The Knowledge of Man

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

As Alaina peered through her only window into the outside world, she could scarcely remember what lay beyond those panes. The truth is, she could not really remember anything before the Collapse. All she knew of what the world held was what she could barely see through this two-foot window in Kai’s private study inside the library. Kai was the man who had saved her from almost certain death when the first of the great fissures appeared. Alaina was 17 then, but she remembered it like it was yesterday. Yet, for some reason, she could not remember anything that had come before. Perhaps the experience had been so traumatic, it had overwritten all her previous memories? She couldn’t say.

Alaina had been trapped inside a large building that had half collapsed in on itself when the initial wave of fissures first opened. She remembered not how she had gotten there, nor why. She had tried many times to remember, but nothing ever came to her. It was completely blank. Kai told her the stories of how it had all happened, but that is all she knew. However, the history leading up to the Collapse was something they had spoken of often, plus she had read hundreds of books on mankind’s history up to that point.

According to the books, mankind had started to seriously run out of most natural resources around the year 2040. Initially, and during the several decades preceding that time, man had ventured out into space to seek other hospitable planets, in addition to planets that could be mined for resources. However, none of the crews that returned ever brought back anything promising. And many other expeditions never even returned at all. Declared a complete failure, man began to look closer at our own planet, as it seemed the only resource we had left. And so, the great excavations began…

We began to drill and mine out larger and larger portions of the Earth. As overpopulation became worse, we had to expand, and the only way to do that was down. We tried to be as conservative as possible. The United Nations sought to control the rate and spread of the excavations, but it was soon apparent that there was no feasible way to police the entire planet.

And so, as man became more desperate, the planet became less and less stable. Within a few years, some had dug so deep they began to reach the outer layer of the core. As more followed suit, gases and high heat started to seep from the core at an alarming rate. For a planet with already heavy pollution, this made the atmosphere nearly unlivable. And so, man got even more desperate to expand underground cities and infrastructure to shield themselves from the savage environment on the surface.

The move underground seemed successful at first, but after about a decade, problems started to arise. At first, the collapses were small and scattered, but over time they got larger and more dangerous. More and more of the surface began to sink into the Earth. The coastal cities were the first to experience. Underground cities started to flood and hundreds of thousands died. Those who survived moved further inland. But cracks and fissures in the Earth’s core followed them, soon spreading to even the innermost parts of the continents. We tried to use technology to stabilize them, which again, seemed to work for a time. But we were running out of resources and were unable to keep up with the pace of the fissures.

At last, in the year 2071, all hell broke loose. A large portion of what remained of Russia split open and nearly a third of the continent collapsed in on itself. As the ripple effects of this great sundering spread out, other similar fissures opened in China, Africa, and North America. Many others, smaller in size, but bigger than any we had experienced prior, rippled across the planet. Within 6 days, nearly half of the planet was torn asunder, and in less than a month, it was presumed that roughly 80% of the world’s population had perished.

It was hard to accurately gauge the full extent of the great collapse as most of the world’s infrastructure and telecommunications went down in the initial weeks. Power remained, but it was sparse. The survivors flocked to these locations, hoping to find a haven from the nearly inhospitable atmosphere. And thus began the age of tribulation.

This age lasted for approximately seven years, and in that time, the population on Earth dwindled down to just under a million. There just wasn’t enough space for everyone in the remaining cities, and resources were even more scarce. Those who survived were the ones who were in control of the power, or those who sided with them. As such, several factions arose. If you were not part of one of those factions, your chances of survival were extremely low. There were a few outsiders who decided to scavenge out on their own. Among them was Kai, Alaina’s savior. He was the one who had pulled Alaina from the wreckage of that building and who had built a life for them in a library in a solitary, underground city, somewhere in the mountains just west of where Denver used to be.

And so, every day Alaina would wait, watching the little bit of the outside world from her small haven of safety. Kai would go out every day to forage for anything usable. Sometimes he would return with some useful tech, food, or other materials. Sometimes he would find more books for the library, and sometimes he would find nothing useful at all. But every day, it was essentially the same; Kai would leave early in the morning and return late in the evening, just before dusk. If he had brought things, Alaina would help him clean them off and sort them in their storage for later usage. And every day after all that was done, Alaina would prepare their rations while Kai cleaned up. Then, they would sit in silence and eat. Sometimes Alaina studied Kai, pondering to herself what it might possibly be like out there; wondering what Kai did all day. Several times she had worked up the courage to ask if she could come along. She was, after all, 19 now. But each time he had been stern with her and explained that she was not ready. He explained that the world out there was harsh and dangerous, and that she must be more prepared if she is to venture out.

After dinner, they would sit down together and discuss the books that Alaina had read throughout the day. Alaina had always loved to read books and Kai encouraged her in doing so. She didn’t know why she loved to read; there was just something deep down inside her that drove her to a hunger for knowledge. She read everything she could get her hands on; it didn’t matter if it was fiction or non-fiction, biographies, poetry, or mythology – she loved it all. There were tens of thousands of books in the library, and Alaina had read a fairly large portion of them.

Kai had always encouraged Alaina to read. He told her that because there were so few people left, the knowledge of humanity’s ways would be lost if they did not seek to preserve it. Kai often spent some time in the evenings reading himself, in addition to doing a great deal of writing. Kai had filled several books full of work, but these were the only texts in the whole library that Alaina was not allowed to read. Kai told her that one day he would let her read them - when she was ready.

It was always ‘when she was ready.’

Alaina wondered when she would ever be ready. It had been two years since Kai had rescued her, but he had never really given her any indication of what she needed to do to be ready. All he told her to do was to read and to learn.

And so, she did. Day in and day out, she would sit by the small window and read, blissfully unaware of the true reality outside as she painted for herself a picture of what the world was like based on the words she processed and stored away inside her mind. Every day she dreamt of the world beyond her own. For she saw the beauty of what mankind could be, knowing little of what the harsh reality truly held.

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But little did Alaina know of the true importance of her existence. Ready or not, she was about to come face to face with the world outside. And the steps she was about to embark upon would be pivotal in determining the future of all mankind…