Prologue: 2012 Meant Dick

So, 2012 didn’t really mean dick to many people at all – it rated a big fat zero in most people’s lives, kind of like millennium bug the sequel. There weren’t any real Mayans around to worry about Quetzacoatl and the Christians waiting for the rapture were as bummed out as those waiting for the singularity. Same old same old – the world didn’t end it just kept turning in an increasingly crappy orbit around the ideas of a few chimps who had climbed to the top of the pile.
No, 2015 was the watershed – the first tac-nuke suicide bomber irradiated the Gaza Strip and plunged the whole of the Middle East into a tit-for-tat that in no way resembled a holy war no matter how many people cried Jihad. God wasn’t on anyone’s side – he was definitely sitting this one out. Oil was no longer a concern since it had become increasingly counter-intuitive to persist in the use of fossil fuels so the west was happy to let them blow the crap out of each other.
The Trans-nationals had finally made the move to declare the holdings in various countries as belonging to sovereign entities not bound by the laws of any country. It had been coming for a while – oligarchy had long been masquerading as democracy and finally decided to come out into the open. Why hide? Who was going to oppose them? The scattered decentralised nations that were trying to cling to the Super Power days of yesteryear?
When every kid in chem class could knock up enough weaponry to destroy a small country you knew the axis of power had shifted. The only people with the resources to rebuild anything were the ones who had made money and survived the economic collapse of countries.
A second bomb in Mexico City pretty much amputated South America and dealt with any immigration problems. The border was reinforced nonetheless – no one wanted to deal with cancer-ridden, radiation sickness plagued refugees; they were shot on sight.
Money represented the old regime and it didn’t really carry any weight – your skills were what got you through and if you didn’t have anything of worth to trade you might as well slit your own throat as approach someone and try to get anything out of them. Drugs were like gold-dust, med-tech was priceless – any kind of healing skills would mean you could eat forever and not worry about it.
People still believed things were coming to save them or kill them; not having learned the lesson from the fact that they were still alive and kicking. People will be people – what can you do? Pray they’ll change or just get on with it.