Prolgue

The apocalypse was sudden, but some of us saw it coming. Too bad no one would listen to us.

Ok, I take that back. People listened, but due to the enshitification of the internet, all communication was limited. One day, the Billionaires all started pushing for education reform. They started donating to the Department of Education - after Trump’s impeachment and eventual execution, the Democrats had taken over government at almost every level, and for years, the Oligarchs fought against them. Then they started working together. No one is sure why, but one day, they all started playing nice.

I looked around for a reason why. Did one of them get guillotined? Did a family get their house burned down while they were having their midyear vacation at Martha’s Vineyard? Did the Socialists finally get their tax increase they’d been wanting forever? I couldn’t find anything. Google was useless ever since AI took it over, and all the other search engines were even worse. There were rumors on the net, but most message boards were crushed under by the big companies. After the fallout of the Epstein files and the public execution of so many rich pedophiles, you would think some freedom of information would come about. But the tech bros just consolidated even more, and the enshitification of the internet continued while Congress did nothing.

Oligarchs came out in droves to support and campaign for public education - science, arts, math, engineering, writing. You name it, they pushed it. They encouraged an increase in funding for schools and even donated to charities promoting learning. Charter schools and Private schools were closed within a year, while public schools became temples dedicated to learning. Teachers finally got the pay they deserved.

After more than a decade of this, with teachers finally making more than police officers and education being pushed hard, society started to change. Cities became more efficient, pollution decreased, new forms of power were discovered, and humanities dream of a brighter future seemed reachable. A few years later, we reached for the stars. Of course, we’d been going to space for almost a century at this point, but now it was in reach for everyone. Space elevators were being created, space stations as vacation destinations, and even a colony ship was nearing completion. Faster than light travel hadn’t quite been achieved, but our scientists were working on it.

And then the apocalypse hit. Meteors rained down. The seas boiled and the sky turned red. The moon shattered. Death reigned supreme, as starvation hit billions. And the billionaires? They never changed. They just hid their agenda. They had paid to build the arc in order to escape the doom they had foreseen. They and their lackeys were already gone when the storm of fire swept over the earth. And in its wake, only ashes remained.

Years later, something rose from those ashes. Something not quite human, but upright. Some of the survivors welcomed it, while others feared it. Those times were hard, but they are worth telling.

End Prologue