* Half & Half *

It Was Chinese New Year, 2024, when The Waning began. No one noticed at first, everything seemed normal, except the incidence of wild animal attacks rapidly rose to levels that would have been considered madness before the beginning of the Waning. However, as the months went on, everyone started to notice something: no one was getting pregnant.

Something else changed too, crops planted by humans or any machine would not grow. Our stored food lasted for a month of vicious rationing, but all too soon rioting and robbery took hold as hunger made tempers flare. By the end of the year the whole world was engulfed in Somalia level civil war, and civilization effectively collapsed.

Twenty One Years later in a high tech survivor's compound in northern Australia the answer was found: Gaia, the spirit of the living Earth, had awoken in terrible pain from all the harm we were doing her, and with the glacially slow thought process that typifies a sapient PLANET decided the best way to deal with our bullshit was to revoke all her blessings from us: we could neither sire nor bear children, we could not make the earth bring forth it's bounty, and all the animals which had not been warped by our hand till they were tied to our dominance instead of hers had declared war.

Yet, there was HOPE, blessings so revoked could in theory be given again, but more importantly, part of making this discovery was an equally important one: the McGovern-Vader Gate, which opened a two way door between parallel universes.

These findings were publicized over what was left of the internet, and satellite networks, along with the schematics for the gates, Everyone was recommended to leave the earth behind, and wander among alternate universes: our last act as a species being to warn any other worlds where we found intelligent life of what we had done and the consequences.

But that wasn't what happened.

As the few beleaguered survivors left the earth behind they discovered other habitable planets, and some of them, wistfully hopeful, planted gardens. Gardens which grew...

Not too long later they encountered natives, and the younger humans, (those born just after the start of The Waning,) who had been raised on a culture of "fuck all you want, who cares, we're probably going to starve to eventually anyway", seduced a few of the locals, (because, well, elves and orcs are hot...) and were astounded to discover they were not as infertile as they had thought: provided one partner was not HUMAN...

Another 30 years passed, it was now 2075 AD on Imperial Terra Prime. The Earth has been recolonized by the descendants of the 90-some Million survivors of The Waning, but the culture there has changed. Farmland has been allowed to revert to scrub, and thence to young forest, massive efforts to cool the world from the effects of the greenhouse gasses released during the "Dark Age of Technology" being engaged in by every member state of the United Terran Empire. Frozen worlds where the ice age never ended are being swapped liquid water for enough blocks of ice to rebuild the Antarctic ice shelf. The new forests are being carefully encouraged to absorb as much carbon as they possibly can. Magnetic scooping sieves are being used to eliminate the chlorofluorocarbons from the upper atmosphere. The Stored oil has been spread over the desserts to trap water in the soil and start building up the biosphere again.

Meanwhile, on the other worlds we have discovered, Imperial Terra has come to dominate international discourse. The half-breed sons and daughters of the human race represent Terra's interests and frequently become mighty heroes, one of which is ME...

Who Am I?

Good Question...