After China united with
Russia in the year 2055, the United States of America was worried
that it was no longer the world's greatest power. So the US united
with Canada to become a huge new nation known as Canmerica. This was
the beginning of a great wave of nation-merging which swept the world
over the next two decades. When this process finally ended, there
were only two powers left in the world: the Blue Alliance
(controlling all of the Western Hemisphere) and the Gold Alliance
(controlling all of the rest of the world).
For three decades these two
great alliances existed in peace. But eventually a dispute arose over
vast mineral riches discovered in Antarctica and in the ocean. Both
the Blue Alliance and the Gold Alliance claimed these riches as their
own. Eventually the dispute led to a war between the two great
powers.
The President of the Blue
Alliance spoke on 3D television to the billions he ruled over.
“We have no choice in this
matter,” said President Olsen. “We will never be able to live in
peace until the Gold Alliance is destroyed utterly. I hereby announce
that a state of war exists between the Blue Alliance and the Gold
Alliance.”
But before he could finish
his speech, he was notified that nuclear missiles had been launched
from the Gold Alliance. President Olsen ordered a full-scale nuclear
counterattack. Hundreds of nuclear bombs went off all over the world,
leading to the death of billions. All of the dust from the nuclear
explosions caused a nuclear winter that darkened Earth's skies for
years, causing billions more to die from crop failures.
But the war still was not
over. Both sides had prepared elaborate attack plans that would be
carried out even after a nuclear holocaust had occurred.
The Blue Alliance set forth
drones that reached Europe and Asia, releasing a variety of
biological plagues. The Gold Alliance unleashed an invasion of killer
robots that attacked the Western Hemisphere. The robots were
self-reproducing robots that knew how to make more and more copies of
themselves, using metals scavenged from cars and houses.
The effects of both of these
attacks were devastating. In both cases, the attacks were supposed to
be limited. The Blue Alliance thought that its biological plagues
would only inflict the Eastern Hemisphere. But it was wrong. The
plagues soon spread to the Western Hemisphere as well. The Gold
Alliance thought that its self-reproducing killer robots would cause
devastation only in the Western Hemisphere, being blocked by the
Bering Strait from spreading into Asia. But after the nuclear
winter caused temperatures to plummet, the Bering Strait froze
over. The killer robots marched over the frozen straight, spreading
into Asia, and then into Europe and Africa. Every place the robots
entered they left a trail of death and utter devastation.
The population of the world,
which had risen to nine billion before the war, dropped first into
the millions, and then into the thousands, and then into the
hundreds, and then into the dozens.
Some of the last few
survivors were in a tiny military unit of the Blue Alliance. The unit
used the last functional spy satellite to study heat signatures from
the Eastern Hemisphere. They determined that there was no sign of
life anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere, except for the faintest
indication of human activity in one ruined city of the Gold Alliance.
The military unit set forth a jet on a search and destroy mission to
neutralize this last speck of resistance.
While traveling across the
ocean, three of the crew members died from the plague virus. But one
determined soldier named Arnold Johnson continued flying the jet,
until it came to the ruins of the enemy city.
Johnson landed the jet in a
risky landing on a vacated air field. Carrying a machine gun and a
biological sensor, he set forth to find the remaining pocket of enemy
resistance. He searched through the ruins of the city, getting closer
and closer to his objective. Finally he found his target.
It was a tent which had been
pitched amid the ruins. Lifting the flap of the tent, Johnson saw an
old man spooning out beans from a can of beans.
“Are you the last left of
your kind?” asked Johnson.
“Probably,” said the old
man, guessing correctly.
Johnson killed the man with
his machine gun. Then he raised his fist in triumph.
“The war is over!” said
Johnson. “We won!”
But the victory was pyrrhic,
for he was the last human being left in the world. He died from the
plague virus a few days later.
It would have been the end of
civilization on planet Earth, but there was one reason it was not.
For many years, the planet had been silently observed by a wise and
kindly extraterrestrial race called the Voltons. The Voltons had a
strict ethic of non-interference. As soon as they realized that
mankind was extinct, the Voltons took the uninhabited Earth as their
own. First, they removed all traces of human civilization, except for
some pieces that were kept in museums, and a handful of places
preserved as historical exhibits. Then the Voltons cleaned up all the
pollution and ugliness that man had created. The Voltons then slowly
went to work building a paradise planet. They succeeded beyond their
wildest dreams.
Earth was transformed into a
planet where civilization and nature meshed together in perfect
harmony. A glorious ideal society of justice, peace, forgiveness and
tolerance flourished like no galactic society had ever flourished. A
golden age began, and lasted for eons. The planet contained a
thousand busy centers of art, philosophy, science, and culture, but
nowhere on the planet were there any bombs, missiles or weapons.
Earth, which had once been the laughing stock of the galaxy, was
transformed into the greatest showpiece of galactic culture.
Throughout a region of space stretching for thousands of light-years,
beings with a hundred strange appearances all longed to one day visit
Earth, or to make their own planet like Earth. The inhabitants of
Earth all lived blissfully like philosopher kings, basking in the
warm sunlight of tranquility, freedom, wisdom, and equality.
So the end result was very,
very happy for the planet Earth, but not for its original
inhabitants.
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