Cause

Once upon a time, there was a universe. In that universe, there was a world not so different from your own. Mayhap it was the same world as yours, but a few years into the future.

I was not the cause of the events which I am about to discuss. The cause was not any single person. The cause was not any single country. The blame for my eventual eternal imprisonment lies not with any one individual. To put it simply, the cause was human nature – though that may not be the best of word choice, as you shall soon see.

In this world, there were wars and robberies and murders and corrupt governments and embezzlements and pollution all the other terrible crimes of which I am either too ashamed to admit or too short on paper to list. I warned you that it was very similar to your own.

At some point, the United Nations decided to stop war. The means that they had devised to enforce it were harsh; a disabling of all technology in any country who used force upon another until they proved themselves capable of restraint. The U.N. had designed machines that could disrupt all electrical signals in a large area. These machines would be attached to satellites where they would be able to do the greatest amount of damage to one unlawful country and would also be quite inaccessible to that country.

I'm both sorry and glad to say that the threat of no technology proved highly effective.

I knew that while the intentions had been good – or had they? – the lapse in war would lead to a by and large more devastating one once someone in the world broke the rules (rules, after all, are made to be broken). Tensions between countries would grow exponentially and in the meantime people would find awful new means of punishing other people, or clever ways of disguising wars as something else. Maybe I was the only one who noticed; maybe I was the only one who cared; there certainly exists the possibility that both are true.

And yet, I couldn't help but be happy at the state of the world. Someone great had done the unthinkable and taken a large step towards a less violent planet. The lives this law would save were innumerable. Possibly, these saved lives would be ended prematurely, but at a later date; possibly, this anti-war legislation would merely reschedule their deaths. They would live to see more happy days than they would have which is most certainly a good thing, until one considers that they would also live to see a greater number of sad days than they would have.

Ah, the complexities of something that was seemingly simple. I won't even begin to discuss many other impacts the absence of war might have, because you did not come here to read that. You came here for action and here it begins.

Well, my predictions were correct. The apprehension in the world mounted. No country trusted any other. Paranoia reigned freely. Old allies now had only hostility for each other. Even within countries conflicts in opinion began to appear; for example, Britain split into Britainnorth and Britainsouth.

The unspoken reasons behind Britain's division were related to the anti-war legislation. In what is now Britainnorth, factories had been built for producing weapons, claiming in whispers that they needed protection if another country went against their anti-war vow. Britain's second half had not responded well to them, possibly choosing to believe in the loyalty of the rest of the world, possibly choosing to believe that such a covertly forthright act would provoke the rest of the world into doing the same in defense.

Due to Ireland's proximity to Britain, it was simple to learn more than I should have about the event. To the outside world, the schism was over the environmental effects of these factories.

Understand that the pollution of these factories was one of the issues leading to the separation, just not the most vital one. "Vital" is a poor word here, because this pollution was said to aid in the spreading of a recently discovered influenza strain. The gaseous particles were highly liable to attach on to the coughed saliva droplets which carry the flu from one person to another, and would then stay aloft for days increasing the likelihood that another person would breathe in the droplets and thus contract the disease.

The world did not wonder about Britain's divide. Discord was too widespread for Britain's plight to be anything interesting and new. The world did, however, grow evermore suspicious of the factories. Some also believed that the flu was not the reason for the influx of deaths in Britainnorth; there were rumors of a secret war going on between the Britains. This was completely false, but in those times truth was hard to come by – hardly anyone traveled between countries because no one wanted to give the impression of spying on another country. Communication between people of two different lands rarely took place face-to-face.

Trade was one of the few ways news spread reliably. A ship's crew would see and hear things that no one else from their country did, and they would relay it back to the public through word of mouth. Though a long process, it was far better than watching the news or reading a newspaper. One was lucky to find one true fact amongst all the propaganda and invented tales. Yes, the media resorted to making things up on occasion until it got to the point where it was foolish to believe anything you heard on the news.

Another complication was the way the U.N. could not end terrorism. The definition of terrorism is tricky, for what is the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? Tracing a terrorist back to his or her country could only provide doubtful results. And then to punish an entire country for the actions of a single extremist – it would be morally wrong! Thus, the U.N. had to insist that no country retaliate against an act of terrorism. All a country could do was create better security policies, which in turn created more suspicion and distance between nations.

As you can imagine, these terrorists provoked the world. Eventually, armies around the world stood poised to attack at all times, despite the anti-war pact.

Then one day, I woke up and the third World War had begun. There was no catalyst. It just started, all of a sudden. Once one country broke the pact it seemed every other country had found it easy to follow suit. To this day no one knows which side cast the first stone, and with every country fighting for itself, sides were hard to distinguish anyhow.

Disclaimer: I do not own Artemis Fowl. Do you?

A/N: Hi!

Well, I've revised this chapter based on WhiteLily's review. It is much better now. Thank you once again, Whilily! (To tell the truth, I hadn't even thought about going into more detail about how to enforce the war!ban until Lily mentioned it. 0.0)

Did I ever mention that TOD didn't happen? Well, it didn't. That's the only AU in this fic.

There will be fairies in the next chapter.

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