Prisoner of Mankind

We did this. We all did. We should have been dead a long time ago, and yet we found a way to screw things even more, outdid ourselves. Africa was the obvious answer. So simple. This massive piece of hot sweaty heaven sitting right there, undisturbed for thousands of years. Of course it had to be Africa, what else? The north polar cap? Maybe.

Everything started when the man got confused beyond anything that can be controlled by religion or government. He wanted to be unique again, to live in smaller communities with different values and traditions. The European Union fell apart first. It was the Eastern European countries that didn't want to be part of global expansion any more. The Western countries had enough of this crap too, plus the immigration tsunamis were becoming devastating both for the economy and demography.

The fall of the EU was bound to happen as those nations were incompatible in the first place. Their values were so different and the bomb went finally off. As a result homosexuals became prosecuted, gypsies rose against their hosts and civil wars spilled the blood of hundreds of thousands across southern Europe. Russia tried to take advantage of the chaos to reclaim lost territories but it ultimately failed and its government was lost in those conflicts.

The USA became unstable really fast because of its economic dependencies and eventually another civil war spread across the states, Americans against Americans. South American cartels grabbed the opportunity and waged war against the corrupt governments across the continent.

And then the war began. Man against man. Primal rage. Blood thirst. The animals in us came to life and took over. The Islamic countries suffered under ISIS and Asia just couldn't stop this menace. China lost connection with the world, the millions of poor people finally opposed the ruling party, but eventually the focus drifted away and nobody knew what he was fighting for.

Chaos hijacked the reality and blood fed the soil. Millions died just in the first month. Billions were lost to suffering, radiation, hunger, poisoning. The future seemed doomed. Years have passed and we lost the answer. Where were we when the world changed? We didn’t remember anymore. When did everything start? What were we fighting for? Nothing.

Eventually the land became poisoned and unusable. Farms and food industry was no more, major lakes and rivers were lost forever. We destroyed our homes, our friends and families. We almost killed our planet. Almost.

And there was Africa, sitting in the middle of Earth, an undisturbed promised land. So close to our dead territories and far enough to be left out of the destruction. You can’t imagine how fast the so-called democracy conquered the continent. All local conflicts were put to rest, all dictators and generals were cast out.

The newly formed Future Coalition cleansed Africa like nothing the history has seen. There was no one left to care about human rights. In the aftermath of the cleansing the Coalition began building a new society. Cures were found for all African deceases in a flash. In the process were lost hundreds of centuries-old tribes, but there was no one to care for them. They were used either for testing, or were just in the way of the New World expansion.

Man had to live again. And man lived. After Africa was ready, the chosen ones were transported to live there. Slaves worked the land, while great minds rebooted the modern societies. But they learned nothing from their mistakes. Instead of a brave new world, the Future Coalition used the old broken pattern and tried to live as in the old days but applying even more restrictions on the people.

If you weren’t a proven genius or a politician or militia, you couldn’t just go to Africa. You had to be chosen by the lottery. The Future Coalition organized a lottery for people like me and you to be able to live in the Promised Land. But it was a charade, of course, the entire “random” system was rigged. Corruption was spread among entire organizing committee and just one of ten people actually got there my pure luck.

But this wasn’t even remotely bad to what was actually happening in Africa. At first the utopia worked and everyone seemed to be happy. But the Coalition made life even more miserable than before, making people working more and more, in order to achieve their vision for the New World.

The money was secured by land and the work was paid by square centimeters of land. The banknotes were called Stones. Primitive, but appropriate. The entire African land was Coalition property and everyone lived to pay rent. You owned pieces of land, but you couldn’t buy home. That’s how the Scavengers appeared.

People started to defy the Coalition’s ways of ruling and left the New Cities. They didn’t want to organize rebellion, they just chose to live differently. But this was totally unacceptable by the government and they went after them, once again cleansing the land.

While the Coalition focus was on the Scavengers, the Outsiders began walking Africa. These were people who crossed the Oceans or the Mediterranean Sea and arrived illegally. And the revolution kicked off. Outsiders and Scavengers fighting together for a chance to co-exist with the Coalition and its order.

In a desperate attempt to end the war, the Coalition fired the nukes and destroyed the last piece of heaven the man had left.

Man is bad, has always been, since its evolution to a sane human being. It held Earth prisoner for its needs, destroying all of Earth’s creations. Man killed off thousands of unique spices, poisoned the water, made the air unbreathable, destroyed the forests and let the sun radiation in through ozone holes. And Earth gave him a chance every single time. Man screwed up, Earth tried to save him.

Now the last of the mankind are walking on Earth with masks and suits because the ground is a hostile environment. The remnants of once great nations live underground and try to survive for better times, with the hope that one day they will go up there without anti-radiation suits and live again.

But we don’t deserve it. We’ll fuck it up again. You bet we will. Because even underground we are still these petty people fighting for compartments for sleeping, pillows, women and, of course, ranks and power. Even buried down there, we still argue, fight and even kill for some trivial nonsense.

This is our story and we don’t deserve to live. We should have died millennia ago. And yet we are still there, chewing up Earth, spitting it dead, destroying life. Like vultures. But as all other things, we are an Earth creation and it will try to save us, once again. It became our prisoner by just creating us.

What we’ll do this time around to repay Earth’s generosity? Something even terrible, for sure.