PART I
Earth
----------------------------------------
The time is at hand when you shall forget all things, and when all shall forget you.
~Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome
----------------------------------------
CHAPTER 1
“Ah, fuck.”
“Shit-fuck.”
Marston Kane woke up in his barebones apartment, head throbbing. He barely remembered the previous night. He remembered having drinks at the bar down the street, but not much else. How did he get back to his place?
He looked at the calendar-clock on his nightstand…09:47, Tuesday, 17 April, 8454.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he said.
He shit, showered, and shaved as fast as he could so he could get to work and see what enjoyments waited for him there—and what story he would have to tell to not get in too much trouble. He kept trying to remember the events of last night—it was just flashes though; pieces of a puzzle floating around in his mind that he couldn’t piece together. He remembered drinking, but not enough to knock him out like this.
He was a tall man, standing six foot four, sandy-brown hair that he kept slicked back with much prideful care, deep brown eyes that could see past peoples bullshit, and well-defined muscles from years of training them.
Since he lived on the second floor, he ran down the stairs and burst through the complex door, into the outside. The sunlight burned his eyes momentarily; as he adjusted to it, he remembered the name of a person he was drinking with the night before…Jaxson. Jaxson…something. He struggled with trying to picture his face though.
He jumped on the closest city hover bike he could find. Much had changed in the thirty-one years since Odina had revealed herself to the world. A cult had quickly formed around her called Nova Gnosis and the governments of the world had succumbed to their populations and promptly signed accords to form a new one-world government, the Lux Orbis. Many of them weren’t much of a government anyways, enslaving their populations or enslaving neighboring populations; always in some kind of war or conflict with each other, always keeping the upper caste of society rich and prosperous and the lower castes where the powerful thought they belonged—in the gutters. Humanity always seemed to revert to the worst of itself.
Thanks to the newly completed subterranean roadways that spread throughout the city, Mars got to the Federation Historia Building of Chicago in under ten minutes. He always felt overwhelming senses of calm and peace driving these tunnels with the holographic displays that switched between nature scenery and rhythmic light designs.
He limberly jumped off the hover bike and iris-locked the vehicle to a light pole, hoping that the city didn’t overcharge him for the vehicle again.
He ran into the building and quickly found his way to his office on the 32nd floor. As he opened the door, he slapped the plaque above the door for good luck—the plaque that held the Federation Historia mantra: Remember the past, Avenge the past, Transcend into the future.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
As he walked through the door, a voice from the corner office boomed across the entire floor.
“Kane!” shouted Colonel Jacoby
Fuck, thought Mars. Absolute fuck.
Kane thought it could’ve gone better. He should have come up with a different story, but he had been in too much of a rush to worry much about that. He also just didn’t care anymore. He knew they would never punish him too severely; the Federation Historia, and Lux Orbis for that matter, needed his skills and knowledge too badly.
When he graduated at the top of his two-year-long Spartan Berserkr Course ten years prior, he didn’t care much for the accolades. Or the attention. Or the applause of his classmates. His thoughts had been on his parents and how they had missed another significant event in his life. As he looked at their empty seats, he had felt a deep anger inside.
He never saw his parents again. They died in a freak construction accident where an enormous pillar that was being fitted to the top of a column broke the cable on the crane that was holding it up. They died instantly.
He took the next eight years to hyper-focus and do everything he could to be the best Spartan Berserkr he could be…the future depended on it. He took all the advanced courses he could in fighting and surreptitious activities, for that was all the schools had left to teach: how to train the body to be a weapon of the mind; everything else could be learned through the Susurrus. He passed with the highest grades in those classes too.
Now he was here, at the Chicago Federation of all places, being yelled at by a joke of a man who couldn’t grasp the complexities of what the Lux Orbis needed to accomplish. Kane knew he needed to calm down. He wouldn’t stoop to the asinine level of his superior. He didn’t let his emotions control him; he controlled them. As much as the confrontation angered him, he tried giving Colonel Jacoby a little slack. The older generation wasn’t as quick and adept at learning the colossal influx of information that Odina had brought with when she escaped Proxima Borealis. They were entirely engrained in their ways.
But it had been four long, long years under this man.
Mars would persevere. That was what he was best at, outlasting his adversity.
Federation Historia was founded by Lux Orbis to train and guide the populations of Earth in the lost knowledge of mankind and fighting techniques from humanities greatest warriors. It was a daunting task. As soon as the first class of three million graduated, they were randomly divided and sent to the seven continental deputies to spread their knowledge, set up a school on each continent, and build the new world. After a decade, most of the human population of Earth was living in massive, solar-powered super-cities that seemed like a utopian daydream to these people who had lived in squalid conditions for millennia. It was all one world now, and the division that had always plagued humanity was turned against those who sought to exterminate them. The clones.
Each continent had at least one super-city, or Pyrἰnas. The America’s had the Chicago and the Sᾶo Paulo Pyrἰnas; Africa had the Lagos Pyrἰnas; Europe had the Istanbul and the Munich Pyrἰnas; Asia had the Hyderabad Pyrἰnas and the Seoul Pyrἰnas. They were known as the Seven Pillars of Odina. While all super-cities were well defended, the Lagos Pyrἰnas had the most defenses because of the vast solar array splayed across the Sahara Desert, which was the primary source of power for the seven super-cities and for the Thov Rapra Spaceport, the key to mankind’s future.
Each super-city was multi-level with subterranean roads, and vehicle-lifts that went to each city level; the fifth level of each city, which was the top level, had roof-top gardens. The bottom layers were fed sunlight through massive sky-ports, or through
artificial means. Holograms were everywhere. Colors were everywhere. Everything was built through robotics and raw, human power.
Kane couldn’t believe how fast everything was built. Massive boring projects were underway to connect the Seven Pillars by hypersonic train. The Federation engineers had estimated two years till completion. Kane thought they would be done sooner.
He looked out the window and wondered what was next, with possibilities circling his mind.