2100: A Short Story Part 1

2100: A Short Story [Twenty One Hundred]

    Jared lived in crowded conditions, because the Central Government wanted everyone to be readily controlled, somewhat smushed together. This system was meant to leave more of the Earth to its nature and relatively remote productivity. Fish farms, forests with hunting and wildlife, and the native trees, also known as autochthonous pods, to breed and to potentially grow and expand.  Trees and undergrowth were now present in many parts of the world that had never had them before: in the Artic reaches, the Antarctic continent, with its series of underground tunnels and channels, the high mountain ranges and isolated deserts all had new vegetation and animal life. Vast parts of formerly dry regions, like in Mauritania and the Gobi, were thriving with more animals and plants. The temperatures and climates were controlled, or governed, as the Chinese word implied: the Chinese had it under control. Or so they thought.

    Jared was working his way up the secret society of thought. "The Secret Society of Thinking", a better translation. They would refer to it in short code names, because the very knowledge of it threatened it and its members their very existence. The Central Government, Chinese-dominated, ran most things, or so they thought.

    But most people knew that you could not control most of the people most of the time, and the people in their own spare time, which was meant to be observed and "educated" for the sake of the masses, by the CG (Central Government). Jared and his associates, who it was hard to number, and like illegal terrorist cells did not know who else were associated, so that if caught, plausible deniability would save all the others. Which likely was numbered in the millions, almost no one knew how many.

    One would make their way up through the thought lessons step by step, and there was not only way to learn. One could choose the method of learning, the focus, the depth. If Islam appealed, then go with it.

    China first made its move on Taiwan back in the 2030s, and it was not bloody at first. The weaponized bio-agents got out of control, and then the nuclear mishaps between South Africa and Pakistan turned everything on its head. Luckily for most, it was contained to those two countries and Tanzania. And Yemen. And some tiny islands close to the aftermath down range.

    The world moved on, and China infiltrated more of the poorer countries, and some quite naive incels and socialists worldwide. Many of them, even relatively wealthy ones, were so convinced or fooled that the world economies were inherently unfair, that they fell prey to Confucius-Maoist dogma, and they infected their fellow capitalist citizens, and fell prey to the great awakening of the Central Government. The CG killed off those that they could not re-educate, and the U.S. and all sovereign powers collapsed by 2075. Many never gave up, but many could not last.

    By 2100, as Jared was now 35, so many could not remember times of freedom, or fighting for freedom other than surreptitious classes on religion and other historical novelties.

    Revolutions of yore. Castro was highlighted, Washington was pilloried.

    The new math of CG. Chinese (Mandarin) was compelled to learn upon all, but pockets still kept their old languages, especially the romance languages. 

    To be continued.