Pain wracked Jack’s body. It felt as though all his nerves were on fire. His head was pinned between two other bodies, that were leaking something onto him. Immediately he thought of blood and bile and nearly threw up. He stares up at a giant figure wielding a club eyes frozen open. “Noooo” Jack screams, his hands reaching out to clawing at his comfort in an attempt to escape, the the nightmare. Realization dawned on Jack’s face as he saw the clock on the wall. It was a dream, or in this case a nightmare. Slumping back into bed, Jack read the clock 4:30 am. “At this point I am not going back to sleep” Jack said with a sigh as he got up. He went to the bathroom, washed his face and brushed his teeth. “How many years has it been since this nightmare began” Jack wonders out loud. Ten years of nightmares. They say the 20s of a new century are the worst and the 2020’s had not disappointed. War between Ukraine and Russia, a global pandemic and then the barrier. In 2024 a barrier appeared splitting the world in two and unfortunately The US was caught in the middle of it, literal in this case. 1/3 of the USA was lost as the barrier appeared, the only other effected country being Australia. The barrier was a temporal and spatial anomaly that acted as a short cut. Anything that entered one end would appear immediately on the other side, but nothing could enter the space cut off. America went into a state of emergency, and after a month of being in this state, China made their move and attacked Taiwan, sparking WWIII. A bloody event that lasted 8 months. With America being crippled her enemies thought now would be the best time to strike, forgetting that America’s Air Force and naval power were something to be feared. After 8 months of brutal fighting, and several tactical nuclear strikes the war ended. Poland absorbed Belarus, Russia was crippled and split up into three different countries, the same occurring with China. Korea was now just Korea with South Korea wiping out North Korea’s government and military force. The war had caused both the Chinese and Russian people to revolt against their governments resulting in massive casualties. When all was said and done the casualties due to the war approached a billion. Then the depression hit, the next 5 years people struggle to survive and make ends meet, another 100 million died due to famine and unrest. Finally  4 years ago things began to stabilize. The war had caused a huge change in global power, the USA was still on top but no longer boasted the military power they had before, and could not unilaterally make decisions. Europe once again became a strong military power with Poland leading the pack. WWIII did result in a more unified human race and a world in a much greater state of peace. Finally humanity turned their attention to the barrier, part of the reason WWIII started in the first place and part of the reason it ended so quickly. Humanity was scared of it as it represented a massive unknown. Jack snaps out of his reminiscences and looks back to his watch. 5:00 am, with a sigh Jack hops into the shower quickly. Within 20 minutes Jack is in a suit walking out of his house with a cup of coffee and bagel in one had. He starts his car to head to work, work. Jack thoughts return to the origin of his job in the ARO. The ARO was originally founded in 2024 when the barrier first appeared to being researching it ARO standing for Anomalies Research Organization. It was determine in 2025 that the barrier was a temporal space distortion similar to that of a worm hole which is why matter can enter one side just fine and exit the other side the same as it entered. Currently there are no known side effects of entering a barrier or being close to it. Though there were a few people who escaped from the barrier and stated that they were on the barrier for several hours before it closed when to those on the outside it took seconds to close. Scientist theorize that the barrier causes a time distortion effect causing events on the inside to feel sped up compared to things outside of the barrier. Jury is still out on how the barrier came to be and exactly what it is as we do not have the technology to understand it completely.

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“Good morning Jack, you are in early” greets an elder women with brown hair can sad eyes. “Good morning Dolores, I couldn’t sleep so decided to get a jump on today’s work”. “Don’t work to hard” Dolores calls as I walk away. Dolores a good women, in her 50’s when the world when to shit, lost everything, home, family, friends. She originally joined hoping to find her kids, now she doesn’t know what to do. “Kinda of like the rest of us”. My office, an actually office with four walls and a door, no windows because of our sensitive work. There’s a email from my boss when my laptop boots up. ‘You have been assigned ARS 29, attached is all of the current information on ARS 29’. Good old acronyms, ARS, anomalies research subject. There are things the public doesn’t know about the barrier things that the world is not ready for, at least that’s what the people above me say. Then again no one would believe me if I told them but, any way ARS 29. Let’s see the first recorded event was.