“The Orwell Summit was the end, not the beginning.”

Elsbeth gave him a quizzical look.

“What do you mean? I’ve heard the stories plenty of times. How the animals turned on people. Not just wild ones, but the ones we kept as pets or worked alongside. They began attacking, tearing down homes, and taking over territories. Towns and villages around the world were overtaken or wiped out completely. People were driven off their land or killed.

Humanity responded the only way it knew how—with force. We mobilized, fought back, and in some places turned it into a full-scale war. But the animals weren’t just acting on instinct. They were organizing, forming inter-species councils, planning ways to defend themselves. It was a new kind of conflict, one where the old rules didn’t apply.

Then, one day, they showed up at the United Nations. They weren’t there to plead or surrender. They came to negotiate, to demand peace on equal footing. It changed everything. The fighting stopped, and thats where the new laws began, as the world had to adjust to a reality where humans weren’t the only ones calling the shots.”

“So how was that not the beginning of the world we have now?”

Man Xiong sighed. “Because that bit of history only covers one year. This had been building behind the scenes for far longer.

“To understand where we are, you have to understand where we were fifty, sixty years ago. We were a world of convenience and excess. Being concerned for the environment, or for animals collectively, was a new idea, and where profit was concerned it was not a priority. Making more, selling more, consuming more. That was what made the world go around. We believed we were the masters of all we surveyed.

You two have a greater idea than many younger people. You’ve traveled, you’ve scavenged; you’ve seen the excess of the past that lie languishing or rotting in those massive graveyards we called stores.

Another aspect of this was that people with power, didn't care about people without. They only cared about controlling them and getting more power. So, we weren’t on a good path. There were good people. But one thing I learned back then was that the good people didn't often seek out the power. They weren’t the ones getting laws passed, or making policy.

Everytime someone positive rose up, they would be pounded back down by science deniers, politicians, hate and the list goes on. Negativity was bred and rewarded with popularity.

But, I stray from the point. We were a society in overall decline and the decline was comfortable.

It wasn’t all bad though. Things changed a bit as people became more aware and as issues crossed borders. Especially when there were a few disasters on a scale so large that they directly affected huge portions of the world.

There was an oil “spill”. Where millions of gallons of oil pumped into the ocean from an undersea well. That was about sixty years ago. There were others, before and after. Then there was the bacteria they cooked up to eat the oil.

There were companies messing with DNA and doing things with crops that Nature hadn’t intended or approved.

We had lots of stuff going on that were made to make human lives easier, and make more money. Problem was, these people were only looking at the immediate effects. No one was testing the changes they made to Soy DNA to see how it would interact with shark DNA for example. Or what would happen through the years, if insects spread it to other plants. No one was thinking long term. Even when the environmental impact was considered, people would be paid to lie about it.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

So the changes it caused in nature snuck up on us. What the Inheritors call “The Cure” began subtly at first; with our world changing in small almost unnoticeable ways. Nothing we paid attention to, of course. A capsized fishing vessel here and there, a random animal attack, the animal couldn’t be caught. People were caught up in their lives and their phones— if squirrels were just a little more vicious, who noticed? We just avoided the parks.

People who worked closely with animals had a clue that things were happening, but even then, it was just their little section of the planet. It was like five people in the woods, maybe one finds a toe, another finds a finger, everyone is intrigued by this little piece of flesh they found but no one is thinking “maybe there’s a whole body out here”. Myopia at its scientific finest.

Even I was guilty of that. I raised pitbulls back then. Every new litter of puppies I bred was smarter than the last. Got to the point where I wasn’t even selling them as pups anymore. I would wait until they were old enough to decide for themselves who they wanted as their new owner. If none of my dogs wanted to go with you, you didn't get a dog. Still at the time, I didn’t see that it was a universal increase in intelligence.

Some people did start seeing these outliers as a trend, and they did what they always do. Started capturing and experimenting, trying to see how they could use this for war and profit. AugurCorp got ahead of the race then. Started isolating the mutated DNA and using it in their products.

What they didn't consider is that with the intelligence these animals were developing right under our noses, came a different level of cunning. They started hiding themselves from us. The ones who evolved faster took control of the others and kept humanity from finding out the extent of what was going on. Until they showed up at the UN demanding a seat at the table.

And you know how that went… they demonstrated all that they had learned from us over the years.

But.. I’m all over the place.

Whatever it was that really kicked this all off we may never be sure; there was a combination of things, on that point, the scientist types agree.

As a giant FU to humanity, this combination of SNAFUs must have somehow occurred where land meets water and an entirely new aquatic microorganism mutated. It created an unprecedented algae bloom.

This “Blue bloom” spread all over the world over the next few years, replicating itself and mutating at record speeds. Despite, or possibly because of its unstable DNA, it started causing wild mutations to any other organisms it came in contact with. It out-maneuvered natural selection, the ocean currents and even the food chain to make it to every landmass on the planet and then against all odds, it thrived in soil too. Changes to the animals are obvious but plants exposed to the Blue Bloom effect didn’t seem to mutate; still they acted as carriers passing the mutations along to any creature that consumed them.

In the “developed countries” people were more detached from food production. With so much of the agricultural process coming under the strict control of corporations and undergoing extensive processing, the were absolutely no cases of the BlueBloom effect in general food production. Of course the corporations had a few subjects to study; samples taken from small family farms or affiliated countries, so in the shadows where decisions were made, a state of emergency was declared, and a move to take full control of our food sources was made.

This is why even before The Orwell Summit, food production had been mandated to FDA approved seeds only, Farms that bred and sold their own seed strains or “Heirloom” seeds were shut down by federal law, and genetic testing became a hidden mandate at birth.”