I wandered home through the silent streets
And fell into a fitful sleep
Escape to realms beyond the night
Dream – can't you show me the light
I stand atop a spiral stair
An oracle confronts me there
He leads me on, light years away
Through astral nights, galactic days
I see the works of gifted hands
Grace this strange and wondrous land
I see the hand of man arise
With hungry mind and open eyes…
The sleep is still in my eyes
The dream is still in my head
I heave a sigh, and sadly smile
And lie a while in bed
I wish that it might come to pass
Not fade like all my dreams
Just think of what my life might be
In a world like I have seen
Rush, 2112
Prelude
In the end, it started with a whimper.
In future years, historians would look back and debate when, exactly, the Final World War began. Did it begin at the first moment, the first kernel of discord? Did it begin later, once it crossed some predetermined threshold? Was it at the point where it became self-determining? Or was it always self-determining?
Food, water, arable land, fuel, raw materials…all became in short supply, and nations and cities jockeyed for dwindling resources, beggaring their neighbors to fill their own coffers, however momentarily.
Ironically, the Earth had no shortage of water. But it was not consumable, and not in the locations where it was needed.
Brutal agricultural policies forced an entire generation from the farms and into the cities. The impact was thus doubled; food production shrunk as mass farming techniques leeched the soil, and arable land disappeared into instant slums or deserts. And the major cities exploded in growth, far beyond the supportive ability of their deteriorating infrastructure.
No nation was truly immune. Cause and effect crossed national borders with ease, tearing through the global markets with the vehemence of a demon. In country after country, friction and unrest grew as once—prosperous families were forced into destitution, competing with one another for the scraps that remained.
As the cities expand, social services cannot keep up. Schools, libraries, and hospitals all suffer. Law enforcement retreats, ceding the barrios to the gangs. And public health deteriorates as sanitation vanishes. Cholera, dysentery, malaria and typhoid emerged in regions that had not seen such epidemics in centuries.
And things began to fall apart.
Those not immediately affected turned a blind eye, preferring to just not see. And they paralyzed their governments, preventing a meaningful response in the little time remaining, even as food shortages spread and hunger took over some of the once-great cities of the world. For that was the sin of Sodom: she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
And as all this came to pass, the human misery amplified the growing instability of Earth's climate.
Temperature extremes became more common as the biosphere became unglued. Floods and storms swept the globe, pounding the reeling countries with greater and greater force. Droughts hit where the storms did not; it was always too much or not enough. Until the cataclysm struck.
The monster storm killed tens of thousands in the crowded slums, and triggered a wave of mass migration unlike any seen in centuries. The resulting humanitarian disaster toppled the global system.
Once-great nations, struggling to provide for their citizens, closed the gates to the refugees. Social unrest spread. Governments retrenched, abandoning everything else in their pursuit of survival. Desperation struck the globe.
And it was then that the wars broke out.
It began with a little here and a little there. Border skirmishes. Firefights to turn back refugees. Internal strife. Accusations of neighbor undermining neighbor.
And the skirmishes grew into wars.
International conflict. Internal civil war. States fought states, tribes fought tribes, and once-united countries descended into sectarianism as everyone sought to protect their own. Pestilence and famine, flood and drought were not enough; now, the specter of warfare and death haunted the Earth as well.
And fire swept the globe.
The end came upon the four corners of the land, rousing itself against the occupants of this battered world. It poured out its wrath upon the peoples of the Earth. Doom burst forth, the rod budded, violence grew until none were left untouched.
Outside was warfare, total and barbaric, sparing none before the blade of death's bitter blow. Inside were plague and famine; epidemics and hunger ate away never before witnessed in the depraved history of mankind. Those who sought to escape, to survive in the mountains and outwait the apocalypse, were not spared; every person knew the face of Death as it stalked the world.
The land was full of bloodshed. Rivers of red streamed through the plains and valleys as the survivors fought on top the corpses, boots squelching through the ochre mud. Brutes and thugs took possession of the Earth; the pride of the once-great nations only made their desecration that much worse.
And those who expected salvation were left behind, abandoned by the God who turned his back on the arrogant and self-righteous.
The flames swept the Earth as humans unleashed their greatest weapons. The land burned, the oceans boiled, the skies curled and darkened as the world became a wasteland of parched desert and poisonous water. Little was left moving in the skeletal remains.
In the darkness, the false prophets emerged.
They led the people astray, preaching peace through violence, love through hate, and salvation through ignorance. But they spread only death as they put populations to the sword; in their zealousness they slaughtered millions, promising sanctimonious purity as they hacked away at the surviving beings who struggled to cling to life in this most unholy of places.
Rain came in torrents, hailstones hurtled down, and violent winds burst forth on the tongues of prophets. In the wreckage of this world, discarded and abandoned, desperate for hope, the wretched surrendered themselves to the desolation. Thousands more, tens of thousands, took their own lives, leaving behind the beaten and broken remains that once claimed to know the will of God.
Beneath the sundered skies, the people fell silent, exhausted and spent. The ammunition was expended, and the guns destroyed. The tools of warfare were gone, the great factories long since destroyed.
But pestilence still walked among the wretched. Famine and hunger, misery and disease, multiplied by the destructive impact of debilitating levels of radiation. The food was poisonous, the water was poisonous, and the medicine no longer existed. The sick and the weak perished, and the strong lost their will.
In the year of 2053, no formal declaration took place. No great peace conference nor assembly of nations; the nations no longer even existed, and no representatives of mankind were left. In the wreckage of the generation-long struggle was the entire system of states and nations; only individual people were left, scattered widely across the globe, barely able to even communicate with each other.
Nothing was left. No agriculture, no industry, no government and no trade. The atmosphere roiled brown, creating a permanent shadowland below for the remnants of the human race. Less than half survived; battlefield deaths alone numbered over six hundred million. The motley assortment of civilian deaths was over five billion, and many more would perish in the years to come.
And so it ended, not with a bang, but a whimper.