[Hard SF] Children of a Dead World

Earth is broken. Old Earth, the cradle of humanity, has been all but shattered in the death throes of what some have called the Last War. Its continents were scarred by climate change and rising seas, marked by pollution events and the great gray swaths of coastal habitation. They are changed now, pocked with the craters of nuclear detonation where life is scorched away by radiation. Clouds gather above the ruins of humanity's cities, scorched northern and southern reaches marked by bombardment while the tropics are burning from heat that their systems are no longer capable of dealing with. Amidst all this, humanity yet scurries in the cracks of the horror that they wrought, but human remnants are few and far between.

There are bunkers in northern America, where ice and snow once fell in wintertime and tent-cities, encampments and prefabs mushroomed into permanent habitation over the past century of turmoil. Those bunkers are home to uniformed personnel and the huddled masses of those that made it there in time, recycled air and canned rations cold comfort to those that survived. In one of the bunkers a grim, unsmiling man is sworn in as President of the United States, before the Great Seal and speaking to whoever yet listens from a replica of the White House briefing room. Flanking him are hollow-eyed bodyguards in sharp black suits, and around him are a bevy of titles that hark back to an age that died with the bombs.

A continent away from the north of America are bunkers holding the leadership cadres from Zhongnanhai, where a new leader is selected from what remains of government. Pageantry and thundering speeches are a reminder of the times before what some call the Fall, the ceremonies of the past trapped in the bunkers like flies in amber.

Across the world, there is comfort taken in ritual and reminder as remnant governments desperately try to survive. In Europe where the bombs fell like rain and radiation sears every inch of the surface, in India where the flatlands are uninhabitable from the planet's warming and the rivers lie lethal and sluggish and polluted, in unhappy Africa where climate change and warfare have melded into a lament of blood and toxic air – across the world, humanity bleeds. The atmosphere yet roils with the ash and dust from thousands of nuclear warheads, food crumbles on shelves amid cities too irradiated for people to move through, and diseases born of the cold skill of pre-War laboratories wreaks a terrible toll on those who lived through the bombs.

On unhappy Earth the week after the war died down, black rain gently begins to fall on the bunker networks like the poisoned tears of a sorrowful world.

---

Venus is a hothouse, it's been called a hellworld and it most certainly uninhabitable. The projections for terraforming as of 2154 were for another one to two centuries of terraforming on Venus, involving the stabilization of its reworked atmosphere and the creation of a proper biosphere before the first colonist hit the surface. Until then the aerostats with their massive upper envelopes composed of polymers multiple meters thick and their suspended cities of tens of thousands were the primary mode of habitation, moving around in the Venerian atmosphere on massive thrusters.

Those aerostats are sustained by pilots that drive shuttles and freighters through the high winds and acid storms of the Venerian atmosphere, moving cargo from aerostat to aerostat to keep the million humans on Venus alive. It's a dangerous job with a high attrition rate, the pilots moving to closed-off hangars and taxiing out of the aerostats in a sealed shuttle lest the Venerian air kill them as they move.

Outside of one of the hangars of the is Pilot Simon Kenning, the young American thumbing through photos on a tablet just outside the airtight doors. There are faces smiling at him through the screen, mother and father and sister now dead and gone. There's a house and rooms that he grew up in, now burned away by nuclear fire. It's all gone. Gone, gone, gone.

A sudden voice from behind him startles him out of his reverie, the pilot looking up to see his copilot's face. She's smiling, telling him to get a move on – the medical supplies shipment is getting late. Kenning nods and folds away the tablet carefully, putting on his helmet and suit in preparation to taxiing out. Before the helmet visor obscures her face, Kenning can see his copilot's eyes.

They're red and bloodshot, as if she had been crying.

---

Ganymede is a place defined by Jupiter. The incomprehensibly massive sweep of Jupiter swings below the colonists of the Ganymede outpost, angry red vortices churning its surface and angrily staring up at the moon that holds life so precariously close. The light of Jupiter filters into the colony's windowpanes, radiation washing away at shielding in a futile attempt to sweep the rocky surface of Ganymede clean. Ganymede is a lonely outpost, a collection of linked domes sealed against radiation and the low pressure of the thin atmosphere.

The reason for its existence is stamped into the landscape, the long black rail of a magnetic launch accelerator curving upwards past a row of domes and trailing past a loading bay where a massive robotic arm stands idle. Flat graded surfaces are testament to more old-fashioned methods, landing pads for dropships from the ships in orbit. Above in the skies are the tubular forms of cargo starships, hanging in orbit above Ganymede while the refineries on the planet feed them freight and the staff on-planet attend to their repair and supply needs.

Ganymede is defined by these ships and by the giant it orbits, an outpost of humanity precariously clinging to the rocky moon's surface.

Pungent smells tell a tale of waste recycling in the domes, the colony fed and kept alive by hydroponics technicians who carefully tend to the sprouting plants and the submerged forms of vat-grown meat. Humming machinery keeps the food alive and the food keeps the humans alive, the technicians ensuring it all flows smoothly.

Technicians like Somnath Desai. The young Bengali has been quiet most of the day, thoughts turned elsewhere. Thoughts turned back to Old Earth, to the country that he came here from two years ago.

Mrow.

The soft noise of the dome's resident cat jerks Desai out of the rut that his thoughts were in, the technician absently reaching down to stroke the soft, warm orange cat that presses itself against him and demands attention. For a few minutes, Somnath Desai pets the cat with his thoughts no longer on what happened to Earth. Much like the cat, life goes on.

---

Earth has gone silent. Nobody knows how this happened, why this happened, or how the remnants of human civilization outside the mother world are to survive. Titan is far from Earth and far from Venus, the outermost outpost of human civilization in the Sol System. It's a place that refuels and resupplies the cargo ships that carry ore and ingots of material back to Venus for processing, a place that mines and refines plenty of metals on its own and serves as the main supplier of nitrogen and ethane to the rest of the Belt and Ganymede.

From where the colonial administrator's office the clear polymer windows look out onto the magnetic launch rail for orbital heavy cargo, and past that at the clouds that herald methane monsoons sometime in the near future. The reports on the administrator's table talk about the death of Earth and the reactions to it, ranging from detailed supply reports and feedstock projections to the extensive report screaming in genteel language about psychological impacts of the 'recent news'. Spare parts are needed, more processing equipment is needed, more manufacturing gear is needed, psychological stability is at risk for far too many of the colonists, all this and more is what greets the administrator when they open the door to their office. There's already been one suicide, in the bare two days since the news came in.

In the distance, the Titan auroras gleam as Saturn swings below. For better or worse, life goes on and home is here. For now.

Pick a name and gender:
[]Write in

Pick a final supply shipment before the next consignment from Venus arrives:

[]Personnel: While this will mean more short term supply loss and more rationing until the Venerian supply ships come in, Titan is in the main self sufficient for foodstuffs and basic needs – the issue is more feedstock than basics. Skilled personnel in the meantime will allow more flexibility later on, as they adapt to life in the colony. Allows more options for technical skill development later on, supply crunch worsens early on.

[]Morale Boosters: Things like genebanks for pets – allowing a few animals to be grown and turned loose as a morale boost. Other things like a few bottles of vanilla and seeds for the plants, allowing some more diet variation. Some religious paraphernalia, funded by a wide swathe of organizations on Old Earth before the bombs fell. All of this will help people keep an even keel in these times. Greater psychological stability for colonists, allows rationing of luxuries.

[]Complex Assemblies: Spare parts for the 3D printers that keep most components moving on Titan, some refining gear for semiconductor printing, a spare chipset for the quantum computing setups on the colony, things that Earth once made and Venus can barely replicate at artisanal rates. These are vital in keeping the colony running, although Venus can perhaps take up the slack. Short-term mitigation of supply crunch somewhat, less issues with complex machinery.

AN: Feedback welcome.