You knew what this was when you came in, so kwityerbitching. Anyway …
Let’s say that for whatever unfathomable reason you have accepted an invitation to a weekend houseparty at the RhymerLair. Exhausted from a session of carnal excess with the hookerbots of your choice, you stumble off looking for a cool, refreshing drink. But, confused by all the magic and super-science, you mistake the inter-universal transporter controls for the water cooler, and thus you find yourself transported to an alternate Earth world which is a moral inversion of this one. All the nice people are assholes; all the assholes are victims. You know, like on that episode of the Mr. Sulu show.
Luckily for you, you have the hyperspace cell phone I provide all my guests, and it’s charged up. So you give me a call, and you get an automated message:
*Hello, and thanks for calling Skaldimus! Tracing your signal, I see that you are a Doper who has accidentally exiled him, or, or itself to that hellish alternate Earth in which black is white, up is down, and Barack Obama has a beard. If you are Anaamika or somebody else on the Short List, fear not, because of course I’m going to drop everything and come save your ass and murder anyone who looked at you sidewise. As for the rest of you, I’ll come get you when I have time. I’m busy torturing hobbits right now, but I promise to come get you before 181 days have passed. I wish you could ask Skald Prime for help, but frankly he was an embarrassment to the name Rhymer so I had to shoot him in the face recently and take his stuff.
*What’s your plan for making it through the next six months?
I’m assuming I’m on the short list (if not, you got 'splaining to do). I’d whack somebody over the head, take their money, buy supplies, and head for the wilderness. Time to get writing done!
I started out as a journalism major, but quickly decided that journalism isn’t for me. But now I’m intrigued. I might not will a Pulitzer for writing up a series about the sociological impact of a society where birth control is outlawed, all drugs are legal except alcohol, and murder has no penalty, but I sure as hell would find some interesting material for fiction.
So, I’d hope I could get one of the ginormous families in the mirror world - hopefully one that hasn’t faced too much adversity from (illegal) gun violence and drug addiction - to take pity on me as I study the natives for the next six months and hope not to get shot myself while pestering people for informal interviews.
I don’t understand: why would I find it difficult to survive in a universe with some assholes and some nice people, and where the assholes have all the good stuff? I’ve been training for that all my life.
Am I taking the place of my mirror universe counterpart, or am I a homeless person with no papers and no local money? If the latter then things would be difficult regardless of which universe I was in, although I suppose in the mirror universe I could seek charitable aid from the local Satanic cult or something.
If the former it would definitely be strange to find that I hate all my friends, and that the coworkers or acquaintances I find most irritating in this universe are great people in the mirror universe. It would be upsetting to wind up in the place of someone who was, by the standards of my own universe, a terrible person – but perhaps even more upsetting to learn that my mirror universe counterpart was a wonderful person who’s devoted her life to caring for sick orphans or something. That would mean that back in my own universe I’m a total jerk.
MirrorMe[sup]TM[/sup] would be a popular, gregarious extrovert, a real life of the party type, always flirting and picking up chicks. But he would also be oddly traditional, not particularly tolerant of the different, and probably a Conservative voter. My friends would be skinny, disdainful, miserly atheists, the kind that make you want to go to church just to spite them.
But what about countries? MirrorCanada would be poor, oppressive, intolerant of immigrants, and probably always scheming militarily.
Once I figured out what was going on, I’d head for that bastion of pluralism and tolerance, Mirror North Korea.