Eidolon
"World population 1991, before the war started, 5.4 billion people rounding down, current population of humanity, 4.3 billion people rounded down and it's dropping fast."
Number Man looked bored as he pulled out a map on a projector.
"Blue are the countries that are more or less prospering, greens are the countries that are stable, everything in yellow is doing bad but they're functioning, everything in orange is a failed state, and if you don't know name of a country in red, don't bother learning it. It's already collapsed and its' existance is a polite fiction."
He pointed at the Americas.
"As you can see America and Canada are in blue, most of the countries are green, with a splash of yellow in South America, the only country in orange is Haiti and no countries in red yet."
He pointed at Europe.
"England, France and Germany are blue, most of Europe is green, With the exception of Greece, Italy, and Spain who are yellow. Russia is by the way currently yellow, but they're actually recovering, they used to be orange."
He pointed at Africa.
"As you can see pretty much everything here is red, you have three orange splashes, they're Liberia, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Egypt is the only country in yellow, they have been through a lot so they deserve a fuck load of credit for that."
He spanned over to the middle east.
"Turkey is yellow, everything east of Israel and west of India is in red. Israel is currently green but they're going to probably move into the blue once Leda opens up."
He moved the map to Asia.
"China is in blue, getting Oberon was a massive boon, the mixture of resources, a war economy and everything else has lifted most of the country out of poverty. India is in Green, they bitch about Io but those resources are keeping them in the green. The other blue zones are Australia, New Zealand, and two surprises. Bangladesh and the Philippines. Bangladesh by the way, well they're kicking ass and taking names. If they don't get hit again before the war ends they will be a developed country."
He paused.
"Most of Asia is either green or yellow, you have a splash of orange here in East Timor but that's the worst of it."
He sat down.
"The offworld colonies?"
He brought up an image of Venus.
"500 million people rounding up, as you can see it's all in blue, the refugee population included a lot of Thinkers and they were determined to advoid the mistakes of the motherland. Projections show that they're hard at work at creating good insitutions, the idiots who say that muslims are not capable of good government? Well they're being proven wrong."
He paused.
"Very wrong, people are not just leaving the middle east because of the disease, the violence, the collapse of most of the governments, the parahuman warlords and the bad economy. Venus is just plain better place to live."
I raised a hand.
"Ironwood said that Venus was a poverty trap."
He turned his head.
"Venus has at least 5 times more arable land then earth, and I'm rounding down by the way. Said arable land is incredibly fertile and rich, the best volcanic soil earth has is a good comparison, and the extra juice that goes into making venus habitable means that the soil recovers much faster then earth. Not as crazy as Mars but still pretty good. They might be isolated from the larger solar economy but you're not going to see anyone starve."
He moved on.
"The second largest blot is Oberon, the chinese say they have 400 million people there, it's still under 300 million and it's the third most populated world in the Solar system. Io has around 100 million rounding down and no body else has more then 100 million."
He sighed.
"As of the Brockton bay attack the number of americans killed in the war just made it to 15 million people, rounding down."
He just looked tired.
"So as of the Zeus attack we have three of the official enemies left, Lucifer, Arachne, and of course the queen bitch herself the Simurgh, and of course waiting in the wings to fuck up our day is Zion, which apparently isn't actually his name but the closest approximation."
Hero stepped up.
"With help from our defector, I have some good news."
He pressed a button and we stared at the alternate dimension, I saw machines, a lot of machines.
"Give them the number crunch."
He sighed.
"Death within three years, unavoidable, maximum number of worlds killed is now cut by 90% rounding up. Which you know doesn't save us but hey we can now take him down with us, and keep a whole bunch of alternate worlds from dying, of course that doesn't stop the fact that as things currently stand our world is more or less fucked. Which is why a preemptive attack is currently stupid and sucidal."
He opened up a flask and Hero rolled his eyes as Number Man took a swig.
"We have a chance, now."
"If something doesn't fuck it up."
Number Man massaged his head.
"Look Earth is where I keep my stuff, so I'm with you guys in saving it, also you'll murder me if I fuck you over but don't get your hopes up."
The meeting went down as we tried to brainstorm ways to keep humanity stable, save what we could and win the war, after it was over I took a Door. It was raining, that was normal, I saw the space needle in the distance. It was dwarfed by the World tree in the distance, there were more of them, well the jump trees leading to Mars at least dotting the coast between Canada and Baha. They provided power, transported people across worlds, and provided fresh water. I flew over to a park, and waited.
"Your shift's over?"
He shrugged, Woody was at times not all that talkative.
"Yeah, going home to the family, you're welcome to come."
I nodded my head.
"Heard you put in a request?"
"The 9 are a personal issue of mine, and I'm worried about Amy."
"She's a big girl."
"She's my student, and Juno would be upset if anything happened to her."
He opened the door.
"Daddy."
His screen got lighter.
"Uncle EDI!"
"Hey princess."
I smiled as she brought out a box.
"Daddy I want to play it again."
"Ok June Bug."
We headed to the table and she opened the box, she hit the spinner and frowned.
"Black ring, ugh."
We continued another game of Pretty Pretty Princess.