A satellite from an earlier age circles the quiet Earth. The Earth was not always this quiet. Once she communicated in thousands of languages across hundreds of tiny spectra, a rainbow of communication shouting out to space, that we are here, we are here, we are here... Those voices spoke with no unity and the fears and loneliness which allowed for retail therapy eventually gave way to wholesale slaughter. South America was the first to feel the sting of Envy.
Now the Earth sits quiet, its communications by directed cold beam or submerged fiber-optic keep random signals to space to a minimum. Mankind's exposure to the stars, has left scars, not easily healed. Remnants of First Contact has left humanity with a fear of the stars, but a need for them. The cradle of humanity is aflame, set afire by Earth's greatest and most terrible creation, Man. But fear or not, dangerous or not, humanity must ascend or starve to death on a world too hot or too cold, whose air is too dry and rainfall far too rare, whose people are still too numerous, even with fratricide practiced all over the globe, with infrastructure just barely strong enough to keep its tortured billions working around the clock for a future most will never see. And these are still better times than mankind has seen in nearly five decades.
This satellite hailed from a time when the world was changing and it looked as if mankind had learned the lessons it needed to mature and not a moment too soon. Scientists placed it in orbit to monitor the ever increasing and erratic world-wide weather patterns of the time. And for fifty years, it had an eye on the world and took photos of the world as it changed mostly for the better. Those photos were collected and studied by men and machines until the year 2073. And then the world was silent.
This satellite saw a happier world, prosperous beyond anyone from the early 20th century's expectations, those predictions of Malthusian doom would wilt under the bloom of the early twenty first century's super-economy of Brazil. Under the leadership of one of its first, in a line of female presidents, caused the country to soar to a level of economic prosperity never seen in its modern history.
Preventing the last of its rainforests from being destroyed, Brazil capitalized on the rainforest's biodiversity with a new explosion of science, genetic engineering and pharmacology. In the year 2021, a viable cure for cancer cell development was synthesized from the seeds of a barely known plant found in a tiny fifteen acre section of the rain-forest, that was slated for demolition before the forest was saved. This plant was found nowhere else in the rainforest and its benefits caused nations all over the world to reconsider their primal forests and an explosion of planting and reforestation began. The world was rife with cancers from rampant industrialization and a lapse of standards due to the profit-mongering of the greediest of the world's remaining superpowers. This panacea was literally in the nick of time and made Brazil the envy of a world growing sicker by the day.
The cancer cure was tightly held by the Brazilian government and scientific community and once the clinical trials were over, the Brazilian government created an agency to oversee the management of the drug, its licensing and distribution. Overnight Brazil became one of the most important destinations in the world. This caused South America to grow both in population and world-wide importance.
Central America benefited from this overflow of popularity and these nations of the southern hemisphere finally achieved prominence in the world, befitting a country that had placed biodiversity higher than raw profit and easy exploitation of the rain-forest. Lamentations of what other cures might have been lost were shouted around the world, but Brazil's latest crop of scientists and explorers would canvas the remaining rain-forest for any insect, venom, genome, or bio-plasm that might have another amazing offering.
Meanwhile, Africa under the guidance of Communist China began to change and its tribal wars began to be diminished. Unfortunately, there were several full scale wars that ended in the complete annihilation of one side or the other. Once those wars were done, the victors welcomed the Communist Chinese and their offers of factory development, manufacturing, food, resource management and wealth for anyone willing to work. But the Africans were canny. Too often before, they had been exploited and would not allow the Chinese to do what had been done in the past. All deals were made with strict legal management and the unified armies of the African continent ensured no one would ever take advantage of the Continent again.
China with its billions, closed its borders to immigration and built its Second Great Wall, surrounding the country's borders with an impenetrable barrier to protect itself from the rapacious powers scouring the world for resources. Building the wall concentrated the populations of China and helped to spread a slow viral disease for which there was no cure. Mutations of this new virus spread across the world and did not act the same as it did with the Chinese populace. Outside of China, the disease acted more like Ebola, spreading fast, killing quickly and without mercy. Accused of creating a bio-weapon designed to attack non-Chinese, the remaining superpowers rattled their sabers weakly but did nothing. At least, for a while.
The only area of the world apparently immune to the rampant effects of Chi-dromeda (as it was called in the West) was much of Russia. So China and Russia combined their resources and became a new world power. This benefitted Russia more than China, who was nursing an aging populace with a corrupt government. The Communist Chinese, executed the current Russian government suspected of corruption and annexed Russia. Russian and China scientists developed a medical scanner that could detect the virus and only allowed the serum-negative to leave the country. Those that chose to leave were never allowed to return. Taiwan became a Mecca for China's dispossessed but many fled to the factories of Africa and were welcomed for their skills and training. China lamented the loss of talent, but the country was still powerful, vibrant and with the union of Russia, they still had access to the last great stockpiles of petroleum left on the planet and had the manpower to expend to reach it. Millions died for the next five decades reaching those oil stockpiles further cementing China's worldwide supremacy. Prejudice against the Chinese, mostly from fear of Chin-dromeda, would last for decades and would eventually erupt into the Last World War.
This infusion of the Chinese immigrants displaced from China, many who were forced to come with the factories, gave Africa an infusion of highly educated, willing workers to work on one of the greatest projects on the Earth to date, the Solar Pavilions of the Sahara Desert. Eight hundred square miles of the Sahara, a relatively tiny portion was covered with a newly discovered quartz matrix created by Chinese and African scientists allowing them to harness nearly fifty percent of the energy from the sun, storing the energy in a treated silicon slurry below the desert acting as a battery, storing the intense solar heat of the day into an energy to power the United Nations of Africa, which included the Muslim Alliance nations of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Yemen.
The Solar Pavilion was a project that provided power for India, Greece, and the southern parts of Europe as well. With a nondestructive form of energy being focused into the continent of Africa, for the first time in millennia, the people could devote themselves to lives free from warfare and now spent their time harnessing the natural beauty of their country, replenishing the land, caring for the genetic diversity of the remaining wildlife that had not been hunted into extinction. As the Solar Pavilion employed millions laying the power cables, crafting the Pavilion itself, maintaining the cities near the edges of the Pavilion, raising families, creating schools, moving resources, the continent was buzzing with activities, each vying for which would continue to transform this collection of nations seeking redemption from the ravages of the nineteenth century. Africa was poised to be the power-plant of a world in desperate need for a solution as fossil fuels grew more scarce, more irreplaceable, and the tensions over how the remaining fuels would be used, escalated. India also formed relationships with Africa and the combinations of manpower, resources and education, turned Africa into the worlds, second greatest potential superpower.
The West, now called the Old Men of the Century, suffered greatly under the new prosperity of the Southern Hemisphere. A brain drain of their best and brightest fled the country seeking opportunity in the new stock markets, new scientific communities, new construction works that sprung up virtually overnight all over the world. China, now the world's premiere superpower and super-economy, was in economic control of the direction of the world's development and while it paid lip service to the Old Men of the West, the US and the European communities, their power was more of a figurehead than actually possessing any real say in the current direction of the world.
The last of their powers were waning under the weight of their overburdened economies saddled with ridiculous debt from their maintenance of militaries they could no longer afford. The nations of Mexico and Canada realizing they were burdened with the United States did what they could to prop up the US's fading economy and became the United North America Alliance (UNAA) in 2034 right after the Black Monday, in December 2034 when the NASDAQ collapsed for the last time, driving almost all but the richest American corporations into bankruptcy. This collapse restructured the West for what would later become the beginnings of the Oligarchy. Corrupted later by the blood-wealth and power of the surviving nations of a European Union, shattered by treachery and the destruction of the poorest nations of the EU to become the Plutocracy. The Plutocracy armed with super-advanced technologies created in secret labs practiced greed at its purest and most destructive. They were believers in commerce before all other things and would use whatever means necessary to further their goals.
The Plutocracy appointed the remnants of the world's religions as the tenders of men's souls, creating the legendary and apocryphal, Theocracy who would lead the desperate masses of the UNAA in what would be known as the Last War on Earth. Every religion was asked to join the Theocracy and send their representatives to create the last great religion, humanity would ever need. Those that refused were exterminated by the Plutocracy's mighty and alien-derived war machines. Those religions whose members still practiced their religions did so in secret. When discovered, the Theocracy's Inquisition was brutally effective. There was no word that inspired fear like Inquisitor, except for, Proctor, the War Dogs of the Theocracy.
Proctors lead the war which would kill billions. Nearly as many people died in the Last War as had ever died in every war ever fought on the planet. The aftermath would cause plague, madness, and psychological dysfunction on a planet wide scale. The advances of the last seventy years, and they were many, those that could run automatically continued to do so until they failed or the Plutocracy's Technical Services restored them. The rest disappeared into history. Countries and superpowers retreated into themselves and waited for the storm to clear.
In this vacuum of technology, in this vacuum of society, a cabal of scientists would discover the secrets for faster than light travel and offer this shattered humanity, the stars. Except the Plutocracy decided who would go, and they did not vote for any of the wretched refuse. They sent themselves to the stars instead. And eight years later, many would return, but not all. It would seem Space was too dangerous for just the rich and a new plan to offer the rest of humanity an option to build ships and head out to the safer worlds and with the manpower of a determined humanity take over those worlds.
But Humanity was not told of the secret war waged by the Plutocracy against an enemy who had made it to Earth and while held in place by the Technology of the Plutocracy, could not be destroyed. And so mankind began its race to escape its cradle before the new inheritors of the Earth could escape their prison.
The Theocracy rallied the souls of men while the Plutocracy provided the resources for the Great Ships of the Diaspora to be built. And for a while the world was quiet. But that quiet couldn't last. There were too many secrets. The Theocracy learned early, the best way to keep secrets was to sanction anyone who knew too much. The dance for the leadership was always to know just enough to do your job, and not enough to be considered unwisely knowledgeable.
Proctor Grimaldi was such a man, vicious, but not savage, intelligently but not too curious, callus, but not completely unfeeling, he walked that line of cruelty required by this new world of extremes. Powerful, yet appearing beneficent, he lead the Scavengers of the West toward their ultimate goal, the completion of the Great Ships. The three ships under his leadership were nearly seventy percent complete. His successes led him toward his real goal, the head of what remained of the UNAA as its Theocrat. Once his ships were completed, he would gather only the most sacred of his flock and return to the stars, leaving the rest of these unfortunate souls to whichever terrible fate would claim them first.
The Proctor's ambitions while carefully measured, still suffered from the vagaries of fate. He had no wife, nor any interest in one. But the Theocrat must be married, so he arranged to acquire one. The woman's husband was a heretic and the records will show that. His home will be destroyed in a fire, ensuring no one will be able to disprove that. His son will die a tragic death, a disease of the brain stem. Incurable. And once he was Theocrat, he would imprison the wife in a corporate apartment and maintain his catamite in the lifestyle to which he would grow accustomed. It has been said, Man Plans, God Laughs. The Proctor did not believe in God, so he might be excused for not knowing the expression.
'Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved
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