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Description
Prologue

The year is 156 IE or; what you could call 66,792 AD. For over one and a half centuries now the earth has been working on a way to fight its fate, a fate that it has only just come to terms with.
In 0 IE or Zero Invenio Exitium or Discover Destruction, a group of scientists working with the orbital accelerators discovered something about the universe; it confirmed an age old theory that the entire universe is a vacuum created by the creation of our reality, it also confirmed a potential threat to our universe, something scientists tens of thousands of years ago named the "False Vacuum." This is literally a weakness in the vacuum identified twenty years after the discovery that will cause the end of existence, if the weakness is allowed to continue, then in just over one thousand years the vacuum will fail, causing almost instantaneous destruction of everything. Apocalyptic I know, but its not all bad, because we identified the area of weakness we spent as much time as possible finding ways to correct it.

To understand the world as it is today there are several things that need to be understood, firstly, humanity is a little different in this world, evolution has led to marginally different sub-species within the human race, some are faster, some are stronger and some are even pushing the bounds of what it is to be human. To effect of nations within the planet led to intra-breeding and therefore qualities within nations were amplified, as the planet was only unified six thousand years ago, it led to some major and many minor changes to the human gene pool. Now, of course people moved from place to place however, the majority met their "darling" just down the road form where they work, they got married and had kids, and those kids did the same and so on. Although there are sub-species I'm not talking about the twentieth century equivalent of aliens, no, in fact many looks identical to basic humans, only minor differences exist such as thinner legs, larger muscles, larger brains, only those exhibiting the rare energy conversion gene are really noticeable, demonstrating green tinted skin and black eyes with a much tall but thinner stature than the average human, although theories about where this gene come from are still on-going. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk bigger picture.
The Earth hasn't had it easier since the geomagnetic reversal in 20,000 AD. The magnetic poles reversed and left the Earth with six different north and south poles before it final stabilised around 27,000AD. During that time the human population dropped from twenty two billion to just under nine billion. It wasn't a mass extinction but many left the planet and headed off into orbit and our first colony, the Moon. The earth experienced increased volcanism and the threat of radiation contamination increased, the food chain began to collapse and we had to make do with synthetic food created from hydrogen atoms, don't ask me the science, I'm not an expert. As the world wasn't unified at that point, poorer nations had little resources or aid from other nations fleeing to the skies, historians speculate that that was the main cause of deaths during the seven thousand years of troubles known as the "Dark Ages."

Not only has the Earth had its share of natural catastrophe but there have been many serious wars since records began aeons ago, but the most devastating was 2312, where a minor nuclear winter began, 43,000, in which one nation thought it would be a good idea to use the Earth's core as a tool for blackmail, he got pretty far, caused a few volcanic eruptions and a few decades of pain but finally the war was won and he ended up on the losing side. Finally, 60,000AD, the unification of planet Earth, one nation, not an evil dictatorship but one of the powerful nations took the planet and unified it through a combination of war, blackmail and diplomacy, although I think the last two are very similar, but this is how I was taught in school. Now if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, asking the year and receiving the answer its 66,792 must be a pain, believe me you don't know the half of it, but that's one of the reasons the government changed the official year to 0, one hundred and fifty six years ago. Although we generally shorted it to 6792, it became too unwieldy and so to mark our universal discovery the Planetary government changed the year to 0 IE (66,636AD).

Now I've told you a little of our history, I'll mention what people thought years like this would be like, such as what is true and what isn't. Firstly, space travel is a normal thing, 20th century people got that right, another is that we understand vastly more about the universe and have the ability to travel there, that is also correct. However, there are no other species like us in the universe, although we've found planets with microscopic life and even large creatures and animals, we've yet to find any sentient life, although travel between galaxies is rare, costly and time consuming, so wrong there! Humanity has conquered terraforming and all planets in the solar system have some sort of human activity, yes and no. We have the ability to terraform certain planets, but only those with active cores, so mars, I'm afraid not, Europa and Titan, yes. Secondly, we don't have a presence on all planets, not because we can't but because it's expensive and maintaining human colonies on all planets is not only difficult but pointless, why live on an enclosed habitat on mercury when you could enjoy life on Europa? Another thing, teleportation, not happening, some people tried it a few times in history and yeah it worked, kind of. They disappeared in one place and appeared in the other, what's the problem you ask? Well the original had not been transported, he or she would merely be completely destroyed and an exact copy returned in its place that believed he was the original. So yeah it does work, at the expense of your existence.

There that seems about everything, some history, some culture and some politics what more could you ask for in the opening pages of a story? A character you ask? Well wait no longer.

Description
Prologue

The year is 156 IE or; what you could call 66,792 AD. For over one and a half centuries now the earth has been working on a way to fight its fate, a fate that it has only just come to terms with.
In 0 IE or Zero Invenio Exitium or Discover Destruction, a group of scientists working with the orbital accelerators discovered something about the universe; it confirmed an age old theory that the entire universe is a vacuum created by the creation of our reality, it also confirmed a potential threat to our universe, something scientists tens of thousands of years ago named the "False Vacuum." This is literally a weakness in the vacuum identified twenty years after the discovery that will cause the end of existence, if the weakness is allowed to continue, then in just over one thousand years the vacuum will fail, causing almost instantaneous destruction of everything. Apocalyptic I know, but its not all bad, because we identified the area of weakness we spent as much time as possible finding ways to correct it.

To understand the world as it is today there are several things that need to be understood, firstly, humanity is a little different in this world, evolution has led to marginally different sub-species within the human race, some are faster, some are stronger and some are even pushing the bounds of what it is to be human. To effect of nations within the planet led to intra-breeding and therefore qualities within nations were amplified, as the planet was only unified six thousand years ago, it led to some major and many minor changes to the human gene pool. Now, of course people moved from place to place however, the majority met their "darling" just down the road form where they work, they got married and had kids, and those kids did the same and so on. Although there are sub-species I'm not talking about the twentieth century equivalent of aliens, no, in fact many looks identical to basic humans, only minor differences exist such as thinner legs, larger muscles, larger brains, only those exhibiting the rare energy conversion gene are really noticeable, demonstrating green tinted skin and black eyes with a much tall but thinner stature than the average human, although theories about where this gene come from are still on-going. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk bigger picture.
The Earth hasn't had it easier since the geomagnetic reversal in 20,000 AD. The magnetic poles reversed and left the Earth with six different north and south poles before it final stabilised around 27,000AD. During that time the human population dropped from twenty two billion to just under nine billion. It wasn't a mass extinction but many left the planet and headed off into orbit and our first colony, the Moon. The earth experienced increased volcanism and the threat of radiation contamination increased, the food chain began to collapse and we had to make do with synthetic food created from hydrogen atoms, don't ask me the science, I'm not an expert. As the world wasn't unified at that point, poorer nations had little resources or aid from other nations fleeing to the skies, historians speculate that that was the main cause of deaths during the seven thousand years of troubles known as the "Dark Ages."

Not only has the Earth had its share of natural catastrophe but there have been many serious wars since records began aeons ago, but the most devastating was 2312, where a minor nuclear winter began, 43,000, in which one nation thought it would be a good idea to use the Earth's core as a tool for blackmail, he got pretty far, caused a few volcanic eruptions and a few decades of pain but finally the war was won and he ended up on the losing side. Finally, 60,000AD, the unification of planet Earth, one nation, not an evil dictatorship but one of the powerful nations took the planet and unified it through a combination of war, blackmail and diplomacy, although I think the last two are very similar, but this is how I was taught in school. Now if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, asking the year and receiving the answer its 66,792 must be a pain, believe me you don't know the half of it, but that's one of the reasons the government changed the official year to 0, one hundred and fifty six years ago. Although we generally shorted it to 6792, it became too unwieldy and so to mark our universal discovery the Planetary government changed the year to 0 IE (66,636AD).

Now I've told you a little of our history, I'll mention what people thought years like this would be like, such as what is true and what isn't. Firstly, space travel is a normal thing, 20th century people got that right, another is that we understand vastly more about the universe and have the ability to travel there, that is also correct. However, there are no other species like us in the universe, although we've found planets with microscopic life and even large creatures and animals, we've yet to find any sentient life, although travel between galaxies is rare, costly and time consuming, so wrong there! Humanity has conquered terraforming and all planets in the solar system have some sort of human activity, yes and no. We have the ability to terraform certain planets, but only those with active cores, so mars, I'm afraid not, Europa and Titan, yes. Secondly, we don't have a presence on all planets, not because we can't but because it's expensive and maintaining human colonies on all planets is not only difficult but pointless, why live on an enclosed habitat on mercury when you could enjoy life on Europa? Another thing, teleportation, not happening, some people tried it a few times in history and yeah it worked, kind of. They disappeared in one place and appeared in the other, what's the problem you ask? Well the original had not been transported, he or she would merely be completely destroyed and an exact copy returned in its place that believed he was the original. So yeah it does work, at the expense of your existence.

There that seems about everything, some history, some culture and some politics what more could you ask for in the opening pages of a story? A character you ask? Well wait no longer.