To fallen, fading dreams

Flicker free

FOREWORD

It’s not every day the world blows up around you and the very earth is shaken to its core. It’s not every day myriad missile men, having been triggered by one middle finger too many, rain devastation upon the countless human settlements containing the civilian populations of their enemies. It is not every day people annihilate chunks of land as would a conniving grocery clerk selling overly aired-up cheese and making a profit by the bubble. It’s not every day violence solves, quite literally, everything; or even for wars to abruptly – almost inexplicably – end. And it’s even less common for a newly triumphant force to refrain from flaunting their hard-earned victory over the newly-defeated.

But… The Great Baptism had just not been the normal kind of war, and its ending did not bring about the usual flavour of outcome or victory. What’s more, while our blue planet had long been mapped in its entirety – disallowing the separation of enemy forces – and the stars remained, and remain still, far out of reach, another solution occurred.

As luck would have it, for a but brief window in time, hard work and its resulting advances in the sciences played a pivotal role in allowing for an issuing – fingers crossed – lasting peace.

But I get ahead of myself: before all that… Half the world had to go the way of a depressed, testosteroned dodo; one that’s been egged on for far too long by a buck-thirsty, drug dealing, degenerate, sociopathic so-called friend. Innumerable millions of families had to be ripped from reality, torn, spliced and split; countless billions of lives had to be aborted at all ages, from all walks of life. Chaos had to reign, a solution had to be needed and the single logical pursuit for any-and-all survivors – seeking out ever-lasting peace – had to be found and resources had to be funnelled into it.

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Had to, had to, had to… Did things really have to be this way? Well, for those who lived through the events leading up to global civil war… Survivors say, “back in the moment”, it all seemed inevitable.

And once it had started? Well, there was now, for Australia (for instance), simply put: no putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. The once-island was cooked, crisped even. Its people broken… Sizzled, flipped over, and left in the care of a would-be toddler in a house-fire [Do not try this at home].

And other areas of the world – which had likewise been subject to the nerd-works – were similarly cautioned, red lines and all, then dealt with; cauterising them.

There are, to this day, no more life-sustaining lands in the areas blackened by past lights. There is no more building in the cities now mopped off the map. Diligently, I might add, with the commendable perseverance of a cleaner with five mouths to feed, and one more on the way.

Congratulations! There is no more joy to be had in all those have-been places. No more happiness to be felt, no more hope to be spread, no more dreams to be snapped out of.

No Sir! For those things, one would have to look elsewhere…

People, one day, will ask – they always do – “Who knows what the future holds?”. But none in the scorched earths will be alive to answer the most traditional of dark-humour, forum-memed replies: “Not Australia, the Great Baptism saw to that.”

And so, Dear Reader (or listener, if you haven’t learnt your letters), as you may have gathered, in the time when this coming tale is set, I regret to inform you, the great Australian ship has sailed, and sunk. And been salvaged! Spliced open. Shattered. Trampled. And, just for good measure, sunk again. Deeper this time, ever deeper! Its surrounding waters brewed, its hull busted, bled, baked and boiled. Australia was done. Kaput!

But what of the rest of the world you might ask?

Well, in spite of all that’s been said – by me – some survivors had made it out of the tumult, out of the chaos, out of the frying pan and into the safe, comforting clutches of captivity, out and into the pods, into exile: the simulation that is; and its world: Exile.

That’s where this story begins…