This is a 2913 word long short story. I post it here only because it has relevance to the political world. It is, more or less, a prediction and a warning all in one to the people of planet Earth.
Enjoy... and... my human resources guy says I need a public service announcement in every few posts... soooooooo...
Uh... kids don't smoke? And and and don't try to get the dog high if you do smoke, because the dog has absolutely no idea what on Earth is going on when that happens.
My human resources guy is shaking his head. Whatever.
Here's the story:
"Democracy To The End
The end of time came far too soon. I don’t exactly know how it happened; was it a result of mass pollution, technological experimentation, or simple human arrogance? Most probably it was some combination of the three… with a plethora of additional factors. Whatever be the cause, the effect is as catastrophic as predicted by every fear monger in history. July 4, 2118, the planet Earth died.
I wasn’t born on our late fair planet. Actually, I was one of the first of the minority of the human species previously referred to as spacers; now they call us survivors. We spacers were born on one of Earth’s three colonies from the late ‘60’s on ‘til now. I, myself, was born on the Titan colony. Saturn’s largest moon, apparently, had favorable conditions for the United States to attempt the experiment that led to the formation of the first stellar colony. The three stellar colonies, Titan, Ganymede, and Mars are all the result of synthetic atmospheric pressurization and terraformation of the rocky surface for life sustainability.
The lunar colony (lost with Earth, unfortunately) had been the United States’ first real success as far as true expansion beyond its terra-locked territory. In 2054, an American physicist on the President’s staff discovered a formula to produce oxygen in mass quantities from the particles in void space. That formula earned Dr. Joseph Soong the congressional cross for ingenuity, and a fully paid retirement from that moment on. He refused the retirement, opting instead to help construct the lunar base and subsequent stellar bases for the next twenty years, retiring in ’74 to a colony he had made possible.
Soong had been the last protégé of Dr. Stephen Hawking, a physicist of brilliance beyond any before him. Soong himself surpassed even his mentor in terms of ingenuity, though it could be argued that was only due to the massive scientific expansion that occurred in the ‘20’s. The insanity of what became known as the Transdigital Revolution died down by 2040, when President Anthony Immensus Exitium was elected for his first term.
Exitium was inaugurated on the heels of the last Middle Eastern war which decimated the population and ruined the landscape of the region. Everybody knew the real war was Israel versus Iran and the rest was just filler; to be completely honest, to this day no one knows who dropped the first bomb. The war lasted six hours; long enough for intercontinental ballistic missiles to reach their targets, and the area went dark for a week. Not even the American Territory of Iraq was spared.
General Immensus Exitium had already made a name for himself during the Afghan Rebellion in 2031. Using sheer speed and incredible Military genius, Exitium’s forces stormed the bases of resistance and eliminated the entire ruling council of the organization without ever being fired upon. Of course, after the failure of the United States to ever catch Osama Bin-Laden, this was regarded as an incredible success.
After such a potent victory, Immensus Exitium began speaking in a more political sense. I remember my father telling me about Exitium’s speeches; he would never waffle around like so many politicians, which definitely helped secure his landslide victory in the Presidential race of 2040. It was under Exitium’s reign in office that the first seeds were sewn for our planet’s ultimate finality.
Exitium was an apt politician, nobody would argue with that, but his first, best calling was the Military. If there was a problem, the only solution he knew was Military means. What he never understood until he took office was that his biggest problem would not be a physical attack from a rival power or a revolt to quell, rather it was the plain and simple natural fact of overgrowth in the population, and, consequently, overuse of natural resources.
Maybe it would have happened this way under any politician, maybe not, but how it happened was under President Exitium’s rule. On December 31, 2040, the oil market failed. Saudi Arabia and its surrounding countries had been irradiated earlier in the year, so oil was harder to come by, but price was really the only issue for about four months. Nobody truly realized how quickly the reserve oil and other sources would be depleted (or, more accurately, the people who did realize it were silenced with accusations of being conspiracy theorists and fear mongers) but depleted they were, and there was no hope of getting it back.
Exitium tried to make it seem less catastrophic than it was, but for the first time, people were not listening to him. Mass panic broke out in the streets and chaos ensued. Fortunately for Exitium, his Military was fiercely loyal to him and him alone. “For my country” to the military brass now meant “For my president.” It took all of forty five minutes for total Martial Law to lock into place across the country. “For the safety of the people” Exitium was granted emergency powers from the Legislative branch (For years, rumors circled that the President had used military pressure along with other connections to get to a majority of both the House and the Senate to side with him for his initial emergency thrust, but it was never proven until 2096, and the woman who gathered the evidence and wrote that essay was hanged without trial for “attempting to incite chaos.”).
The first law Exitium enacted with his new authority banned the use of petroleum based automobiles. Only electric cars could be driven (no surprise that his wife immediately bought huge amounts of stock in the electric car company). He then almost immediately formed a committee of scientists dubbed the “Energy Union” whose initial job was to come up with any form of feasible, long-term alternative energy source to replace oil. Two years later, the union found a way to synthesize petroleum but by then, Exitium had cleaned house.
The first to go was the House of Representatives. Exitium made sense, in a time when we need swift decisions, the last thing we need is more senseless debate. The people cried out in agreement, and by 2042, Congress had been disbanded.
Next to go was the nine-justice system in the Supreme Court. Who needed that? Granted, the Supreme Court needed more than one justice, but three would do. Speedier and less politically weighed results that way, Exitium had argued. Again, the people agreed; anything to get them out of their ditch faster. So the Supreme Court was dismissed in early ‘42 and replaced with three entirely new justices, all of whom had honorable military records in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
By 2043 when petrol synthate was first produced, Exitium had militarized law enforcement, the FBI and the CIA. “For the safety of the United States and her citizens” the police would be given the right to search and seizure without cause, and the FBI would be randomly surveying peoples’ homes. Nobody even protested, anything to keep them from falling into what happened in the Middle East.
According to so many people, including my parents, that time was a time of intrigue and mystery and endless possibilities. Scientists had synthesized oil, what else could they manage? Dr. Joseph Soong, the head of the Energy Union, petitioned the government for an extension on his grant. Exitium jumped on the chance, openly chanting that it would be “un-American” to refuse such a request.
In 2044, after being reelected, President Exitium was approached by a senator from Vermont, who publicly requested he lift Martial Law and curfew, given the fact that it was no longer needed. The President actually laughed in the man’s face, calling him a fool, and suggested that he take a good look at the Middle East before he said anything so unpatriotic again. At the time, enough senators sided with Exitium that it was overlooked. The senator from Vermont, however, was shot two weeks later by a “rogue” nineteen year old army corporal, who was arrested and freed on lack of evidence (that same corporal, incidentally, became the secretary of defense to President Immensus Exitium II in 2072).
When the request for Martial Law removal did reappear, two years later, it was backed by forty senators. Exitium arrested them for conspiracy to overthrow the government. To the majority of the public, the senate had staged a coup d’état, and it was only natural for the president to keep it from happening again. It was simple, clean, painless, and absolute. By 2047, there was no more senate to rule against Exitium’s retraction of the “two-terms” clause from the constitution. The Supreme Court ratified it in a day, and the President submitted his candidacy for the 2048 election. He won with 78% of the popular vote.
In 2050, just after the invention of the widely used “holodeck” (a sensory entertainment that transformed movies and games so that the user was physically in the story), President Exitium announced that he would be discussing United States expansion with Canada over the next coming weeks, and that the people of America should be ready for an era of joy and contentedness in a new, larger world.
What came next was stricken from public record and is framed by two dates: May 6, 2050; and August 21, 2050. On May 6, the president of the United States of America went with a special envoy to Canada to examine the possibility of expansion. On August 21, the nation of Canada surrendered to superior American forces. There is no casualty list from what we now call the “Unspoken War,” but Canada seemed uncharacteristically unpopulated to the families who moved into the newest fourteen states in the union. The Canadian people were just gone… but Americans had elbow room. We did not know until 2118 what the vanishing of the Canadian people really meant, but we were so desperate for good news that we did not care.
The next ten years passed quite smoothly with no real radical changes other than the previously mentioned lunar colonization in ‘54. As an aside, that lunar colony turned out to be the perfect place for Exitium and his military to store whatever he wanted stashed away for later. Several politicians conveniently disappeared and the Democrats and Republicans slowly merged into one party (the American Party, founded by Exitium himself). The country continued to love Exitium, “the first president to lead a truly safe America,” one reporter said.
In 2060, the Supreme Court unanimously suggested an extension of the president’s term to twelve years. The president signed his approval, and two months later was elected to office by 100% of the voters (his name was the only one on the ballot, after all, parties other than the American party were un-American, and not nominating the current president would be quite un-American of the American party). In ’62 the first “expander craft” was launched with supplies to start a colony on Mars, followed a year later by the Ganymede and Titan expeditions.
The three colonies were a symbol of hope to America; we would not be squeezed out by the planet we lived on. We could spread and live on in other areas of the galaxy. In ’64, nine ships launched carrying sixteen families each to the new colonies. They were promised everything they wanted as long as they would go, and it was no lie. Life on the stellar colonies was prosperous and easy. Cities were, literally, space-age in design, and the artificial atmosphere was free of pollutants. No wonder my parents stayed. In 2068, I was born on the Titan colony, the first of three siblings. Sorry, getting a little sentimental in my middle age.
Dr. Joseph Soong, as his last hurrah to science, offered up a medical breakthrough he dubbed “the elixir of life” in 2070. The medicine, when taken semi-regularly, defeated the signs of aging and cured any viral disease. The average life span went from about 90 to 105 in ten years. Exitium, some would say thankfully, had a tolerance to the elixir, and kept aging with the best of them.
Incidentally, Martial Law was never lifted. Exitium held on to the notion of its necessity by indicating the massive plummet of crime rates in each of the sixty-four states. That fact was undeniable. By 2072, when Exitium finally stepped down from power, nobody even questioned Martial Law’s legitimacy and purpose. It was a part of life.
President Exitium II was elected (again, 100%) in 2072 to sit a term through 2084. He (decidedly unfortunately) could take the elixir. Exitium II was like his dear old dad without the military finesse or experience. He had been brought up watching his father, but he never really got the art. It was his doing that the US got into the ten year war in 2073 that, yes, won it all of Central and South America, but also took a nice chunk out of the American population. In 2083, though, even the combined forces of South America were no match for the US. They surrendered on the same day that Exitium I died peacefully in his sleep.
At least Exitium II waited until his second term to sever ties with the United Nations. Not that it mattered. The UN was nothing more than a symbol, powerless to stop anything. For years the United States did whatever it wanted, and nobody stopped them. In 2090, the council dissolved permanently, and diplomacy became a game of barter.
The highest bidder in the political world won the treaty, and treaties were not even sacred. International laws became guidelines, then suggestions, then afterthoughts. With that, however, national law became questionable as well; and without his father’s influence, President Exitium II found it harder and harder to hold on to his position of power. In the name of order, Exitium II made hundreds of random arrests and dozens of public executions for “unpatriotic behavior” and “treasonous intent.”
Even that could not hold the chaos off forever. The Supreme Court in one, last ditch effort to secure power for themselves and the President, voted the President’s term a lifetime position, but barely anybody took notice. First states separated from one another, then districts, then cities, towns, neighborhoods. Everywhere you looked there was a different regime vying for ultimate control. Martial Law became meaningless when people began smuggling weapons contraband from Central America to combat the military. Even parts of the military were joining the fray.
America was not alone in this nonsense by any means. Britain and France went to war over territory, as did China and Russia. Everywhere was riddled with internal disputes. There were just too many people and not enough living space.
The last straw broke on July 3, 2118, one day before the end of ends. Three new shuttles launched to the stellar colonies carrying civilians and military personnel alike. A massive insurgent strike force stormed the launch pad, firing high yield explosives at the shuttles. Two were destroyed, one was damaged severely but managed to make it out with several casualties.
The next day, that shuttle was still within range of Earth to hear Exitium II make his announcement. It was still in range to detect the shockwave after it happened. It was still in range when there was nothing but silence. Exitium II explained, button on the trigger, a crazed look in his eyes, that for their own protection, the people of the United States and the world must be calmed forcefully. As his father had used this weapon against the Canadian people so many years ago, now he would take the next step and use it as a means to achieve massive calm and peace. The weapon was housed on the surface of the moon, and it would strategically destroy city after city as it came in target range. “The disruptor” was capable of vaporizing animal tissue and leaving the rest intact to be plundered.
With a grin and a murmured “Happy Independence Day!” He pushed the button. The rest is history. The power needed to fire the disruptor shook the moon to pieces and it fell, causing a cloud of debris to rise over Earth, changing its gravitational mass so drastically that it imploded. Like that, in the span of an hour, it was gone.
So that’s that. Where there were once nine-billion strong souls, now there are fewer than a million human beings left alive. Our experience proves you can’t out run nature, you can’t hide from your destiny, you can only try and stave off your ultimate finality. Could we, as a people, have had a better option than what happened to us? Of course we could have. I cannot possibly tell you what option that would be, but there are any infinite numbers of possibilities that could play in to any avoidance of finality.
My grandfather, Dr. Joseph Soong, had a vision of hope and prosperity for all mankind; a vision he did not live to see. I share his vision. I, too, am a man of science, and my truest ambition is to see a perfect humanity form from the ashes of the old. My grandfather gave our species a fighting chance to survive, and I, Dr. Arik Soong, and my children will continue his quest until the end of our line. I raise a glass: to a new humanity; to three new Earths."
Yup, that's my view of the next hundred years. If you're worried, you should be! Also, Immensus is Latin for infinite and Exitium is Latin for destruction, so that's a little secret you might otherwise have had to google or something.
Oh yeah, all hail the great disruptor!
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