“…liberal democracy may constitute ‘the end point of … evolution’ and as such constitute[s] the ‘end of history.” Francis Fukuyama (1992)
"Once humanity decided that money was to be their God, there was only one way that things could go; and it was only a matter of time.’ Nero ‘The Mutated Philosopher" (circa 2430)
Right bang in the middle of the twenty-first century (2050) there was a global-pandemic-outbreak called the K725 virus.
It attacked on a number of fronts:
In its dormant phase, it simply sat about blocking various body system cells, usually causing infertility and muscular rigidity, with other varying symptoms such as alopecia and/or narcolepsy; however, if ‘activated’ by a secondary viral host, called the K+ molecule, it switched to directly attacking brain tissue in novel ways.
It altered neural pathways, caused visible deformity of the skull. the cerebrum and cerebellum beneath; the brainstem was particularly susceptible to attack; and there was no cure!
It killed all but the strongest of those carriers that were susceptible and exposed to the viral host.
In total it did nothing short of maiming humanity; completely and unavoidably; leaving survivors brain damaged and deformed beyond recognition.
Many sufferers also held that there was a psychic aspect to the illness, and they called it the ‘End of the World’ disease; sufferers all reporting having the same apocalyptic paranoid delirium regarding humanity’s ongoing demise. The 'Mutant Wars' was the label given by certain sections of the western media to several armed skirmishes between infected and non-infected sections of the new populations.
And what was left over beyond those first waves of drastic change was a world of absolute quarantine and considerable paranoia.
Those who were exposed and survived became a species apart within the space of twenty-five years.
Surviving underground in the remains of the cities, or out in those hills and mountains not taken over and ‘purified’ by someone’s army. There were maybe twenty-something-million of these survivors in the whole world, if anyone had bothered to count them. Though this number dwindled and grew with a seasonal regularity that became noticeable across the pursuing centuries.
There was also a small percentage of the infected who remained immune to any of the terrible effects of K+ exposure. They were known as pure carriers, though truly there were usually gradations between the unaffected, the partially affected and the fully mutated categories of sufferer.
Some survivors who had no apparent physical symptoms claimed only subtle (psychic) mutation!
There were some forty-million lucky souls who were not exposed at all to the K pandemic:
living in enclaves mostly set up by the rich and their scientists, and incorporating scaled down versions of their governments. They lived underground and in air-filtered surface domes, protected by the military. There were a few brave and adventurous others of course who took the opportunity and went into space, living mostly in toroidal spacecraft made from old-school space-shuttle fuel-tanks, which gradually became known as the 'Dockless Donughts' because they were never to land anywhere!
Most of these new societies quickly became highly routinized and based much more around safety and defence than even the most paranoid western cities had been prior to the K virus. That in the midst of these martial states, people finally began to really wake up to the urgency of life, was one of the only good things to come out of the virus.
Problems such as unemployment, obesity, suicide and petty crime disappeared practically overnight in most of the enclaves, and due to continued 'emergency' conditions, never again devolved to the terrible situation of ‘freedom’ that history had recorded from just before the K disaster.
These societies were good; close to perfect in fact as at last the 'protected' mostly in fear of losing their priviledge of life, all accepted the necessity of working together toward some sort of higher ideal (namely survival).
So ultimately, some more of the protected went regularly into space to lay infrastructure for their governments while the others kept the enclaves safe and running. It wasn’t just the Western Union. Survivors from the new Chinese and Eastern Collectives, and others also from outside the bounds of the Western Union also became space born in increasing numbers. This is when the moon bases really first began, though it was still a while before there were people beyond the Earth moon domain and on Mars, the asteroid belt, the gas giants and in deep space.
But all that remained outside of the enclaves on earth was the worsening panic of a spiralling pandemic, which ultimately collapsed the major cities and caused them to be uninhabitable to all but the bravest and the stupidest of what was still moving about on the surface of planet earth. And those that didn’t move at all - a lot of bodies went undealt with for a long time, and animals that were immune to the K725 virus became the more successful scavengers, thriving as a result of the new, initially very large, food source.
The Western Union, which sprang up just after the turn of the twenty-second century, was initially the first successful attempt since the commencement of the 2050 pandemic to re-establish some system of government for what was left of the unprotected Western populations. There was a hope that survivors would try to rebuild the cities together and recreate at least some of the civilisation that they had lost.
Their first setback was the ensuing ‘mutant war’ which is recorded as having begun shortly after the global internet (world-wide-web) was re-established in 2120. It began with small bands of survivors trying to attack places in continental-Europe where there was believed to be food and medical supplies.
It was known by then that the original K725 virus was not only immunisable against, but was also now treatable in the early pre-host-activity phases. Survivors simply wanted the benefit of these new medicines for their children and friends, rather than for themselves. But to get them they had to go to some still officially 'Off-Limit' areas. Places which were militarily protected within the partially re-opened enclaves.
There were some shootings (‘I see a mute and I shoot’), a slogan which ultimately horrified people enough to lead to the founding of a larger organisation of survivors from across the world.
Once again, there seemed to be hope of rebuilding a world for everyone.
This dream was ended in 2129 by ‘the poison’. Another virus, or rather a hybridised version of the K725 with the K+ molecule included pre-wrapped. This time it had to have been knowingly created and released with the express intention of wiping out the human populations that had not been exposed to the original virus!
Protection became everything as the enclave’s military authorities took tight and drastic control of the situation.
Now there was a clear enemy – the jealous, sly and murderous infected human populations (mutants).
It was five hundred years between that event, and the complete ending of the second quarantine (the 'Great Quarantine'). During those five hundred years, survivors (those not in need of quarantine (mutants, unkindly)) were hunted down by the ever-evolving air and space forces of the wealthy quarantined, unexposed sections of humanity.
These unfortunate victims of the man-made plague occasionally tried to access the enclaves for food or for whatever reason, sometimes violently and in large numbers. Mostly they were killed by the military until they were no longer a threat, although as time went on, there were stories claiming that some mutants had evolved mystical psychic powers, maybe this was untrue or perhaps there was some little truth in it, but it served to increase the dipolar mythology between the ‘protected’ and the ‘unprotected’ sections of the new society.
Young pilots would be encouraged to buzz mutant populations (scare and confuse them by bombing near them) make them herd around some places where they had dirty great encampments; like for example in parts of where New York had once stood.
This all became a routinised aspect of growing up in the enclaves, seeing the pictures and films of big groups of truly hideous mutants tearing each other, or worse a protected, normal person to bits. It did happen though sometimes. Maybe not as much as the status quo claimed, but occasionally, and one of the films they were all shown as recruits showed some mutants playing football with a severed human head in an air-force helmet. “Non amorus mutantes” – that was the old air force slogan at a time when napalming a whole hideous family tree of mutants still got you a medal of honour, a promotion and a raise.
All the good people wanted was peace, and even if there was such a thing a psychic-mutants, they rarely had more de facto influence than a good VR movie game.
When the panic was finally over, it was declared on May 24th, 2630, that everyone could come back outside again, the air was at last totally clear, they’d released a macrophage and the virus was eradicated practically over night. The only real fear left to be afraid of, according to authorities, was that some angry disgruntled mutants might still stop by for a feed, on one and one’s family’s brains. This only ever happened very rarely.
So anyway, our story begins right at the end. The end of planet Earth that is, on June 11th, 2757. 127 years and 18 days after freedom from K725. It only really remains to fill in some of the important events that happened in the gap between the end of quarantine and the end of the world.
NCT got to be known as 'the Spaceport' because, although it was never a big launch site for rockets and shuttles in the early days, the first space balloonists (popularly known as the ‘Space-Cats’) had used it as their launch site from the mid twenty-first century onward, using novel new ways of achieving orbit and beyond, such as hydrogen balloons with magnetic ion charge to carry them into and out of space.
It was because the enclave which developed around the site of NCT was filled with some of the cleverest and most daring astrophysicists of the time, just after the first mutant war, when everyone was either locked back in their bunker cities or out in space helping to put the first stations together, that it also happened to become the first production site for gravitational re-angling technology when Romeo Hines finally worked out the solution in 2112.
This was the new, revolutionary, and truly ground-breaking technology, which gave us flying cars and light thrust shuttles; and indeed some nice big fast-ish space ships, such as the original Fracker's, which were made for the superrich of Western Union to go exploring the solar-system in style, comform and relative safety.
The approach to NCT runs up a part of the Olifants river toward the feet of the Outeniqua Mountains. It is verdant, layered by brown scrub plateaus where leopards feed on klipspringer and grey rhebuck.
Just as China has the three winter friends of prunus, plum and bamboo, so too do the Khoikoi have three summer friends that aid a person to live: iron wood, yellow wood and stink wood. Iron wood is strong, so it is used to build huts, yellow wood is beautiful, so it is used to make furniture, and stink wood is foul when burned, so it is put on the fire when an unwanted guest visits one’s beautiful home.
It attacked on a number of fronts:
Those who were exposed and survived became a species apart within the space of twenty-five years.
Most of these new societies quickly became highly routinized and based much more around safety and defence than even the most paranoid western cities had been prior to the K virus. That in the midst of these martial states, people finally began to really wake up to the urgency of life, was one of the only good things to come out of the virus.
So ultimately, some more of the protected went regularly into space to lay infrastructure for their governments while the others kept the enclaves safe and running. It wasn’t just the Western Union. Survivors from the new Chinese and Eastern Collectives, and others also from outside the bounds of the Western Union also became space born in increasing numbers. This is when the moon bases really first began, though it was still a while before there were people beyond the Earth moon domain and on Mars, the asteroid belt, the gas giants and in deep space.
