Chapter 1: World In Decline

It was just another day. Another unbearably hot and humid day in what was known as Baton Rouge, a scant 15 miles from the edge of the of the ever expanding Gulf of Mexico. Andre Bowman was just another African American male, in a now mostly minority occupied city. Oh yeah it was a real big city now, after Hurricane Gregory finally dealt the final blow to New Orleans almost exactly 35 years ago. The nation long ago had since adjusted, for example, to calling the World American-Football League team there the "Baton Rouge Saints" instead of "New Orleans Saints". You have to learn how to adjust and adapt in this world in order to survive it, survival of the fittest and all. Nevertheless well over 1 million Blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans called it home, along with god knows how many refugees from the Mexican Territories and now sunken or nearly sunk Caribbean Islands. The Caucasians had mostly left for greener pastures if you will, only really the poor whites and the Cajuns were left of those fair-skinned. Most with any real means now lived in the Domed Communities. Andre stood outside of his apartment building, Lord knows there was hardly any decent ground left to build a house that wouldn't sink in 3 years time, silently saying to himself "Who in their right fucking mind would build a city in this god forsaken area, it's fucking summer almost all the time and whatever we call winter is more like a slightly-warm autumn."

He held up a piece of e-paper, showing the latest news from the Saints offseason acquisitions and dealings, and the owner, Mary-Anne Benson, 3rd Generation owner of the team, forever complaining to have a bigger domed stadium built where the Neo Superdome now stands. "Ugh this harpy should have more than enough cash to build 3 'Ultradomes' (as fans and commentators jokingly referred to the planned super-luxury facility). I don't know why she can think she can ever have a stadium bigger than Dallas or Atlanta and expect them to not respond." He said out loud, not caring if anyone thought him crazy for talking like that. The whole world seemed to be out to drive him batty, between the incessant heat, the incessant carping of those who really have no business carping, and the incessant gnawing in the back of his head about the lack of purpose he had in life.

The world, where it was hard for him to begin thinking about how bad he and much of the rest of humanity had it conditions wise. It seemed like Summer lasted 9 months of the year, with only maybe 3 months of respite for a fall, or if one was lucky with the winds an actual winter. Most people thanked their grandparents half-facetiously for the brief Green Movement in the 2020s, scientists said that if that now hiccup in the pollution patterns hadn't had happened things would be even worse than it is now. Acid rain and smog had been making a comeback like gangbusters, the smokestacks burning away the last of the oil and coal that could dug up without it taking forever and costing an arm and a leg, and turning even the Air in a bright midday sun an unnatural orange, like it was forever sunset (fitting some would say).

The Waters had become fetid for the most part, only heavy nanomachine recycling and desalination plants kept billions from dying of water-borne diseases or just plain thirst, hard to say which was a worse way to go. In the zeal to provide highly disease resistant crops that could be grown anywhere from the Russian steppes to Sub-Saharan Africa, the mega corporations produced Genetically Engineered crops, which worked well for quite a few decades. That is, until it turned out they were, in part, responsible for damn near wiping out native plant and pollinator species. After that, it just seemed like the government gave up enforcing anything resembling logical regulations of industry, and dumping became rampant.

The ground pollution eventually became entirely unbearable for most species, so the it seemed the Earth itself was going through some deadly form of pattern baldness: trees dying, crops dying, wild plants dying, animals dying, as well as rural populations dying. As it stood, some sense, it had seemed Mother Nature had gone insane with grief, watching her children were slowly dying, species by species, individual by individual.

The Fires, from coal to nuclear, energy that drove our industries, now also seemed to have gone mad. Random blackouts began, as the power infrastructure of 120 years finally said had begun failing on an increasingly grave scale. Once again some foresight but Andre's collective grandfathers had modernized enough of it anyway to where there were not whole areas of the country randomly going offline at any given time. A half-done job but given this environment he'd take it.

Rampant human greed by a scant few, barely 1/100th of 1 Percent of the total population had either directly or indirectly caused a vast number of species to die, entire ecosystems to utterly fail. But it seemed there was never enough to quench their eternal thirst for more: more money, more stuff, more of whatever, he could never tell. Quite possibly out of vanity or out of some warped sense of compassion, they funded some kind of mass genetic repository. Hundreds of thousands of biologists and trackers fanned out, and collected genetic samples of pretty much every species they could find in order to genetically sequence them at some later date.

The population of the world at large, well they just seemed like a beaten down lot. It was hard for them to keep caring about the state of things outside of their little personal circle of friends and family when the government (or the corporations effectively running them) basically didn't care about their quality of life or anything. Just so long as people weren't rioting or being unseemly they were free to go about their lives, such as they had lives left to lead. The drones had made almost the entire non-Dome dwelling population redundant, about the only people left with steady jobs were the doctors and the lawyers. Those two professions no one trusted completely to the machines, although everyone wondered how long it was going to be until people stopped caring about that as well.

All across the world, new diseases like the Neo-Black Plague and old ones like influenza and dysentery were making life a living hell for those not in Domes in Africa, South and Central America, and Asia. Oceania and the Caribbean hardly existed anymore, due to rising sea levels; just Australia, New Guinea, and chunks of Hawaii were high enough to withstand it. Europe, North America, and Russia were in a constant state of flux, the wild weather patterns had made living outside a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with the weather, and there was no way to get out of the game unless you were inside, as it were.

Well, that is what life was like outside of the Domes anyway. Very little needed to be said of life inside the Domes in a relative sense. The Elites loved using their avatars in the almost live-actorless media to show everyone just how fucking good they had it. Fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat, none of that knockoff slog the proles got. Money, oh just to even get INTO a dome you had to be rolling in cash, and living there, it was like a Gated Community of the turn of the Millennium with its own private weather system. The Color Filters of the Domed Sky always made sure that the sky was picture perfect sky blue for the day and midnight blue for the night, no orange or purple haze for them. Heck a few years after opening and some clever programmers even could simulate the stars in their exact position relative to the domes. In short, it was Heaven on Earth.

A place free from need, but seemingly drowning in want. It was something that always bothered the hell out of Andre when the thought about it, "Why the hell would they want so much. Almost every natural forest is gone. Almost every fish in the sea snapped up or choked to death on red tide. Almost every beast and bird fallen to illness or poaching. But it still seems like they want more when they already have damn near everything."  He could never understand that mentality as he glared at that seemingly heartless harpy on the e-paper, forever clamoring for more, for bigger, for the absolute best that money could buy. He sat at his computer terminal, checking the news feeds. Who knows what other crack in the facade of civilization would show up, he was just hoping it wasn't anywhere nearby.

Meanwhile, a few thousand miles west, it was now around 6:30 AM. A quiet unassuming man walked outside of his barracks and down a runway at Edwards Air Force Base. He was looking his latest model, state of the art AI-Assisted Stealth Recon aircraft, the Nighthawk.

"It is almost time for midday patrol, Airman First Class (A1C) Hartford.", mechanically quipped Sally, the AI that ran most of the flight systems.

"Yeah yeah Sally, I know, another boring 2 hours wasted flying around looking for anyone dumb enough to encroach on the good ol US of A.", replied Ethan Hartford, sounding like he was desperately trying to stave off the incoming boredom.

"A1C Hartford, due to your attitude I am once again to remind you that your duty is crucially important. As you know, other nations and groups have various manned and unmanned aircraft as well as watercraft and land vehicles that can and occasionally do penetrate satellite and stationary ground-based detection. It is imperative that air and mobile ground reconnaissance be used to head off any potential national security threats.", Sally replied, honestly trying to get Ethan to take his duty seriously as best a machine could implore a human to do something.

"Oh come on Sally, I know what we are supposed to be doing, it doesn't mean that it doesn't bore the absolute HELL out of me.", Ethan replied sarcastically. Sally's generation of AI were rapidly acclimating themselves to the vagaries of human expression.

"Your sarcasm has been duly noted, I can only hope that you do not talk to Master Sergeant Thomas the same way.", Sally replied, devoid of any real emotion.

"Yeah I know I can't talk that way to MSgt Thomas that way. If I did he'd have my head on a platter.", Ethan said with all seriousness now. Ethan was bored of flying around aimlessly on order, trying to find anyone that slipped through the various redundant sensory arrays around the country. At 9:00, he took off from base. Its mission, incredibly simple: Fly around a preset pattern and see if any vehicle or mass of people were trying to get into American territory. 50 years ago the Mexican Territories had disintegrated in terms of a central government. Solid bulwarks had to be airlifted and dropped across most of the Desert American Southwest just to prevent an outright flood into the American Southwest proper, so part of this mission was trying to find stealth refugee boats or land transports near San Diego or otherwise along the California-Mexico border. Today however, was going to very different for Mr. Ethan Hartford... and if luck would have it, for the entirety of two worlds.

Wait... two worlds?!