- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
- Location
- Jurassic Park
In 2021, in the wake of coronavirus, what remained of the top travel companies completed a merger to form a monopoly called Stellar and unveiled their new, multibillion dollar Ark line of cruise ships, hyper trains up to 1001 cars long, jumbo jets, even entire artificial private islands that were supposedly powered by breakthrough cold fusion with nearly perpetual motion engines. They’d all put 20 years of collective R&D into these super machines as a backup plan to restore the luster of the Golden Age of travel in case of a 9/11 style catastrophe...all paid for with a conspiracy to impose ridiculous fees and cuts to service for unaware customers.
And catastrophe was the perfect word for what was coming...
In order to get a good return on investment and comply with governmental orders to limit capacity to prevent another pandemic, most seats on all these were given to the ultra wealthy, who shut themselves out by paying for years in advance and working remotely while the world started falling apart.
Most of Russia was consumed by a forest fire a hundred times the size of Australia’s 2020 fire, causing the government to collapse into anarchy, trillions of tons of CO2 to release into the atmosphere, and most of its nukes to go missing. London, Venice, DC and many more were drowned after Greenland and a third of Antarctica melted. And then, while much of the world hoped to get a reprieve in a New Year, the Chinese government, on the verge of economic collapse itself and seething at accusations against it for coronavirus being a “Chinese virus,” dumped all the US debt it had- trillions of dollars worth- sparking global tensions.
Near default, the US declared war on January 7th, 2022 and exhausted itself on a costly invasion of mainland China, but was on the verge of conquering Beijing when, as the UN tried desperately to deescalate the situation, a desperate Chinese Communist Party launched a massive nuclear attack on most major American cities on Friday, May 13th. Within hours, the US retaliated, terrorists used misplaced nukes to further sow death, and billions were obliterated from the blasts alone.
World War III was the last, as many had always feared.
MC’s father, a Chinese American manufacturing and hotel mogul, foresaw global calamity and bought a 20-year pass on Ark HT-1453, one of the longest and fastest hypertrains in existence, for himself and his wife and six-year-old daughter in March 2022. When his wife heard that he’d paid for it by liquidating his company and firing everyone with no severance, however, she grew to hate him, and he took out his frustration on her with physical abuse. MC’s mother got her chance to escape with MC when on May 13th, thousands of panicked citizens in Washington DC who couldn’t get to the AmeriBunkers or even the underground Metro system stormed the stopped train; she used the chaos to go into the rear of the train with the other stowaways.
Because of the shared hell of being stuck in the back of the train in squalid conditions and being forced to do menial labor together, MC didn’t experience much racism or sexism that other Asians did as a result of the war. But as nuclear winter blocked the sun for a year, plants died, ice returned with a vengeance to reclaim much of the Northern hemisphere, and the only two options for those who were poor and weren’t in rural areas (and even that was rough with hardly any food left after the bread baskets died) were life stuck underground fighting for scraps in one of the global metros when the Stellar Arks stopped or wage slavery to the last remaining megacorporation, eating bugs.
So, tensions boiled over. HT-1453’s Tail Revolution began in July 2033, when MC was just 16. After her mother was executed by the rebels for peacefully protesting the war, MC snuck away and informed Ark Security of a planned sabotage of the brakes, which squashed the revolution. Then she joined Ark Security Academy, learned that her father had died of unknown causes, and graduated at 18 in 2034.
It is now 2036, and MC patrols the party cars, consigned to her colossal guilt and trying to be serious in the most wild part of the train. This is where most young adults live to drink, hallucinate and fuck their troubles away, most of them barely remembering the World Before and only getting paradise streamed to them in a massively multiplayer VR game.
But then, she meets YC (or YCs if enough interest is there)...
And catastrophe was the perfect word for what was coming...
In order to get a good return on investment and comply with governmental orders to limit capacity to prevent another pandemic, most seats on all these were given to the ultra wealthy, who shut themselves out by paying for years in advance and working remotely while the world started falling apart.
Most of Russia was consumed by a forest fire a hundred times the size of Australia’s 2020 fire, causing the government to collapse into anarchy, trillions of tons of CO2 to release into the atmosphere, and most of its nukes to go missing. London, Venice, DC and many more were drowned after Greenland and a third of Antarctica melted. And then, while much of the world hoped to get a reprieve in a New Year, the Chinese government, on the verge of economic collapse itself and seething at accusations against it for coronavirus being a “Chinese virus,” dumped all the US debt it had- trillions of dollars worth- sparking global tensions.
Near default, the US declared war on January 7th, 2022 and exhausted itself on a costly invasion of mainland China, but was on the verge of conquering Beijing when, as the UN tried desperately to deescalate the situation, a desperate Chinese Communist Party launched a massive nuclear attack on most major American cities on Friday, May 13th. Within hours, the US retaliated, terrorists used misplaced nukes to further sow death, and billions were obliterated from the blasts alone.
World War III was the last, as many had always feared.
MC’s father, a Chinese American manufacturing and hotel mogul, foresaw global calamity and bought a 20-year pass on Ark HT-1453, one of the longest and fastest hypertrains in existence, for himself and his wife and six-year-old daughter in March 2022. When his wife heard that he’d paid for it by liquidating his company and firing everyone with no severance, however, she grew to hate him, and he took out his frustration on her with physical abuse. MC’s mother got her chance to escape with MC when on May 13th, thousands of panicked citizens in Washington DC who couldn’t get to the AmeriBunkers or even the underground Metro system stormed the stopped train; she used the chaos to go into the rear of the train with the other stowaways.
Because of the shared hell of being stuck in the back of the train in squalid conditions and being forced to do menial labor together, MC didn’t experience much racism or sexism that other Asians did as a result of the war. But as nuclear winter blocked the sun for a year, plants died, ice returned with a vengeance to reclaim much of the Northern hemisphere, and the only two options for those who were poor and weren’t in rural areas (and even that was rough with hardly any food left after the bread baskets died) were life stuck underground fighting for scraps in one of the global metros when the Stellar Arks stopped or wage slavery to the last remaining megacorporation, eating bugs.
So, tensions boiled over. HT-1453’s Tail Revolution began in July 2033, when MC was just 16. After her mother was executed by the rebels for peacefully protesting the war, MC snuck away and informed Ark Security of a planned sabotage of the brakes, which squashed the revolution. Then she joined Ark Security Academy, learned that her father had died of unknown causes, and graduated at 18 in 2034.
It is now 2036, and MC patrols the party cars, consigned to her colossal guilt and trying to be serious in the most wild part of the train. This is where most young adults live to drink, hallucinate and fuck their troubles away, most of them barely remembering the World Before and only getting paradise streamed to them in a massively multiplayer VR game.
But then, she meets YC (or YCs if enough interest is there)...