IV - The Age of the Atom - Modern

Peace was now the only path to the stars, because world war was suicide.

Banding together with the Unity had bought the Alliance time to develop a war-defining superweapon, the atom bomb. A device capable of apocalyptic destruction not seen since the old gods. Even the Imperial legions could not stand, and they tossed down their arms, allowing the three powers to come to the bargaining table and form the Allied Nations.

A joyous baby boom set to work replacing the lost millions of our greatest generation, and ordinary people were more than ready for the peace and quiet of a middle class life. Technology once developed for wartime applications came home, offices and colleges replaced factories, and the internet connected the world instantly, shrinking the vast oceans to nothing.

So we sought new oceans. We reached out to the depths of the sea, and launched rockets with hotshot, hardbody nekomata pioneers ever higher. The discovery of the hypergate on the moon, which led to the colonization of our neighbor world, frozen Kigawa, expanded our horizons. Showing us in one stroke that faster than light travel and alien life both existed!

Proof positive of our wildest fantasies, and a primary trigger that saw the gradual reawakening of magic. Wonder itself was returning. We saw a million possible futures reaching out for us, and imagined millions more with vibrant fictional entertainments of past, present, and future, so we missed what was happening on the ground right beneath our feet.

For progress always has its costs, and just as poverty creates wealth, wealth creates poverty. Technology raced forward, but left behind most of the world who couldn’t afford to share in the bounty. No, it's more like the third world was being plundered to keep the first world afloat. Eventually, when all else had been exploited and the oceans rose for them, the great mass of Autumn’s dispossessed flooded that developed world.

Open the gates, or fight to keep them closed? It was past time to choose a side, but the tides of a greater conflict were turning against us. Stepping up to feed, house, and employ everyone in newborn megacities, our rulers swept to power with little resistance.

Megacorporations surpassed, and then became, the Allied Nations of Autumn.