Sci Fi & Fantasy / Prologue Version 2
A brief history of the world
I shall tell you the story of a time when the darkness of days unnumbered lay thick upon the face of the earth; where passion and madness entangled each other. With horror creeping slowly over every threshold, and blackness so dank it suffocates every pore, the human element crumbled away to insanity.
At the dawn of the twenty-second century, mankind was ripe with power. The human race rejoiced in its dominion over the planet, thrilled at their brilliant mastery of things- like a giant child under a synthetic pine on Christmas morning. Life expectancy had almost doubled since the early 2000’s, thanks to many great technological advances in “New Medicine”, including cloning and biochemical research. The issue of cloning, while in the past had been something of high and heated debate throughout the world, was now an essential ingredient to the physiology of world politics.
The first person to receive a body replacement made of fully cloned human material was eight-year-old Lizzy Sparrow of Idaho City, Idaho, USA. The child had been hit by a truck that had lost control as it slid over patch of black ice on the highway, sending a ton of metal screaming into the side of her mother’s car, pinning Lizzy in between the two vehicles, and causing a fatal stroke in the case of Mrs. Sparrow. The three victims-two dead and one wounded, sat unnoticed for 52 minutes. The accident couldn’t have been worse. It was a complete mess in every way, and at the same time, it was a perfect opportunity for the U.S. government to engage in a top-secret experimental procedure.
The surgeon was none other than the infamous Dr. Chloe Wong, first lady of stem cell reproduction, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2100 for her success in implanting the first cloned human heart into a dying patient. Prior to the Idaho City incident, Dr. Wong had been contracted several times; however, none of the previous experiments had been as highly classified, for none had gone so far as to replace a whole body. Curtains were drawn tight. The surgeon and her assistants had arrived 31hours after the accident, approximately. The six hour procedure took place in a wing of the local hospital that had been closed due to its being “under construction”.
Seventy-two hours later, the little girl was back in the arms of her father and beloved family, alive and well. Lizzy Sparrow never knew that she had died. She only knew that her mother had been killed in the same car accident that had put her into a “coma”. Nobody knew any better until Lizzy became pregnant. The forty weeks of gestation seemed to go as smoothly as possible. No defects were detected by any ultrasonic or echo- sonic tests. Her nutrient levels were high and toxin levels low. Oxygen saturation was normal, weight gain fine. Lizzy simply glowed, a beautiful triumph for Mother Nature.
The labor lasted for eleven hours and twenty three minutes, during which time a nurse midwife attended Mother Sparrow, with a doctor on call for the delivery. She seemed relaxed enough between contractions, she progressed smoothly, and the tense excitement in the room was almost too much to bear. Both mother and father wept tears of joy as the doctor was summoned. Her eyes widened as big as saucers and she cried out, “It’s time to push!” As the baby’s head crowned, a confused and scared look seized the doctor’s face. He turned and ran from the room. The midwife fainted clean away. The uterus contracted and Lizzy Sparrow pushed with all her might and brought into this world an abomination.
Instead of eyes there were two big, bulbous blue spheres where the sockets would be, rimmed in black. The boy had no mouth, just a few crooked fragments of bone protruding out of the soft flesh below his slit nostrils. His feet came to a point where the toes would have been and his head was covered in a slimy worm-like map of blood vesicles. Lying on the sheets, bloody and squirming, the child lived his few seconds of life and perished before the midwife came to.
Lizzy was committed to the state mental hospital where she lived out the rest of her days, which were 141 exactly before the night she strung herself up with a bit of contraband rope from the rafters.
The story leaked into the press after that, thanks to Leah Thompson, who had been the assisting surgeon during the Sparrow replacement. Miss Thompson had apparently been struck in the forehead by her own guilty conscience. International uproar ensued, throwing the whole governmental body into a panic. It was simply no longer feasible trying to cover everything up. Too many rumors were circulating; there was talk of action, and, in a moment of sheer idiocy, the bill was written and the votes were cast. Ninety-nine percent voted in favor of the legalization of full body replacement cloning. The scientific community nearly wet their proverbial shorts. Idaho City was forgotten.
Petitions for body replacements flooded the medical community, causing an economical shift. The elderly spent their whole pensions on down payments for replacements. Young people invested in savings bonds for future replacements. Prices were sky-high and profiteering overtook many. Suicide and homicide, even infanticide rates rose due to the new “freedom of life” law, which legalized a one-time use of full body replacement per human being per life span.
To balance out the boom in world population, the United Nations introduced a new strain of the flu virus into the population, killing millions of elderly and children around the globe in one swift stroke. The medical professionals pocketed the difference, naturally. The virus was kept circulated long after the vaccination saved millions, of course, because the cycle of resistance and persistence will continue.
Capital punishment for all heinous crimes was a worldwide absolute; however, the underground population of career criminals was larger than it ever had been, due to the corruption of the system. A sad paradox burdened the world. It was almost impossible for any court to find anybody truly guilty of a heinous crime. The new world view of society and how it breeds its own criminals had widened to accept and forgive most felons due to past trauma dealt by other people, and of course, the mental illness epidemic that followed the right to life bill’s ratification.
Most rapists and homicidal maniacs and average Joe murderers were housed in massive prisons for the mentally ill. These institutions were funded primarily through mandatory prison house taxation. They were better known to the general civilian population as “Bush houses” because they had been instituted throughout America by the former president George Bush the Fourth in the same year he introduced democracy to eleven separate African Nations.
New and exciting street drugs had cropped up in various places. One popular substance was a stimulant/hallucinogen called Triptamphetakins, or “skin” on the street. It was a hybrid drug, its foundation being methamphetamines. The user experiences an intense, prolonged euphoria that sometimes includes visual and auditory hallucinations.
An out-of-body feeling immobilizes the user’s thought process while the body becomes arrested by a series of spasms. Multiple involuntary sexual climaxes and all-over sharp tingling combined with numb rushes cycle through the physical person as the psyche is churned to oatmeal. The first phase of the high lasts two to four hours. Eight hours follow, during which the body is once again mobile, but the brain is not functioning properly. Many “skinners” black out the whole experience, knowing only that they have flown far, and have paid dearly for it. . There is a twelve- day detoxification following a skin trip during which the user experiences chest pain excruciating enough to cause a heart attack if another dose is not taken. The drug forces the addict to live in an altered reality either way.
“Skin” originated in Korea, but was soon after adopted as the favorite on the other side of the globe in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. From there, it grew across the nation. The individuals who specialized in the production and sale of skin grew fat on customers young and old. Organized crime grew strong, unstoppable. There had never been a higher murder rate in any country’s history.
Surrounded by shiny paper and cascades of curled ribbon, the United States government engaged in secret dealings with foreign mercenaries. The president of the United States, President Bonnie Kemp, was kidnapped by her own secret service and beaten to death after a 44-hour inquest into the whereabouts of the known terrorist and new ally to the President-Sir Igor Karovsky. The president was suspected of selling information from top-secret CIA files to the wanted, along with several unidentified weapons of mass destruction.
The assassination of Lady Kemp rocked the foundations of the senate and congress. Accusations flew freely back and forth across the floor. Plots were developed and traps were set. Several cabinet members disappeared without as much as a whisper. Chaos broke out within the United States Government. Over a period of thirteen months, America’s reputation and favor within the UN disintegrated. Without the superpower of the United States running the world, democracy cracked and fell, sending a thundering echo of freedom across the continents. Armies around the globe were reinforced, drawing men and women from every forgotten corner and the men behind the curtain were finally revealed. The Puppet Masters took hold of the strings and wiggled and pulled and prodded the people of earth into all-out rebellion.
In the year 2341 A.D., on April sixth, mankind engaged one another in war. The Last Great War, in fact. It was a day never to be forgiven by history, and certainly never forgotten. The world was divided, a map of chaos spanning every continent. The war was already in the streets, the black market thriving on “mutant capitalization”. The legal rights of first-generation humans and their replicas were not the same, either in government or society. The situation was no longer secure. Thousands of political leaders from all different countries and their families were executed. The Order of Zion had overthrown the United Nations, dismissing leaders from life in a brutal massacre.
The bloodbath swept over Europe and the Americas like a storm, leaving most islands unclaimed as yet. After the western hemisphere belonged to the order, the movement into Asia and Africa began. The few political leaders who had survived the destruction dealt by the Order were picked off one by one. Some were murdered, some were never found. One or two were determined to be of some use, and were therefore turned, rising to power with the brothers of Zion. It happened quickly and the world was unaware until after the fact. The conspiratorial dream of one world government had come to its realization.
Crusaders, called The Brotherhood, swept the globe with gale force, assassins on a spree. Thousands of medical professionals were executed and trillions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment destroyed in the tirade. The three supreme leaders of The Brotherhood maintained facilities for themselves, eliminating any possible infiltration of the system. Children, women, and men were all slaughtered equally and towns leveled at random as mankind fought against one world government. The battle cry of the rioting mob echoed off every city wall. People starved, killing one another for the last bit of bread or the warmer blanket. Millions of cities were leveled in the hail of warheads, millions more eaten alive by fires that consumed all and kept burning for weeks at a time. The known global society toppled as the empire was destroyed and the world began to drown in its own blood.
The waters were poisoned, the skies scorched. Mother Nature was raped and brutally beaten. Venus wept bloody tears for her sister Earth. Survivors fled into the wilderness, making their lives secret within the forests and mountains and deserts of the planet, dying off quickly from exposure and radiation. Human numbers dwindled, and yet the race clung on by a few tribal threads. Eventually, the thrill of world domination wore off, due to the staggering lack of human population. The Brotherhood disbanded, its members disappearing into thin air.
The Tauri made their home high up in the mountains of the Southern Territories. Here we have thrived for the last 1,150 years in relative harmony with our mother earth. The Guardians of Aeternus gave to us Ovus, god of the living and giver of magic, war, and love, the three Great Forces.
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Only after reading chapter one did I discover that it was essential to the introduction to the Tauri ‘Guardians of Aeternus’. However I found it confusing.
‘Pinning Lizzy in between the two vehicles’ infers that she was outside the vehicle in which she and her mother traveled not as let us say ‘Pininng Lizzy to the back seat of the vehicle’.
There also seemed to be a sudden change in the story, to sudden, when at one moment only 72 hours after the car accident she is in the arms of her father and then she is pregnant. One moment a child the next an adult.
It is a pity I have to sift though the writing to find the story….but I know it is there. The worth of your work will depend on the story you tell of the Tauri. My curiosity is peaked.
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