underwater. The temperature has been rising for years, but soon most of the tropics will be too hot to grow crops. Summers will get harder and harder. The storms will get fiercer and the droughts drier.

Within a few decades, the planet will be nearly unliveable. Earth will be unable to support 10% of her current population. Billions of people will starve. In your future, only a few thousand people escaped this hell. You were one of those that got out on a ship bound for Jerusalem, the planet that would be a fresh start for humanity.

You were born March 28, 2040 to a young single mother on the streets, just around the corner from here. When you were growing up, your mother showed you the place, and told you of the people who came and visited her and comforted her after your birth. They brought food, blankets and kind words. She never knew them or saw their faces after that, but they helped her through that dark day.

That was the last shining light in your life for several years. Your childhood was hard. You never had a stable home. Sometimes your mother would live with a boyfriend for a few months, or scrape together rent for a room, but often you were both on the street.

Despite the hard times, you had some success. School came easily to you, and you managed to make an impression on some of your teachers. You showed particular aptitude with math and science. When you were in high school, you were offered a prestigious internship with a major real estate developer. You would work closely with the engineers, and have the opportunity to compete for an engineering scholarship for college.

You were amazed and excited. The prestige and the money were nearly overwhelming to a homeless teenager. The job even paid enough that you were able to give your mother the money to rent a tiny apartment. It wasn't much, but it was the first stability you had ever known.

As the weeks went on, you started paying more attention to what the company was doing. You had heard about global warming and pollution in class, but you had never thought about the causes in detail. You realized that the company you worked for took every shortcut and cut every corner. Every heating system they installed was polluting the air. Every factory they built spilled chemicals into the water.

Still, you didn't think too much about it. The work paid the bills, and you weren't the one calling the shots. Then came the tsunami. You were working in your glassed-in high-rise when the massive waves struck the city. The lowest, poorest parts of the city were the hardest hit. Two kids you had known your whole life were killed by the waters.

After that, more and more people blamed global warming for what had happened. Your role, however small, began to trouble you. You heard about an organization that was trying to do something about the devastation.

As soon as you got connected to the Scientific Human Interplanetary Freedom and Rebirth Association (SHIFRA), you joined at the lowest level. You went to meetings and cheered people on, but it didn't feel like you were doing anything. You knew that there were big projects happening, but it wasn't easy to get into them.

You got accepted into an engineering program at a local university on scholarship. After you accepted admission, you got a letter from the SHIFRA board, inviting you to interview for Project Exodus. You had no idea what that meant, but you were excited.

Your interview went startlingly well, and you were allowed into the project that changed--and probably saved--your life. Project Exodus planned to send a colony ship to a newly discovered earth-like planet. SHIFRA was still doing its best to save earth, but earth was nearly beyond hope. Escape was the only hope left.

You started college and took every engineering class you could. You put off everything else and spent all your spare time helping with construction and maintenance of whatever parts of the ship your limited experience was useful for.

Finally, it all paid off. The world was crashing down around your heads, but your spaceship was ready to launch, and you were on it.

Most of the passengers were put in cryosleep after the first few months in space. As someone with engineering skill, you took shifts awake every few months. That was how you got involved in Project Resurrection.

Dr. Carl Myers, one of the other engineers, had gotten bored during several month-long shifts and started playing around with an old physics experiment he worked on in grad school. To his surprise, it worked. He managed to create a very limited form of time travel.

After some tests, Carl spoke with the heads of SHIFRA. They agreed to give the plan a try. The goal was to send back one person to try to help the planet. This person would work to slow global warming and try to get more ships launched sooner. No one believed that the eventual downfall of earth could be prevented, but if it was forestalled even a few more years, maybe a few million people could escape instead of a few thousand.

You were chosen because you spoke well, understood the engineering required for the ship and had been involved in Project Resurrection while you were awake.

The trip was one-way. Time travel couldn't bring anything forward in time.

You spent over a year preparing. You studied history and sought out information on the worst offenders in the global collapse. You studied the diseases brought by climate change and armed yourself with cures. Most importantly, you studied the ship designs over and over until you knew every piece by heart.

You also spoke often with a historian on board about what you planned to do. The historian predicted that you would be so disruptive that you would be arrested or assassinated. Throughout history, most people who have tried to make changes on the level you had planned did not live to see them through.

You're probably approaching that point. You went too far this last time.

When you got here, you were lost and disoriented. You had been supplied with some money from this time, and you found yourself a room in the house of a nice family. That was where you met Jamie, the only child of the family where you lived.

You spent the first year mostly settling in. You had lots of big ideas, but only the faintest plan of how to go about them. You started by making connections with liberal application of funds. Then, more and more catastrophes started to happen. Somehow, you managed to wrangle yourself an appearance in front of the U.S. Congress.

You were terrified. You had never spoken in front of that large a crowd. You brought Jamie with you to help out. You advocated for environmental controls.

You were nearly laughed out of Congress. No one believed your warnings. You needed another tactic.

More and more diseases started spreading through the population, and no one knew how to cure them. You tried distributing medicine and warnings. People took your medicine, but ignored what you had to say.

Despite these setbacks, you began to gather a few followers. You started the Movement Against Global Exploitation (MAGE) Institute. Your people held rallies in the streets, wrote op-ed pieces in the newspaper, and occasionally took more drastic action.

During this time you recruited Andrea. Andrea was very devoted, but cautious. Not long after you recruited Andrea, she introduced you to her sister Pearl. Pearl was skeptical about your ideas, but she had seen Three Diamonds Foods, the fishing company she worked for, do some terrible things. You helped her expose one of the worst offenses. Since then, Pearl has been firmly in MAGE's camp, whatever her doubts.

Pearl's connections to a big fishing company made her a great source for information on the polluters. Industrial espionage turned into low-level industrial sabotage. Your group worked hard to minimize the damage that corporations were doing to the environment. You started getting some money together from small donations and wealthy contributors, as well as more than a little money that you tried not to track too closely.

Soon, you went before Congress again. This time you had more support and were more prepared. You listed off the plagues of environmental destruction that were striking the world and railed against the offenders. More people listened, but you were still making very little progress among the legislators.

You did make some progress. Barry Magdalene, a prominent Senator, was swayed to your side. Very shortly, however, Barry's career was brought low when he was caught with a prostitute. His wife divorced him and he was forced to resign.

Barry showed up at your doorstep and offered to help. He was no longer a senator, but he was still a lawyer with a lot of connections. Barry became your legal adviser and closest friend. Before long he became more than that. Barry and Jamie were the only people in this time who really cared for you more than for your message. While the message is the truly important thing, having Barry in your life made your work easier.

You continued to see the world fall apart as you advocated in Congress. Some members of your organization began taking more and more drastic actions against the worst polluters. You didn't exactly support these actions, but you turned a blind eye. Anything that decreased pollution gave your people a few more years to work.

You finally decided that it was time for the big step. You started to seek out other engineers to begin work on spaceships. The next time you went before Congress, while you still advocated for controls for pollution, you also began talking about escape.

Over time, you got closer and closer to Barry. Finally, he proposed to you. You ran away and hid. You couldn't do that, could you? You knew that one day you were going to be assassinated or arrested. You couldn't marry him and then leave him alone.

You talked to Barry about your fears, leaving out the time-travel part of course. He promised you that he would never blame you for whatever happened, and begged you to give him whatever time you could.

Three months later, you were married. You still worry about Barry, but you are very happy that you have him in your life.

As your spaceship plans slowly progressed, you got more and more frustrated by the failure of the country to do anything. With Barry's help, you assembled a list of all the donors to the campaign funds of all the members of Congress. You found link after link to large polluting companies. Finally, last month, you got up in front of Congress and national television and told everyone about these connections. You pointed out how people were destroying the world, and talked about what could be done.

You had some success for the first time. The media attention was far more than anything you'd received before. However, you quickly you realized that you had gone too far. Some members of your association realized it too, particularly Judah. The next day, Judah came to you and said that he was afraid that your name was too tainted to do anymore good. You couldn't disagree with him.

Someday very soon, you will be removed from the picture. You have certainly done things for which you could be arrested if they had the evidence--industrial sabotage and the like. The work that MAGE is doing needs to continue after you are gone. This is why you have gathered your closest associates tonight for a Passover Seder.

You have never been a very observant Jew, but Passover has real significance for you. Someone always took you and your mother in for the Seder, and fed you. It was a night when everyone cared for each other and remembered what it was like to suffer.

Tonight you want to tell your closest associates the true story so that they can continue your work. In your work, you have learned the hard way that if you tell people something that they are not ready to hear, they will not listen. In the context of the Seder, you are prepared to tell your story as a series of parables that will help your friends understand. It doesn't matter if every story happened exactly the way you tell it: you have already changed the future by being here. What matters is that your friends truly understand why what they are doing is so important.

You need to prepare your closest friends to carry on without you and save as many people as possible from their own destruction.

People You Know

Barry Magdalene - Your husband. Barry was a U.S. Senator until he got cocky and started fooling around with prostitutes. After being forced out, he came to MAGE and turned his life around. In doing so, he has truly given you something to care about besides the cause. That is wonderful, but it's also terrifying because the cause is the most important thing to you. You are willing to give your life for it. At the same time, you hate to think of the sorrow that Barry will suffer when that happens. Within MAGE, Barry has begun leading the "Peaceniks". He is afraid of the actions of some of the more extreme members, but you think that his fear is mostly for you.

Jamie Schreiber - When you came back to this time, you got a room at Jamie's parents' house. Jamie was 16 at the time, and an only child. She latched onto you like an older sister, and you became quite close. Jamie was the first person you connected to in this time, and Jamie helped you through some of the most depressing downturns early on. Jamie came out as gay in college, and you helped her through some of the hard times, especially when Maria, her lover, was unable to stay in the country. Jamie has grown up a little after that experience, but she is still very naive and full of hope. You hope that her world is better than yours was. She and Barry are close, and you think that is good for both of them. Jamie has not joined Barry's little offshoot group, but you know that she is also scared of some of the more extreme actions that MAGE has had to take.

Pearl Skala - As the group has factionalized, Pearl has always been firmly in the center. Pearl works for the Three Diamonds Food Corporation, a major fishing company owned by Mitsubishi. Pearl has been spying on them and providing information that MAGE can use to sway public opinion. She has also helped small sabotage missions within Three Diamonds. You don't like having to do sabotage, but it's worthwhile to save lives. Pearl is Andrea's sister. While they have their differences, they are very close. It was Andrea who brought Pearl into MAGE.

Andrea Skala - Andrea is Pearl's sister. They both work very hard for MAGE, but have somewhat different ideas of where it should be going. Andrea is a marine biologist who has the scientist's attitude to politics and the world. Andrea feels that if all the information is provided to people in ways that they can understand, the people will make the right decisions. Andrea thinks that the major problem is simply a lack of education. While a lack of education is a problem, Andrea severely underestimates the power of greed. Even so, there is a place for this attitude in MAGE, and Andrea has done some good work with Barry. Between the two of them, they have created some great pamphlets and ads that have made some people listen.

James Papadopoulos - You're glad that James is on your side. You certainly wouldn't want him against you. James was a U.S. Marine, and came out of the military disgusted by being told to kill people for reasons that didn't make sense to him. He came to MAGE through his brother, John. He had already been fighting for the environment on his own for a few years, but he wanted other people. You know that he uses tactics that you aren't comfortable with, but you're willing to turn a blind eye if it helps save the world.

John Papadopoulos - You worry about John. John is a very nice, somewhat delicate man who is trapped between his cold-blooded brother James and his hot-tempered and violent lover, Jude. Jude won't even let John be open about their relationship. John believes in the goodness of all humanity, and can be a bit naive, especially for someone who has seen so much darkness. He is part of the Peacenik faction, and writes impassioned prose for the cause.

Jude Fairchild - Jude is an environmentalist because environmental destruction hit him personally. Jude's family had a farm until the changing climate left it barren. As a farm kid and an ex-cop, Jude is able to connect with communities that few environmentalists can reach. Jude is not a liberal or an intellectual. He has seen the harm we're doing to the planet first hand, and wants to stop it any way he can. Jude has had a hard life, and being gay hasn't helped. Of course, if he would come out and let John help him, it would be better for everyone, but that isn't really your business. Jude is not a nice person, but he can be very effective.

Phillip Harrison - Phillip is a street preacher, offering salvation and a sandwich to the homeless on the street. You remember some of those from childhood. They could be scary, but the food was appreciated. Sometimes Phillip's religious fervor scares you. Christians like him have often taught that this world doesn't matter. The glint in his eyes when he talks about his religion makes you doubt his sanity. He can reach out to the evangelical Christians in the suburbs and the people on the street that society has ignored. His religious fervor can be terrifying, but it is also powerful.

Colonol Frank Bartholemew - Frank did some hard things in the Franco-Rwandan war, but once he got home, getting a job was too hard for him. He wound up on the street and connected with Phillip. Phillip brought him here. He makes everyone uncomfortable, and you thought long and hard about bringing him into your inner circle. Frank really does have some insights into the darkest parts of this country. He has seen the worst parts of military service and lived on the street. The people on the street know things that most people do not want to learn. You know. You've been there.

Tamasa Valappil - Tamasa has gotten heavily involved with MAGE without ever quite accepting the degree to which the world is in danger. In some ways, having a skeptic in your inner circle has been very valuable to you. If you can't convince Tamasa of something you know that you won't be able to convince the populace either. Once convinced of something, she does work hard, but she still does not accept that more extreme measures are necessary.

Eve Matthews - Eve was the first female major-league baseball player until an accident put her in a wheelchair. After that, she became an accountant for Chevron. When the company asked her to falsify information for them, she came to MAGE. Since then, she has been leaking information to MAGE that you have used in publicity. You have also let the information get around to the extremists. You're not sure whether any Chevron money has wound up funding MAGE and you'd rather not know.

Simone Cylima - Simone was a child soldier in Rwanda and has always had to make her own luck. Despite her early experience, she is not one of the more violent extremists. She uses her computer skills to great effect. She has gotten valuable information for you in the past, and you try not to pry too hard into what else she is using her skills for.

Judah Isaacson - Judah is the treasurer of MAGE. He got involved with MAGE primarily because he was interested in you. You were flattered, but you were too involved with Barry to care. Recently he has become quite devoted to the cause anyway. Sometimes you wonder if Judah is actually more devoted to the true cause than you are. Shortly after your last speech to Congress, Judah confronted you. He said that he was afraid that you had gone too far and had become so controversial that you were a detriment to your own cause. You couldn't really argue with him. People spend more time these days arguing about you than about the planet. You wouldn't be surprised if Judah is the one who will turn you in, and you aren't entirely sure you would blame him.