The Last Good Thing - Universe Pilot
#2 of The Last Good Thing
Disclaimer: This story, the characters within it, the fictional names and places, the technologies, etc; the Universe in which this story is written is my own creation. In instances of ambiguity regarding the fictional status of something is concerned, work it out for yourself; if it is 100% (as defined as: Either entirely based in fiction or based on a theory or similar such production that is only hypothetical and so forth) made up then it is mine and you cannot touch it without asking me first and agreeing to my terms; if it is based in reality (as defined as: country names, historical events, objects and etc which currently exist or will do so in the next five to ten years and so forth) then my use of it in no way implies, claims or states (or is intended to do as such) ownership of such. When necessary or deemed appropriate, this author will reference/quote/provide legitimate reference to source material in the event of the use of something that is not of everyday use in writing (for example: a country name or historical event reference wont be referenced/quoted/etc unless a specific fact from a specific text or essay etc is used while statistics that are not made up or the guesstimation of this author, and other such things will be referenced according to their exact nature.
Many things from the contemporary day might/can/will be used as a creative medium, and as a creative medium only.
In short, use your brains and if you are not sure or want to point something out to this author, make contact and the issue will be resolved.
References: N/A
Accreditations: N/A (Authors Note: Cf. L.G.T - Tools of the Changers: Quenching the Blade)
Universe: The Last Good Thing
Story: N/A
History does not record all facts. It records those most tangible of events that change the world, but the slightest changes in the raw material that makes up such events before they happen go unnoticed. Such was the case when the human race reached its maximum potential, and was found wanting.
Nearly one hundred and seventy years after the advent of mankind in the late 21st century, human development began to falter. Fewer and fewer globally recognized advances in human culture, science, thinking, technology, medicine, every field in which mankind had advanced since the dawn of the Victorian Age. In the course of those hundred and seventy years, the human limit was reached and the greatest resource mankind possessed ran out. Not oil, as many had thought it would be, but human spirit and imagination. The vision that had been the driving force for the entirety of human history died.
What history did record was the moment when humanity became aware of their peril, their demise. It came in the form of a plague that spread with the ease and virulence of the common cold, and acted as a cancer on the genetic level. At the time of the outbreak the total population of earth had risen to over 14 billion. By the time a solution had been found, enacted and considered to be viable over eight billion had died. Mass graves became insufficient as entire cities that had once been teeming with life, became colossal mausoleums, mines that had long since been emptied of their minerals became national pits into which the dead were interred and forgotten.
It took almost twenty years for a viable solution to be theorized and another 12 months for it to be realized on a global scale. The disorganized efforts of national research teams had yielded promising data, but the scale of plague proved to be too much for a single nation or research facility. With the total human population at eleven and a half billion, the United Nations dissolved itself and established in its place the Nascent Threshold. The Threshold's single directive was to harness all that humanity had left to offer and marshal it in order to save whatever of mankind it could.
The result of this final spark of human spirit was The Last Good Thing. Between the rapid on set of the plague, its virulence and the urgency with which a countermeasure was called for, the smallest of details had managed to slip past the best minds of the time. Only humans were affected by the genetic cancer; somehow animals, insects, all other forms of life remained unaffected while humanity slowly met its end. With the discovery of a previously ignored combination of genes absent in humans, but present in virtually every other form of animal life, the Nascent Threshold had found the hope that humanity so desperately needed. Though the careful synthesis of the gene cluster, a radical new form of global gene therapy was developed; a concoction of bio-chemical solutions that could be infected with a virus that bore the genetic package. The final shape of The Last Good Thing, an aerosolized genetic mutation designed to bring the Animal Kingdom and Homo sapiens together.
And so it came to pass that on the Last Day of Miracles, with nine billion people awaiting the return of hope, the Nascent Threshold activated The Last Good Thing. For the next twenty-four hours, in dozens upon dozens of carefully selected locations, the potent mixture was slowly dispersed into the air, mixing with the atmosphere and beginning its work. The following decade saw the gradual decline in the dead and dying until, with the birth of a single baby, it was determined that The Last Good Thing had succeeded. With the birth of that baby, the human population rose for the first time since the outbreak of the plague.
Over the course of the next century mankind slowly rebuilt and learned to adapt to the side effects of the Last Good Thing. Internal and external traits began to manifest themselves in each generation of children. Having had no way to control the exact nature of the genetic mutations within children born after the Last Day of Miracles, samples had been taken from animals indigenous to each region, as determined by the maximum effective range of each vessel of the Last Good Thing. In regions where the number of indigenous animals was too widely varied over the maximum affected area, the total effective range was scaled back. The end result being that while the exact characteristics that manifested could not be determined, controlled or predicted, they would be appropriate to the region in which the child's parents came from.
What had not been foreseen however, were the effects that the Last Good Thing would have upon the environment, the global ecology of the Earth and the inexplicable new genes slowly being discovered within the helixes of each new generation. But despite these unforeseeable side effects, the fact remained that in its darkest hour Humanity had managed to change the course of its own fate by redefining what it meant to Human.