One should never underestimate the gullibility of the human species especially when it is aligned with hopeless idealism. This is particularly true with respect to the Clarkers
Clarker is a blanket term applied to a wide variety of strange pseudo-religious groups which have abruptly sprung up everywhere. The term is taken from the name of Arthur C. Clarke, author of Childhood’s End, a story from the previous century wherein children around the world simultaneously evolve into an advanced life form. The term is derogatory, implying that the Clarker takes a fantasy and believes it to be real. It’s also derogatory in that it lumps all Clarkers into one bucket, a generalization which all Clarkers find offensive; after all they’re right, the others are just loonies.
Clarkers come in all varieties, ranging from slightly offbeat visionaries to downright spiritual hacks, but they all share one central premise. The Carbon Plague, whether it be an actual plague or an act of God or an evolutionary imperative, is a Momumental Thing, on par with the Second Coming. For Many it is A Good Thing, thus an obvious corollary to this is that the Clarkers themselves will help further the Carbon Plague in any way possible. Human Dawn, for example, has a name patterned after the popular vidshow. They are convinced that the children are evolving per the natural laws. They claim that the theory of evolution has never explained sudden radical shifts in gene coding, and that we are privileged to witness the sudden birth of a new species, Homo sapiens cambiarus. In their opinion, evolution must not, and in fact can not, be stopped.
Thus the Clarkers work to foil anything and everything that seeks to prevent the children from growing as they want. Human Dawn is, in effect, a group of terrorist extremists. They actively hunt down and kill BuReloc personnel. They look for and destroy BuReloc camps. They ruthlessly kill anyone who stands in their way. And, most importantly, they find the children, spirit them away to safety, and fill them with their doctrine.
The adult members of Human Dawn are even more devoted to their work . They firmly believe that the human race as we have known it these past few thousand years is obsolete. They know their time is through, so they don’t care if they die as long as their death furthers evolution in some way. In fact, were Human Dawn able to do so, they would wipe out the entire species of unchanged humans in a flash. Fortunately for us, however, they do not have tactical nuclear devices. They do, however, have kids whom they’ve educated to believe they are the wave of the future and therefore entitled under the Survival of the Fittest to wreak havoc on the obsolete humans.
The Living Advent Church is another example of a Clarker group. Through a very creative interpretation (i.e., rewriting) of the Bible and other holy works, they have proven (that is, found or generated enough rickety evidence to support their wild claim) that the children are the Coming of God incarnate, which is the only way their damaged brains can make sense of the apparent miracles the kids can pull off. To this end, members will deliberately expose their kids to the Change (or as they see it, to the glory of God), Naturally, ‘God’ invariably obliges these faithful, and their children get massively ill as ‘God purges them of sin’.
There are some groups that have gone the opposite way : that the Carbon Plague is the beginning of the end times / punishment from god / the literal manifestation of sin on earth. While it might be simple just to lump these people into another group of plague haters (there are a lot of them after all), that underestimates the biggest threat of these people over many of the other organisations: that they fanatically believe in their version of the truth and will stop at nothing to achieve it. Most other adversaries care a bit about their own self preservation if nothing else!
Obviously, desperate religious fanatics like these have nothing to do with real religion, and are dangerous to an extreme. They kill unbelievers in the blink of an eye, and spirit away as many children as they can to worship them and tell them that they are God incarnate. This does very little good to the developing young minds, but the believers write off any tantrums or punishments the spoiled children inflict on them as the will of God. The net result is a church run by spoiled children and staffed by fanatics — a bad combination indeed.
Whatever the actual doctrine, you can readily see that Clarkers are a problem for all. Fortunately, they are strange enough that they only attract those whose sanity is already in question; were they able to attract stable and intelligent people, society would be turned