An Experiment into the Controlled Release of Information about the Future.

[Gilhelmi]

Before we get into the bases, I guess we need to go over "Souls". It's times like this that I remember all the minor things we take for granted, but it's an important part of our culture.

In my time, death from old age is something that is relegated to history. Disease on Earth was wiped out long ago; cancer became a mild annoyance that needed little more than corrective gene therapy and pinpoint removal. Accidents can still happen, but don't matter. See, we understand the nature of the "Soul" so we just catch the spirit and put you in a new body. Kind of like the Asgards in SG-1, except the genetic decay thing was easily solved by, and get this you are going to laugh at how simple it is, allowing random combinations of to mix and then trimming out serious disorders. Just like in nature *facepalm*. Yeah, you won't look exactly the same as before, but we stopped caring as much about our outward appearance when we realized that "Souls" were real. Racism is a distant, bad, memory. Now, skin and body features are more based on where you choose to live. For example, if you move to Africa, you will be given a "Black" skinned body. This is to reduce the chance of sunburns and skin cancer (because, even though cancer is very treatable in my time, it still takes medical resources and there is no point in treating something preventable). Likewise, if you live far north, you will be given a more "White" skinned body. This is because the amount of sunlight is lower and human bodies need to metabolize the vitamin D as efficiently as possible. (Depending on how far north, you might also be a lot hairier.) In addition, we had to fully re-engineer the brain to allow most memories that the soul had to enter the new body, but it was worth it. We are still developing this, we can only remember the last 1500 years of past lives. But it looks like we might have reached our limit for now. (Hence, the reason we have to come back in time to do research.) This gave the added benefit that almost everyone has the intellect of Albert Einstein, Sir Issac Newton, and anyone else you can think of; all rolled into one.

Nationalism is still a problem, because we humans are still a prideful lot. We have a lot fewer nations, and neighboring nations usually get along very well. It is much more like an "idealized" version of your United States; 50 nations, under one central governing nation that represents the whole and manages cross 'state' matters like regional utilities, infrastructure, and crime (though we don't have much crime as criminals can't just die to get their records expunged anymore, like what happens in your era.)

When "Souls" were first discovered, we found that most of the world's religions were partially right in one way or another. I am not allowed to risk cultural contamination too much, but I can say it was a combination of Rebirth, Heaven/Hell rest, and flowing energies. This led to an "interesting" time for Earth.

Wars were still a thing before we started cloning ourselves. Shortly after this new age began, bizarrely enough, the number of wars actually skyrocketed. Death was a minor annoyance, just wait for 'respawn' at the cloning facility. Fortunately, after 20 long years of stupidity, people realized just how wasteful blowing each other up really was. Recycling wasn't (and still isn't) 100%, so wood needed to be grown, synthetic materials needed to be made from resources that needed to be mined, so on and so on. And of course, DYING STILL HURTS. I remember the first couple times I was shot, blown up, and I still refuse to get on boats because drowning is the just the worst thing. Only a couple hundred more years and I will not be able to remember that time.

This also led to another strange quirk, National leaders. Sure, ruling for life sounds great and all, until life is unending and no one wants to after 75 or 100 years. Even Legislative and Judicial positions are incredibly draining for a person. About 200 years after we became immortal, most leaders wanted to do something, anything, else. New term limits were set by most nations for between 50 to 100 years, with a required break of a few decades. These jobs started to become true "public service" positions and some places even had to resort to "Drafting" people into the low level bureaucracy jobs. By the 600 year mark, most nations settled into a good routine. No new laws were being made, all social reforms were done (poverty was wiped-out), all that was left was budgeting to keep law enforcement and utilities going; with Scientific Research and Development being the 'new' "military" budget. Resources were still dwindling, only a couple thousand years left by most estimates, and when you are immortal, that is within your lifetime.

The problem was, we were still competing with everyone for resources. Even though the fighting was no longer physical, it could ruin nations financially if they made the wrong enemies. Trading alliances formed and the new wars were being fought in "Dollars and Cents". Buying and selling resources the new weapons of war, resources were our ammunition.

There were five main Trading alliances. I am not allowed to use the actual names of the nations, so I will just refer to the continents where they were (fortunately, most of the surrounding nations allied with their neighbor). North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and the biggest power house Africa. Their technology was the greatest. While everyone else was recycling rate of 50-65%, their tech gave them a huge advantage at almost 90%; giving them a huge trade advantage.

The only logical thing to do with only a couple thousand years of resources was to look up and try to mine the rest of the Solar System. Terra-form Venus, maybe set up small colonies to try and push back the end date of our resources until matter-replication could be perfected. It was our only hope.

Hopefully, next time I can finally talk about bases. And feel free to ask any questions.

 

[Gilhelmi]

On Thursdays, I plan on giving random fun facts.

Of course, because our physical are grown in vats we have tinkered around with the human Genome to make us as smart as biologically possible. However we took this a few steps further and created implants to help us think better as well. The truly fascinating bit is that these implants are extremely simple to make. All they are is a thin Gold wire, wrapped in a non-biodegradable insulator, that connects various regions of the brain. Primarily regions of the Cerebrum, however, various other regions can be connected together to produce interesting results. One example that occasionally happens in nature is Synesthesia, but this is far more controlled. IF we choose to get the implant, we can CHOOSE what spectrum's we see. I have an "Artist" friend who loves seeing sounds (I think that would get annoying, but she loves it so much that she has kept it for over 500 years). A few people choose to see farther into the Infrared Spectrum to help in their career fields. (paint-ball games where someone had this were a heck of a lot fun, it was like playing against someone who was running a "wall-cheats" program in a FPS. There were special rules to make the game more balanced, but man oh man, beating someone with that ability was difficult but fun.)

If I wanted to, I could even make the implants in my basement. There would be no point though because it would violate EVERY ethics code of your time. And, of course, you need a "biologically active" brain to experiment on. You can not dissect a human being that is Alive after all.

Although, in the world I come from, our definition for a human to be "Alive" is slightly different. For someone to be "Alive" they need three things. 1) A functional Mind (aka. brain): 2) A functional body: 3) A "Soul" connected to a Mind (through the "Soul"-Mind gateway, a structure in the human brain that has not yet been discovered).

So, as long as there is no "Soul" in the Mind, the body is just a cadaver that has basic functions (like breathing and heart beat). Most of the time, we schedule our implant upgrades when we switch bodies. The people who put in the implants are not even Doctors, they are more akin to highly trained technicians. On the unusual occasion that we do need to get an implant while "Alive", our "Soul" is transferred into (deity redacted save me) a "Soul" battery........ see rant at the end.

We still have Doctors who do routine maintenance and repair. No reason to toss a perfectly good body just because of a few broken bones, heck, that just takes a couple days to repair.

A human Mind can handle around 10-20 implants depending on type, grade, and location. Although, everyone has the same "first five" implants that together boosts our "mental capacity" by around 400% (on top of the already impressive amount gained from genetic editing). These are the free ones, everything else we choose to pay for (unless the company you work for requires a "specialized" implant). They can get pricey, the more you put in, the harder it is to wire everything correctly. And of course, they are made of Gold. With 10 Billion people on Earth at any given time, each having an average of a 5th ​of an ounce of Gold in their brains, that is just over 2 BILLION ounces of Gold. It is the easiest metal to recycle at least (98% rate in my time), so we only really lose Gold when the body is completely unrecoverable. To put that into perspective, according to Bing (by far the superior search engine), there is only 2.5 Billion ounces of Gold above ground today. Just barely enough to get everyone their first implants, forget about getting the optional fun implants. Of course, almost no one wears Gold jewelry, it is far to valuable for implants. The Gold mining industry is still going as strong as ever, and will be for the foreseeable future because of the implants.

Feel free to ask me any questions if something is unclear or does not make sense. Thank you.

Off-Topic Rant: "Soul" battery. I swear, it sounds so stupid. But, that is the CLOSEST translation I could figure out. Half the words describing the scientific terms just DON'T EXIST yet. I am not happy with "Souls" either, but it's at least somewhat closer. Imagine trying to describe the "Big Bang" without using any of the science you are familiar with. It would quickly start to sound like a Creationist myth too. OK, rant done, I feel better now.

 

[Gilhelmi]

This is the tricky bit, because a lot of the words to describe everything don't exist yet. Even the concepts won't exist for several thousand years. So I will try to get the ideas close but there will be some "inaccuracies" with the language.

They exist in a pocket dimension outside of time, but remain anchored to a point in space around our solar system. This gave them a measure of protection from "temporal disruptions" or changes in the time-line. This was aided by an extra layer of an "energy" shielding that cut them off further from space-time.

The Anchor kept the Bases near their locations. Otherwise, they would "fly off". Or more accurately, the base would remain EXACTLY where it was but the Solar System would continue its orbit around the Galactic center, and the Galaxy would continue ITS orbit around the Universal center. Without the Anchor tethering us to one location, everything else would fly off at thousands of miles per hour. Fortunately, the first pocket dimension was created with a beacon so we could measure its trajectory.

As mentioned in my last post, there were five organizations representing most of the major world powers. The powers from Asia and Europe were mostly allied. Then the North American and South American were allies. Africa always did their own thing since by that point in history they had the technological superiority.

I was part of the N. American team in geosynchronous orbit around Venus. At this time, there was still the whole "cloak and daggers" around temporal work. Officially, we were trying to terraform the planet with the South American's (we brought the science, they brought the engineering). But the main space station was also used to disguise the 'energy' signature of the temporal-space anchor. Commander Johnathan Wilson (not real name) was in charge of the joint teams. Most of the terraforming team did not "know" that our project existed, but they were told not to ask questions about things that were obviously not for them (mostly extra supplies, and the occasional unknown staff person who they saw arriving but never for their team).

Africa was trying to do the same thing with Mars (they had a superiority complex, they were jealous of the Americas efforts and wanted to show us up by 'fixing' Mars). But they had their station built into Phobos giving them a better anchor (the larger the structure, the better the anchor). Honestly, Africa had the best technology and their systems were far superior in every almost every way. They had every right to be arrogant, even if they were a bit annoying at the international conferences.

And finally, the European and Asian stations. The Asian station was on Titan (under the pretense of mining and deep space exploration) while Europe kept their main Temporal facility on Earth under one of the major Capital cities. They still shared quite a bit, but didn't have a joint facility like the Americas had. They had the advantage in population though, especially Asia. The large number of people gave them a much larger pool of highly qualified researchers. Of course the "Deep Space" bit was obvious nonsense; they had tried to use the cover story that they were close to developing an interstellar drive-system. Which, while possible, would have required access to more of a "certain alloy" (sorry have to be dodgy) that would have taken another 1000 years to manufacture enough to build the drive they envisioned.

We would actively try to sabotage one another in trade deals, market manipulation, even going back to before the Immortal Era to try and remove certain advantages (even killing, which was not as big of deal as it should have been since we knew about "Souls", we still had to be careful not to "Grandfather Paradox" ourselves to badly). Of course, everyone had counter-operations going as well, and the temporal "shielding" meant they knew how history was supposed to unfold. So mostly it was poking one another to see if they were paying attention.

Then the incident occurred that forced us to form the First Council.

 

[Gilhelmi]

I was still on the Terra-forming station orbiting Venus. Myself and the rest of our Temporal Command was in the know as to what was going on, as was the S. American commander who ran the station. However, the station crew had no idea what was going on. Communications with Earth were cut off, something that never happened before. Then they realized that no one can reach the other supply ships or the second Ore Crusher. They knew something bad was up. Things were getting tense, as there was no plan in place to ever take the Temporal Research public. This was particularly hard due to transparency rules most governments had, but there were still rules in place from when military's were still more of a thing. I never fully understood how they kept everything secret, but they managed it.

After receiving word that Earth was gone, and that our remaining Supply ship took on survivors from the European base. The S. American commander realized the situation, we had 5,000 humans on the station, no cloning facilities, and only a couple hundred "Soul" batteries. After consulting with us and the N. American commander over long-range communications. The decision was made to tell his command staff and leadership of the situation. It was not pleasant, but they realized that they were in a desperate situation. The rest of the crew would be informed if we could not solve the problem in a weeks time. It was just a problem with the comms.

Meanwhile, the N. American Commander was broadcasting a wide-band signal trying to get the African and Asian Commands to pick up. They were stubbornly thinking that losing communications with Earth was a technical problem on their end. Fed-up with being ignored for hours, he broadcasted images of the cold, dead Earth on open frequencies. That got their attention and they finally started talking to us, mostly demanding answers. Neither of them had teams in the past either. The Asian Commander agreed to use their experimental clone bay to get the European Commander back because we wanted answers. To avoid more communication delays (still takes several hours to send signals across the system) they decided to pick-up the African Commander and head to Titan.

However, the Commander did not think completely think the broadcast thru. He forgot that we were holding off on telling the rest of the station crew. That was a real shit-show. So, two days after Earth suddenly disappeared. Some of the crew heard the N. American Commander yelling at the other Commanders to "pick-up, we know your there, this is no time for the cloak and dagger Bullshit!" and saw the evidence that Earth was gone. Panic ensued as word spread. None of them realized that Time travel was involved yet, and were trying to figure out what was going on. Asteroid? Accident? Aliens? Mostly, they LIED about the comms being down.

They were pissed that Command was not telling them. So, while the N. American Commander was trying to be diplomatic with people we strongly disliked (and they disliked us just as much), the S. American Commander had to try and calm down 5000 people who just found out that they were the last survivors of Earth. We did not tell them about time travel at that point, just that the situation was being "Investigated" but that our main mission to Terra-form Venus was now even more crucial to humanities survival. This is our main focus, and that we will have to work with the other Commands to survive. Honestly, it was pretty inspiring. There were still rumors that about not being told everything. (where are the other ships? one might have been on Earth, but the second Ore Crusher was munching on Mercury.) But, because of the social unity brought about by people moving to be near other like-minded individuals. They still trusted the N. and S. American commanders, mostly (N. and S. America might have a number of differences, but the people have more trust in their local leaders. If they say that the other is alright, the people generally follow.)

No one had realized the even bigger horror than Earth being destroyed. No one thought to ask the question "where are the Souls that are in the Ethereal plane?"

 

[Gilhelmi]

They were gone, they were all gone. Billions of "Souls", gone.....

Even one "Soul" disappearing was almost unheard of. Normally you die, wake up a few days later, rest and gain strength for a couple of weeks, and get back to life. Every few hundred years, you start to get "Really Tired" (not physically, but spiritually) and your "Soul" goes to rest in either "Paradise" or "Punishment" overseen by the "Deity". I won't get into that bit much, what is important is that in my era around 20% of people are at rest (usually lasting between 100 and 500 years). These points are well planed out in advance, as it is rare that anyone go to "Punishment", even rarer for longer than 100 years (also, people remember if you were an a**hole in your previous life, so generally people are more polite. Imagine a society where Canadian's would be considered rude.). So we know that we will be out for 100 years on an extended vacation. Breaks up the year-to-year monotony.

I look back now and ask myself, how did the "Spiritual Science" people not think of this first? They were doing cloning research on Titan. They had a large team studying the connection pathways trying to get us to remember even farther back (remember, we can only remember back 1500 years or so). But, I guess with the everyone trying to figure out why there is a giant elephant laying down in the room, no one noticed the bloody spot underneath it.

It wasn't until after the Supply Ship reached Titan. The African Commander asked "have you tried reviving the last people that died on Earth? We could Interrogate them to see what happened and get clues." The Chief of the Cloning operation checked the plane, only to find it gone....... and without the Ethereal plane, if we died and no battery was available, death would be permanent. We had around 200, the African's another 50, the Asian's 400. 650 "Soul" batteries in total for almost 10,000 humans, many of whom were close to getting a new body due to age... Almost forgot to mention, only 10 clone bays, and it takes 2 years to bring a clone to maturity.

We needed a new plan.

 

[Gilhelmi]

We had to make some hard decisions, and they needed to be made fast. And a lot of people were not going to like them in the least.

First, we resurrected the European Commander. Maybe he had some answers to this nonsense, everyone else already proved that we had no agents in the past. It would take a couple of weeks for him to recover from the resurrection.

Second, we still had no idea how long it would take to fix things. We did not entertain the idea that it could not be fixed, and supplies would start running low. African Command and Asian Command were entirely dependent on Earth for food and supplies. The joint American (both North and South) Commands were dependent on Earth for Water and Air. Things were going to run out quickly.

The usual arguing and bickering between the different Continents did not happen. They all realized that they needed each other for the basic necessities.

Titan has water in abundance. It was the main reason Asia set-up their research post their. Where there is water, There can be life. (the first true non-terrestrial life was found there.) Electrolysis was used to get Oxygen for air and Hydrogen for additional fuel. Their clone bays and "Spiritual Science" teams would bring back the mission critical personnel quickly.

The Joint American base was researching food production and eco-system development in preparation for the Terra-forming of Venus. It was not quite sustainable for our population before, but with the added water from Titan, and diverting all our resources from the planet, we could scrap by. People might go hungry, but would not starve. We also had the only 2 ships remaining. (It was really good luck that we had any ships. Usually, they would have all been out but a scheduled crew rotation for the two ship meant that they were in dock.)

The African Command had some of the best talent in the world on their team. Their help actually made the sudden switch from "research farm" to "real farm" possible. They were invaluable in building an Electrolysis system in record time. The thing looked like something out of MacGyver but it worked. They even agreed to "abandon" their base to pool and save resources. They split their team, half lived on Titan and half lived on our station.

Third, and this is where people started to complain very loudly but; we had 10 clone bays, 650 "Soul Batteries", and no Ethereal Plane. Once the batteries were filled, we would have to choose who to save. So the painful decision was made, we would use Natural Birth to fill in the coverage.

Pregnancy is rare in our time, some people prefer it, there even are small nations of people who insist on it even. They still retain all their memories from past lives, but they have to grow up naturally. Most people don't bother and most women don't like having to be pregnant (although, I hear the pay is quite good). So, that was not a fun meeting telling the around 5,000 women that they would be required to give birth from time to time on a rotating cycle.

There was then quite a bit of yelling when it came to Breast Feeding. Especially, after it was mentioned that at any given time around half of the women would need to be wet-nurses. No, we did not have the resources or materials needed to make bottles. But as there was legitimately no way to make formula in the short-term it was eventually accepted........... Side note: Thank you to all the brave Women who gave birth to children. You have given the greatest of services to your community and nation. This is true throughout all ages.

The other downside was that it would take the "non-critical" workers out of the work-force for at least 8 years. At least child labor laws only apply to when people are not born with knowledge of their past lives. But the process of doing it this way means that the knowledge is not immediate. It takes more time to integrate memories. This meant that instead of 10,000 people working together, there would be only 7,900 after thing got going. (2,000 children, 100 child-care workers) Less if we count the time that women needed to feed the children.

Of course, there was a "Vigorous" discussion about not allowing women to take on dangerous or hazardous missions. They were now our most valuable personnel. But, the needs of the human race surviving outweighed all other concerns. When put like that, everyone agreed that survival trumps all.

The news did not get better, no-more-implants for anyone, including "Mission essential" personnel. The surgery require to put them into living beings is risky, usually not a problem when you have an unlimited number of Clones. But a 2% failure rate was just to much of a resource drain. People, accepted that a bit more willingly, although..........

I was still "young", I had just gotten a new body 5 years earlier. But the thought was unsettling, people would have memories of them being "Smarter, Quicker, and all-around Better" but would now be unable to do all the same things they used to.

Seems a bit petty now, especially considering the women's situation, but at the time being born and having to through childhood was not a pleasant idea. No understanding, yet a slow creeping terror that something bigger is going on. Not fully grasping the concepts laid before you; but a deep, dark, sense of déjà-vu pokes at you. Like you are suppose to remember what is going on but can't.

It was a very eventful 2 weeks to say the least.

The European Commander was shocked that all this was done in such a short time, but accepted that the decisions needed to be made quickly and that the Asian Commander had their interests. But everyone was more focused on the big question.

Did the European Temporal Command have agents in the Past, and if so, how the Hell did they mess things up this badly?

 

[Gilhelmi]

I have read many things about time travel. The question that almost always comes up is "What would be the first thing you would do with a time machine?"

After 5,000 years, the history of the 20th ​century is spotty at best. Before our research mission, we believed that the whole century was one of constant war. We had forgotten that there were two World Wars, believing that it was just one really long war that lasted over a century. I touched a bit on the myths and legends. That the wars had forced extreme technological changes. In 300 short years, we went from an agrarian society to that of a high technology one.

We believed that between 20%-40% of the worlds population would be killed during this time. We believed that the Nazi's had ruled a third of the world thew force, and were cannibals, and developed atomic weapons, and that Nuclear exchanges were common.

We discovered only recently, from this research mission, that the radiation signatures were actually from testing Nuclear weapons. The World Wars may have kick-started the high-tech revolution but they were not the sole driving force.

But one thing we knew, that there had been an "Anti-Christ" on the Earth (closest translation that makes cultural sense). I suspect you already know who I am talking about.

Adolf "Anti-Christ" Hitler

The European Temporal Command went back in time, over 5000 years, and killed Hitler.

They were pretty smart about it to. They researched the legends carefully and found one chance that had a "fair" chance of success (estimate of 20%). They then sent 2 agents back in a Temporal-Wolfhelm machine. The date was early January 1894. Just stop one boy from rescuing a 4-year old child who was drowning. Simple enough, create a cover story and invite the family over to dinner. They had enough gold to buy the neighbor's house, this was the most strait forward thing.

If the mission was a bust, or if they were too late, gather intel and try again later. If they were early, then they would blend in and wait for a chance to strike.

They could not kill him directly, there was to much of risk of being captured (the Wolfhelm did have a self-destruct, but there would be catastrophic consequences if that happened). But this opportunity was ideal. Just a tragic accident.

It might not stop all the wars from happening, but it should have reduced the severity. Right?

But why.......... Why did the Earth turn to ash? HE WAS ADOLF "THE ANTI-FIGGEN-CHRIST" HITLER!!!

Everyone was in shock, their shock turned quickly to rage. If they had succeeded, without the Earth blowing up, then untold BILLIONS of lives would have changed. Just the family tree of one person changing that dramatically over 5000 years would be hundreds-of-thousands, if not millions of different decedents. With Millions surviving that might other wise die, Millions of children would be born who otherwise would not have been. And your life and how you live matters, it shapes you for how you will be in future rebirths. But we would remain the same, and suffer from some of the more problematic paradoxes like "your nation no longer exists, where are you going to trade to get our next meal?"

We will never truly know what happened in that other timeline. But it was even worse than anyone could imagine.

This was also one of the deciding factors in sending our first ever temporal research team to this era (19th​-21st​). We wanted to see if there were any clues as to why this happened.

But, at the time, no one knew why. All we knew was that we needed to build a new Temporal-Wolfhelm machine, go back and prevent the agents from letting Hitler drown.

Now, with no Earth, meant no manufacturing bases or mining operation for materials more easily gathered on Earth. It might take centuries before we could get everything we would need. We would have to build asteroid miners and factories. Heck, maybe even a couple orbital platforms and space docks to build and maintain the ships we would need to haul everything.

In order to restore the Earth, the last 10,000 souls would need leaders to keep things focused on salvation. The 4 Commanders accepted the European Commander's resignation and appointed his 4th ​Officer to lead the European survivors (the only one who actually objected to the stupid "kill someone that far in the past" plan). These 5 Commander's then formed and ratified the First Temporal Council.

Their primary objective being restoring the timeline. Their second objective was to ensure our survival. Nothing else would matter.

 

[Gilhelmi]

I have debated putting this in. There are still many uncertainties, but one of the main objectives to our original mission was to answer the question, "Why?".

Why did assassinating the "Anti-Christ" Hitler result in the destruction of Earth?

I alluded to this before but, we did not realize that WW1 and WW2 were separate. We had believed that Hitler was responsible for all of the Wars in the 20th ​Century. We were not even sure as to the events that led up to him ruling Germany.

We now know more of the truth. The start of WW1 had nothing to do with him, but due to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was in economic ruin. He was charismatic and led Germany into a short period of economic success.

People were still upset at the rest of the world for the suffering they had to endure, and willingly supported a stronger military (though it could be debated whether or not they wanted it for defensive purposes). Even though Germany had violated it's treaty numerous times in regards to military buildup, the rest of the world did not enforce the treaty.

But Hitler was crazy. We had always assumed that him being called "crazy" was just because he wanted to take over the world and the atrocities committed. Oh No, he really was even crazier than that. He was truly insane.

He was massively paranoid, especially near the end. Executing many good and qualified leaders and replacing them with idiots.

He ignored sound advice, instead going for high-risk/low-reward strategies that were doomed to fail. Prioritizing revenge strikes instead of more strategic offensive and defensive maneuvers.

He attacked France and quickly turned the Army around to attack Russia. Now fighting a two front war. (Russia hated Germany, but would not intervene due to the high cost of war.)

An example might be the Blitz on England. Sound strategy on paper, damage vital infrastructure and demoralize the citizens. But it was a waste.

While some of the bombings were against military production, far to much was against civilian infrastructure. The people felt like that they had two choices; surrender and die, or fight until the end. It solidified England.

Germany lost far more planes than the English (thanks to radar technology). Despite their loses, they kept throwing more planes and bombers at the English.

The same was true for just about every front.

Even the "Deity" got involved by "obscuring" the minds of commanders. D-Day should never have been that successful. (Did not help that the soldiers were to dependent on receiving orders to do anything) Then the Battle of the Budge, really there was no way that Germany should have lost that fight.

---

Now we know Hitler did not start WW1 and it would have happened regardless. We believe that Germany would have still been in a desperate economic situation, another charismatic person would have risen but would have been much more competent.

Even though Germany had violated it's treaty numerous times in regards to military buildup, the rest of the world did not enforce the treaty. But they did not attack, rather continued to build.

It is now believed that Germany did not attack France by the late 1930's, or if they did, they did not turn around to attack Russia immediately. We believe that Germany focused more R&D into more practical weapons and fewer "Comic book Supervillian" style weapons.

They developed Atomic weapons just before the rest of the world, and built up a stock-pile.

We found surviving evidence on the destroyed Earth led us to believe that its final moments were engulfed by thousands of atomic blasts. Mostly aimed at Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Japan. North and South America were virtually unscathed. However, and we are not sure how, one of the weapons ignited the Atmosphere.

We will never know for certain the exact history of the destroyed Earth. But this is the best conclusion we could come to.

 

[Gilhelmi]

I wanted to give a bit more context to our Culture. So I thought this humorous story about the first, and only, war since the Immortal era began (in full) would help.

Then I realized, that from your perspective this story will probably be quite horrifying. Well, it is only funny in hindsight I guess. Probably won't be funny for a few thousand years.

Also, was way longer than I expected. I had forgotten details until I started writing. (stupid normal brain with no implants or genetic improvements.)

As you know, there are five major Allied regions. For simplicity, I used the continents that each of them were on, but this was not 100% accurate. There are also ten smaller Trading Alliances that occasionally work together, not often though, and are not as wealthy or were not willing to invest in going to space. There standard of living is just as high, but they just focused on other areas of interest.

Each Alliance works slightly differently, but most (not all) operate more like an Idealized version of the USA or maybe the EU. Each individual Nation makes their own goals and agendas, while the organization above them (similar to your federal government) ensures that each nation interacts fairly with other nations in the trading alliance. They also run and maintain the regional infrastructures (rail, ports, etc) and negotiate larger trade deals with other regions. But almost no authority to tell each Nation what they can or can not do.

Like I mentioned before, most people drifted to locations that best fit their personal philosophy and beliefs. The nations then made Alliances with nations that have similar TRADE/ECONOMIC policies, but not necessarily the same political or philosophical beliefs.

It usually works out well in a "you stay out of our yard, we stay out of your yard" kind-of way. So you could have an Ultra-Conservative Nation near an Ultra-Liberal one and never have any trouble because they rarely cross the boarder. There are also strict regulations from the Alliance prohibiting Nations from interfering in elections. Even campaign contributions result in large fines.

Most Nations are a balance of moderate positions though, as everyone still campaigns to attract new citizens. But after this long, most people have settled into their new norm and are not moving.

"International" news works differently as well. Most people only care about their own Nation so 80%+ of news is just that. Then 15% might be important events from other Nations in the Alliance. With the remaining small margin about major stories like natural disasters and world changing technological advances (that the African Alliance probably won't share for another 500 years, haha).

You can read news from other places but...... why would you? The only reason most non-Americans follow American news is because it is the best reality show on television. ( yes, that was a joke. An observational joke that is also true, but still a joke.)

---

With most of the important cultural stuff said lets get to it. I have changed all the names of the Nations involved. Here are the main players.

First Texanada, the Trade Alliance that had to deal with this mess. Not much to say about them, yet.

The first Nation........ Let's call them Albert, the Albertson's of Albert.

Almost everyone is a clone, but there are a few places that hold tight that "Natural Birth" is the best way to go. (the technology for "Soul" capture is still the same. The "Soul" is just implanted a lot earlier.) There is still a few clone bays for emergencies, and they still edit out genetic defects and diseases. Everything else though is all natural.

They are also......... Highly Conservative, with everyone still holding onto "gender roles" of what men and women should do. They believe in many strange things..... Remember, everyone, and I do mean every single person who lives in Albert, all want to live like this. They chose to be Albertson's.

Albertson women are required to give birth a minimum of two times per body-life-cycle to preserve the population rate, and strongly are encourage to give more. There were certain things that were "too dangourous" for women (until they hit menopause) that men were required to do. But they are more like the Women of Sparta from your ancient history books than an oppress people.

Then there was the Nation of Calidonia. They were the exact opposite in almost every way (except trade policy).

Albertson's are a quiet people, they don't care about what other's think about them, while the Calidonian's are loud and obnoxious. For the most part, the regular citizens only annoyed one another.

Remember that I mentioned how one of the very few 'federal' responsibilities of the Trade Alliance was to prevent Nations from interfering with one another's politics. The people of Calidonia were notorious for brazenly violating that rule. While Albert was their favorite target, they enjoyed protesting everyone, anyone, and anything they could, openly defying the Trade Alliance. There were dozens of arrests every year, but they just would not stop. Rumor even had it that 5% of Texanada's budget came from fining the Calidonian's. (Not entirely true, but it was still a very significant sum.)

The final player in all this did not even want to be a player, Zizerland. Yes, that is a play on the name Switzerland because the Zize are neutral in all this. The Zize are not even in the Texanada Alliance, but a nearby one.

Their national boarders are even stranger. Here is a picture of Oman. Not a perfect comparison (because they are not completely surrounded) but you get the idea. Also, they have a pan-handle section that is about 100 miles wide, similar to the Oklahoma pan-handle. They have the misfortune of siting in-between these two nations.

---

Everything was relatively quite for around 200 years prior. The Calidionan's would rage against Albert for "gender discrimination", Albert would file complaints about Calidonia meddling in their affairs, Calidiona would be rebuked (even other Nations who agreed with them thought they were going overboard), rinse and repeat.

But a group calling themselves the "People's Liberation Front" (PLF) decided to take more direct action. They (illegally) bought "Soul Capture Batteries", "Soul detectors/identifiers", a basic Cloning facility, and then started trying to capture the "Souls" of the Albertson women. They were unsuccessful at first.

You see, the "Soul" does not promptly leave the immediate area. It will usually hang around the area for a few weeks to a few years before heading to the "Ethereal Plane". This is a well known phenomenon to anyone in the medical community......... the PLF did not even have a Nurse around.


Also, there just was not all that many "uncontrolled" deaths. Most people die and rebirth on schedule. Accidents happen, but a rare, and usually the person lives long enough to get to the hospital. So their is almost always a Doctor or Nurse nearby, with all the equipment needed to capture the "Soul".

So, several questions about the above three paragraphs. How did the buy this stuff that was so heavily regulated? How did they plan on Cloning a human being without any training? How were they funding this stupid madness?

They bribed a company to give them the equipment for 'educational' purposes.
They believed that what you learned in General Anatomy and Health class was enough. (equivalent to your High School level education)
They told their donors that they were going to use the money to protest against Albert........... They never said how.

When they realized how much more difficult it would be; they formed a new plan, even stupider, plan.
1) Smuggle the "Batteries, Detectors/Identifiers" into Albert. (boarders are not officially as 'open' as the EU, but crime had not been an issue for centuries. There was very little in the way of boarder guards.)
2) Build a bomb with a remote trigger. They did not want to get caught in the explosion and get "Soul Captured" by the local authorities. (Reason: "Gee, I wonder why this Calidonian, who is in the country illegally, was near an explosion that killed a bunch of people. Let's ask them.)
3) Attack a women's luncheon.
4) Capture as many women's "Souls" as they can during the chaos. (Remember, there has not been an attack for almost a millennia at this point. No one knew what to do, the local police were in disarray, it was chaos.)
5) Smugly Smuggle the "Soul Batteries" out.
6) Be worshiped as heroes....... (This did not happen.)

It actually worked, the attack went off without a hitch and the escaped back over into Calidonia, and they got to work cloning, badly.

---

The Nation of Albert was in panic. This had never happened before, and there was no sign of 43 "Souls". They were not in the "Ethereal Plane", not in "Paradise", not even in "Punishment".

They saw this as an attack, but could not figure out who. Could someone have really figured out how to destroy the "Immortal Soul"? And then why attack them?

They immediately contacted Texanada for help, they sent a team immediately to investigate. They tried to keep it quiet, didn't want to cause a panic but......

Within a week, everyone in Albert knew that 43 "Souls" were missing after the explosion. Two weeks, everyone in Texanada knew. They decided to make an announcement and statement to the world to hopefully avoid a worldwide panic and arms build-up. This could lead to a war that might actually kill everyone,

They already knew that normal "Souls" were going through the usual process. People die every day, the "Soul Transfer" process was still working. They asked for help from all Alliances and Nations. For once, every Alliance agreed and wanted to help. We are Immortal, no one was wanting to lose that.

I still like to talk some smack on the Major African Alliance, they are very snooty with a superiority complex to match. But, they were the first to arrive to Albert after the announcement, and they brought everything. Their best scientists, best investigators, best equipment, they even shared everything they thought would be useful. No expense was spared.

Most other Alliances sent support was well, a few experts and a lot of money.

The attack site was still in-tacked, samples were taken but no one knew what to do with the rest. The investigators scanned every last square inch of the site, then studied everything that could possibly be related to "Souls" wandering or getting stuck even.

Video surveillance systems are almost unheard of. Almost no one commits a crime, and when someone does our memory is nearly perfect. In some serious cases, like this, they can hook-up directly to the Brain and get direct access to the memories of a "Soul". This is extremely expensive, and only 'safe-ish' at best. Not dangerous for the "Soul", but can lead to damaging the link between the "Mind" and "Soul". This would cause the person to need to recover in "Paradise" for a few years.

I did mention that no expense was spared, and Africa did bring along their best equipment specifically built just for this. But the process is still a long one, it would take months.

About 10 months after the explosion, they announced that they were unable to identify the attackers, but that the "Souls" were captured in "Batteries". A small relief, but it left so many questions.

---

The rest of the world was on edge for the next several months, waiting for every update. People started to actually freak out a bit.

As the investigation dragged on, updates were becoming fewer and fewer.

Albert suspected Calidonia, but had no proof. Calidonia denied involvement trying to shift the blame elsewhere. Tensions were rising.

---

Back with the PLF. They were hiding in a basement of one of their members.

They really had no idea what they were doing. The first clone didn't have a working liver, and the second was worse. Their genetic editing skills were non-existent.

The third cloned body, somehow, was barely functional. They transferred the first of the kidnapped "Souls" into it.

Confused, the Albertson woman tried to figure out what was going on, and insisted that she get back to her husband.

"It's OK, your in Calidonia. We freed you." The PLF 'medic' said.

Of course, the Calidonian's have a bit of a reputation for their excessive criticisms of everyone. Thinking quickly the Albertson woman pretended to thank them profusely, even though she was in great pain. A 'birth defect' caused the body to develop oversensitive nerve-endings. Every light touch on her body was agony.

She bided her time, and listened to their conspiracy theories. The usual about how Albert prevented women from moving out of the nation by force and how Texanada was aiding them. Both impossible, because the head of Texanada was in fact a woman as well, and half of the representatives were also women. Heck, even Albert had a woman representing them in the Alliance at the time (a post-menopausal woman, because women of child-bearing ability needed to stay close by in-case of an emergency need for children).

They gave her monitored 'Internet' access. She realized that no one would find them anytime soon unless she took drastic action. She was able to find a map online and asked the "therapy" guard where they were. Yes, the guard told her. Why? Because almost no one had kidnapped someone in almost a thousand years, and honestly thought she was converting to the PLF cause.

Eventually, the "therapy" guard was taken off as they thought she was now on their side. They were getting ready to finish clone number 6 and were hopeful (clones 4-10 were all useless, only one clone 'survived').

In the middle of the night, after being gone for just over a year, she escaped. With incredible determination, she managed to make it to the Zizerland boarder and found a small city.

Around 18 months after the first explosion, another explosion happened. This time, it was an explosion of rage and emotion as the Albertson woman gave the investigators her testimony and they documented how bad the cloned body really was.

---

Albert demanded the immediate arrest of the terrorists. Calidonia (whose government did not originally know about what the PLF was doing) refused saying that "it was their duty to liberate people under oppression."

They would later admitted that was just political grandstanding. Trying to get support and sympathy. It failed, badly.

The world had been in a near panic for almost a year. Months more worrying about the hostages, only to find out that it was Calidonia being worse than their usual self's. News stories about Calidonia past grandstanding, fines, and political interference suddenly became world wide news. Something unheard of in my era.

Then, something unbelievable happened. Texanada actually kicked Calidonia out of the Trade Alliance. Something that has never happened before or since in any region of the world.

Was it legal for them to do that? Legal scholars have since said 'technically no', but that a unanimous vote (not counting Calidonia) kind also means 'yes'.

Twenty months after the initial explosion. Calidonia was trying to grandstand, 42 of the women were still missing, and the people of Albert was done being the "quiet old man standing in the corner".

Calidonia was no longer a part of Texanada, Calidonia was stalling for time while the "Daughters of Albert" were in danger. The everyone was losing their patience.

The Prime Minister of Albert, stood on stage next to the brave woman who had escaped captivity two months earlier, and gave this simple speech.

For the sake of our friends and family.
For the sake of our liberty and freedom.
For the sake of our right to live free of fear.
We, the people of the Nation of Albert, do hereby declare war.

(translated of course)

 

[Gilhelmi]

So, in the first part. I went over the set-up to the "war". This is where things get funny.

No one has a "real" military. A few places have a "natural disaster/emergency response" organization similar to the American States National Guards of this time period (no weapons). A couple places have a "Ceremonial" military that purely ceremonial. They do have glorified laser pointers that are for show, but useless for anything else.

Of course there are still security forces for doing actual guarding of government and secure buildings, but they are very lightly armed.

With the police, they have 1 real laser pistol for every 500+ officers. They are usually kept locked up unless needed. Police are more geared towards what you call "white-collar" crime as that is far more serious to the overall economy.

Some places have civilian weapons, but they are more for target practice. (only slightly better than the glorified laser pointers seen above.) The people who hunt generally use bows and arrows (or crossbows).

When Albert called their people to arms, (well, there were no arms to speak of.) 30,000 men and 10,000 women (post-menopausal) stepped forward, armed with bats and sharpened sticks. There were 50 (real) laser pistols, a few hundred "Pointy stick launchers" (bows/crossbows), and a lot of pissed off people.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. (Albert Einstein)

He turned out to be only partly right, it was not a World War at least.

The International community were both routing for Albert, but wanted nothing to do with the war. Some places sent food, medical aid, and transportation vehicles. No one sent weapons.

In terms of "re-spawning", Albertson's people never went much for cloning but focused on "natural births". So people would take around 10 years to come back after death. (around age 8-10 most people were able to fully resettle their "Minds" and "Souls". Childhood had not been a thing since we stopped letting "Souls" naturally drift into fetuses.)

But the Calidonian's were in a bad place. They still had full cloning bays, but now no one was trading with them. They were barely handling normal re-population cloning, they could not handle the thousands of extra people dying in a war.

So Zizerland, being stuck between the two, decided to host a peace conference. They did not want Albertson's "military" going through their nation, and were also quite annoyed by Calidonia's insistence that it was just a "misunderstanding". Zize was also, less than pleased that the PLF had gone thru their territory to get to Albert.

Day 1. Albertson made one demand, they did not care about reparations, they just wanted their citizens back. Calidonia tried playing to argue that the PLF was well meaning but foolish in their forwardness, but they had no way of tracking the PLF..... It was like they were saying "yes this is my employee, but I can not stop them from violating international law."

We have much better technology than people in the 21st ​century. Better ways of tracking heat signature, better ways of tracking financial transactions. Heck, until this point, most disputes between nation's and regional alliances were economic's based. They could easily have tracked them down.

Day 2 of the peace talks went about the same, except Albertson started organizing their militia forces and started loading the hover ships.

Day 3. Calidonia was sure they were bluffing and held out that the PLF could not be found.

Day 4...... Zizerland became extremely frustrated and gave Albertson official permission to fly in their Air space. No land troops, no stopping for supplies.

Day 5; 7:30AM local standard time, the Albert Prime Minister opened the peace talks by saying that Calidonia had until the hover ships reached the Calidonian boarder to return their citizens. That Albertson's investigators had tracked all the PLF members and would begin the raids. Several nations had volunteered "Non-combatant" observers to ensure that only the PLF and/or Calidonia government agencies were targeted. This will occur in 3 hours.

 

[Gilhelmi]

0730 AM

The first "war fleet" in almost 1000 years launches from Albert. Crowds gathered to send the militia off. International media on hand documenting and reporting everything.

They split into 6 groups to target the PLF and Calidonian facilities

Over in Calidonia, popular support for the PLF and the Government has been dwindling. Protesters are demanding that the PLF be arrested and turned over. The Police, armed with a few dozen laser pistols for 7,000 officers begin getting ready to defend the government buildings only.

Unsurprisingly, an odd disease breaks out, I believe you call it the "Blue flu". Half of the Calidonian police caught it. So less than 3,500 police armed mostly with sophisticated tasers and handcuffs.

1030 AM

Touchdown began.

The vast majority of Albertson's Militia were armed with bats, some even had nails put in them. They were there mostly to intimidate and, if needed, gang rush a position if the actual fighters went down (or ran out of ammo/arrows).

This strategy worked amazingly well. They never once were used and the first 3 of the locations surrendered without a fight. Dozens were arrested.

The other 3 locations, the defenders were outnumber 10-to-1. Heavy casualties on both sides but they were quickly overran.

230 PM: 4 hours after initial attack.

Mission success, Albert achieved total decisive victory. All of the "Soul Batteries" were recovered and the doctors immediately released the "Souls".

After being in a "Battery" for so long, a few went into the "Afterlife" for rest. Most though immediately bolted back to Albert where they were "guided" to women who were ready to conceive.

Epilogue:

Criminal tribunals were had but those were rather dull, and predictable. Caledonia eventually recovered, but not before a quarter of their population moved. The new government became much more moderate, and eventually rejoined Texanada. (took well over 100 years.)

Most places don't do "annual" traditions, instead going more of a "every 7-years" celebration. So every 7 years, Albert throws a huge celebration that includes historical reenactments. People hit each other with foam sticks and get drunk.

Our Holo Parks actually rents out the whole theater area for these reenactments. It is kinda fun.

The whole affair is still a considered hilarious.