satyapriya

#StoryADay prompt
Societal World Building

The Story A Day website offered the prompt of looking at a story you're writing, and asking how a particular aspect of the story came into being. It can mean research if writing a 'mundane' or literary story, more wild speculation if writing genre.

My mind went straight to a story I never finished, an older one, where Christianity has been side-lined in favour of every other religion in the world. Naturally, I gave St Paul's cathedral to the pagans. Prime real estate.
I never got further than someone on the steps of St Paul's watching Christians march down Swanston St, from the State Library to the Shrine of Remembrance. I remember something about ruined tram lines from the religious riots of twenty years before, and it seemed it was yet another foray of mine into a semi post-apocalyptic Melbourne. I've yet to discover whether all these little Melbourne vignettes are part of one great disaster vision, or separate worlds.

Anyway, so if that's where my mind went, I'm okay with that. Maybe the speculation I'm about to do here, straight onto the page, and without too much seriousness, will respark the story. Maybe not. I don't have much of a stake in the results either way. It's an exercise.

So, partly-ruined Melbourne, or at least, a greatly neglected and run-down Melbourne.
How? When? I want to say it's an offshoot of the Kennett years, which is when this story started. That Kennett's strictures on Victoria tightened and tightened, and somehow, the Christian sects of Melbourne became harsher, to the point where other religions finally revolted.
Did they band together? They'd have to, I think. That would take some organisation. A charismatic leader? This was in the days before Facebook, flash mobs, and the internet being a way to rally people(and for people to say they're coming to something, and then not bother turning up, because there's a turmeric chai latte with their name on it at a hipster café).
What would it take for the Pagans, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and every other mob to take to the streets and wrest control of the church sites, and the dominant religious paradigm of Victoria?
Did it happen worldwide, or just in Australia, or just Victoria?
Interesting if it's just Victoria, because it ties in with a story I wrote, also during the Kennett years, of a wall going up around Victoria, and Kennett continuing as a despot. And harnessing all the magical and psychic folk to control the security of the wall. In the case of my heroine, holding her daughter hostage.
If the tram lines in Melbourne are ruined, it suggests a violent takeover that wrecked Melbourne.
Now that the pagans have St Paul's what are they going to do with it? It's scarcely a grove of trees, an open space, or Stonehenge. Or is it? Do those steps of St Paul's now lead to a new Stonehenge on the site of the church?
Oh, but I would miss the bell turrets, and the gargoyles...
But what was the last straw? What was the incident that broke the camel's back and incited rebellion, rioting, and takeover? Who was it who said 'let them eat cake'?
I truly want to implicate George Pell.
"Christians have only ever done good," he might have said.
And that, my friends, would have pissed off just about everyone not Christian. Not that their hands are clean, by any means, because every religion has dickheads, and oppressors.
But, I can just picture Pell saying something like that, then denying he said it, as he's lead to the chopping block.
Or something equally inflammatory.
When it's broadcast on tv, one person puts down their knife and fork on their dinner plate and says: "That's it. I had enough of this git."
Then they're on the phone to their mates, saying: "Did you see Pell? Yeah? We riot at midnight. Call your friends."
And the biggest phone tree in the history of phone trees is activated.
At midnight, Melbourne starts to fall.

And that's what I can think of at 8.30am, Monday morning, over breakfast on the brown couch.
As an experiment, I didn't go terribly wild, but I am feeling rather worn down by the past week.
Plus, I'm only slowly regaining my ability to 'ask the next question' to get deeper into weird territory.
So much of my original storytelling skill deteriorated in the years after my breakdowns, and in the made scramble to write non-fiction to sell to magazines. My word skills have improved, but I need to work out my speculation muscles, build them up again. They are rather atrophied.
So, morning workout done, I now rise from the brown couch, disturbing both the pup, and Chloe Ballerina Cat, and go about my day.
Ciao for now, world builders.