When a space colony of thirteen million, Jensen-Almay, vanished in Venus' orbit, it triggered the greatest war in human history. Every major nation, corporation, and many minor organizations of the Sol System engaged in military and political combat on the planet's surface. The conflict would stretch over seventy-five years until a hotly debated catastrophe sanitized terraformed Venus of all life. The war would be known as Apocalypse Eternal, and remains a watershed of modern human history, even 900 years later at the present.
***
The century leading up the disaster and war showed two lines, one leading to the disaster and the other towards the war. While they would eventually intersect at the same time and place, they began at different origins.
As mankind continued its colonization of the Sol System, the land race demanded resources and new technology. As the nuclear age reached its limit, a pair of promising heirs leap-frogged each other in a battle for reliable, high-speed travel from planet to planet, colony to colony. Gravity reactors utilized fusion and repellant fields to propel massive objects at quarter-light speeds. Dark Energy Theory promised Faster-Than-Lightspeed travel among many other applications. Gravity-tech was already proven, safe, and popular. However, the donkey's carrot of DETH divided the scientific community's efforts as many nations searched for a leg up on their competition.
Politically, the land-race tension was a piano wire ready to snap, featuring mining disputes, border claim conflicts on colony moons, and historical rivalries from a millennium ago on Earth. Corporations had recently become nations of their own, rivaling democracies, dictatorships and kingdoms in landmass and political influence. Even as technology progressed, it was applied to travel and military science as the arms-race elevated over the pursuit of territory. All recognized organizations wanted to protect what they possessed, stopping cold the research of recent medical breakthroughs.
A leader in the DETH research field, the Venusian Orbital colony, Jensen-Almay, attempted the first full experiment of a dark energy reactor on October 8, 3201. Data-streams confirmed the results, that the energy influx overwhelmed the storage equipment. Rather than an explosion, a dimensional rift swallowed the colony and its thirteen million residents. Needless to say, this result was completely unexpected, yet the failure would yield important data for the future of DETH technology, the land-race, and the ultimate destiny of mankind attempting to travel out of the system.
Seconds before the station's ultimate destruction, the research data was automatically transmitted to a Jensen-Almay ground colony on Venus. The following morning, a report of sabotage circulated through the Sol-System, with Jensen-Almay's enemies to blame. All military forces on Aphrodite Terra mobilized to secure the ground colony for scientific gain or political absolution. Within weeks the focus turned back to mining and historical disputes both on-planet and among the parent organizations across the system. Any Venusian nation or organization not directly involved either found a reason to be, or suffered unprovoked attacks.
A full-scale war had begun, and no matter what the conflict, Venus was the battleground.
Continue to Part 2: Apocalypse Eternal
Articles
- Anatali Academy — The largest university on Anatali Station.
- Anatali Corp — The history behind the future's most influential superpower.
- Anatali Station — Humanity's first Exodus-class Star Station.
- Apocalypse Eternal — This popular VR game hosts four million subscribers.
- Dark Energy Theory — The science that altered modern history.
- Gangs of Anatali — Background on Anatali's most infamous vigilantes.
- Mortality Shock — The end of immortality.
- Jensen-Almay Disaster — Part 1, Lead-up to Apocalypse Eternal. *new*
- Apocalypse Eternal (war) — Part 2, Humanity's most deadly war. *new*
- AE Aftermath — Part 3, how the war impacted the future. *new*
Coming Soon
- Dethism, the religion
- Politics in the future
- Science and technology