Post by Cas on Dec 11, 2007 16:56:27 GMT -5
Redermia - Our Lost Earth
This is Redermia; our clockwork city, deep beneath the surface of the Earth it rumbled, on and on it was a continuing, monotonous behemoth of kinetic power. Unrelenting, our once beautiful planet was now a maze of machinery, an equilibrium of equipment, a criss-cross of clogs. Yet, in the darkness, where the sounds of technology mimicked the reverberated lives we led, few were left in the world that remembered the beginning; that remembered the Sun. I am one of those few, the historian of my city.
2021; the great dawn of man, a new world unto which we rode, singing, into a new morning horizon. The leaders of our decaying world felt the pressure of terrorism, of public opinion, of moral standing and finally cracked. There was a council of the greatest minds humanity had to offer. In 2011, presidents, ministers, dictators, scientists, researchers, all of them of one mind, of one goal, finally agreed upon the way out of the darkness, upon the way to consume all the evil in the world and store it for eternity, hidden away from the world. “Nuclear weapons are the scourge of humanity.” It was the slogan the council used to push their campaign. Soon, with growing pressure from the countries involved, more and more nations joined in, helping to wave the flag of world peace. The weapons from all over the globe were taken, removed to the middle of the flagship country, America, and stored two miles down, below the surface of the Earth.
It seemed like the perfect plan. A decade of work and campaigning and collecting and progression and finally, the world had no more weapons of mass destruction. Crime still ran rife but a better feeling was in the air and global annihilation seemed a thing of the past. Those few survivors of the cold war rejoiced especially, their childhood nightmares finally laid to rest. Then it happened. It only took six months. Six whole, beautiful months of peace and happiness, of a united Earth with dropping murder rates, racism, hatred and discrimination before the dream came crashing down around us.
As always with these events, it happened too fast to fathom. Communications with America disappeared, TV stations, Internet connectivity, business calls, the lot; it all went offline. Then came the earthquakes, hitting every country in the world, shaking them to their roots and killing millions of people worldwide. Tsunamis and hurricane-force winds came next, obliterating what little was left of the coastal providences. Island nations like Britain and New Zealand were completely wiped out.
It lasted for 3 days. A calculated 4.3 billion people were killed, leaving 3.6 billion left in the entire world. The sea level dropped seventy feet. World temperature rose a number of degrees. Entire countries were devastated and the Earth herself began to die. Our world was ended and those few who survived retreated below the ravaged surface. Those in Europe, on the other side of the world from the centre point of devastation and far enough away from the coast felt the least of the apocalypse. Scavengers, they first lived within nuclear bunkers, while the world above them burned, the surface too hot now to live in.
Six more months passed and the survivors began to dig. A few parties raided the surface to find a very different wasteland. Ice, snow and deadly cold; winds that cut through the very soul and storms that threw blocks of ice through the air. Confused, they retreated back again, with no idea how the burning lands above could have turned to solid ice.
Few machines were left on the surface but some were scavenged, diggers and the like. Down, down, down they delved until, today, one hundred years later, they had created the city of Redermia, miles below the surface of the Earth. Because of the devastation above, electricity, lighting and fuel were things of the past. As adaptable as humans are, my ancestors used the one thing left to them, the one thing that was in abundance still, all over our destroyed planet; water. Like cavemen, they re-discovered fire, created steam and began from scratch, building and creating the machines that drive our home today.
We survived, the human race devolved, set back hundreds of years by our own mistakes and now, our own choices. The Second Revolution, they called it. We live in a world of steam. And here, within our roiling city, we struggle onward, just trying to survive.
Redermia - Our Lost Earth
This is Redermia; our clockwork city, deep beneath the surface of the Earth it rumbled, on and on it was a continuing, monotonous behemoth of kinetic power. Unrelenting, our once beautiful planet was now a maze of machinery, an equilibrium of equipment, a criss-cross of clogs. Yet, in the darkness, where the sounds of technology mimicked the reverberated lives we led, few were left in the world that remembered the beginning; that remembered the Sun. I am one of those few, the historian of my city.
2021; the great dawn of man, a new world unto which we rode, singing, into a new morning horizon. The leaders of our decaying world felt the pressure of terrorism, of public opinion, of moral standing and finally cracked. There was a council of the greatest minds humanity had to offer. In 2011, presidents, ministers, dictators, scientists, researchers, all of them of one mind, of one goal, finally agreed upon the way out of the darkness, upon the way to consume all the evil in the world and store it for eternity, hidden away from the world. “Nuclear weapons are the scourge of humanity.” It was the slogan the council used to push their campaign. Soon, with growing pressure from the countries involved, more and more nations joined in, helping to wave the flag of world peace. The weapons from all over the globe were taken, removed to the middle of the flagship country, America, and stored two miles down, below the surface of the Earth.
It seemed like the perfect plan. A decade of work and campaigning and collecting and progression and finally, the world had no more weapons of mass destruction. Crime still ran rife but a better feeling was in the air and global annihilation seemed a thing of the past. Those few survivors of the cold war rejoiced especially, their childhood nightmares finally laid to rest. Then it happened. It only took six months. Six whole, beautiful months of peace and happiness, of a united Earth with dropping murder rates, racism, hatred and discrimination before the dream came crashing down around us.
As always with these events, it happened too fast to fathom. Communications with America disappeared, TV stations, Internet connectivity, business calls, the lot; it all went offline. Then came the earthquakes, hitting every country in the world, shaking them to their roots and killing millions of people worldwide. Tsunamis and hurricane-force winds came next, obliterating what little was left of the coastal providences. Island nations like Britain and New Zealand were completely wiped out.
It lasted for 3 days. A calculated 4.3 billion people were killed, leaving 3.6 billion left in the entire world. The sea level dropped seventy feet. World temperature rose a number of degrees. Entire countries were devastated and the Earth herself began to die. Our world was ended and those few who survived retreated below the ravaged surface. Those in Europe, on the other side of the world from the centre point of devastation and far enough away from the coast felt the least of the apocalypse. Scavengers, they first lived within nuclear bunkers, while the world above them burned, the surface too hot now to live in.
Six more months passed and the survivors began to dig. A few parties raided the surface to find a very different wasteland. Ice, snow and deadly cold; winds that cut through the very soul and storms that threw blocks of ice through the air. Confused, they retreated back again, with no idea how the burning lands above could have turned to solid ice.
Few machines were left on the surface but some were scavenged, diggers and the like. Down, down, down they delved until, today, one hundred years later, they had created the city of Redermia, miles below the surface of the Earth. Because of the devastation above, electricity, lighting and fuel were things of the past. As adaptable as humans are, my ancestors used the one thing left to them, the one thing that was in abundance still, all over our destroyed planet; water. Like cavemen, they re-discovered fire, created steam and began from scratch, building and creating the machines that drive our home today.
We survived, the human race devolved, set back hundreds of years by our own mistakes and now, our own choices. The Second Revolution, they called it. We live in a world of steam. And here, within our roiling city, we struggle onward, just trying to survive.
Redermia - Our Lost Earth