Introduction

The year, as best we can tell, is 2358 by the old reckoning, 308 by the new. There was a collapse some time between 2000 and 2050 that left all the records in a confused jumble with multiple versions of events from the prior fifty or so years cluttering the histories, leading to information overflow and massive data collapse. The world was not fully functional again until the year 2100, when The Realignment occurred; when all the nations of the Earth united into five supernations - The Confederation of American States, Pacifica, the Asian Hegemony, the African Alliance, and the Second European Union. That was also the first year we retained any accurate records post the year two thousand. A perpetual cold war, mollified some by trade, existed for about two centuries, with occasional small battles, usually over islands bordering two or three supernations or in the former Middle East, as alliances there shift as swiftly as do the sands, but mankind thrived and, despite the tensions, the world was a beautiful, hopeful place.

This status was brought to an end roughly a decade ago, when the Exerians appeared. Their initial demand for planetary surrender was met with the prompt destruction of their first starship to enter our space. They responded by landing a fleet of ships around the planet. The Five Nations restarted the United Nations and banded together to fight this menace, and, by the fourth year, it looked like Earth might possibly win - until the largest Exerian ship thus seen appeared in our system. It unleashed their deadliest weapons yet, biological horrors that, for several months, Earth had no name for, until a reporter from the Asian Hegemony discovered something similar to these creatures in some old entertainment films of the past and from them came a name for these living weapons: Kaiju. The world embraced this name, even as it reeled from the attacks of these gargantuan beasts. Their strongest monster was called the daikaiju, and given the name of one of the most feared of all these fictional giant monsters - King Ghidorah.

In the entertainment films, this monster was always defeated by other monsters banding together, but Earth had no monsters, or none that it knew of. Weapons were assembled to face these horrors, but they were only fought to a standstill, a stalemate - and one that it soon became clear Earth would eventually lose, unless our own monsters could be found, or a hero to somehow take their place…

This is the story of one who may yet be that hero. No, it is not my story, not exactly, it is that of a young man born to the reporter who named the kaiju and his American wife, Nicholas Sato,

Or, if you’re a traditionalist, I suppose Sato Nicholas.

Today is his sixteenth birthday, the day we meet.

The day that will change the world

And maybe, just maybe, save it as well…