[REDACTED]

II

chapter title: one

-Karl's POV-

"So you're telling me, the reason you have so much money, BILLIONS, is 'confidential'?" I just looked at the bank broker in front of me.

"Yes, now I would appreciate 16 grand in cash from my account." He stared at me for another two minutes, still silent and not saying anything. Then he just huffed and turned to the computer, starting up the system so that I could get my money. Twenty minutes of awkward silence went by and I was walking out of the bank with 16k in my backpack. I looked to the left of me, and only saw one of the dystopian areas there, so I turned right and continued walking.

The world is different, people have died, the population now is less than 15 million, and considering that the world has more than 24 million liveable square miles, you can tell how bad it is now. It's not like there was a huge radioactive rock flinging towards Earth or anything, except for the fact that there was. However, there had been this government project going for centuries to prepare the moon and Mars for colonization. So when an asteroid wound up in the radius of Earth they evacuated.

It wasn't like they forgot us, no, they put every citizen's name in a huge, what is now referred to as, life funnel. If your name was chosen from it, you didn't get to go. So, that's how I ended up here, though, my family all got to go, and most of my friends as well. The asteroid did hit Earth but fortunately, the abrupt stop in carbon production had formed a type of airlock against the radiation. None of it made it to the ground, any radiation kinda... bounced off of the planet. Though, once it reflected it hit the two main radio satellites to connect the new to the old world. So there went communication.

After that, the world kind of spiraled into chaos for a little bit, but you'd expect that. The dystopia that was known as Earth, still exists and so do the people on it. You're most likely also wondering how I just got money from a bank. All banks are still running. There are still cities and towns that fully function, and those cities are in different areas of the world. There are still plenty of people, of course, a good way to describe it is just... less crowded. Anyway, the new worlds didn't want an economy as we have, they didn't want money. They had a peace treaty, people would simply trade, no liquid equity or currency for either planet.

You're now wondering, 'so what did the remaining people do with all the money?' Well, it was distributed among all the remaining people. Which is the exact number of 15,876,540, now the amount of money before distribution was 5 quadrillion dollars. Do the math and now each person is worth a good 315 million dollars.

You'd think since everyone has so much money that now everything costs so much more right? You're wrong, the people here have stopped caring about money too much. Though in some situations, it's still nice to have and spend, but you are now thinking, how does Karl Jacobs have... millions. Before the people of the new world left us, I hunted down serial killers, for the government, and it paid well. I'm one of the few remaining trillionaires in the world. Meaning I have access to a lot of things.

Though, times have changed. There is very little violence, people always have food and water, you don't have to work unless you're doing it as punishment, there is no one set government, there are no set beliefs, and countless other amazing things. It's been 8 years since the people left, and people are wondering if they will ever come back, if something happened on the journey, there's no way to tell.

I love who I am now, I get to enjoy tons of things that I never would have dreamed of doing at 18, 8 years ago, but here we are. Also, there aren't that many laws except for the necessary ones.

-Killing is bad, don't do it

-stealing is bad, don't do it

-lying is back, you shouldn't do it

That's prettymuch it, anyone can do what they want, when they want, how they want to do it, with whoever they want, for whatever reason, on whatever day, in whatever place, as many times as they want, for as long as they want, there's nothing against anyone anymore.

My life might not seem great, but it just got a lot worse when I heard a crash in the field I was walking by to get back, 'home', and especially after I saw a trail of smoke too.