The world of this quest and our own was nearly indistinguishable for most of human history, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The early days unfolded much the same: an Austrian Archduke was assassinated, the Russians declared war on the Germans, the French and Germans clashed, and the British and Americans eventually joined in. The point of divergence wasn't how the war began, but how it ended—or rather, how it refused to end. What should have been four years of bloodshed dragged on until 1958.
How did a global conflict stretch for forty-four years? Explaining every turn of history would require a ten-thousand-word epic, but suffice it to say that as fighting spilled onto every landmass known to man, the war became an unrelenting cycle of destruction. No one was spared. Battlefields emerged in Africa, Asia, and South America, erasing the line between combatants and civilians. By the time the final guns fell silent, over two hundred sixty-three million lives had been lost in Europe alone. And that's not counting the untold millions who perished in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
This prolonged Great War triggered a technological acceleration unlike anything humanity had ever seen. Necessity—the cruelest of innovators—gave rise to inventions unthinkable before: autonomous robots, jet aircraft, atom bombs, orbital lasers, and rudimentary artificial intelligence were all conceived in the crucible of endless warfare. The result was a world that, by 1958, was unrecognizable. Sure, the Allied powers technically "won" when a U.S.-designed orbital laser obliterated Berlin in one devastating flash, but there was no triumph to celebrate. Europe lay in ruins, a wasteland of shattered nations. The majority of governments had collapsed, and what little remained of society dissolved into anarchy.
It was in this chaos that America emerged as the unchallenged superpower. Isolated from much of the fighting, the United States remained virtually untouched by the war's devastation. With the strongest military and the only functioning economy left on the planet, it moved swiftly to fill the power vacuum. Of course, the U.S. wasn't naïve enough to attempt direct control of the entire globe. Instead, it established puppet states across Europe and other war-ravaged continents, creating a web of nations utterly dependent on American aid and subservient to its will.
Yet global dominance came at a cost. Corruption set in quickly as corporations that had profited immensely from the war turned their attention to exploiting the shattered economies of the postwar world. These corporations grew unchecked, becoming more powerful than governments. Mob bosses and criminal syndicates seized the opportunity, stepping into the void left by crumbling institutions. Across vast swathes of the planet, they became the de facto rulers, wielding private armies and influencing local politics. By the late 2000s, monopolies and criminal empires ruled much of the world. The U.S. president was little more than a puppet for corporate interests, while local politicians were powerless to stop the gangsters who operated with impunity.
The state of the world in this dystopian future is grimly stratified. North America and Europe, while technically the safest and most stable regions, are under the thumb of corporate overlords, with every aspect of life dictated by profit motives. Asia, though technologically advanced, remains plagued by ceaseless power struggles between criminal gangs and military dictatorships. South America is a lawless battleground, carved into territories controlled by warring cartels. Africa, once hopeful in the aftermath of colonialism, has descended into a state of near-total collapse, a victim of global neglect and internal exploitation.
While the world has evolved both technologically and politically, culturally it remains frozen in the Roaring 1920s. Maybe the horrors of the war made people retreat into the decadent comforts of the '20s, or maybe they just enjoy the aesthetic. Either way, the language, fashion, tastes, and entertainment have largely stayed the same for over a hundred years. Sure, film, television, and the internet may have changed one or two things, but people still sincerely call things "the cat's pajamas."