Scorched Earth | Page 5

that they were divinely chosen to be "superior and perfect," and so they enslaved
and mistreated those who happened to trespass on their city boundaries. For mating, only
the true hermaphrodites were allowed to propagate. After several generations of regulated
breeding, a pure-bred race of hermaphrodites was formed.
There was another similar band of humans in the eastern part of the northern Continent.
They called themselves the Palatkans. Their appearance was much like that of lepers.
They had segregated themselves from the main stream years before the great cataclysm.
They congregated in long strips of semi-fertile land on the floor of lengthy canyons.
Following several generations of their offspring, they bore a race of ugly and
canker-covered beings that developed a culture of cannibalism.
They believed that all the other humans were left on Earth for them to sacrifice to their
gods, then to feast. They were aware of a life force that permeated everything and that
was significantly concentrated within the flesh of humans.
Many such bands of human beings were alive, over the entire face of the Earth. Most of
these peoples contained and confined themselves within special areas of land and rarely
ventured out.
Six centuries passed since the cataclysm.
Lack of productivity and raw stock caused the remaining human people to further mutate
into odd looking things. Civilisation had also regressed into a primitive form. Much of
the Earth reverted into the appearance of the primitive and the primordial, awaiting the
moment to be reborn.
The Earth was not alone in its anxiety for rebirth. There were nearly one quarter of a
million true humans that waited, also, to be reborn craving to, once more, walk the
mother Earth's surface, and to begin life anew. In six hundred years of waiting, the
population of the Omega SubGround Installations grew. To extend the food and water
rations, the major part of the personnel was placed in cryogenic suspension vaults upon
attaining the age of thirty-five.
Most, of age, personnel stayed to be suspended in animation but some were granted the
permission to leave the cities and try to reestablish life wherever they could find
hospitable environments. Contact was not kept with those who had left. Only on hearsay
did anyone know how these people fared.
Many headed towards the eastern shoes where they successfully took up oceanic
livelihoods, and so began the city, later to be called, Besten. Others made their way to the
mountains and met up with other bands of self-exiled people. They took to herding goats,
and sheep; and whatever other animals that were left alive, they could catch to
domesticate.
The people took to catching and taming the Continent's greatest animal mutations:
gigantic eagles that were as high as trees. These people learned to fly them and use them
as beasts of burden. These agrarian peoples were called the Krolalins and the Virunese.

The time had come, in the O.S.G.I's, where all those people in cryogenics were awakened.
They organized into groups of thousands then left to set up individual and distinct
villages, towns and cities.
The Earth was becoming clean again. Air and water sparkled with freshness and the
entire world returned to green.
The only people to stay in the O.S.G.I's were the scientists, carrying on with their work
(in every field), as it was done in the Twentieth Century. With those that left and built
cities, these cities adapted to a simpler way of life and craved not to progress much in
their technology. They did not crave to progress very much in their technology. They did
not want the responsibilities that went with having technology. They found that they were
just as happy without it, and their attitudes were civilised enough to accept and give their
blessings to those still utilising the ancient ways. By 2500 C.E., many of the O.S.G.I's
were back to a comfortable size of around four hundred people. Some O.S.G.I's lost
people so readily and quickly, that a few had become abandoned and forgotten.
All those who left the cities tried to track down some of their old comrades, heading in
the direction of newly established settlements and subsequently joining with some of
them.
The surface cities began to grow and the O.S.G.I's were beginning to be emptied, with
only a few hundred older people remaining in some of them.
In those Omega cities, that were still densely populated, power struggles often took place.
Some of these people who became the leaders, by force or otherwise, set up a form if
thought that denied the life and events of the Twentieth Century. Some even went as far
as stating that the Twentieth Century never happened, and so proclaimed themselves as
Kings, Queens and other types of monarchials because they were descended from the
intellectuals who "made