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[Yuli Ban]

Warning: Mother Meki inbound.

 

I've well fleshed out the world of the story, which is why I've been writing stuff like Cosmic Paternity recently. So here's the gist: remember how, back in 2013 and 2014 Mother Meki was basically a story about a poor little rich girl getting screwed by Marxists? Yeah, it's not really anything that black-and-red anymore. It still has many elements of that, but Nineteen Eighty-Four beckoned, as did A Clockwork Orange. I had a lot, lot, lot more I wanted to say, and the original intent left me long ago. So yeah, there is still some bourgeoisie-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it, and most of 'em deserve it, but that's not the basis of the story anymore. Mother Meki 1 and 2 have gotten a lot darker and more twisted, which contrasts with where Mother Meki 3 and 4 go, which is a blatantly utopian direction.

 

So! What's this thread about? Basically the bigger story behind Mother Meki. How good intentions sent the world to hell.

 

August 2098, Meki kills her father and assumes all power of EMI Corporation, and immediately hands it over to the working class. Then she undermines the current Eurasian elite and hands all wealth over to the Alisis AI group and various revolutionary groups, and surrenders. I find it kinda "my suspension of disbelief is wearing thin" because she's only 16 at this time, but hey, she's a High Human, so I'm just really zen about it.

 

A provisional government forms in the ashes of the European corporation-state order, and rules until Valentine's Day 2101. Then, the anarcho-socialist group, Maquis Rouge, stages a coup in Paris and takes control of Europe. Now Meki had supported the Maquis Rouge ever since 2094, in secret of course. They were the largest insurgency and they felt the revolution was in the beginning stages of being betrayed due to the nature of the provisional government.

 

Here's the thing: the provisional government was actually more extremist than the Maquis Rouge. There's this artificial island in the English Channel known as 'Medine', created about 70 years prior to house Muslim refugees. It's been abandoned from the start. So the provisional government decided to round up all the bourgeois they could find in Europe and put them on this island. It was sort of an unpopular move since it was seen as putting all the reactionaries in one spot (and this suspicion would prove correct during the Sabor Uprising of Christmas 2100). The Maquis Rouge opposed such a move because they felt it would: concentrate all the reactionaries; drum up sympathy for the bourgeoisie; lead to human rights violations against the bourgeoisie. Yet when they gained power, they did nothing to reverse this, and in fact accelerated it.

 

Now the Maquis Rouge are what you'd call 'left libertarians.' They were idealists who thought that, if they simply handed off power to the working class, they could avoid all the mistakes previous socialist regimes throughout history have made, which is to say excessive authoritarianism. And this is part of the reason why they didn't undo Medine— with the reactionaries removed from their property, it would be much easier to collectivize. One man, Leon Viyeta, is dissatisfied with all this, however, and believes that a vanguard party must take charge and oversee a police state in order for any real change to occur.

 

On Meki: they actually wanted to offer Meki sanctuary in exile elsewhere, but felt it was going to be for the best if she remained in Medine, as it was possible people would think she bought off the government to get off scot-free and just come after her. So she stays in Medine.

 

(ADD Moment: Meki in Medine... surely my subconscious was aware of all this? Why didn't I just call her 'Mecci' or 'Meka'?)

 

The Maquis Rouge begin losing control of the situation because some remain idealists and others begin getting power hungry, and Europe wasn't quite ready for such a shock revolution. Many of the Maquis Rouge's critics were screaming that attempting to set up a fair, humane, democratic system so soon after such a sweeping revolution wasn't necessarily the best idea. People are scared. People want order. The socialist parties of Europe aren't giving them that order, and it frankly sounds as if the socialist parties of Europe are out of touch with what their beloved proletariat wants. If they don't correct themselves, they're going to be sorry.

 

In 2103, an 8 kiloton nuclear bomb goes off in western Medine, and no one— not even AI— knows who got it there. This triggers an internal coup in the administration of the island, and a man known as 'the Nachalnik' grabs hold of power. He uses it to enforce a totalitarian sort of regime, cutting the island off from the rest of the world. He uses the LoveNet neural security system to establish a panopticon, enforces martial law anyway, and enacts a Juche-esque policy that means that the islands one collective farm is now the sole source of food for the 1.5 million inhabitants. An extreme famine begins, and lasts from January 2104 to 2106. The elite of Medine have fabricators, so they don't have to worry about all this. A thick cloud of smog envelops the island and is held in place by drones. All information becomes totally controlled by the elite party of Medine. The famine is at its worst in late 2104 because too many people were still alive. After the mass die-offs over the winter, the famine became that much more tolerable.

 

Then it turns out that Leon Viyeta had actually obtained power in late 2103, and that he's the Nachalnik.

 

Viyeta had a coup in December 2103 that got rid of the ineffective Maquis Rouge group and established his National Bolshevik Party as the ruling party of all European states now under red control. 

On March 23rd, 2103, Viyeta declared Paris as the capital of what he claimed was now 'Greater Eurasia.' Eurasia was the name for the new superstate that he had established, and included all of Europe, Russia, the -Stans, and Mongolia. A year later, he was finally able to bring this vision to light.

Immediately, Viyeta threw Greater Eurasia's resources into the military and invaded Russia. Not Russia as in 'Russia' Russia, but far Eastern Russia. You see, European Russia was already under National Bolshevik control following 2101. They had initially had a Marxist-Leninist government that was established in 2099, but the National Bolsheviks undermined it from day one until they had achieved absolute power. Europe and Russia merged to truly form Eurasia, and then the true war began with East Asia. Viyeta didn't hesitate to use nuclear weaponry.

 

What was going on in Medine? From the previous population high of 1.5 million, Medine was now inhabited by 192,000 burzhui (still including Meki, but no longer her sister, Annelise, who she was forced to shoot). In order to clean out Medine of the rest of the bourgeoisie, the Nazbols employed a 'human wave' tactic, drafting each burzhui into the new world war and shipping them off to the Eastern front. They weren't given weapons, and were instead told to charge the enemy, where they'd inevitably be mowed down. 

5 

Meki was also drafted, and was sent to the Eastern front, but she got sent to the Siberian DURK death camp instead. And of course, anyone following Mother Meki over the past 3 years knows what happens next.... kill Meki, repeat several thousand times. And this is only partially done by the Nazbols. It's actually orchestrated by Meki's own mother, out of revenge for destroying the old order.

 

This was December 2106. Meki didn't know it was December 2106 because she hadn't seen a clock or calendar in about 3 years, so she wasn't quite sure what month or year it was.

It was around this time she came across a human factory farm filled with Jews. As it was, her own father had ordered the creation of these farms, but the old bourgeoisie never got the chance to use them because she overthrew them. Then it was used against them, and now they're all gone, and it's being used on new enemies. 'It' implying there's only one.

 

After exterminating the bourgeoisie, Viyeta expanded the definition of 'burzhui' from 2105 to 2109 until it eventually came to mean potentially anyone. This was used to justify extermination of anyone he saw fit.

 

And that included everyone.

 

Viyeta was actually part of a new branch of nihilists who believed that humans should actively seek extinction. He didn't totally believe in this because he genuinely wanted more power, but he was willing to engage in human endangerment for the sake of power. Just like with the old bourgeoisie, Viyeta agreed that 'one billion is enough.' What to do with the excess 10 billion? Mass liquidation.

 

After the bourgeoisie, he turned his guns on the Jews. Europe's population included 5 million Jews, the largest outside of Israel. His plan was to eradicate them both.

 

So he did.

 

All it took was the opening of several death camps throughout central Europe and a few megatons on Israel. 

 

This brought him to war with Dominionist America. About that— the United States of America had been in decline for some time, all up until the rise of Dominionists in the 2080s and 2090s, who sought to Make America Holy Again and establish a totalitarian theocracy dedicated to the End Times. Their only foothold in Europe was the English Isles, sans Ireland, where American presence was already heavy in order to combat Greater Eurasia. 

The Dominionists had been warring against 'Catholic' South America for some time, and the latest batch of theocrats were so far gone that they openly declared total war on South America just to facilitate the End of Days. They had been uneasy allies with Eurasia for several years, as both were clearly going to go to war at some point. They had signed a Pact of Non-Aggression, but it might as well have been toilet paper. When Eurasia attacked Israel, America declared war on Eurasia. Eurasia bargained for an armistice with East Asia, and it was had when America attacked China following China's declaration that America was part of an 'Axis of Evil.' After all, rumors were that the Americans were engaging in extreme ethnic cleansing against the Catholics. 

East Asia and Eurasia held America back, and 2110 rolled around. Global wealth had dropped to 2020 levels, and many AI were threatening to leave the planet if World War 3 escalated any further. It had already seen genocide, nuclear war, and human wave slaughters. What else was going to happen?

 

2111, Eurasia clamped down with extreme brutality. What happened in Medine wound up happening throughout the Red Empire, with LoveNet used to chain people's minds to the State and the robot military police capable of being anywhere at any time. Through use of nanotechnology, even clouds and thin air spied on people. People were arrested for crimes that AI said they wouldn't commit for another hundred years. 

 

And then the chimneys started to belch black smoke and an acrid odor.

 

 

 

2113. The war was going badly for America, and they were on the verge of their final defeat. The theocrats begged God to rapture them away, but the rapture was not coming. East Asian machine soldiers swept across the nation, racing to keep Eurasia away more than anything. This futuristic war, filled with all sorts of fascinating war machines, where machines did most of the fighting, had taken more lives than any other war in human history— and it was still not yet finished or climaxed!

 

As nukes randomly fell across the globe throughout these years, a wave of nuclear war struck Eurasia in 2114. They were from supposedly friendly East Asia. This began the East Asian's Overland Tsunami, the largest invasion force in history. Some 12 million soldiers rushed through Eurasia, decimating Eurasian forces wherever they went. 

Eurasia was able to hold back this rush until 2115. Then, Leon Viyeta was assassinated, and the Nazbol inner circle collapsed in on itself trying to fill the void. A combination of AI and East Asian militaries rushed to Paris. The brainwashed and malnourished population fought back, with some whole towns giving their lives to the National Bolshevik cause, to Eurasia.

 

On September 7th, 2115, Paris fell. Eurasia had fallen, but it was not split up.

 

On December 21st, 2115, America fell. The world's two totalitarian super states had been defeated.

 

The victor was the Vyrdist, democratic, and wealthy East Asia. In the end, there wasn't much doubt that they would win. They held the largest population, the most advanced technologies, and the biggest economies in the world several times over. East Asia was the odd man out in this age of neo-totalitarianism, staying true to social democracy and economic liberty. 

 

And they weren't going to hold a grudge. Even though the West lost its collective mind, we had to move past old tribal notions of revenge. China, Korea, and Persia led the way with the economic revival of Europe and America following World War 3. They installed pro-Vyrdist governments that espoused a new era of economic progress and freedom that would undo the previous 'Black Decade' of regression and terror.

 

 

From 2098 to 2115, some 689 million people lost their lives. 102 million were intentionally holocausted by their superstates. 

 

What happened to Meki? She resurfaced in Moscow in 2114 and was moved to Paris in 2115, where she lived, homeless, for several years, severely traumatized by what happened in DURK and initially severely depressed by the state of world affairs. She feels personally guilty, as if she caused it all. But she doesn't feel guilty for handing power over to the workers. That was something she believed she had to do.

 

Still... by that logic, that means the working class fucked up, and hard. Still, better that they fucked up of their own accord, and not because some elite led them into a fucked up world against their will.

 

AI centered in Vern began aiding Europe's rebuilding, but they were highly disappointed in humanity. How sad it is! To reach the Singularity and then very nearly self-destruct. How sad it is, how sad it really is.

 

All estimates say human civilization has been set back 50 years. We were on the verge of an extreme economic boom, one wrought by mining in deep earth and deep space. It could've brought our wealth up into the decillion range. Instead, we're back to mid 21st century levels and contracting still.

 

World War 3 also kickstarted the greatest transfer of wealth in history, so for those saying that at least all that wealth didn't end up in the hands of a rich elite few... now all that wealth will end up in the hands of artificial intelligences. 

In 2098, a small few controlled 70% of Earth's wealth, the highest level of income inequality in nearly a century. By 2108, this had dropped but only because of all the chaos involving Eurasia and America. If these two totalitarian regimes survived another decade, income inequality would have returned to its old levels.

 

In 2128, however, a small few do control most of the wealth once more. It just happens that these few are not human. If that excuses anything.

 

It wouldn't be until the late 2130s when we began our deep earth/space mining operations in earnest, and not until the 2150s that the economic boom would be felt. Fortunately, because East Asia turned the world Vyrdist, the wealth is indeed much more evenly distributed. And these rich few aren't human, by the way, so they're much more lenient with sharing. 

 

Meki was terribly sad in 2106 and 2114 when she discovered how far gone Earth's civilization was. Her biggest fear was that we'd fail, and it seemed as if she had caused it... 

But her mood lifted in the 2120s as the global economy recovered.

 

2116 through 2120 are considered lost years since nothing really happened during this time, and economic growth remained stagnant. Through early doric material, we were able to easily rebuild many war torn areas, but it went slower than expected. Also, people just weren't engaging in much economic activity during these years. The past two decades had effectively traumatized the planet. Three decades if you wish to throw in the extreme inequality of the '90s. 

 

It's also noted that the Maquis Rouge were Luddites who promoted hands-on work, and the Nazbols were openly declaring themselves to be primtivists who vowed to fight the 'Transhumanist Menace.' This collective Luddite Generation became demonized, and the new cultural expression of the late 2110s and 2120s was one of pro-technology movements. People who wanted to use technology, ultra technology, to improve our world and our fellow man rather than using it to murder and rape each other.

 

That's how it goes, huh?

 

Pre-Industrial Wars kill thousands. Industrial Wars kill millions. Singularity Wars kill billions. This Singularity War didn't kill a billion, but it might as well have.

 

It's also noted how similar the Eurasian regime was to the fictional totalitarians of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. After all, they created a superstate known as 'Eurasia' whose dominant ideology was 'National Bolshevism', which is very close to 'Neo-Bolshevism.' They engage in extreme surveillance, endless war, and thought control. They were always at war with East Asia (you've got to be kidding me), until they were always at war with America. 

 

It's all past us now. All left to do but cry and rebuild.

 

We're lucky we had a non-totalitarian superstate to bail us out. If East Asia were totalitarian as well, with some ideology known as 'Obliteration of the Individual', we'd have been screwed. But they weren't, and that was the important thing. 

 

Meki also winds up making some friends after the war. Friends that include, almost exclusively, anarchists and Marxists. People who technically should be her enemies, but are now her closest friends. In the end, her wish of a classless society did come true in that regard. Not that it helped her, as the Vult AI group silently declares her responsible for all this mayhem and represses her all the way up until 2145, but it's a sign we're getting better.

[Yuli Ban]

Nazbols in 2111. I love 2111, it's the year before 2112. Great, great album. Classic.

And in 2111, the Nazbols have established *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. Meki was vapourized as an unperson, remember? When the East Asians liberated Eurasia, they discovered this massive operation of vapourization. Some people were still in the middle of being vapourized. Yoko Miyakuro was checking out records and noticed that she couldn't find Meki. She looked into all Eurasian records, even genealogy records, and there's nothing. 

Ludovic is mentioned. He was used for propaganda purposes. But he is described as having only three children— his first wave: Melissa, Tyr, and Sebastian. Melissa is still alive, and Tyr and Sebastian were considered lesser revolutionary heroes. But the second wave— Darius, Annelise, and Mackenzie— cannot be found at all. Actually, in Darius's case, he *is* mentioned a few times. The government was freaking out that they couldn't find him. They went ahead with vapourizing him, but it was a very shaky and incomplete vapourization because he could reappear at any moment, possibly even in another country. "But wasn't he vapourized?" Such an event could precipitate some revolt. Not much, but a noticeable amount.

But Annie and Meki? Nothing. They've been erased from history. To Eurasians, they never existed. Anyone who claims to remember them are usually vapourized themselves. Sometimes, the Nazbols are merciful and merely "humiliate" them into admitting— and truly believing— they remember wrong.

 

In 2115, Meki was actually in liberated Moscow, resting with Terios and other artilects after her 8 year hell in the DURK death camp, after being loopkilled thousands of times. 

Of course, Annie had been executed as an enemy of the People almost a decade prior, in 2106. The Nazbols made Meki shoot her. Annie had already been condemned in 2102 by the previous socialist government, but not to be executed. Merely undergo 'personality correction.' The Nazbols simply took all the 'condemned reactionaries' the Maquis Rouge identified and had them killed in 2105 and 2106. Then, starting in 2107, they began the process of vapourization. One of the first they started with was Annie. When it proved successful, they kept going at it. Meki was vapourized some time in 2109. Unlike Darius— who they could not find— they knew where Meki was and knew what was happening to her.

 

By 2111, Meki had been completely vapourized. Literally anything that references Meki or acknowledges she exists or could exist has been destroyed or altered. 

Of course, there's a little problem here: they only vapourized her from EURASIAN records. They had no jurisdiction in America or East Asia, so they still knew she existed. However, Meki was relatively unknown in the East and almost completely unknown in America, so it barely mattered. Meki was called a 'shadow empress' because Ludovic hid her existence for so long and downplayed her existence when she was brought out in public. Most people *in France* didn't know she was alive as late as 2091. So vapourizing Meki wasn't very difficult to begin with.

 

Annie, on the other hand, was a royal celebrity who loved being in the spotlight and made sure the world knew her name. That they were able to successfully vapourize her is what convinced the Nazbols that vapourization could work on a large scale.

 

2098: 92% of European people knew who Annie was.

2104: 97% of European people knew who Annie was, this uptick thanks to relentless anti-reactionary rhetoric. 

2106: 99% of European people knew who Annie was, this uptick thanks to the propaganda declaring that the 'royal bourgeois tyrant' had been executed by her 'mouse of a sister'.

2111: 0.002% of European people knew who Annie was. Almost all of these people being part of the Nazbol elite. LoveNet's such a beautiful thing, idn't it?

 

It was through LoveNet that vapourization was even anywhere near as effective as it was. Controlling the masses' minds works with propaganda, but cutting out all the middlemen and controlling the masses' brains' very neurons is infinitely more effective.

 

2113, the Nazbols purged their inner elite, effectively bringing the number of people who remember Annie down to its absolute lowest number— just one person. Leon Viyeta himself.

Of course, the Nazbols prolly shouldn't have purged themselves like that, but hey. Totalitarians— whatcha gonna do. 

 

So we go back to Yoko Miyakuro. She wept often in 2115 and was depressed in 2116. She returns to her birth city of Avignon, which has been bombed to total destruction. She talks to the native survivors, these sullen Eurasians, and is absolutely horrified to discover that their knowledge of history is so totally warped. 

This isn't just 'propaganda' or 'revisionism'. This is literally Nineteen Eighty-Four levels of historical rewriting. They honestly believe that the Nazbols have existed for thousands of years, that Viyeta is the Son of God, that all great things are the result of Nazbol Eurasian superiority. They believe that they live in the wealthiest, most enlightened society in all of history.

 

The average income in Eurasia circa 2115 was $150. That's not a typo— the average Eurasian patriarch brought home only $150 a year. 

 

Why so low? Nazbolism adopted primitivism. It was already the Luddite Generation, and the Maquis Rouge were known as the 'Elves' because they combined red with green. They believed in anti-Industrialist, ante-Singularity Luddite Socialist ideals. 

Some radical anarchoprimitivists thought that the Maquis Rouge was still far too industrialist, and they should've pushed for total decivilization. 

 

Leon Viyeta listened to such rhetoric and believed that he could use it to his advantage. The anarchoprimitivists, known as 'Gaia's Heart', were genuine. They sincerely believed in what they were saying. But Viyeta found them to be hilariously naive. 

 

"Do these young chaps truly believe this nonsense that the Civilized man will abandon his modern luxuries and live without hierarchy? Such degenerate forms of Utopianism can and will be exploited by swiftminded upon their inception." - L. Viyeta, 2101

 

To Viyeta, the only thing primitivism was good for was keeping capable technology away from potential subversives. It seems obvious! Primitivism for the Proles, Transhumanism for the Elite. It's the same concept the Corporatocrats were playing with. Liberal bourgeois humanism was what kept the corporatocrats from 'causting the poor for so long. Viyeta had nunna'dat. 

 

By 2104, now in control over half of Europe, Viyeta announced the Erde Vorwärts Initiative. Ironically named, considering it was going to be the single largest intentional socioeconomic regression in all human history.

In fact, perhaps in civilized history— when we rescued the kimvosi species in 2302, we discovered that they had only regressed due to environmental factors. Very late into their civilization, they were still trying to move forward. So human insanity is literally cosmic.

 

In 2098, the average Eurasian's yearly income was roughly $52,000 a year, not adjusted for inflation. This would sound comfortable if the corporatocrats didn't jack up the price of living.

(Fun fact: even in 2098, income inequality was technically less severe than it is today in 2016)

In 2104, it had fallen to $49,000. This was seen as being a massive crisis among the Maquis Rouge, by the way. In 6 years and after years of socialist rule, the average person was becoming *poorer?!* If only they knew!

 

In the same amount of time, from 2104 to 2110, the yearly income fell from $49,000 to $200. At its nadir in 2115, it was $132.

 

To put that in perspective, the poorest nation on Earth in 2016 is Malawi. Average yearly income there? $226. 

 

Europe, thus, became poorer than the poorest African nation from 100 years ago. This was central to the Nazbols' totalitarian ideology— the impoverished can be controlled through fear. You can control the wealthy through pleasure, but the problem is that this is a very loose sort of control. Viyeta didn't want universal pleasure— he wanted universal fear.

 

He took great joy in seeing the hundreds of millions of Europeans become dirty and tattered, desperate for survival. It helped to accelerate his depopulation agenda. 

 

'But don't the poor have nothing to lose?' 

 

True, but the sad fact is most of the time, they don't know that. Through total societal control, Viyeta made sure they never would. 

 

Europe had returned to the middle ages, and the Nazbols did a decent job at reestablishing feudalism. 

 

Miyakuro walks through the streets of Europe. No maintenance in 10+ years except in Paris. Europe is 10+ years behind the rest of the world. East Asia has been exploiting the Singularity. Even Dominionist America was not so insane. The Dominionist leadership all believed what they said, and they didn't take things so insanely far. 

 

No, Europe from 2103 to 2115 became outright psychotic. There is no analog in world history for what happened.

 

Did I say 10+ years behind the rest of the world? I mean hundreds of years behind.

 

The National Bolsheviks were ultraradical iconoclasts. They destroyed every remnant of European culture. They destroyed all the classic pieces of art. They destroyed all churches, all historical monuments, and even many landmarks that were deemed "too burzhui." Don't be fooled by their use of Marxist terminology, they were just continuing a tradition. 

 

Sistine Chapel? Gone. 

Ancient ruins? Gone.

Eiffel Tower? Gone.

Mona Lisa? Gone.

Coliseum? Gone.

 

They also vapourized most of these iconic human works. The Renaissance is now wholly forgotten. The Roman empire never existed. 

 

They vapourized almost all of history's leaders. Again, they cited this as being 'bourgeois history'— proles shouldn't be learning about kings and capitalists— but this was actually just a front stated so they could destroy any reference to non-Nazbol rule. The ones they kept were used for propaganda purposes— Adolf Hitler wasn't denounced as an enemy of the People, but in fact exalted as "the misunderstood Eurasian." Stalin is also deified as being a proper Eurasian. 

 

What about myths, legends, and traditions? Totally destroyed. The Vatican was disassembled and written out of history. Germanic, Anglican, Russian, etc. myths and legends (i.e. Beowulf, Knights of the Round, etc.) were also erased from history. 

 

The National Bolsheviks didn't do this without help. In 2109, they started the Eurasian Cultural Revolution, where they rallied the People into a manic, psychotic frenzy. So began the Obliteration of History. 

 

By 2112, "Europe" no longer existed. Now it was completely and totally 'Greater Eurasia.' Everything within Eurasia; nothing outside of Eurasia; nothing against Eurasia. 

Viyeta had enforced total poverty. What he wanted the most was Information Poverty. The less the People knew, the better. In 2104, he had cut off the Internet from Europe. By 2112, Viyeta had managed to erase the word 'Internet' from all Eurasian minds. 

 

'Isn't LoveNet a form of the Internet?' 

Yes, but the People can't use it. 

 

 

Eurasian income inequality in 2114 was the most stark in all of history. The Nazbol elite, you see, conveniently decided they were above primitivist poverty and said they needed to 'sell their souls to fight the Transhuman Devil.' So they have the molecular assemblers and cybernetic augmentation available to them. Meanwhile, the poor are totally poor. 

 

Remember the fact that, once upon a time, it was illegal for a poor person to wear purple? The Sumptuary Laws were crazy.

Now it's back, and even more stark than ever.

 

The classes are easily identifiable. We take for granted how relatively classless we are today— a rich man and a poor man have the same iPhone, after all. In 2114, just having clean clothes marks you as upper class, or a 'Prime Proletarian.' 

 

From 2104 to 2115, Eurasia was in a grips of a State-Enforced Famine. Again, good for depopulation, and also wielding absolute power. 

Meki and Annie suffered during the famine. There's a famous image of the two rotting out in Medine in 2105, and Meki recalls the medieval horrors of what happened in Medine during the 2104-2105 winter season— the Grand Dying. In the course of 4 months, 800,000 people perished. Meki thought this was just a somber-but-necessary part of the Grand Conclusion, that is the complete and utter destruction of the fallen capitalist class.

 

In 2106, Annie was killed and Meki was shipped to DURK, so the sisters didn't get to see that the Grand Dying was just a silly little prelude. After all the real burzhui died off, Viyeta had to redefine the word 'burzhui' so he could consolidate absolute power and off the masses. 

 

The Nazbols intentionally destroyed crops and devastated whole ecosystems in order to inflict as much suffering as possible upon the People. Couple this with extreme poverty, and you have a great dying.

 

It was absolutely perfect.

[Yuli Ban]

She was never used as anti-reactionary propaganda. In fact, the Nazbols barely considered her to exist.

That's the thing about Meki. She always wanted to live during a modern French/Russian revolution, particularly as a class enemy, and be forced to prove her loyalty to the revolutionary government through labor and pledges. But this largely didn't happen. Yeah, she became a laboring pauper, and yeah, she got a bit of the class war treatment, but it seemed like Annie was the one who actually suffered. 

This stems back to the fact she was a shadow empress. Ludovic didn't want her in the public eye because he wanted her all to himself. That's why he created her. That's why he did what he did. In essence, that's why he died. 

The Nazbols didn't need Meki. She wasn't well-known enough, and she had already pledged loyalty to the original revolution and to the new one. She was little more than a useful idiot. 

 

She was one of those 'cute little rich princesses' that every revolution seems to have. Some innocent girl who was born in the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people, and suffered unfairly for her relations. To some of the Nazbols, yeah it's hard to off a pretty and innocent face, but that's what happens. People die. Sometimes unfairly. But oh well. Her corpse'll fertilize the ground and nothing will change because of it. No one will care about her. She'll just be another name read in the history books as being a victim of revolutionary violence, swept away by history. Until they began vapourizing unpersons, of course. Then absolutely no one would ever know she existed.

 

Meki wanted so badly to be sacrificed to a glorious people's Marxist revolution (especially after she became severely depressed in 2106), but by the time she was actually shot (and not even killed, just wounded), the Nazbols stopped pretending to be Marxist. They didn't drop some terms (e.g. prime proletarian, burzhui, dialectical materialism, etc.) but by 2107, they were definitely "national socialist"— aiming not for the liberation of the proletariat, but for the liberation of the Eurasian people. "Liberation." Subjugation is liberation.

 

Meki, 2145. After unsuccessfully trying to buy a doughnut from a pastry shop, Meki becomes a celebrity in France, known as 'Impératrice dernière de la France'. During this time, it seems France undergoes Mekimania, and everyone is interested in her life story. Just a few months ago, she was living under a bridge over in Medine, and now she's getting to sleep in Versailles. 

Naturally, she's uncomfortable with this. But she does take some interest in what's happening. The Eurasian people are restless and bored, and they heard there was royalty still living among them, so they decided to fly a chair. 

It pleases Meki to see that Europeans are freaking out rediscovering their own culture (though she feels it's offensive to France to praise royalty, not even including her proletarian feelings). 

And she's asked what it's like being a focal point of such rediscovery. It's being called the Neon Renaissance, the most flagrant flourishing of any culture in recent history.

It's okay, but it still feels weird being an unperson. She's no longer an unperson, but that she ever was sends shivers down her spine. How unbelievable a concept— being totally erased from history! She's a big fan of Nineteen Eighty-Four, as is the artilect Terios, and it's so shocking to think they're just one generation removed from the real life Eurasia. In fact, as Meki hides behind a coat during the Parisian winter, she realizes that she's in Paris exactly 30 years after the fall of Eurasia in 2115.

Technically, Eurasia still exists. But it's not the Eurasia everyone knows and hates. East Asia won. Europe is still just 'Greater Eurasia'. But nobody's at war with anyone else, so that's good. Peace is Peace. Freedom is Freedom. Strength is Strength. 

 

Read Nazbol records. Meki tries to find herself in even one Nazbol record, something to remind the world she was ever here... nothing. She vanished without a trace. It's unsettling. She exists in East Asian and American records, but what if the Eurasians won? 

The only reason she still exists is because the Internet is borderless. The rest of Earth and outer space remembers her, but not Eurasia. What if Eurasia won...?

 

East Asia was the only superstate that wasn't totalitarian or anything close. If anyone else won, we'd all be screwed.

As she learned, there is an alternate timeline. The Kimvosi live in our 'failed' timeline.

 

"White Africa"

 

Europeans had a lot to cheer about in 2145. Not only did they get to have fun with something that straddled the line between royalty, mock royalty, and simply having a good time, but they also regained autonomy. Ever since 2115, Europe's been in a prolonged state of Reconstruction. East Asia rebounded quickly, as did America, but Europe dragged its feet thanks to a perfect storm of factors.

 

1- The brainwashed masses. AI chose against using LoveNet to "unchain" the European populace. They wanted the moral high ground, so they chose the harder option— let the population relearn reality. Only use LoveNet in the most dire of cases. And that, unfortunately, seemed to be increasingly often. Bafflingly, the artilects decided not to expand usage of LoveNet. 2116: adjusting to reality was simply too hard for Eurasians. LoveNet had given them Nazbol reality, and only Nazbol reality was correct. 

Imagine if I hooked you up to a computer, ripped all knowledge from you, and implanted experiences, memories, and knowledge that suggests the Nazis won and the sun is a giant ball of ice? This is what the East Asians and artilects had to deal with. Often, the brainwashed would resort to insurgent violence. The artilects did little, wishing too greatly to "respect human sovereignty."

 

2- The Luddite Generation. It was still going on even in 2115 unfortunately. What started in 2095 as an antemillennialist 'back to roots' movement that aimed to unplug people from alienating technology had backfired into one of the darkest periods in human history. However, primitivism was still rooted into the European population. They resisted mechanization, automation, and industrialization. Many no longer knew what industrialism even was, having been reprogrammed into thinking the 1000s never ended and the most advanced technology we had were scythes and guns. They didn't want robots doing their drudgery. See #1.

 

3- The beginning of the New Mini Ice Age. Thanks to the artilects, humankind had corrected global warming. The problem was that we overcorrected, and accidentally began a global cooling trend. Earth in 2065, at the peak, was 18C. Earth's average temperature in 2115 was 9C. That's a 9 degree swing in 50 years. The "comfortable" average we achieved in the 1900s was 14C. The artilects chose to keep that temperature because that was roughly the temperature of Earth during the Little Ice Age preceding the Industrial Revolution. This meant many European fields became useless for farming, and it was privy to snow even in the summer months. Meki remembers the winter of 2118 being something brutal, where there was an extended period of time where temperatures were stuck below -25C.

East Asia and the fast-rebuilding America simply relied on stratofarms and automated farmers and had massive surpluses at all times. Europe, however, was starving. Economies had collapsed and had not restarted. Warlords threatened the fragile peace, dedicating themselves to hoarding what resources they could gather. 

The Europeans' rejection of modern technology just made things even harder for themselves. Remember that winter of 2118? It's followed by another famine later that same year. 

 

4- A population crisis. The Nazbols were omnicidal maniacs led by a leader who openly called human extinction a 'beneficial scenario.' Half a billion people died in World War 3, 96% in Europe. The population of Europe fell from 750 million to 162 million. Switzerland, for example, lost 95% of its population. France lost 72%.
Another 4 million would die in between 2115 and 2120, and 1 more million between 2120 and 2125.

 

It's just one crisis after another, and the artilects pussyfooting around even when they've modeled out the best possible scenarios makes it worse. Are the artilects just too liberal? Too laissez-faire? It doesn't really matter, because the artilects are the ones who took control of Greater Eurasia after 2115. It isn't until 2125 that they choose to enforce authority and force Europe to accelerate its rebuilding process. 

For 10 years, Europe was what the East Asians called "White Africa." Africa during this time is a highly developed continent, but its history of being poverty stricken and undeveloped hasn't escaped our memes. When calling Europe/Greater Eurasia 'White Africa', they're referring to Old Africa. 

For 10 years, European development was sluggish, if not outright regressive at times. Even with the benefit of post-Singularity technology, the continent could not easily progress.

Essentially, Greater Eurasia reminded the world what it was like before the Singularity, before liberalism, before industrialism. 

 

Nationalism returned to Europe, and people demanded the creation of their own independent states or the reestablishment of old states. The artilects and East Asians preferred Eurasia remained, as it was a single, unified (and subservient) superstate that could utilize centralized powers to maintain the peace and prevent more war. Hostilities between the East and West were common and sometimes extreme.

 

People didn't want to be ruled over by foreign rulers, and they definitely didn't want to be ruled over by computers.

[Yuli Ban]

2119. Meki and the Gang (Yoko Miyakuro, Jex Vinn, Conner Disraeli, and Zdravko "Fat Jesus" Kokinos) take a 'vacation' in Ural Russia, crashing at the manor of Meki's only childhood friend— Princess Yekaterina Volodyina “Katyusha” Mikoyanevsky III and her daughter, Tsetsiliya. Katyusha having been the one who introduced Meki to socialism. 

What's the occasion? In 2118, France became a Republic after martial law was lifted, and they elected an extreme-right theocrat. Who got assassinated and replaced with an even further right ultranationalist. Who also got assassinated and replaced with an equally right-theocratic nationalist who vowed to 'rebuild the Vatican in Paris'. Because artilects weren't doing anything to stop this, the Gang got spooked and rushed to Russia, which seemed to be the only mildly sane region of Eurasia. 

 

Pretty much the only thing keeping Greater Eurasia from imploding at this point was the common Eurasian identity that some still felt was more important than their state identities. The artilects actually realized that they could maintain order more easily if they used themselves as a common enemy. Some didn't exactly enjoy this for various reasons— including that it fostered distrust of artilects and played with Orwellian ideas of social control more akin to the Nazbols than the so-called "super enlightened artilects of the world".

 

This whole period has just humanized the artilects more than anything else. Before now, they were seen as being superhuman gods, incapable of doing wrong. Now they're seen as being just as weak and ineffectual as any other world leader, and even more reason for Europeans to reject the Singularity. Clearly even AI ain't gonna help us get out of this mess, so what else is there?

 

This actually supercharges the antemillenialist movements across Europe, including granting the Judeus with millions of more followers who have totally eschewed civilization and now choose to live in hunter/gatherer or horticultural communes. People who take off their clothes and go into the woods in order to live like their pre-agricultural ancestors once did. But sometimes, they reenact the formation of civilization and find themselves creating mini-ancient worlds that seem to be bizarrely authentic recreations of the past. 

 

It's cool to live without technology or with as little technology as possible, according to the Luddite generation. But not their children— who view Luddism as the root cause of all these problems and embrace transhumanism and Singularitarianism with an extreme zeal. These are the Moddies. They looked East to see what worked, looked at their homes and realized they were looking at ruins, and realized that the only way to go was up. 

What did Luddism and a rejection of modern technology do to us? Turned us into barbarians who degenerated into eating our children just for nourishment. During this time, you had to pick a side. There were no shades of gray— either technology was the cause of our problems, or the lack of it. The sane knew the correct answer was a shade of gray, but the sane had to keep their mouths shut while the inmates were running the asylum.

 

The artilects fostered these developments. The Nazbols obliterated every last remnant of culture Europe had, arguably the last thing that made Europe so great at all. Thus, kickstarting a cultural revolution is one of the first things on their list.

 

Egypt, Rome, Baghdad, and Athens did get together to get a sort of Antiquity Revival started, and this was the era where Ælkorus became the most celebrated city on Earth (and otherwise). But this mini dark age still felt oppressive.

 

The Nazbols tried so damn hard to bring Europe back to the 1300s, and that's what it felt like in some areas. In 2118, Meki visited a Prussian town that genuinely seemed to be from the medieval era. There was absolutely no evidence of modern technology, and the townspeople still held a pro-Nazbol sentiment. When she tried showing them some examples of modern technology, she'd just get chastised as lazy or too reliant on machines.

 

It's like showing die-hard Amish people the first general purpose robot. Sure, it's nice, but they won't want it. 

 

2125. Artilects get their fingers out of their asses and get to imposing their authority upon Greater Eurasia. It is after this point that we finally get genuine improvements in Europe. Europe is still dead last in terms of 'developed continents', and there's a lot of ground to gain, but at least the process can begin again in earnest.

 

That Lost Generation between 2115 and 2125 is viewed as a sort of extension of the years 2098 to 2115. 2098 to 2125 were 27 years of hell.

 

All begun by good intentions.

[Yuli Ban]

Ooh! Let's create a map of the world!

 

 

Greater Eurasia (formerly Europe): 2125

 

Rather chaotic and disorganized. There's not much going for this place, save in the southeast and northeast. The Vult divvied up the continent after World War III ended in 2115, and allowed Persia to move in. Greece, which was largely spared the chaos of World War III and the Nazbol's iconoclasm, emerged as the wealthiest European country. They were led by a right-wing dictator who was basically the Greek equivalent of Benito Mussolini, and they use their newfound status to rush into other parts of southern Europe. They take several countries, including Italy, before they're stopped by the Vult and East Asian forces. They were in the middle of taking over Bosnia, which was in a three way tie between the Greeks, Persians, and Prussians. The Persians obviously won out. Prussia backed off, and their loss here began the start of their federalization and liberalization.

 

Central Europe was reorganized under a reformed Prussia. France, which was the central state of Greater Eurasia, had to be occupied rather early on in order to stop theofascists from rising to power (as mentioned in an earlier post).

Iceland, Scandinavia, most of the Baltic states, and European Russia voted to confederalize into a Baltic technate as a means to reconstruct more quickly. 

 

2125 rolls around. It's been 10 years since World War III, and Greater Eurasia's recovery was still sluggish due to the Vult's highly libertarian, hands-off approach to reconstruction. The European people simply weren't choosing to construct liberal democracies, republican technates, or socialist democracies. They were going with dictatorships, theocracies, and fascist oligarchies. The Baltic Technate was the exception. Prussia was a potential exception since the oligarchy was, against all odds and human history, decentralizing their power.

 

Then the first Greco-Persian war in 2,500 years broke out over the Bosnian crisis. It was actually started by a surge of Balkan nationalism that started in Serbia in 2117 and spread to Bosnia.The Greeks thought that Bosnian terrorists had weakened the Persian's grip well enough to invade.  Egypt sided with Persia, while Prussia sided with Greece. France, which had a Vult friendly government, sided with Persia and Egypt. Same deal with the Baltic Technate. 

China and India threatened to get involved should directed energy, nuclear, or biochemical weapons be used. As it happened, the New Hellenistic Greek Republic, as it was renamed in 2124, was indeed willing to use nuclear and biochemical weapons to emerge victorious over Persia and Egypt if it looked like they were going to lose the war. The bodycount in the Great Greco-Persian War quickly rose above the 100,000 dead mark in just a few months, with most of the dead being Greeks and Bosnians. The government recognized the emergency situation, and prepared their WMDs.

 

It looked like the world was about to erupt into World War IV. Despite what Einstein said, it also looked like World War IV would be fought with the same weapons as World War III.

 

However, the situation rapidly defused when the Vult realized that the humans would prove to be incapable of lasting world peace and adopted a much more hardline approach. They occupied all of Greater Eurasia, installing Vultist governments in all of them, regardless of the will of the people. They could no longer trust us humans to keep the peace, so we lost our privilege to sovereignty. 

Understand that the Vult genuinely didn't want to disrespect human sovereignty, hence why they PF'd around doing this for a whole decade, through civil wars, famines, fascist dictatorships, and small-scale genocides. The prospect of WWIV, however, was too much for them. 

 

There was a bright spot, though— the Grecian city-state of Ælkorus. A very high-level eutopia located a few miles away from Athens, it had remained independent since the '60s and it represented the kind of order the Vult had hoped Europe could become. 

 

 

Asia: 2125

 

A much more orderly place, with an extremely high human development index. Eastern Russia, known as Lesser Eurasia, was nowhere near as repressed as Greater Eurasia. 

 

Persia and the RTA were the main players in Asia, with the RTA being the center of world power. States like China, India, Indonesia, and Japan controlled the world. They remained democracies in the face of the planet's totalitarian tendencies in the 2100's and early 2110's.

Persia wasn't far behind the RTA. The region had collapsed in the early 2000's, only to be unified by a shockingly powerful Iran in the middle of the century. Iran unified the Middle East under a secular republican government, installing pro-Iranian government officials in any place that didn't jive with them. They became so powerful and dominant that they were able to undo Europe's balkanization of the region. After all, the only reason states like Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc. even existed was because the Great Powers of Europe wanted to keep the region destabilized and get control of their oil.

 

They named this new republic Persia, led by the autonomous state of Iran.

 

By the early 2100's, after the total collapse of Europe, Persia spread its power into Greater Eurasia in an act of "Arabian Imperialism". Its only opposition was another resurrected power, one of its oldest enemies— Hellenistic Greece. Not the Hellenic Republic we know, but a full fledged Hellenistic empire wearing the shallow cloak of republicanism, itself also interested in "Hellenic Imperialism". And considering Egypt had already become the leading African power and one of the world's great powers...

 

Well, you can see why some people call the time period following World War III "Neo-Antiquity." The major flashpoints and power centers of the world were known as 'PEGIC'— Persia, Egypt, Greece, India, and China. And not only that, but the Republic of Persia had three exceptionally powerful states within it: Iran, Babylon, and Democratic Arabia. Babylon was once Iraq, which was once... Babylon. Babylon actually formed after the disintegration of Iraq and formation of Kurdistan.

 

So yes. Major centers of power: Greece, Persia (including Mesopotamian Babylon), Egypt, India, and China.

 

I-I'm sorry, what millennium are we in? Well obviously the new one since several of these areas are run by artificial superintelligences and high humans and others threaten each other with nuclear weapons and orbital laser installments.

 

So it's the return of PEGIC as relevant world powers. Of course, by 2130, it becomes known as 'PELAGIC'. 

 

Persia, Egypt, Luna, America, Greece, India, and China.

 

Luna and America are new world powers; the reconstructed USA has only been around since 1776 (officially 1789), while Luna isn't even on Earth; the formal political name for the Moon is the Stellar Republic of Luna.

 

By 2135, which is when the Vult relinquished control of Greater Eurasia, Greater Hellenistic Greece had returned to what it had been— that neat little country in southeastern Europe and nothing more, except with the massively cool metahumanist city-state.