When All Is Said and Done — Robert Taylor

To say The End comes all of a sudden would be a mistake. The End comes slowly, with one thing and then the next. The End began in the early years of the third millennium. The economic and industrial necessities of Earth's ever-growing human population caused unrestrained environmental damage, leading to a catastrophic greenhouse effect. This irreparable harm to the atmosphere invited the wrath of nature and a perpetual season of super-storms. Over-population and climate change created such financial strain, the collapse of the global economy became inevitable. Capitalism failed and the ensuing societal instability turned to widespread civil unrest. The United States of America dissolved into lawlessness and the victors of their second civil war brought an end to western democracy. To compound the woes of mankind's darkest hour, a virulent outbreak of H5-N1 influenza, known as The Avian Plague, swept through the sub-continent, mutating faster than any cure. From the Iranian Plateau to the Caspian Sea, across the Caucasus Mountains and into the Gulf of Oman, The Plague spared only the few. Within a year, Continental Europe had been invaded by a billion refugees - The Great Exodus of 2070. The Kingdom advocated a siege mentality, closing its borders and defending its coastline. To no avail. And then came the next thing. A biblical sense of apocalypse cast its shadow across the world. The theory of Exogenesis was proven and the undeniable scientific fact was - mankind had once been nothing more than a virus genome itself, brought to the planet on the tail of an asteroid. In light of this, God was forsaken by reason. All efforts to survive pointed to the stars. The Moon provided mankind with the energy source Helium-3 and the power of fusion that enabled terra formers to begin colonising Mars and exploring the far side of the Asteroid Belt. Pioneers headed for the Red Planet and beyond, to Jupiter and the Jovian moons of Io and Europa. In 2073, all the citizens of The Kingdom could do was hope for salvation.