From Nothing to Something

Chapter 1: The Before

About 150 years from now, scientists gathered in a facility in the cleanest city left on the Earth. 

"I told you guys, this experiment is gonna work!" One scientist exclaimed as he pointed to a diagram of a globulous creature, with eight robotic legs and a jelly like body. 

"The science behind this makes this experiment physically impossible!" Another scientist exclaimed loudly.

"But there's one right there!" Someone exclaimed. The scientists all turned around to look at what seemed like a giant slug. But, they all thought, slugs don't have mouths that big, nor do they have eight spider-like legs growing out of its body. 

They all turned to look at the diagram, then at the creature, and put two and two together.

"Erm, if this...creature of yours can eat trash and spit out Eco-friendly material like dirt like you have said, then can we have an example?" A scientist said, breaking the silence. 

A guard outside was immediately dispatched to grab a barrel of trash from one of the many trash mounds outside, and it was brought before the creature, who was now standing in the middle of the room. 

It immediately began eating it, swallowing gulp after gulp, and it disappeared into the creature's pinkish translucent body. Seconds later, dirt came out of a hole in the creature's body. It was so fertile that when a scientist sprinkled (now extremely rare) seeds on it, it only took half an hour before a yellow sunflower grew out of the dirt. 

About 100 miles from the scientists facility, around the time when the creature made itself known, a large transport ship was carrying about 150,000 people toward a place which will be known as the Refuge. 

"Approaching methane fog, shutting off fusion engines and activating propellers." One of the pilots said. 

They entered a dense greenish yellow fog which was composed of methane made from decaying trash. 

After they got out, they touched down on a flat site where there was no trash. It will eventually become a vast city, but for now it was just a walled off area with multiple tents and wooden buildings

A few days after the plane dropped the passengers off, two more planes arrived.

One was carrying another 150,000 people and a whole bunch , the other was carrying a ton of those creatures. 

The plane that was carrying the humans dropped them off in the small town, and the plane dropped the creatures off outside of the town. 

Then the creatures started clearing out trash around the city, and everything was calm for a while.

5 years later, the town has grown into a city, which was now known as the Refuge, of immense density. There are now about 800,000 people in it, about three times as much as before. It was when the Monitors of the city began to notice something strange. 

There was a huge spike in "craziness levels." Mysteriously, most of the crazy people have poor lifestyles in the city.

"Mr. President, we have a small problem here." A Monitor said to the president on the phone. 

"Well, we have a little problem here that we're reading!" The president said. 

The President lived on the far side of the city, closest to the 20 story high trash mound they called the Hill. The creatures that had been introduced about 4 years ago were now attacking guards near the right side of the President's building. 

No one knew what happened to the creatures.

The two problems were eventually dealt with, but the craziness situation was dealt with rather drastically. 

After the last crazy person was "dealt with," the government of the Refuge did two things, 

One, build a massive, concrete wall around the city.

Two, separate the rich and poor into groups. The richer people were called the Importants, the poorer people called the Unimportants. They called the insane people Isolates.

They built a raised platform in the middle of the city, and built fancy apartments and houses for the Importants to live on after a flood stormed through a hole in the wall. The Unimportants were forced to live in hovels. Only Importants were only allowed to get the super expensive sleek cars. 

Even though Importants have higher status than Unimportants, they still do the same jobs, but the Importants have bigger roles in society. 

After the struggles to keep the Refuge alive, the city emerged stronger than ever before. 

But, there are still flaws that few people noticed.