One in Twelve Thousandth Percent

Prologue:

The year 2496:

They finally managed to do it. They reduced Earth to an uninhabitable state and people had to flee or die. The rich were able to get themselves and their loved ones away safely by 2380, but for everyone else it was "figure it out or else". In 2400, we figured that we had very little time left. What we didn't realize was just how little time that was. In 2440, a giant section of atmosphere above Antarctica opened up, reducing its icy glaciers to puddles in mere months. Never before in the history of humankind has everyone buckled down to help each other. Scientists immediately began researching how to better detect future openings. By 2450, we had launched several large size space ships into orbit. By 2455, we had expanded and converted Earth's orbiting space station in orbit to house civilians on a massive scale, renaming it Janus Colony. We couldn't have gotten that done any sooner because in June of 2456, four more large sections of atmosphere opened up, this time over Midwest America, India, Southern Africa and Eastern Russia.

We thought the pandemic of 2020 killed a lot of people. That paled in comparison to what 2456 brought. Within a month, half of the entire planet's remaining population was decimated. At that point, it was no longer "survival of the fittest" or in this case, the "richest". It was more like "GTFO of this dead planet, yesterday. We started to stuff as many people into ships as possible. In August, we were finally able to roughly detect future openings. It was better than nothing, really.

By the end of 2456, another three sections opened up. Eastern America, China and Australia. Thankfully most of the populations of those areas had been evacuated. In 2462, we made contact with several other humanoid races and began to share our cultures, technology and lives with each other.

By 2475, we had gotten roughly 98% of the remaining population off of Earth. By that time, there were only two sections left untouched: Western America and Japan. We spent what little time those two areas had left scavenging resources like food, metal, etc. In December of 2480, those two areas finally gave in. Earth was now totally uninhabitable.

By 2490, we had pretty much adapted to space living. I mean, it's not like we had a choice at that time. Well, we had a choice, but earlier generations kinda ruined that for us by wrecking Earth. Anyways, in 2500, we had changed our currency totally and had begun to integrate computers, called Custodians, into our limbs to assist us in daily tasks. The basic of those was a program for keeping track of personal currency, which we for some reason called "Mystics" as well as an infrared port for easy transfer of funds to and from people. It had other basic functions as well like a watch and step counter for the health nuts as well as a wireless connection to the station for simple point to point calls and messages.