Red Sky

Chapter 1: John

Chapter 1: John

The pitter patter of rain on my window was the only sound I could hear as I lay in bed starring at the ceiling. The streets of Zone II outside were deserted, people feared the water that fell from the sky. Everyone was inside their government issued steel homes gathered in front of the television set; everyone except me. Tonight, the Capital was going to announce the new leader of Terra Iterum, so naturally everyone was anxious to see who next would hold the fate of humankind. I could hear my family from the living room talking about the broad cast and their opinions on the candidates. There was one candidate that was favoured to win, his name was Jay Kape. The leader of Terra Iterum was chosen by the board of the original survivors of the Great Tragedy that created our society, it had to be a unanimous decision. My parents have told me stories about the Great Tragedy all my life and what they endured growing up in the world after. Though, Terra Iterum is 35 years old, the Great Tragedy occurred 50 years ago. I do not know a world other than my own but my grandmother once told me that the grass she played on was soft and green. I could hardly believe it, the grass on our lawn is grey and brown, and the acidic rain makes it worse. This world before the Great Tragedy sounds like a scary place, grandmother said there were so many people and that people travelled to places far from their homes for something called ‘vacation’. I can’t imagine leaving the city boundaries for fun; it’s so desolate out there.

I could now hear the history of Terra Iterum segment being played on the television set downstairs; they played that segment many times in hype of the elections. I could hear the familiar voice narrating all the events that had led to the creation of Terra Iterum and then show the desolate effects of the nuclear blasts. They say that people of the Old Earth had such powerful weapons that could destroy the whole planet, which is exactly what happened 50 years ago. Several of these nuclear weapons exploded and ruined the green grass that my grandmother so fondly talks about. I don’t know the details of why and how these weapons caused the destruction of the planet; there has been no official explanation. That is probably because the people who know how it happened are most likely dead. There have been many rumours and conspiracies theories regarding what actually happened back then. My grandparents believe that it was the government from the Old Earth that conspired it all. There are others who believe that it was an experiment gone wrong. No one knows exactly what happened; my grandparents describe it as a nightmare. They often have nightmares as they watched their world collapse. The Great Tragedy reduced the population of the planet by more than half.

For 15 years, the survivors were without order before Terra Iterum was created. These survivors including my grandparents lived in camps, there were several of these camps scattered throughout the planet. Both my parents were infants when it happened, and their families lived in the tents next to each other. Every evening, my grandparents recall sitting by the fire with other families listening to the radio. Without fail, an hour after sunset, there would be a voice on the only transmission on the radio. This voice gave the survivors hope and encouraged them to unite to form a new society. It would teach them how to hunt for food, the best techniques for survival without the luxuries people were accustomed to. The voice called itself Veritas, which according to my grandparents means “Truth”. The broadcast continued for 15 years, and occurred all over the world. Always giving hope to the desperate families who were getting fed up living in broken camps. One day, the Veritas instructed for all living humans in the world to gather at what used to be known as the Lost City in the Old Earth days. My grandparents often talk about the stories they heard about the Lost City when they were younger. The way they talk about it makes it sound like an exotic land lost in time that I’ll never be able to see, it was so long abandoned that even the residents of Old Earth forgot its real name and just referred to it as the Lost City. It was a thriving place once, centuries before the Great Tragedy, before any single human being in the world can even dream to remember. It was the center of all economic activity on Old Earth; it was very small, a country of its own. All that wealth and all that power could not save it from the tiny microscopic and unstoppable enemy that was its downfall. The population of the Lost City was wiped out by a deadly, contagious virus. After the breakout of the virus, the city was quarantined. Not a single resident survived, all that remained were ruins of buildings and roads, and homes where laughter once echoed. Ever since, people of Old Earth feared that the virus would return, and thus, the Lost City remained forgotten. That is, until Veritas instructed all surviving humans to gather there to unite and create a new world that is now my world.