Humanity's Assurance

There was a time, not all that long ago, in which humanity could swing for fences - they could experiment freely because technology was so far behind where it is now that even a technological marvel wasn't all that dangerous. That all changed one day.

A hundred years ago we couldn't even fathom what space was, and then fifty years ago we sent a group of scientists hurtling through space in an effort to save the planet. Ten years ago we received our saving grace back from that endeavor. In the forty years that those scientists were gone the planet suffered vast casualties due to the discomfort it felt within societies all over the world, due to the hopelessness cultures all around the world felt.

The sun was dying and we had no idea why. It turns out, it wasn't dying. It was being blocked.

Those scientists never made it back. They send smaller crafts loaded with all the information they had gathered on their journey about the problems they discovered. It was all complicated.

Now, however, due to the forty years without any contact with those said scientists, humanity developed more and more destructive technologies. Food became more and more scarce, and the entirely of the planet shifted drastically in terms of who they trusted and a perpetual world war had been fought for a good portion of that 40 years. It is so hard to produce crops when the sun is even fractionally less impactful to the planet, and we did everything we could, at first, to stabilize the planet's heat. Humanity has a short attention span, though, and while it was extremely peaceful for the first five years or so, it devolved quickly.

Societies all over the world started electing warhawk leaders who were dead set on gaining every resource they could possibly gain from neighboring societies. Entire countries broke apart from the instability, and borders shifted constantly. It was common enough for the amount of countries on the planet to change within months - 128 one month, 115 a few months later, 140 a few months after that. The state of the world had absolutely no stability.

Even the powerhouse countries - like the USA - elected a president that quickly turned into an authoritarian and before you knew it, the entire country was in a civil war while simultaneously fighting wars to the north and south. As well as halfway across the world. Within years, the once greatest military force in the world became so fractured that it became five countries, and the wars that ensued from that ended up destroying half of the land to the point that it was no longer inhabitable by the masses.

Other powerhouse countries utilized this influx of disruption to seize more power. Russia utilized technology to such great extent that two-fifths of the USA became part of the Russian coalition without even knowing it. No longer did leaders have to be born on US soil - there was no more USA, and Russian oligarchs put in place the people that most satisfied their desires. In one such case, an election wasn't even held. Just suddenly a Russian born man was sitting in the highest office.

As for the other two countries that the USA fractured into, one is controlled by China - the biggest of the five, while the last one considers itself the last stand for the USA.

Russia and China's borders also shifted drastically as they took over neighboring countries and gave up war torn land that held no more resources, as far as they were concerned.

The war with information was also incredibly intense. The amount of resources utilized to make it look like dead parts of the world were still lush with resources to neighboring countries was what all the most powerful countries were doing. It meant that these smaller, neighboring countries would go in attacking places with nothing, wasting all their resources in doing so. At that point, the more powerful countries would sweep in and take over the attacking countries with ease, draining what little resources they may have so they weren't tapping into their own.

In the past fifty years, the planet has lost roughly 1/3rd of humanity to poverty, war, and starving to death. The only positive from that is that it meant that the resources remaining didn't have to go as far.

Then, one day, one of the shuttles arrived. No one actually knows exactly when that happened because whatever country gained the first shipment of information from the scientists likely held onto the information because they had gained too much power from the instability to want to give that up. Eventually, though, one of the lesser powerful countries gained access to that information and set on to resolving the issues that plagued the planet.

Suddenly the peaceful countries became so much more appealing to the people remaining in the world. The sun's light brightened, the warmth all naturally came back to the planet. It has only been ten years, and things still aren't the same, but more countries than has in the past fifty years are producing crops again, the plants and animals are becoming more and more prominent every day. As soon as humanity became well fed again, large groups of people began toppling their own governments to create safe havens for the people of their communities.

Most of all of humanity won't ever know what information was sent back from those scientists. It doesn't matter. At a point where more death and suicide was happening than ever before recorded in human history, all at once humanity felt hope again.

Now we just wait and see until the greedy decided to capitalize on this hope and continue the regression of humanity. If there is one thing about humanity that is assured, someone is always waiting to capitalize on every positive thing humanity has ever done. And with that, humanity will suffer.

-Dustin S. Stover