Where to begin? That’s always the most difficult part, but our team had already been assembled. Not for our current task, mind you, but for other reasons that were relevant before the apocalypse. We already knew each other from several other projects and articles, some even having worked together in the past. Things like developing newer or more efficient forms of energy generation, atmosphere cleansing and recycling of noxious compounds were among them. At least for those focused on environmental efforts... that came too late and did too little, as we can now see. The climate had already changed, drastically so. The sea had risen dramatically, the quantity of breathable air dropped and natural disasters had increased in both number and intensity. Tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, heat so strong it shattered concrete… the list goes on.
And that was only the weather!
New maladies swept through whole continents, spreading too fast or being too virulent for us to adapt, most infecting humans, some our cattle; like cows, pigs, chicken… They left us too weak and without food, bringing famine. Conflict had started not long after, economic paralysis and the lack of essential resources putting everyone on edge. Even if other countries exclaimed that they had no resources to spare, desperation and paranoia drove even the kindest people to extreme measures, and we weren’t saints to begin with… And that’s how war started. Some of the people in our team were epidemiologists, pharmacists and bioengineers, having worked on the development of several vaccines, drugs and alternate ways of feeding the starving population.
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Too bad the ensuing conflict brought even worse things to our already decaying world. At some point, strange things started happening around the globe, even more disturbing than the threat of war. It was only natural that doomsday cults started popping everywhere due to the circumstances, but it was truly calamitous when the things they preached started to come to life. From all different religions and corners of the world, all hell broke loose, quite literally. The earth ruptured and from its guts flowed not only lava, but creatures only depicted in literature; from demons to dragons... As if the volcanic eruptions and earthquakes weren’t terrible enough. And that’s how several history, theology, psychology, psychiatry and religious figures came into the fold.
All in all, quite the picturesque collective, gathered in one place to help in something none of them was even truly equipped to do; the creation of Artificial Intelligence. That’s what I, along with a bunch of other programmers, engineers and roboticists, was tasked to do. The rest were to keep us alive and kicking, at least long enough for us to complete our work, our Magnum Opus, if you will. It will be the last thing we do anyways.