Before Integration, humanity was on the verge of extinction. Climate change had reformed the environment and overconsumption had killed the soil. Large parts of South America and Africa had become uninhabitable, holes in the ozone layer making living there a tough prospect if you couldn’t afford the latest protection from the sun. Diseases and pandemics became more common and more deadly, as widespread malnutrition made our immune systems too weak to function effectively. Coastal cities around the world were slowly sinking, and with climate refugees coming from all corners, the parts of the world that were habitable were strained to bursting point. Mass starvation and wars over freshwater sources and arable land became the status quo. Billions died. Known as the Great Dark Age, a bit of a misnomer considering it was very well documented, this was one of the worst periods of human history. The few who could afford it, or were lucky enough to have essential skills, congregated in little self-sufficient city clusters and life seemed to continue as normal, while the world outside these bastions slowly succumbed to a hostile planet.
There had been talk of creating a colony ship, each Cluster pooling their remaining resources and ditching their ailing planet, making the several hundred year journey to Proxima B, but that fizzled out when the Ganbaatar Event hit. The geomagnetic storm took out the remaining electronic infrastructure connecting the world, left over from more prosperous times. Satellites fell from the sky like some divine punishment while brilliant, multicoloured aurorae lit the heavens up like a farewell party for our species. And it did truly seem like a farewell. The Earth no longer had the means to reconnect each Cluster, as the internet went down and the land separating them was lawless and dangerous. Bank accounts all over the world emptied, hospitals went dark and farming went from an automated process to a back-breaking chore, as all their supporting technologies died en masse. No one could contact anyone outside of their Cluster. It was the end of the Human Era.
Until it wasn’t.
* Excerpt from “A History of Humanity, Pre- and Post-Integration”
Musa woke up with an aching head, something he hadn’t experienced since first manifesting his Seed. That damn giant was standing over him, studying him curiously while also shading him from the Sun with his ridiculously large frame. No wonder my head still hurts. He looked around, worried about Mike and Jas, but it seemed everyone else had recovered and were doing drills with various weapons. He saw Mike shooting several test dummies out on the grass with a pistol, only headshots of course, and wowing all the other students on the firing range. Jas was out of sight but he could hear the prince on the other side of the far wall, regaling others with his tales of how much better his homeland was than New London. Musa grinned despite himself.
“Good, you’re awake. We should talk.” The intimidating man walked off towards the door, expecting Musa to follow him. As he moved off, the student felt his connection to the Sun reappear, soothing his head and removing the grogginess of waking up from unconsciousness. He got to his feet, glanced at his classmates and dutifully followed. A pretty pink-haired girl called out to him as he left.
“Hey, could you teach me how you did that? No one else lasted half as long against Mr McLeod, and you even forced him to break one of his bands on your own!” she said, enthusiastic as anything.
Musa turned the charm on, cheeks dimpling as he responded with one of his trademark grins. “The moment I figure it out, you’ll be the first person I go to, pinky swear.”
“Awesome! My name’s Birgitte, I live in Upola, west wing. You’ll see my name on my door if you walk down the main hallway.”
“Sure thing, I’m Musa. Manono, top floor.”
“The whole top floor?”
“I share it, but yes. Perks of knowing royalty.” He said with a shrug.
She looked him up and down, seemingly even more impressed than before. Yep, she totally wants me.
“Why are you so bad at theory then?” Hmm. Maybe she needs a bit more work.
He laughed it off as he walked out the door, still a bit stung by the reference to his bombed test, but too elated at actually gaining the lecturer’s, Mr McLeod’s, attention to be anything but happy. Hopefully, his performance would make everyone re-evaluate their perception of him as some rich lout, skating through the preeminent Academy in the world on his wallet.
Mr McLeod was waiting just outside the door for him, eyes closed in the Sun, hands clasped behind his back like some larger-than-life sculpture. Does he do this because it’s so menacing? There’s no way he doesn’t do this on purpose. “Come young Mirzadeh, we’ll talk as we walk to my office.”
They started walking down the glass corridor, the opposite way whence they came, getting even further from the Lecture Hall. There were a few people still walking about, as this was the middle of midday period and most other students were in class.
“A normal human’s nerve impulses move at about 110 metres per second. This means that a student at Seed level, little better than a mundane, should react to visual stimulus in a fifth of a second. My Concept happens to be Momentum, at Flower level. I always know exactly how fast any given part of my body is moving. While I was suppressed, I was still far beyond anything a random Seed should be able to see and avoid. So answer me this, do you have a precognitive Concept?” He looked intently at Musa as he asked his question, not even watching where he was going.
As far as he knew, Musa’s Concept was Remembrance, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had hidden their true abilities, since there was no way to check, aside from Internet’s unique powers and possibly some unregistered Seeds.
They turned a corner, approaching a small reinforced building, grey and metallic. It looked like the type of building Mr McLeod would build, just as stolid and strong-looking as the man himself, with no windows or visible openings.
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“No sir, though my Seed hasn’t done anything up until this point, assuming that’s why I could keep you away for so long.”
Mr McLeod barked a short, sharp laugh, “You didn’t keep me away kid, though I like your confidence.”
They reached the entrance to the office. Seems odd to call an entire building an office, however small. The enigmatic lecturer stood in front of the door, that weirdly had no keyhole or knob, and cocked his arm back. A reddish tint covered his arm and it accelerated faster than Musa could see, hitting the door with a ripple instead of the expected boom. He pulled his arm back from where it had sunken into the door, and it seemed to melt away like some portal made of water instead of a grey concrete slab. “Come in. Ignore the door, it’ll reform behind us.”
Amazed, but keeping his peace, Musa entered the office. His expectations for the inside were completely blown away. The first thing he noticed was his connection to the Sun not disappearing, despite being in an enclosed space. The second thing was how lavish it was. Musa had grown up in the lap of luxury, and currently lived with a Prince, but was still impressed at the sense of comfort the space radiated. A hearth burned merrily against the wall, a raw flame producing no smoke and burning no fuel. A thick, deep crimson rug covered most of the floor, with paintings and ornaments hung up all around the single roomed building. A large wooden desk dominated the area in front of the hearth, with an imperial, high-backed chair behind it, and a small, frail looking chair in front. Hmm, wonder what he’s trying to convey there. The various quality of life additions, such as the computer in the corner and the beanbag chair in front of it, were directly at odds with Musa’s initial perception of Mr McLeod. Goes to show how mistaken first impressions can be, I guess.
He took off his shoes, copying the lecturer as he pulled off his powerful looking boots. Who am I kidding, everything about him looks powerful. They sat down in the two chairs, Musa feeling as weak as his chair looked, and the combat instructor steepled his fingers and stared over them. Uncomfortable in the silence, Musa started talking.
“I hadn’t managed to use my Seed for anything really before just now. I trained my arse off for years but until that voice, I may as well have been mundane.”
“Voice?”
“Yeah, I heard a voice clearly in my head telling me to duck. I assumed it was one of my classmates but considering these questions, I now think it was my Seed.”
“Hmm. Okay, what I’m about to say will remain between us, but you’re going to have to watch your back.”
“Sir?”
“When the Elvar first pierced the fabric of spacetime and found us, they initially thought us heretics. They couldn’t abide by a sapient race being in the Garden without a Gardener, what they called Heralds of The Sun. It made us unworthy in their eyes and their Pope declared a crusade against those who would presume to share in the bounty of their God without a Sun-Chosen Herald. Of course, not all Elvar are Sun-addled zealots, as your radiant friend so eloquently puts it, but enough of them are that we could do nothing against the tide of death that came out of that first portal. That all ended as soon as Mafui’e ascended and sunk South America, but there’s always been a simmering of discontent, since his Concept allowed him to ascend using man-made technology rather than truly being ‘Chosen by the Sun’.”
“You’re talking about the nukes.”
“Yes. This is mostly public knowledge, but sometime within the last five years, a new Herald appeared on the Elvan planet. He’s styled himself as The Prophet, and started his own nation, separate from Jas or The Holy Ish Empire. The religion is mostly the same as in Ish, but crucially, they do not believe the Worldshaker is legitimate. They cannot make any overt moves since the Pope is still in control of the only Burrows with portals to our world, but they fundamentally cannot abide us and we expect them to make a move at some point. Which brings me to you. Since about two years ago, people with precognitive Concepts have been getting killed off.”
“What? How? Don’t their powers specifically prevent this sort of thing?”
“We don’t know. Even a precognitive Flower, allegedly unkillable by anything except a Gardener, has been assassinated. We can’t tie anything to the Prophet directly, else Worldshaker would have stepped in by now. But we think they’re planning something big, and removing anyone who could potentially stop it before it happens.”
“Why can’t Worldshaker just go anyway? We have a cordial relationship with the Pope, and I’m sure he doesn’t like a second Herald splintering his country.”
The man chuckled, “Boy, he is the Worldshaker. His very existence is a threat to the entire Elvar planet, they wouldn’t let him even sniff the portal. Elvar and humans aren’t the only sapient species in the Garden, before we came along there was a pact of mutually assured destruction between the Garden races. Gardeners don’t set foot on other Garden worlds, period, unless they’re fine with the destruction of their own planet.”
Musa sat and slowly digested this info. Okay, I could be targeted by a demi-god with a hate-on for humans. Okay. Awesome.
“Of course, if what you’ve been saying about your Seed is true, it might not be precognitive. These types generally know the moment they manifest and are usually given obvious Concepts like Forethought or Readiness. We’ve never seen Remembrance before however, so we’ll wait until you bloom and become a Sprout, at which point you’ll be powerful enough to confirm without a doubt whether you can tell the future.”
“I see. Is there anything I can do in the meantime? This is kind of a lot to dump on a guy in his second week of training.”
“Unfortunately not. Luckily, you already live in a secure place with the prince and your little friend, but we’ll increase security around Manono until we can confirm whether you’re in danger or not. I would say just keep working, maybe raise those test scores, until we can go out to a Burrow and you can bloom.”
Mr McLeod then leaned back in his chair, silently dismissing him. Musa stood up, thanked him, and put on his shoes when he remembered the solid door and how much force was needed to open it. He looked back at his instructor, who told him to just walk through. The solid door. Cool, guess I’ll just mosey on through then. He stood looking up at the door, feeling incredibly stupid as he got closer. He looked back at Mr McLeod, already writing something on his desk, and asked a question.
“Can you at least tell me how it works, sir?”
McLeod glanced upwards, “You’re still here? A friend of mine has the Flower of Phase, just walk through it.”
Musa looked back at the door, took a breath and plunged through, surprisingly feeling no resistance at all. He felt behind him and of course, the door was fully solid again. Fucking weird Concepts.
He walked along the corridors in silence, turning the information around in his mind. Midday period had long finished by then and since it was the first-years’ first CQC/W lesson, they had been given the rest of the day off. He made his way down to the dorms in deep contemplation, unconsciously picking out the passage that would lead him to his own residence. After ascending the stairs, he opened the door, seeing Mike teaching Jas how to play video games. The two of them looked up at him, Mike eating a pizza and Jas tearing into a whole turkey.
“Guys,” Musa intoned somberly, before his eyes lit up in excitement. “I have SO much to tell you!”