The year is 2299. Much of the planet lays barren, bereft of the rich ecological and artificial wonders which had defined it for so long. The cults of its “leaders” now withered down to but hundreds, huddled in underground caverns, forsaking their sisters and brothers, devoted still to their immeasurably irrational cause. Pallid skin heaves with each breath, a scorched atmosphere turning the sun from life-giver into life-taker. Radiation. Terra. Death.
The poles did not fare much better, as one hundred years of rebellion and civil war left nothing but a wreckage of lost hope, hope for a rescued future. Hope for survival. What wandered the vast frozen research facilities now wasn’t Homo Sapiens. It was Homo Abominis. What redeemable aspects of the human form there were before were now lost to time, and this newer more savage form…it retained the worst of us. To rape and to pillage. This was the new destiny.
It would be dishonest to claim the state of the globe was mankind’s doing alone; the Great Annihilator had ensured that it drank deeply from the wound of a dying animal. None saw their true form. All that was ever visible was the monstrous, eldritch ships, hung dark in the sky as feeding cables strung like lights met the surface of the planet. The alien must have been disappointed to see a planet which had consumed itself, when they had such hunger to consume it themselves. This did not stop them from taking specimens for their own experiments.
It could be said that there was still some improvement on this dying world; damnation was equal. Damnation for the poor. Damnation for the rich. Income equality vanished, along with income. The “Slug Lords”, ruinous pits of lust and consumption, using the desperate and poor for their own vile needs grasped at their rule for a decade. Suffice to say, the alien did find plentiful nutrition when they turned down the offer from the shadow of the formerly rich; their phallic feeding tubes instead buried themselves into their negotiators, the soft protein driving the war engines of the Annihilator towards its next inexorable conquest.
We find ourselves here then. At the end of all stories. Perhaps the universe is…what was that? The earth shudders in a dozen locations. Secret vaults open. Salvation may lay inside. There is more to tell.
The year is 2299. Dracula…has finished color matching.