Wars By Alexander Desmarais

Chapter 1

Everything changed.

War in history had always been an infrequent thing among men. A ridged, machine like entity. Death only numbers upon papers. Where bravery is rewarded with unmarked graves, broken lives and lost souls. War comes and goes, appearing from simple squabble to complex conflicts. This is no longer the case.

The world is different now, from how it was. Many things have changed. Cities have grown into entire countries, populations have reached a mass thought impossible by limited space and resources, forests have turned to deserts, species have dissipated, or gone entirely extinct, and there is no space un-touched by human foot. Our largest city, Vibhav, stands amassing more than half of the North American continent, on the western side. Population, 2.98 billion people of mixed races, define entire districts.

What I didn't tell you is that so much has changed for the better. Every road, sidewalk, window, rooftop, boat, plane, vehicle, door, deck and sign post, is a high efficiency solar panel. Fossil fuels no longer exist. There is no more oil fields, no fracking or burning. Spider silk plastics have replaced almost every manufactured consumer solid on earth. The air is clean and clear.

After the great world war, the continent known as Canadad was abandon, only small villages of people in the north remained. And as time passed, the vast wilderness reclaimed its land mass, with a little help of course. Major cities fell to the ground, worn away by rain and sun. Roads turned to gravel, then sand, and finally soil. Time leaves no traces.

Many long dry deserts flooded and seeds dormant for generations bloomed. Trees grew, fields spread, and the Nevada plains were born. Most people had migrated to the southern areas of North America, causing the great merge of Mexico’s and USOA and the depopulation of the eastern world. North in Canadad the climate was too cold for many, to wild: people lacked the skills to be in the wilderness. In fact most people preferred to stay away from it, and to leave it be. Stories of wild monsters circulated. Flesh eating deer, six legged bears, and other ridiculous assortments of creatures that only came of the imagination.

Our city is crowded, streets packed, Rail trains flying at breakneck speed on bridges overhead, looping around buildings, noiselessly. It is not an unfriendly place, people are always smiling, drinking Coffee, reading, smoking cigars. A stranger in the area could ask the most unfriendly looking character, and get a gruff smile, and a polite set of directions. People were docile.

The one thing that hasn't changed much is the drinking. The liquor business is always booming. Bars, night clubs, restaurants, libraries, and public school.

School is where I am now, wandering the endless hall of doors, leading into endless halls of doors, each holding an endless hall of doors, which then finally lead into the twenty-five thousand plus classrooms, the school is the pride of Vibhav, being the largest building ever constructed. It covers a vast three thousand square kilometers and over 30 stories in height. Each wing of the school is designated to a subject of field of study, and each section of each wing is designated to an age group.

We are not marked by grades, we are not expected to complete a set curriculum, other than in the first 5 years. We study what we are good at, we fall into our own social classes, and move on. No person is better or worse than any other person, and is treated suchlike. There is only one teacher for each age group in each subject, who is broadcast live into each classroom via the third dimensional projector. Over one million students come through this school every 10 years.

I live on the 23 floor. It’s a fairly quiet floor. I was mixed in with groups of older teenagers, in the science dorm. Most were studying to become doctors, psychologist, GP's, Ecologist, spider silk manufacturing, and many other fields. I had always been kind of a loner, as they coined it, so I enjoyed the quiet serious nature of the 23 floor science wing.

I was taking a few low volume courses, like the study of Ecosystems, botany and history, along with a whole mess of language classes. The number of students in these classes was lower, only about four thousand each, and so my social circle was nicely limited. Frankly, I was bored. I had always been bored with school. And the only itch for excitement I could scratch was the free running club. Most people looked at us like we were stupid, but my tiny group of six friends, running, jumping, hopping, diving and climbing every square inch of the city, was more than I needed. We even sopped taking the cellulite pills that keep most of the population lean and trim without exercise.

My group was fit. We could run until our feet fell off. Skylark even scaled the Trent building. One-hundred and thirty-six story skyscraper. I guess that's why he called himself Skylark. Jennith Coaxed us all to jump a forty meter drop from one building’s roof top to the other. It was hectic.

Nobody knew what each other looked like either, as we had all dawned the clubs black pants, tank tops and tinted World war one gas mask replicas. We never used our real names, for fear of being caught, and questioned about other group members. Anonymity seemed pretty important to Skylark.

He was kind of like a leader. He could climb anything. He taught us how to scale the many floors of parking garages. We learned how to slide down metal railings on our feet. We even learned how to rope scale apartment balconies. I looked forward to our bi-monthly meetings. It was really all I had, and tonight was the night we were hitting floor 85 of the Co-jun district.

Did I also mention we are robbers? Yea, there’s that too.

Stay tuned for chapter 2;

Falling