Primal Gambit

Prologue

"War does not determine who is right – only who is left." – Bertrand Russell

Since the dawn of mankind overpopulation has been an ongoing enigma, one masqueraded as expanse, growth, and progression as a single race. The year 2069 marked the ending decade but the beginning of "The Great Expanse", a moniker given to humanities' inability to control their basest and most primal needs. Along with the expansion of man across all terrains came the utter destruction of nature. In a few short years, the population of the world had become responsible for the extinction of nearly every land animal. Only the species' able to evolve were spared.

The overconsumption of dwindling resources, the vast growth of overpopulation, and the onslaught of war were all major factors in the rapidly changing climate. Earth was spitting mankind out – clouds began to bring ash instead of rain. When the two mixed, the result was a heavy and suffocating mixture called sog. In less fortunate parts of the world the clouds brought irritant pollution that damaged the eyes and blistered the skin of those unlucky enough to be caught underfoot.

When inklings of the last war to consume humanity rose on news feeds and headlines nobody believed what they read. Sparse words exchanged amongst bickering governments shed light on the dwindling resources left – troubled pasts and blood-stained histories barring withdrawn countries from uniting to distribute them properly, instead plunging the entire civilized world into chaos and carnage. When the first impacts from nuclear bombs hit Siberia, eradicating most life and leaving naught but dust, many began to whisper that this would be the last war that mankind would ever witness. The long volley of atomic weapons would drag on for nearly a century before most of the inhabitable world was ravaged. It was clear that man would stop fighting over what they believed to be rightfully theirs only when their silos ran dry – fuel lines cut. And so began the strained, bloody, devastating "Resource War".

Never once did man unsaddle from the horse on which he sat and realize that as a people, mankind was destroying the one place it knew – the one place that gave birth to science, to evolution, to nature. Everything humans had learned about life came from the fact that the Earth allowed us to. Rather than seeing it as a place of inhabitance, one that required care and a sense of maintaining equilibrium to survive, people were beginning to view the planet in a new light – the bone from a corpse whose meat had yet to be entirely plucked. Major countries would see this as an opportunity to get ahead in the arms race, to outlast the others. Everyone else saw it for what it truly was: senseless destruction.

Some saw the ongoing conflict as a reason to store goods and build shelters. Others saw pressing technology and the pursuit of knowledge as a means to push the war out of mind. The first exchange of hydrogen weapons, expenditures from equal parts United States, Russia, and China, occurred on Christmas Day of the year 2073. The warning shots – displays of dominance to portray the sheer amount of ordinance behind each countries' threat were heard around the world. For six days, the war had come to a standstill, every participant waiting with bated breath for the opposing force to strike.

North America did a fine job at pushing the conflict from the minds of the civilian populace, presenting remarkable steps forward technologically. People drowned themselves in the false reality, allowing the country to obfuscate the war behind a façade of materialistic paradise. The ball still dropped on New Year's, though no one was there to celebrate. Families huddled around televisions, switching past marketed channels filled with celebrating newscasters in search of any word on the halted engagement. Every major country stood on the brink of total war – everyone after what dirty resources they could claim their own through bloodshed.

On the seventh day it arrived. In full effect, each party contributing to the conflict, all who wanted what was left – sent all able-bodied cogs to Siberia and into the fray. Bloody skirmishes left men traumatized and devoid of life. Rapid progression in new age armament left areas radioactive and inhospitable; cartridges of depleted uranium became the norm for all operable weaponry. Upon being fired into civilian-occupied buildings, rocket propelled shells would first result in sub-sonic concussions, causing those inside to suffer and perish from collapsed lungs before the canisters ignited the floors in phosphorus flame. Entire buildings became leveled from the constant barrage of military shelling. The most chemically sinister weaponry would carry with it an invasive plague that mutated living tissue and organic cells, leaving men, women, and children disfigured and no longer human.

America upheld the same promise it had prior to launching airstrikes on foreign soil during past wars – that the government was sending aid to an oppressed people. What the country did not tell their people was what they were truly after – oil. Drilling the ocean floors had long turned dry, all the caches leeched until raw. New laws passed allowed companies to bomb the Arctic seabed in search of spare pockets.

The American government, like all other countries, were running out of resources. Factories came to a halt without the assets both to keep them operational and propel the war machine. Massive fields of junk that had been founded during the technological boom were beginning to be reclaimed by outsourced factions – syndicates paid to rifle through the junk to recover salvageable military properties: equipment ranging from arms and armor to land and air vehicles.

Certain corporations sought new ways to both remain lucrative and profit within the changing economy. The methods in which they carried their businesses were brutal and thoughtless but above all else, dehumanizing. An idea that first began with roots in the populated cities of China were beginning to grow like weeds in the northeast. With their attention focused on the war, the American government paid no mind to the organizations sprouting across New England.

Major cities around the world would commonly divert power from apartment blocks and direct it toward outlying factories that served to aid in the production of the war machine. In North America, Pittsburgh had been deformed by the rapid alteration in climate, population, and war. Every night the entire city would be left dark as power was subverted to offsite factories. When tensions rose and the heat of the battle required more production, the entire city would go dark for days or even weeks at a time. It was for this reason that Pittsburgh had earned the moniker "The Dark City" – an isolated example of the worst tendencies in man. The barren landscape surrounding the metropolis was reformed into a massive junkyard spanning for miles, a place the eyes were not meant to see. Filling "The Yard" was the excrement from past wars and old-aged technology alike – burying entire neighborhoods under rubble and debris. The only hospitable places left other than the Inner City were the boroughs: dens of addicts and outlaws.

In the Inner City greed ran evermore rampant. Corporations based on the neglect of others found new ways to extort income from the wealthy. What struggled the most were zoos – in a world where fauna could no longer be plucked from the wild to maintain the balance of the animals in captivity, many exhibits were left with devolved beasts so sluggish and dependent on man that they no longer resembled the old-world creatures that so many visitors had once come to see. Because all similar businesses had run aground, corporations sought to redefine the idea. Devoid of care for human compassion and life, the first stateside Human Observatory was created. Owned by the Marcotte family, the Pittsburgh-based observatory was devised with the intent to show the wealthy the other end of the spectrum. Addicts and junkies were snared like rabbits – plucked from the outlying boroughs, the very pits of the cesspool. They then had nightmarish surgeries performed on them to ensure that there was no chance at escaping captivity and were placed in the paddocks.

The media waited like vicious curs with treats on their noses for the first slip made by Marcotte. The current state of events allowed the human zoos to continue operating and generating revenue, though one mistake – one word of the true horrors going on behind the facility walls was all that was necessary to bring the massive corporation to its knees. When an unlikely man was captured by a Marcotte hunting party and brought to the observatory, it was not only the eyes of the media that had caught onto his scent and the worth of his head.

What was left to fight against them were a select few non-profit parties whose intent was to bring the zoos down through propaganda. One such group of activists was based in the reformed Pittsburgh. They combatted the Marcotte Corporation with whatever resources and intelligence were available.

The structure of the country was shifting toward peril with each day. The fragile state of existence was about to shatter.