Gra Gryning

Surivors of the Australian campain


Henry Ito


The Japanese invasion of Australia was one of the biggest military disasters in Japanese military history. Out of a force of 100,000 men only 2 survived. Prince Yasukiko Asaka and Jiro Watanabe, a prince of the nation and a conscript peasant. One of them was born into extreme wealth and privilege, the other was born into abject poverty.

The prince managed to escape the final battle by swimming to a Japanese cruiser sent to rescue the prince from certain death while others fought to the death to give him a chance to survive. Jiro Watanabe survived by being too sick and infirm to fight. The prince would escape and live out the rest of the war in japan, Jiro would spend the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp after being nursed back to health by the Australian army.

While the prince lived in relative luxury while his people suffered, Jiro would spend his time as a prisoner of war in a POW camp outside of Sydney Australia. He would be the only prisoner in the camp for the duration of the war. Jiro decided to spend his time in the POW camp studying art, painting, drawing and getting an education.

When the war ended the two men's fates were switched. The prince was put on trial for war crimes, in exchange for testifying against him Jiro was given immunity to prosecution. Jiro would leave the trial a free man, the prince would spend the rest of his life in prison before he was hanged for his crimes against humanity. With the prince's death Jiro was the last and only survivor of the Australian invasion.

Jiro had been saved by the Australian people to tell the tale of what happened and with his new hard won art skills he became a mangaka. Jiro would work as an artist for many other artists before creating his most famous independent work "the black prince".

Jiro Watanabe, even years after the war was over, still felt a deep sense of anger, rage and betrayal over the late prince's decision to leave his men to die while he escaped to safety, an anger that he kept for his entire life. The Black Prince series was the result of this anger. While the series had excellent writing and art, the true reason for its success was that it came at the right time in the Japanese Zeigest.

Japan was still a badly damaged country when the black prince series was created. It's international reputation was tarnished and destroyed and, with the cold war, it was forced to ally and depend on the very countries it had commited atrocities against. The republic of china, Korea, the philipines, hongkong, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, America. Japan had commited war crimes against all of them and now had to rely on their charity to survive because their defeat was total and complete.

Jiro's Black Prince series gave the Japanese something important, it gave them some one to blame. It was quite simply impossible to deny that atrocities had been commited by Japanese troops during the war, there was simply too much evidence to deny it. But the Japanese could rebuild their pride by blaming everything on the Black Prince and they did.

The series created the myth of the honorable Japanese serviceman and the evil and despicable officer class led by the depraved Black Prince. As the cold war went on, those who had worked for the previous regime were let out of prison and gained places in the Japanese government. They bought into the myth and used it as a way to explain away any past ethical crimes as something the black prince forced them to do against their will.

Japanese nationalists, even during the war, hated what they considered the Prince's cowardly escape while his men died and decided to buy into the national myth. In death the black prince became a cowardly evil figure that was featured in Japanese TV and movies about world war two, more akin to a demon or monster than a man. In Japanese textbooks more and more of the atrocities commited by the Japanese would be attributed to him until he became the chesssmaster behind the war.

Jiro, by contrast, would go on to create other mangas and eventually help found one of the largest magna companies, weekly shohen Jump. Jiro would die from advanced lung cancer in 1984, surrounded by his friends and family, one of the wealthiest men in japan and a respected father of Japanese Manga. The Black prince he destested so much in life died alone, stripped of all of his assests.

The contrasting fates of the two survivors of the Australian campaign helped shape modern day japan and make it the country it is today, for better or worse.
​

 

Brian Mc Clain



The Anglican church of Australia had seen better days.

The walls were still riddled with bullets, the stained glass windows had been blasted out and a good portion of the roof was missing, letting in a beam of sunlight on my son as the bride walked down the aisle. Neither of them were dressed for the event, between rationing, the war and everything else these things had to be done on a budget.

So the bride came into the church in her motorcycle leathers and my son waited for her in a tweed jacket. They looked like a bit of a mishmash couple to be honest but maybe that was a good thing, they balanced each other out. My Billy needed some one a little rough and tumble to make sure the world didn't step on him and Nick needed his gentleness to balance out her wild tendencies.

My wife held my arm tight as one of the guests played an accordion, while it wasn't as good as the church organ it had to do because the churches organ had been destroyed during the fighting. I couldn't help but smile as my son got married.

"It's going to be all right."

I kissed my wife's head as she cried, and held her tight.

"Things got pretty dark but we're getting through them."

We were silent as our Billy said his vows. The young couple kissed and we headed out into the light. There wasn't a cake or a massive party, rationing and all that, so we just let them have access to one of the few still upright buildings for the night.

"Think it will end badly?"

My wife's words were worried as we walked back to our damaged home.

"We weren't that much older when we got hitched love."

She held my hand as we walked down the dark streets. All around us mandies were hard at work, piles of rubble rose and merged with damaged buildings, repairing them. In the distance new housing was in the process of being built for the homes of Anzack men with families and in the farthest distance, where the water treatment center sat, a giant new building was rising.

"Mr. Mc Clain?"

I froze and turned around, a soldier looked me in the eye.

"I'm told you used to run a curio shop?"

"Yes?"

"Did you personally organize them?"

"Part of the job mate, got to put like with like."

"Good, your country needs your services...I'm sorry about this but the commander needs your presence now."

My wife nodded and I went with him into one of the badly made armored tanks. We drove in silence to the old plant, guards surrounded the plant and saluted us as we drove past the walls. an older man looked at me as I got out of the tank.

"This the fellow?"

"Yes, Brian Mc Clain ran a curio operation in Darwin before the past nastiness."

The man nodded.

"Good...come with us."

I shrugged and walked alongside him to the inside of the plant to a large room filled with quartz. A number of mandies were working on some project inside, fiddling with the quartz room.

"Can we trust them?"

"Command says they're old enemies of the japs. Don't know if we can trust them, just know that they hate the Japanese far more than we do."

"Good enough for me but I still think their outfits are creepy."

"Keep it to yourself, if you do think that."

The mandies jumped.

"Is it ready?"

"Yes...it's an old principle, you just need two untapped nexus with users on both sides maintaining it. That makes the nexus useless for anything else though, its sucks mana like crazy."

"There's a river nearby, we can tap that for water. Now get too it."

The quartz machine turned on and a large portal opened, a man in a black outfit and a white mask walked out.

"Hello."

He looked eerie and creepy.

"My name's seagull, I heard you fellows had some problems with the Japanese?"

We nodded.

"Yes."

Seagull held out his hand, the commander shook it.

"Can your boys really give us access to Korea?"

"We already have a project going on with the yanks. we're in the mountains so dress appropriately."

The commander smiled.

"Noted. Fellows, this is Seagull, he's from a resistance group in Korea called the Jayu. He's going to give our boys direct access to the Japanese empire, make him feel at home."

We stood a little straighter at those words as the man in the mask looked at us.

"I hope we can all become close friends, or at the very least hate the same people."

The commander chuckled.

"No problem at all with the later mate...well men let's get on with it, there's a war to win."

 

Ralph Essen



It was 1988 now, there wasn't much to say about it.

"Happy New year."

Lee said the words sarcastically as we drove in a bus we had gotten in the Ukraine. I nodded at his words while driving as suzy continued to use magic to try to scry for anything of use. Even with the equipment that compass had donated for the cause it had been a difficult and boring journey.

I sighed as we passed more blasted landscape.

"September 26th 1983, the day the world ended. You would think something would be around now, it's been five years."

"The new year just happened Lee, it hasn't been 5 years yet and we plastered the soviet union with everything we had, every military base, every town, every city. Hell we hit some areas just for the hell of it during the war. Principle of the thing."

Suzy looked up at us.

"I found something."

The four of us stopped and stared at her.

"According to my efforts we are close, we need to go north."

I turned the wheel and continued onward. My palms felt sweaty as we drove north through the gloomy dead lands of the soviet union.

"Stop...It's...outside."

I nodded.

"Everyone suit up."

We got into our radiation suits, set off the protective charms and went into the wasteland. We followed Suzy's lead as she held her enchanted compass and then she stopped.

"It's here."

I nodded and cracked my knuckles, I used a spell to scan the land.

"We have an opening half a klick away."

They nodded and followed me into the gray morning. We walked in silence until we found metallic shutters.

"A bunker.

I nodded at Lees statement. I brushed the dust off of a plaque and used a translation spell.

"Serpukhov-15."

I looked at my fellow magi and the four of us worked together to pry open the doors and we walked inside. The first thing we noticed were the corpses, well skeletons at that point. I tapped a water fountain and sighed.

Liam touched a dead body and spoke.

"The bunker was sealed from radiation but not their drinking water...that's the cause of death."

We split up and searched the facility. I stopped at one skeleton that was hunched over some paperwork.

"They doomed us all...I told them that it was a glitch in the system. The capitalists wouldn't send just 5 nuclear missiles at the soviet union and the early warning radar systems didn't detect anything inbound. But the leadership was too paranoid, they didn't listen and they killed us all."

Stanislav Petrov, the skeleton had a name, the body had a name. I took the notes and put them away. I ran into Liam who looked sick.

"A computer error."

"Liam."

"The fucking world ended, over a billion people died because of a FUCKING COMPUTER ERROR!"

"Liam."

He was tearing up crying.

"A fucking computer error, all of those people died because the soviets couldn't build computers that weren't pieces of SHIT!"

Liam kicked a wall.

"Liam."

"So many people FUCKING died!"

"Liam are you ok?"

He looked at me.

"Of course I'm not FUCKING OK! I just found out that my home planet was destroyed because of some glitchy computers. I'm fucking livid."

I gave him a hug as he continued to cry and rage.

"I was expecting something else, something.....something that explained all of this shit Ralph, not a fucking computer glitch."

"I know. All of us expected something more but we came here looking for the truth and that's what we got. No one ever said the truth was going to be easy, or fun or some thing we would like. But that's what we have, the truth.

Liam sat down on a nearby chair.

"So what now?"

"Nearest city within range is in Estonia. We're going to take every thing we can from this bunker then drive there. Our ship should meet us over there and then we go back to compass."

Liam got up.

"And then we go home and that's it. Every thing's over. That's the adventure of a lifetime, driving in a dead zone, finding a bunker and then just going home."

"Yeah."

"So what do we do now?"

"Now...the only thing we can do, rebuild our lives. Wish there was some thing more to it but it is what it is."

With that said the five of us gathered every scrap of information we could find and put it into boxes and got it on the bus. We then drove towards Estonia, towards the last country on earth. Our feelings were strained with disappointment, anger and other emotions. We had the truth but in the end it didn't make any of us happier.
​

 

Race to the Moon

Buzz Aldrin



There was no excuse for Sputnik, for the Russians beating us into space. We have literally had an actual alien space craft in our possession since the American revolution, with an actual alien there, with books to explain how it all worked. An alien who had every interest in sharing that knowledge because his home world was destroyed by an asteroid because his people didn't put enough effort into space until it was too late.

Robert H Goddard was one of the fathers of human rocketry and we almost completely and utterly squandered the lead he gave us because we considered one of the most important things humanity would ever do as buck Rodgers nonsense. The only reason we kept our lead was because the old bird heard about Goddard and funded him out of his own pocket during one of the worst economic disasters in human history.

We had every thing we needed to beat the soviets into space and we squandered it. So yeah, Sputnik that was our fault. We were lazy, we had all of the tools we needed and we spent 200 years just sitting on our butts. I mean seriously, why did it take over a hundred years for us to send in a horde of people to organize Compass's library?

So Sputnik was a massive blow to the American ego but maybe it was something we needed to go through. Because they finally sent some librarians over to organize the mess over in compass and finally started asking questions, which led to us finding out that over a hundred planets and moons were in the process of being terraformed! and oh yes, this was approved by president Rutherford B Haye. It turns out that the Hayes presidency was actually relevant.

No scrap that. That pretty much makes his presidency one of the most important ones in human history, we also found out that this process would all be finished by 1980....

So yeah. Now the space race was even more important and vital because there was some thing worth fighting about. So we contacted our allies told them about things and concentrated on organizing our space program.

So the Russians beat us to the first dog, the first chimp, but we managed to beat them into space with Alan Sheperd. Then the Cuban missile crisis happened and we all collectively freaked out about how close we came to the entire human race ending. Which of course led to the creation of project Rapture. Then of course the Chinese invaded India and their army shattered like glass which led to the sino indian war.

So between scrambling to save india from becoming another communist country and all of the other problems, there wasn't a lot of money left over for Nasa. We had to fight for every scrap we got and that caused delays. We probally could have gone to the moon even sooner if it wasn't for that but we managed to get there.

It was quite the accomplishment. It made me and Armstrong famous and in our hearts we thought, if things didn't go crazy then the whole solar system would be open to us, the whole galaxy and the universe itself.

Then the world ended, the old bird pulled out all of the stops to get our butts out of the fire.

Can't complain about the results, we're alive, and we have settled the solar system. I just wished it was under better circumstances...

So the space race, funny so many people considered it a waste of time and money but without it there wouldn't be any civilization left. I guess there's a lesson in that.

 

Antartica the lonely kingdom


Olavi Heikkinen


The race to the antartic and the south pole was the great contest of the late 1800s. A land had been found that was potentially filled with resources and, with the example of Greenland, the nations of earth thought they could tame the land and turn it into something worthy of the name.

Great britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy the great empires of the world set their stakes, determined to turn the land into a glorious coliony. Antartica had quite a few ley lines, it had resources and it was large. There was just one small problem.

You needed a small army of Magi to make it useful, a large amount of people to settle it and an incredibly powerful reagent to make it all work at once. Merlin had provided the reagent nessary to terraform portions of Greenland and create the Israeli star but he was firmly against gifting one to the imperial powers for their colonization efforts, stating that Israel formed a pact with him while they did not and that he was working on far more important matters.

The small army of Magi that would be needed thus became an even larger number. As for settlers they found that no one wanted to settle this frozen land and, of the few who did, most left after a couple of years. On top of this the imperial powers simply got in each other's way, feuding constantly instead of cooperating.

World war one spelled the end of the attempts to settle and conquer antartica. The germans had the most settlers there but the combined allied forces had more people and their colonial masters compelled them to go to war.

The conflict in anartica ended with each side destroying the vital infastructure the other needed to survive in that frozen land. All of the settlers were forced to either leave or die from thirst, starvation and the ever present cold.

To this day Antartica remains mostly unsettled. The last continent had managed to successfully avoid being conquered and, with the end of the world, this might remain the case for generations.

 

Isko Bulan

CEO of Jollybee operations in California


Jollybee is the single most successful fast food restaurant chain in the solar system. Now people wonder how it became so successful, the answer is war and logistics. Jollybee as a company was founded by Tony Tan Caktiong about 78 but that's only the official story. The Caktiong family, which originally came from china, owned a host of restaurants scattered throughout the Philipines. When the Sino indian war happened Tony's family decided to sell to American servicemen.

In doing so he was able to befriend lower level troops and eventually formed relationships with the brass. He proposed an idea of mobile restaurants, using boats to serve the allied forces as a moral gesture. This proposal managed to come at the right time. The united states had a bunch of old liberty ships that were not being used so he was able to get them for a song. He bought around a hundred of the damned things, trained some people up and sailed them around india and through the Ganges river.

Tony lived on one of these restaurant ships and learned the ropes from his father who, by the nature of the war effort, had to serve meals that would appeal to the international effort. When the war was over the family was rather wealthy and unfortunatly his father passed on, leaving the family business to Tony.

Now rather then just sit on his laurels Tony decided to get his family together and organize the family business into one coherent whole. The family at this point had restaurants all over the philipines, around Australia and of course in india. They were all joined together under the Jolliebee name.

This gave the company a pretty solid customer base but Tony wasn't satisfied with being a regional player. The good news for him was that he had connections. The service men his family served during the sino-indian wars got promoted, they had positions of power and he was able to use his family's connections to them to build new Jolliebees near naval and army bases. During the early 70s that's how Jolliebee grew, if there was a NATO military base then there was a Jolliebee near them.

To spread farther the company decided to franchise building near highways and such. World war 3 proved to be the moment where we really broke ground as a company. The third world war had a result of pushing most companies into a depressive slump. A lot of the chains closed down, not because of lack of business but because for a lot of owners the end of the world caused them to question what they were doing with their lives.

We were able to acquire entire chains and networks during this period, the company almost tripled in size. By the time people had mentally recovered from the end we were the single largest fast food chain in the solar system, with restaurants on every inhabited world in the solar system.

So why did we succeed when so many other companies fail? Hmm honestly I think it comes down to the value system of the people of the philipines: adaptability and resilience. The philipino people are tough but they're able to adapt to change and deal with unforeseen disasters. That mentality was brought into the world of business and, when the world went to hell, we were there to pick up the pieces.

I'm proud to work for Jolliebee and it's nice knowing that, even if the apocalypse happens, we will always be there to serve people quality food for a reasonable price. After all, we have already done it once.

 

Alexander Altunin general of the soviet union


I don't know why I'm bothering to write this, my capturers are probably going to throw this into the trash after I'm hung, and I very much doubt that these words will convince anyone of anything. So this is essentially just wasted time, something I'm writing for my own peace of mind before I die. Our side of the story as it were.

I don't know why the idiots at the politbureau decided to end the world, what motivated them to do so. I have a few guesses but I will write those down later, instead I will start with this.

The problem with nuclear war is this: once you launch, once you push that button, there is no going back. Everyone in the high command understood this. Once either side launched you were commited to total war...no, that drastically understates it. You were committed to a war of annihilation. Once we pushed that button... The only chance of Russian survival was to kill so many people that the enemy didn't have the strength to fight back.

We also understood that we couldn't allow any nation to survive, that any surviving states would be by their nature a threat to any future Russian successor state. This was official soviet policy and when that policy leaked and it caused the Scandinavian nations to join nato we didn't change it.

I think the politbureau wanted the West to understand that if they did a first strike, we would take every one else with us. There was just one small problem with that plan, time.

The soviet union, my country, former country, was great at projecting strength but that strength was mostly an illusion. Before world war 2 our population stood at around 150 million people. We lost 40 million people during the war. Roughly one in four Russians died. You westerners like to say we did it because of treachery or cowardice but the fact was...

We simply didn't have the strength to continue the fight. So, when Poland rebelled, we sat it out because enough of our boys had died and just concentrated on defeating Nazi forces that were still in our country. It's also why we reneged on our deal to help in the fight against japan.

When the most bloody war in Russian history was over, we wanted to prevent it from happening again so we took over the ex eastern pact countries. We turned them into the buddapest pact to make sure that we had a line of buffer countries. To give us time to recover but these buffer countries were hostile to us, expecially Ukraine, and we had to put in security forces to maintain them.

The West responded to what I consider to be a reasonable step by creating their own alliance set up against us. We looked around and realized we were surrounded by potential enemies again, just like the old eastern pact, and we were nowhere near recovered from the worst war in our nation's history.

So we intervened in the Chinese civil war to secure our southern borders. We intervened in the Korean war to remove a threat to our country, which failed. We intervened in the Sino-indian war because having India as an ally would have changed the game. We funded and supplied every revolutionary group on the planet to tie up our enemies' resources, but there was one small problem.

You kept getting stronger. You had the French economic miracle, the british one, the polish one, the Japanese one, the Italian one, the Korean one, the philipino one. Your economies just got stronger with time. Our industries started out behind your industries and we were only able to keep pace with our significant intelligence assets but it wasn't enough. In many industries, especially electronics, you were outpacing us.

And that's not getting into magic. That Fucking bird made our jobs, our lives, so much harder. You think it would be easy to infiltrate his school and sabotage it but the bird was incredibly good at ferreting out our agents. During the cold war he successfully compromised every single operative in Zone and had them giving us false information.

The fucking bird completely trashed our attempts to sneak into the Manhattan program and gave us false information that delayed our getting the bomb until 55. Then there's the fact that magic was just something that we were bad at. Standard Seasonal magi just did not do well in the soviet union, they either became politically unreliable or they sickened and died. We were forced to rely on the weaker qulipothic arts which we also did not trust.

So now, I guess, why we did it. Ended the world.

Quite simply put, we were running out of resources. Running a global spy network, having the large military we needed to keep our client states in order, the foreign aid, all of it was expensive. We could deal with it all when the price of oil was good during the 70s but the 80s had an oil glut on the market and we were now dealing with western backed insurgencies in our client states which were expensive.

And then you get to project rapture. With each year our single strongest weapons, nuclear weapons, became a weaker threat. Those worlds in the solar system were fully terraformed by 1980 and were now poker chips being used against us. In my opinion we launched because we were in a use it or lose it situation. As far as we were concerned the only reason the west wasn't launching was because they were not sure if project Rapture would work.

But then it did...we launched every thing we had at them. Nuclear, gas, bio weapons and...and you just vanished and we were just hitting empty terraformed land that had been swapped out. We had spent our load as it were and now the west was coming back for vengeance, and oh god your vengeance was something to behold.

You took out every city we had, my troops were outside this small town in Siberia with less then 5,000 people and you still nuked it, and once you had nuked everything your troops came in and...and there was no mercy. At that point Russia was dead and all we could do is make you bleed for it and honestly we didn't do a good job of it.

All of our factories were gone, all of our cities were gone, our crops were dying, every thing was full of radiation and it turns out we were not immune to the plagues we sent out across the world. When my forces fought against you we were starving, hungry and suffering from radiation sickness and god knows how many other diseases.

We tried to fight of course but you had more men, more food, more everything and we just collapsed. A few of us were taken prisoner and taken to Angolas world, the others were killed. I was one of the lucky ones.

So the future of the Russian people? I don't think we have one. The Angolans made a deliberate choice to separate Russian men and Russian women, putting us on islands on the opposite sides of the planet, then they just put some boats around us, put us on the island and shoot any one who tries to escape which is useless because the nearest island is too far away.

As for me...the verdict is guilty of crimes against humanity...tomorrow I'm going to be hung. I don't know what they were thinking when they pushed that button but our final roll of the dice was tossed and we lost.

Russia is dead and I die with my country.

 

Ralph Essen



They gave me back my boat and the other members of my crew went to their respective home countries. As for myself I headed back to America, which was no longer in America. The sky was lit with the light of two moons, in the distance I saw the light of the great tree that held compass academy. I sat down and sighed as I sailed closer.

Lee sat next to me.

"It's beautiful, even from a distance."

I nodded at his words.

"One of the great wonders of the world....solar system..."

I took in a breath and let it out.

"You ok Ralph?"

"No...I'm just mourning the past."

I closed my eyes.

"So when people look back at us, at the 80s, what will they think of us?"

Lee sat next to me as I opened my eyes.

"Probably that it was a weird decade. Losing earth affected us all, I think we all kind of went a little crazy."

We sailed closer to the tree in silence. When we got to the docks we shook hands and parted ways then I looked at the massive tree.

"He's waiting for you."

I blinked one of the guards nodded, I noticed that he wore a sky blue turban.

"Are you? um?"

"New here, I work as part of the mission for compass."

I nodded.

"I'm ready."

I was taken to an elevator and waited for it to rise to the top. The doors opened and the guard nodded.

"He's up ahead."

"Thank you."

I walked forward through the hallway and watched as the door opened. Merlin stared at me from his massive desk. I took a seat and looked up at him, feeling a sense of unease.

"So it was all an accident."

I closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry I don't have better news."

Merlin closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"This isn't your fault."

"With all due respect Mr. Essen I don't quite agree with you."

"You did everything you could to save humanity."

He opened his eyes.

"You know about my condition right?"

I grimaced.

"Yes...we talked about it, you're dying."

"In the phenix religion...your intentions do not matter. What matters, the only thing that matters, is results. If your actions in life resulted in the world being worse off then you go to hell, if the universe is better off because of your life choices then you go to heaven. Intentions do not matter."

He started coughing and wheezing, he took deep breaths until his fit ended.

"Sorry."

"It's our fault...we misused our gifts, your gifts, and."

"Don't tell me you were not ready."

Merlin sighed.

"No one is ever ready for anything. And what was I supposed to do? Stand over you in judgement, like some god."

He coughed.

"No...not my style. I'm afraid humanity, for all of its faults, is my people's successor. I can't expect you not to stumble and not to fall, all I can ask is that you pick yourselves back up and continue walking."

He coughed again.

"Well...let's talk about your reward. You and all the members of your party will be gifted with trust fund."

"Not a lump sum?"

"No...too much hassle in my experience. Better to have a steady income than be hit with a lot of money all at once."

"So what now Merlin?"

He coughed again.

"I have one last gift...the last part of humanity's inheritance...spent a lot of time working on it."

"And?"

"And it's a surprise, one that will start working when the stars are right."

He got up, got out of his chair.

"I know it doesn't seem like it but I am grateful Ralph, you gave me some closure."

I took in a breath.

"So what now?"

"Now? Now we live our lives one day at a time."
​

 

Ralph Essen


A man stood between me and the docks.

"Mr. Essen."

I stretched.

"Mr. Riddle."

He nodded at me.

"If it helps, what you did means a lot to Merlin. It means a lot, to a lot of people."

I grimaced.

"The news."

"Isn't pleasant, yes. The world dying because of a computer error, I know, but humanity needed to know why, in order to prevent it from happening."

"And?"

"And originally the solution was a deep look into human nature but honestly fixing up computer errors is a lot easier than that."

I stood there in silence.

"That wasn't funny."

"I know. But I'm british, we use black humor to deal with our issues."

He sat down on a chair and I sat across from him.

"We needed to know. Even if we don't like the bloody answer we needed to know Mr. Essen."

I took a deep breath.

"So what's your next adventure?"

"I don't know."

My voice was rough.

"I thought the navy would give me some kind of direction but that never came. When I got out I thought doing this would give me a direction and now...now I'm just spinning my wheels."

The man across from me sighed and pulled out a box and tossed it at me.

"What's this?"

"Open it."

I did and saw a quartz crystal.

"What's that?"

"Memory crystal. The old phenix used them to record their memories for prosperity...This one is blank..."

"And?"

"And what you went through was important. Future generations need to know about it so record it, make records for the future."

I looked at the crystal.

"Whatever happens, whatever path you take it's all up to you now."

I put the crystal in my pocket.

"So what now?"

I looked outside the glass doors at the two moons in the sky.

"Now...now I don't have a place I think of as home, I'm going to fix that."

 

Ralph Essen


The Le pen hotel offered me a free room, excutive suit. It was ok, it gave you a view of the great tree in the distance. I probably should be there instead of sulking in the hotel's bar.

"Mr. Essen?"

My eyes were closed as I sipped my iced coffee, I liked to be sober when I did my moping.

"Yeah."

I remembered the accent. The faint scent of roses got closer to me as she got closer, I opened my eyes and looked into her's. Golden eyes were locked onto mine, as my eyes took in more of her I noticed her pink hair, her unblemished caramel skin and her rather significant bust. She wore a rather carefully cut business suit.

"Marie...that's your name right?"

She smiled at me.

"It's been a while. I never had a chance to thank you for saving me."

"From the Russians."

"And helping me meet my father...we did a test it's...legit."

"And?"

"And that means I have dual citizenship now, I got a job in an office."

"Secretary?"

She smirked.

"Nice try but no. Accountant."

"Sounds like good work."

She sighed.

"Not really. Zone has had a glut of skilled labor for over 200 years now, so kind of a bad place to be an accountant."

I grimaced.

"That bad?"

"Yeah."

She looked at me, her eyes warm. I noticed that she bit her lip.

"Hoped I would catch you."

I took another sip of coffee.

"Why?"

"Well you saved me from a life of being a sex slave, so that's something."

She took a deep breath.

"Purple lipstick?"

"Yeah..."

"It suits you, bet your boyfriend loves it."

"I um..don't have one."

I nodded.

"Right your experience, that would mess up anyone."

She closed her eyes.

"I got lucky...well, not really. I didn't expect to get kidnapped and enslaved but...you were the first client...I was scared back home, people just thought as me as, you know, a body...you saw more than that."

"Thought I was pretty rude."

She shrugged.

"You got me out of a bad spot and you treated me like a human being."

"I thought girls liked being treated like princess's."

Marie frowned.

"When someone puts you on a pedestal the only thing you can do is fall."

She leaned against the table, an eyebrow open and then closed them and then raised them. I sipped my coffee as her face contorted in a variety of shapes.

"What are you doing?"

She sighed.

"Trying to flirt with you."

I leaned back in my chair.

"No offense but you're kind of bad at this."

She took in a deep breath.

"I've never really needed to flirt before, so you know there's that."

I turned away from her and sipped my coffee.

"Why Me? I'm old enough to be your father."

"I'm allowed to have preferences for older men."

I took another sip.

"So this isn't going to work?"

"I'm not saying that but I have been around long enough to know when someone has ulterior motives and I would like those out in the open Marie."

She tapped the table.

"I don't feel safe here in zone, don't feel safe period. Right now I feel safe."

"Sounds like something you should talk about with a therapist."

"Already did, for all the good it did."

She motioned for a drink, her hands shaking.

"So what's next for you?"

I looked at my mostly empty coffee cup.

"Don't know, I don't have to worry about money. Between the Navy and Compass...I'm good on that. I think I'm going to travel the solar system."

"Sounds lonely."

"Maybe."

"Can I come along?"

I thought about it, drifting through the solar system on a boat with Marie. It might be a special kind of hell but if I was going to wander the universe directionless then I might as well have company.

"Sure...what the hell."
​

 

Ralph Essen October 13th

September 23 2000, the day Merlin died.

Merlin died on the same day that Earth died. I managed to find my old memory crystal, haven't touched the thing since the 80s.

"Come on dad, we need to get going."

I waved at my son, his hair was the same vibrant pink his mother had. It gave him some trouble but it made him a tough kid and you need that on the sea.

"I'm getting dressed as quickly as I can Louis."

My son nodded and let me get dressed in something that didn't make me look like the old sailor that I was.

"Louis, give your father some time."

Marie smiled at me, her hand on her stomach.

"Are you going?"

"To be ok. This is baby number five Ralph, we have experience with these things now."

She gave me a peck on the cheek.

"Come on, we have a funeral to go to."

I smiled at her and gave her a kiss back.

"EWE!"

I smiled as my youngest girl's face pinched up like a lemon. I ruffled her hair and the six of us got out of the family boat and onto land. We went into a bus and drove to the funeral site. The sky wasn't rainy or cold or gloomy. As new Hampshire weather went it was fine.

"They're holding the funeral in the open, so all of you have to wear sweaters."

The traffic was insane.

"Dad, is it true that Queen's going to be there?"

I nodded.

"Entire band. Freddy Mercury's going to play a song for him."

My son nodded.

"Should I try to get an autograph?"

I frowned at him.

"No...no, there is a time and place for these things Louis and a funeral isn't one of them."

The bus stopped and we walked out with the others. I saw people from all over the solar system there as we all took our seats. The funeral seemed to take forever, Merlin gave permission for any religion that wanted to give him funeral rites to do so. He joked that no one would bother. He was wrong, he was always his biggest critic.

So, one by one, the faiths of the world gave him a send off, priests, clerics, rabbis, Imans, atheists. When it was all over, it was midnight. Then, when it struck, a giant image of the old bird formed on a screen.

"If you're watching this...then I'm dead, I...I'm sorry I wasn't able to save more people, that I couldn't do more."

The bird coughed.

"But...the good news is that it's all finished, your final inheritance."

An image of the milky way formed.

"During my travels I found a bunch of blue stars that could be harvested to make reagents, like the ones used to terraform the solar system. I left probes in a lot of systems throughout the galaxy before I came to earth and I had an idea to make sure humanity had a proper send off when time forced me to leave you."

His face was full of emotion.

"108 billion star systems, I did the math, had it checked and triple checked. With what I gathered, with one ritual, I could terraform 108 billion worlds for the human race. But I needed prototypes. Israel was the first case and it worked, then the solar system proved that our last idea was functional and then I spent the next century working on this...my final gift."

Blue points broke out amongst the galaxy.

"It's all set up to start during the Galatic alignment In 2012. The terraformation process will be finished in 2112 and, when it is, there will be 108 billion planets for human beings to settle on. This is the final gift of the phenix people to the human race...with my death we permanently vanish into the past. It will be up to humanity to carry the tourch of life, civliazation and freedom to the stars."

He paused.

"I am proud of you, all of you. Good bye."

The image ended. The crowd was silent as a team of students past and present went around his coffin and took up the spokes. We then all walked in a procession towards the New Hampshire veteran's cemetary. No one said anything as we walked. When we got there Merlin was carefully laid into the ground.

Next to him were the graves of men who had fought with him during the revolution, those who had fallen in the war of 1812, the civil war, the world wars, my war. He was buried amongst them all and a part of me felt it was appropriate that he was laid to rest there.

Then the band came out. Mercury's hair was almost entirely white as was his mustache.

"Merlin asked me to play this song...it's called 'the show must go on'."

He played the song, diplomats, heads of state, former presidents, celebrities, former students, friends, family, rich and poor we all stood there in the darkness and mourned the loss of our friend.

Good bye Merlin, what ever happens thank you.

 

Ralph Essen


"It's a big honor."

Riddle walked next to me. He leaned on his cane as we walked.

"I don't feel like I'm worthy of it."

Riddle shook his head.

"No. Finding out the truth about the war, that meant a lot to Merlin. It's up to you to do this."

The black maze located in Elwyn part.

"He made it, you know. After the revolution the goal was to have a place that would have the name of every compass student who died, every teacher who died. Merlin was sentimental like that."

We walked pass numerous names in numerous languages, under each name was their birthdate, their date of death and the time they went to school in compass. The maze was huge, I remembered visiting it once before I started school in compass. I thought it was creepy then, morbid, but now... Now seeing it how he saw it, it seemed respectful, seemed right. We stopped at an empty spot.

I opened a box and brought out a chisel. I put question marks for Merlin's date of birth, because not even he knew when he was born, and put down his date of death. then I carefully inscribed his name.

"Merlin, last of the phenix."

Tom sighed.

"It's the end of an era."

I held back the tears, it wouldn't do to cry, not now.

"It's like America lost its grandfather."

"Not just America...we all feel that way. Merlin was...a constant, it seemed like no matter what happened, what changed, he was always there. It's hard to have him gone."

"So who's the head master now."

"Me....but not for long, Neil will take over after I retire."

I looked at him.

"Neil deGrasse Tyson, he used to work in astrophysics."

"So, the school?"

Tom stared at Merlin's name tracing it with his finger.

"Compass has been labeled an historic landmark by the United nations, and of course the US. No one wants this school to close, not after all he's done for us."

"So the show goes on."

Tears ran down Toms face.

"Yes it does."

I gave him a hug and let the old man cry it out.

"Tom."

"Sorry."

"It's ok."

Tom composed himself.

"Before Merlin...I was nothing. I was just this poor orphan boy that nobody wanted. The first person to treat me like an actual human being was Merlin. The first place, the only place, that ever felt like home was Compass. He introduced me to my wife, he helped take care of my children..."

He took a deep breath.

"It's hard to see him go."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"I will keep this school going for him, we all will."

The wind blew around the maze.

"He would have wanted it that way."

Tom nodded.

"So what now?"

I looked up at the night sky.

"Going to take my family and go to korea. There's someone there I have to talk too."

 

Ralph Essen

2000 AD



I sat on the grass, staring at the glowing tree in the distance. My son sat next to me.

"Dad? Why aren't you asleep?"

I smiled at him.

"Sorry Louis, sometimes I can't sleep."

"Because Merlin died?"

I nodded my head.

"Yeah."

He was 11 years old now, I smiled remembering the trip he was conceived on, then our rush to get the marriage through before he was born...Good times. Probably the best years of my life.

"Dad."

My son hugged me.

"It's going to be ok dad."

I put my arm around him.

"You know I named you after one of the first students that Merlin ever taught."

My son blinked.

"Really?"

"Yeah really...you know Compass has open enrollment right now, I could sign you up."

My son stared at the glowing tree.

"Isn't that the same school you learned magic at?"

I nodded my head.

"Yes."

My son got up.

"They say it's going to be different without him."

I nodded my head.

"I know Louis, but it's going to be up to us, all of us, to keep his dream alive."

The wind russled my son's pink hair.

"Yeah dad that sounds nice."

I got off the grass and walked with him to the water's edge. He held my hand as we walked on the water towards Compass, towards a tradition that we were determined to keep alive.

Merlin was gone, the phenix were gone, but humanity remained and out there the stars were waiting for us.

 

The remnants-2130 AD

Paul Atrades



108 terraformed worlds. In 1980 this first phase of terraformation was finished, the work of over a million years done with the best technology and magic the phenix people were capable of. A process started as an after thought by a president of America who was, in every other respects, forgettable except for his death.

These 108 worlds became a promise, a pact between the American empire and its allies: If the Soviet government destroyed the world, their cultures and their people would survive as long as they stood alongside America in the anti-communist pact.

Then, one day, the day of horror came and that promise was kept. Around 200 countries existed before the exchange. When the dust settled only 77 survived the war, if almost none intact. These 77 countries found themselves as the sole masters of their own individual worlds. of the 77 only 30 countries decided to take the option of creating between 1 and 100 million people to help their culture survive the apocalypse. Those that did take the option decided to maximise their numbers, there was no in between.

The rapture countries that found themselves with more people were mostly members of the NATO alliance and other countries who put forth military commitments towards the anti-communist alliance. Though some, like Turkey, had refused on moral grounds and were still included.

The United States, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Poland, the Czech republic, Sweden, Finland, Israel, south Africa, Rhodisia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Philipines, The republic of china, India, Thailand, and Germany.

In total over 3 billion new people were created to serve as remnants and backups for their respective countries and cultures. They were often trained to be rather conservative, in order to make sure that culture lived. With the rapture these new countrymen joined the old ones to forge new nations, new empires. These countries were the biggest winners of the exchange.

The other nations that did not choose to clone new citizens had a rougher time dealing with the transition. They didn't have an influx of educated souls who could help them deal with the market disruptions caused by the end of the world. Still, despite their problems, these countries were also winners, gaining the resources of an entire new world, and having all of their infrastructure intact.

Those who tried to be neutral in the great cold war, and were not able to find allied nations who could vouch for them, had their cities destroyed in nuclear fire by the soviets. Then had much of the rest of their population destroyed by the bioweapons that the Russians liberally used on all other nations. The only neutral that managed to avoid complete collapse was Indonesia though they still lost millions of people in the exchange.

Indonesia would be gifted their own world by the victorious allies and would rebuild from there. The other neutrals would all collapse into anarchy. If they were lucky the allies were able to save them and transport them into UN care offworld for their own safety.

Then we get into the Budapest pact nations, those allied to the soviet union. These nations suffered greatly. The only one that didn't face complete collapse was Estonia and that was because of their rapid call to the allies of their complete unconditional surrender. Because of this decision the allies gave them food and supplies and helped protect them during the 30 years of nuclear winter.

When the sun showed its face again Estonia's population had grown and they found themselves as the uncontested masters over what remained of the world. The other Budapest pact members either died from disease and radiation poisoning or surrendered to allied forces. Many became refugees. Some were lucky, such as Ukraine which had a nato member vouch for them. Ukraine would be gifted its own world.

The other Budapest pact nations would be given continents on Miranda. They were not quite trusted but, if they behaved well, then this land grant would become permanent.Most of them complied with allied force commands. Those that didn't suffered until they did comply, at which point their ownership of their new land was recognized.

The biggest losers by far were the Russians. Every city, every village, every thing of importance was destroyed by nuclear fire. The only Russians who survived were those who were far outside the population centers. Even for them, most would die from radiation, starvation and disease.

The ones that did not were captured by allied forces, separated by gender and sent to the Angolian homeworld. They would remain there until the 1990s, as the angry and vengeful survivors of the war decided what to do with them.

Anyone who was a part of the soviet government or military was excuted for crimes against humanity. It was decided that most of soviet union would be stripped away from the Russian people as punishment for their crimes. the only place that would be recognized as Russian would be the Kamachtka Krai, a cold peninsula that would house the entirety of the Russian people.

The rest of their land was gifted to anyone who desired it. The only taker was the Estonian people, who now outnumbered the Russians and claimed the rest of Russia as compensation for being invaded and for decades of oppression. The Russian population was settled in Kamachtka in 1995 and would live under UN military supervision for the next 60 years. Not allowed to have a military of their own or claim any of the empty lands around them.

The occasional riots caused by these edicts were put down harshly, sometimes with orbital bombardment. UN classrooms would require Russians to learn about every atrocity their people had commited and would show them in graphic detail just what their ancestors had done.

The early post war period was met with one of the largest baby booms in human history as humanity rebuilt itself and adapted to the chaos and disruption. The 20th century would go down as one of the most blood soaked periods in human history. The 21st though would be, by contrast, known as one of the most peaceful periods in human history.

It was thanks to the phenix people, particularly merlin, that human civilization survived despite its flaws and even thrived after the war. After his death a phenix would be placed on the UN flag in remembrance of what he gave humanity. it's been over a hundred years since he died and, with the final terraforming finished, over 108 billion worlds lie in wait.

It seems like every religious, ethnic, and separatist group is leaving for the stars, for distant worlds. If the 20th century was the century of blood and the 21st the century of rebuilding then the 22nd is the great scattering. Humanity survives and we have fulfilled merlin's dream: We sail a sea of stars.