Requiem: Chapter 4
- The separation between the Old and New World had arisen after a long period of unrest and revolts. This was the result of several financial crises that ultimately led to global economic destabilisation. The source of these financial recessions was the inefficient control of the banking sector, the unlimited use of risky credit and the misuse of customer trust. They had not learned from the fiascos of the early 21st century European banks, and they offered ingenious bubbles after just decades of walking in line. As everyone knows, even a child, an air bubble has two properties. On the one hand, she can produce wonderful colors, a rainbow of colorful promises, as attractive as a colored balloon for a child . On the other hand, when an air bubble splashes open, you only have air left. This time the people from the street did not take it anymore, Jan with the cap no longer believed in the promises of yet another reform of the financial sector, no longer trusted in the laws imposed by the institutional powers on the banks. The taxes that were raised for the umpteenth time remained stuck in the throat of the citizen. They swallowed for the umpteenth time, but now they spit out government reforms. Too much is too much! The poor became poorer and the rich had a monopoly position in both the Eurozone and the rest of the world. First there were protests on a small scale. However, they grew as an enormous momentum in just a few weeks into a cascade of deadly waterfalls clapping down in the form of uncontrolled destruction and inhumane violence. Worldwide, the stock markets crashed and banks were bombed by people who wanted to secure their hard-earned savings in vain. In some countries, bloody unrest broke out, sometimes growing in certain regions into outright civil war. As a result of this unrest and insurrection, some of the population were thinned out in the first phase. Violent looting by both adults and young people from all classes of the population were daily costs. What one did not have, they stole. What one wanted, one took. Sometimes with a hard hand! Rape, public executions without trial were numerous and many times for banal reasons. Both on Heads of Government who had committed crimes against humanity and on as many innocent victims who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lawlessness was in power and chaos preached his creed. Governments were knocked down. In some countries, part of the army joined the population. There was fighting with conventional weapons but here and there in a growing madness a button was pushed several times and cities disappeared from the face of the earth as if they had never existed. Tsunamis flooded the low-lying countries. Those who lived at sea level or lower were birds for the cat. When the violence of the water departed, the mainland was a large graveyard. In addition to this reaction of nature to the impact of the nuclear bombs, there was also the fallout that caused a decimation of the population. The problem of overpopulation in China was solved in a few months. The fatal result of the bombing caused a mass of victims. The fallout took care of the rest of the dead. For them it was a slow and painful death. A nuclear winter emerged in much of the world! Extensive zones were quarantined and survivors were left to their fate. In the end, a large part died from the effects of radiation or simply from deprivation. It was hell on earth, the devil was in power and his kingdom grew visibly. But just as many times during the evolution of man there were some people with some common sense, also individuals who were partly immune to radiation because of experimentation with special drugs and injections or simply lucky. People who joined in small groups in the aftermath of the devastation, formed new communities and grew into new nations. This happened both in the West and in the East. There was a period called the 'Second Cold War', a period of distrust and misunderstanding between the two zones and, as usual, the blame for the devastation was invariably placed on the other party. The map of the world was re-colored. As a result of the nuclear attacks, there were earthquakes, eruptions of new and old volcanoes, landslides and new islands were born. Where the East China Sea as part of the Pacific was used to be a natural border between China and Japan, these nations were now connected. The tectonic plates had pushed the seabed between these two nations upwards and now the two states were connected by land. China was so depleted in terms of its population as a result of nuclear explosions that, in addition to the people who had emigrated to Korea or Japan, there was not much left of the world power they used to be. The 21st century local disputes around the oil wells in this area were now one of their least problems. Whereas in the 15th century North and South America had been named the New World because of the discovery by European explorers of these new quotas, this was the exact opposite in 2112. After the Great War as the conflict had been called, the people of the New World in the East licked when the Old World in the West. It became a time when there was an atmosphere of irreparable distrust. There were smaller conflicts and mutual reproaches. One party blamed the other party in each confrontation anyway. Thus many years passed without any rapprochement between the two worlds. The Old World with America as a precursor and Japan and China as the main representatives of the New World in the East realized after a few decades that it could not go on like this. It was decided that the quarantine zones that are Deeplands , because of the thousands of craters in the area between the two worlds, an obvious natural boundary between the two superpowers would become. That border ultimately created a fragile and armed peace. So it went for decades. Generation after generation, the lessons of the war years and their consequences were made up as a compulsory subject in education. Both worlds were rebuilt step by step. New governments came to power. New and better laws were voted and gradually rapprochement between the two worlds. First by some people, ordinary people who came into contact with each other via the restored Internet, despite the ban on government and the controls on various means of communication. Seeds were planted in fertile soil and they grew, albeit slowly, but they became mature in their quirky way that is peculiar to life,. Brittle as they were in the beginning, it was again a probe of borders, a rediscover and appreciate new cultures and thought. There was hope again and hope does live. Tokyo, the eastern city got a big sister at its borders. They chose the very appropriate name for the new city and that was' Sanctuary '. This is contrary to the past few years, which were marked by destruction and a constant sense of insecurity, an ever-present awareness of threat among the population. ' Sanctuary 'became the new capital and had to turn this supermodern capital of the New World into a place where people felt especially safe after all those years of war violence. As the meaning of the word Sanctuary indicated, the name of the city stood for “refuge” and “security”. It possessed in all its facets the latest technology and applications in the fields of science, architecture, ICT, robotics with its specific applications in home automation and many other technological advances. Hundreds of architects had spent years looking at this project, and after a period of destruction, this new building, this modern creation, was a crown on the head of the power that drove Homo Sapiens Sapiens for centuries.. It was the power of survival, the unstoppable urge for change and progress. Then came that day when reports of mysterious disappearances at the borders of the Deeplands reached the population. The two governments of both the Old and New World sent out several reconnaissance groups to investigate these matters at their two borders. Sometimes they disappeared in turn, but after some time it was discovered that in all that time a Third World had emerged. A world that is popularly called the ' Catacombs' because it was underground, in the dark, in the tunnels that swung deep beneath and between the craters. A maze populated by deformed creatures that fed on everything that was edible. Rodents, insects or even worms that had taken foreign and grotesque forms as a result of nuclear violence. The day came when they were 100% sure. The inhabitants of the Catacombs also ate human flesh! In those days, special committees, both from the New World and the Old World, made contact and debated this problem, made solutions and rejected again. What to do without rape nature even more to contain this danger? Because of the fragile peace that prevailed, it was decided to demarcate and guard those specific dangerous zones with man and power. A wall of steel stakes connected to many layers of barbed wire was built around those zones, soldiers patrolled day and night in the vicinity. On both sides there were still reports of disturbing disappearances. One was powerless against the unannounced and bloody nocturnal food raids of the ' Cannibals' , a nickname they were given for obvious reasons. The barbed wire or the sentries didn't always stop them. Sometimes one found the chipped remains of a poor bastard. One was to some extent powerless against the unpredictable attacks of the Cannibals. The world rowed further, both in the East and in the West, with the belts they had. Sometimes a number of inhabitants of the Catacombs were captured. Prisoners were interrogated and invariably one had to conclude that the underground people were a race with a distinct language that consisted more of hoarse sounds and related gestures. The shelf life of the prisoners was the main problem. After a few days above ground, they invariably had a fever, went into a coma and died in the first week after their arrest.. Some of them committed suicide before it came to that. Much information about the operation of the world of the Cannibals had not yet been collected. In the Old World, the United States of the Western Community pursued a tight security policy. This United States of the Western Community consisted of the former United States of America, South and Central America, Africa and part of Western Europe. One had, of course, the inevitable and deadly problem of radiation. But Japan had experimented in the pre-war years with new means against radiation sickness. Nanoparticles in food and also via injection provided genetic engineering in humans in such a way that at cell level the radiation was less likely to grow into cancer. The research and testing phases were a well-kept industrial secret in the pre-Great War period. An inoculation of both the adults and the younger generation made them much more resilient against this invisible killer. In addition, one had to take his dose of medication daily. The joint operation of both these, the inoculation and the drugs made it possible to live in a world where radiation was a given, probably for a very long time. This technology was unselfishly shared with the Old World today, a very big step in the rapprochement between the two superpowers and the first greater step towards mutual trust. In addition, in the Old World in the post-war period, a technique was developed in which a miniscule identification chip was implanted in everyone. Also an application of nanotechnology. A small routine operation with major consequences. The chip was inserted under the skin at the level of the brain stem. This nanochip paired with the Medulla Oblgata. The connection to the medulla of the brainstem consisted of, on the one hand, microscopic semiconductor material and natural nanotissues to counteract the rejection processes. In the first days after the implantation, these tiny tissues developed fine fibers that sought and connected to very specific parts of the brain such as the amygdala, the hypothalamus and a few other important parts of the brain. These parts gave access to various data stored in the brain during a human life. A groundbreaking discovery in the field of nanotechnology and neurology. This mini-piece of hardware encapsulated after a few days by the attachment of the natural tissues to the brainstem and through the numerous fibers they formed a kind of neuronal connection between various parts of the brain and the nanochip. The introduction of the nanochip into the medulla medulla made it virtually impossible to remove it afterwards without causing irreparable damage to the brain. The encapsulation and interweaving with the various parts of the brain of the person concerned after the attachment time would catalogue such an attempt to remove as a surgical murder. That way everyone could be tracked as a light between any other identification point on a map. Under the heading of 'safety for everyone', privacy became an outdated and archaic concept . What the identification chip in various other possibilities could contain even more was a well-kept secret, known only to some insiders and not to mention of course the designers themselves. 'They' had the real power in their hands. Of course, there was opposition to such a measure. However, that protest was quickly smothered in the bud with convincing arguments and sometimes also with some arms display. After the nuclear adventure, people could easily be reminded of the necessity that everyone should be detectable. This is to prevent anyone from being in the vicinity of a fallout zone without knowing it, with all the health hazards that entail. Measures in favor of health were accepted by most with gratitude. In addition, the procedure was free! None of the survivors wanted to die of some kind of cancer if one could avoid it that way. Someone with the nanochip received a danger signal in the brain as an approximate fallout zone. Death still invisibly around and those who were not directly convinced were persuaded and chipped by a majority of convinced people after a while. And the chip worked! The government also did checks, and whoever was visually spotted and didn't appear on the radar was in bad papers. Within the shortest time it was also implanted a brain chip. The control and treatment of chip free persons in the countries of the United States of the Western Community was in the hands of the International Chip Scanning Agency , called ICSA for short. With the chip and the drugs and vaccinations, life in the Old World had become a little safer. The piece of privacy that one had to surrender was subordinated to the result. At least, according to the inhabitants of the Old World. However, the problem was in the total and unconditional rejection of chipping by the New World. After the last Revolution in China and Korea, in which scientists and leading representatives of education, both professors and students, this time unanimously supported by the army, had seized power, new values were introduced in these areas. The party administration had died in the aftermath of the nuclear winter except a few or killed during the unrest of the revolution. They were replaced by a committee of leading scientists, students and professors. In view of the thinning of the Chinese population and much of the Deeplands that ploughed China after the Great War, they depended mainly on what Japan decided in the Council Chamber, which, although also included those responsible for Korea and China. The dwarf had become a giant and vice versa. Where people used to be locked up to stand up for their opinion, now without fear of reprisals, freedom of expression was propagated without hesitation or fear of reprisals. The important decisions were no longer taken by those who used to be alone in charge, but by that Council Chamber which was composed of individuals from all the states of the population of countries of the New World. Democracy had never been so tasted in the New World. Therefore, the rapprochement between the two Worlds with the natural wall of the fallout zones between them was a process of long breath. These zones were located near Eastern European countries, the former Russian States and a large part of China that had now turned into desolate lunar landscape. One major nuclear ruin! copyright Rudi J.P. Lejaeghere PS: I must honestly confess that I made a mistake. Chapter 4 was supposed to be chapter 3 and vice versa but it doesn't matter for the story. Some readers have noted in the past that this chapter with the history of the demise of the Old World and construction of the New World as the first chapter would fit better into the story. I think not to this day, because the story is not so much about that world, but about the people who live during that period.. It is only after getting acquainted with the two main characters that a background is outlined in this chapter. Having said this, sorry for the mistake. Rudi Requiem: Chapter 3 or 5 - Requiem: Chapter 3 - Requiem: Chapter 5 -
Piteke van der Meulen
