Earth was dying; its atmosphere poisonous in the wake of the
two Cyclowars of Attrition. Mankind had found ways to kill itself a thousand
times over and the planet had to bear the consequences.
Factories constructed
mechanoidal robots. Bioclinics bred ‘halfmen’ to operate the robots. What need
for legs if your lower limbs were mechanical?
All armies were now populated with these hybrid monsters.
The ordinary non military people no longer existed. Refugees
fleeing from one zone to the next were massacred as they crossed the borders.
They provided the armies with ‘targets’ to test out their increasingly
destructive weaponry.
Country’s landmarks lay in ruins, the Taj Mahal, a heap of
masonry, the Eiffel
Tower
The surface of the Earth was scarred by nuclear and
neutronic blasts. Forests of blackened stumps and lakes where the water was
polluted beyond redemption.
“How many units can you provide?” screamed Major General
Abbot into his telecommunicator. “I need a thousand yesterday!”
“Impossible, sir. Production is at capacity and by the end
of this daycycle we will only have eight hundred units checked and ready to
go,” whined the voice of a factory technician.
“Damn it man, put on your supervisor…now!”
“Sir, this is Supervisor Stellence. What my technician told
you was true. If you want more mechanoidals you will have to go to Dallas or
Elmsdale. But, although I know Major General Scarr already has these factories
producing for him, there maybe excess.”
Abbot smashed down the telecomm.
“Scarr, Scarr, Scarr! That is all I hear now! But we are
fighting for the same side. Could he not allow our forces to be equal?” he said
to himself.
The Tensa plain stretched for a thousand miles over the
southern hemisphere. Vast armies were camped over its battle pitted surface.
Many skirmishes had been fought and refought by the opposing armies, but always
the winner had pulled back from total annihilation of the loser as if that
final step would be the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’. Better to reduce
your enemy by several units than risk bringing attention, by one of the other
opposing armies eager for conquest, to yourself.
The Earth had become just one gigantic battlefield. Between
the North and South Poles there were at least two thousand different armies
feuding for land to rule. They relied on the factories, they automatically
built upon winning a significant area of land, to provide the weaponry and
machinery.
It was all about supply and demand. Barren planets like Mars
and Uranus were mined for raw materials to supply the factories, to equip the
armies and ultimately to continue the conflict.
The Eastern bloc had made significant progression into the
mid Eastern conclave and it looked as if a state of conquest was about to
occur. Mid Eastern was on the run and leaving a scene reminiscent of hell on
earth, the Easterners pushed their advantage till the ocean could be seen many
miles away, but like a cornered rat the retreating army’s back was to it. They
had no where to go and nothing to lose.
The first Hammerhead missile was launched by the mid
Easterners in error. The misinterpretation of the word ‘fire’ lead an
overenthusiastic warrior to press the button. As the weapon left the Earth and
plummeted towards the oncoming army the retaliation was immediate. Dense
poisonous mushroom clouds were born and dissipated till the entire area glowed
with radioactive fire like a beacon.
Several of the missiles had been incorrectly aimed and
behaved as ICBMs, falling thousands of miles away in other warlords’ blocs.
These areas thinking wrongly that the projectiles had been set off by their opponents, returned fire with
their own weaponry. Soon the Earth’s skies were full of these ‘birds of death’,
rising, falling and destroying.
Then over the entire planet’s surface could be heard the
screams of the dying, the roar of burning and the groaning of the Earth’s
surface as it writhed in earthquake and tsunami.
All at once everything came to an end. There was a silence,
the like of which no human ear had ever heard. It was an absence of sound, of
noise and even vibration.
The Earth lay raped, violated and dead.
How many minutes, weeks or millenia elapsed for this sterile
rotating rock, is not known, for Time is elastic and infinite?
* * *
The roar of the colossal space vessel echoed through the
entire Solar System, years before it arrived. It stretched for thousands of
miles and darkened everything in its shadow.
The surface of the planet that had been Earth was a
wasteland where sandstorms roared and the wind shrieked as it battered the high
cliffs and the barren mesas. Nothing living existed.
From the under surface of the ship, a gigantic tube appeared.
It was wider than the diameter of the Earth and as it neared it began drawing
into itself like a black hole. Soon material and debris were being sucked off
the planet, as it rotated and travelling across space disappeared into the
tube’s voracious mouth.
When the removal process had been completed the tube closed
and retracted into the vessel, to be replaced by a similar but smaller tube
which began pumping out material that resembled soil. When the old Earth had
been given a new and vibrant surface, a spray of millions of tiny particles
were projected onto the surface and lay dormant.
The second tube withdrew and high on the upper surface of
the space vessel a long rod projected high into the boiling hydrogen and oxygen
gases that swirled out of the end. A gigantic spark erupted suddenly and the
combination of gases transformed to water and fell as rain on the newly formed
surface of Earth.
After a period of many daycycles, small shoots began to rise
above the new soil. Soon they covered the planet as trees, grass and flowers.
The roaring and vibration gave a warning that the space ship
was preparing to depart. The new Earth gleamed green where the continents lay
and blue where the deep oceans and seas had formed. Several small bubbles
emerged from the vessel and began spiralling down to the planet’s surface as
the mighty rocket ship began negotiating its way to proceed out of the Solar
System. Once it reached the area by Pluto, the Magnegrum system would operate
and zype it to a position giga light years away. The journey had been worth it
for by the Celestial Law of Randominity the planet may grow and mature to be a
worthy member of the Universe.
The first bubbles landed amongst the trees. The surface
dissolved and small microbes and bacteria were deposited in the water and on
the land. More arrived and landed in other areas of the globe.
Soon there were only two floating like feathers in a gentle
breeze. They approached a particularly lush area of vegetation where the growth
had burgeoned. The bubbles touched down, dissolved and deposited two pieces of genetic
material contained in biological sacs, originally labelled as A-dam and E-v onto the ground.
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