Ritual of the Dead Pt. One

It was an orderly way of conducting a disorderly business. When one side declared its intention to invade and plunder, the defenders picked a village or hamlet about which to conduct the battle. Both sides moved to their rally points with a single battalion. A few dozen tanks, a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred men. Maybe a dozen attack helicopters. Then they dispersed and combat was taken. It was traditional to agree on a forfeit before the battle was joined. Some amount of treasure, a disputed border region, or perhaps a particularly productive mine. Occasionally whole cities changed hands, but this was rare.

And so wars and great industrial complexes passed to the wayside without the annihilation of the martial arts. The two superpowers had their method of solving disputes without war, but with the necessary bloodletting to settle the issues. While peace was not absolute, it was rare that two battles would take place in consecutive years, much less in the same year.

Occasionally great heroes were forged in these fields.

2012 Pt. 2

Humanity then paused. There was a huge push to build bomb shelters and an equally strong drive to evict the bugs from the moon. The blue men were all atwitter. Some spoke of the need for the dispersal of the population over the countryside, others wanted people to converge on the cities and hide in the vast underground spaces. There was no common consensus and the NEU was silent on the matter, saying only that civilians should take whatever precautions they thought necessary.

On December 22, 2012, Earth launched it's second offensive of the war. This time it was a mix of hundreds of unmanned "point defense" satellites launched the old fashion way; dozens of "fighter-frigates" with exotic new propulsion systems; and twelve more of the massive dreadnoughts.

The strategists had long sense realized the folly of floating single ships to fight the alien armada, and had forbidden any unorganized launches. The result had been a trickle of small, mini-gun wielding, unmanned birds who attempted to intercept the shells falling to the earth. The alien bombardment was taking its toll. Cities demolished, mountains flattened, croplands destroyed and entire regions laid waste. If not for the CERN inspired particle beams popping up at research institutions all over the world, humanity would have had to surrender if possible or become extinct during that first terrible year.

The scientists were quite smug when around politicians that had tried to block what they had called "Billion dollar holes in the ground." The much maligned research projects were destroying incoming shells from the moon and racking up kills. The moon's nearside was quickly made uninhabitable for the bugs, and with the launch of the Combined Fleet, the entire orb was soon besieged. The aliens had dug in deep, and were still lobbing shells at the earth, but fewer and fewer were getting through. While a determined infantry was judged as necessary to root out the last of the aliens present, the battle for Earth-Space was deemed over, a decisive victory for Earth. The invaders that remained hide deep under the surface, their landing boats destroyed and with the great Tin-Pot Transport having been stripped for the occupation, they were trapped on the dusty orb.

Probes showed the bugs were constructing a massive network of defense satellites around Saturn, digging entrenched firing positions in its many small moon, and leaving many more in orbit. They seemed to be constructing a base or fueling facility on Titan, but no probes could survive to examine the place from a close distance and so the mystery remained.

Man's attention shifted towards the red planet.

Your son is a (Flying)Car Salesman, Your daughter a receptionist.

In the future, when all manufacturing tasks have become completely automated and robots and computers run the world, the only work that is available will be jobs in the service industry. Hence, boys sell the fancy cars, girls the makeup(just examples, no sexism on my end). While there may still be a market for haut couture, we are still left with the question of who will be able to afford to buy these things.

The only possible outlet for the economy will be retirees, assuming that all non-service jobs have been automated and the working class thus eliminated(or forced into extreme poverty/welfare).

These retirees will be your sons and daughters, once they have worked a few years and amassed plentiful and secure investments, likely in the company they work for. While there may still be management positions available, they will be few and far between because of the far better machine decision making and the availability of almost any luxury item at low low prices, i.e. you'd have to be a fool not to retire and simply live like a king on your modest dividends. Massive deflation will likely result from absolute automation, and, as long as young replacements keep arriving to fill the service jobs, most will likely work a few years out of high school and retire to a standard of living unimaginable today.

In order to prevent the extremely wealthy from disrupting the economy in foolhardy ways, seeking to become a zero higher than the rest(with little to no increase in physical comfort), the estate tax will have to be almost absolute. Simply to prevent large, destabilizing concentrations of wealth.

So relax, the economy of the future may well be more egalitarian than you imagine. It may require either ZPG or MPG(Massive Population Growth)

2012 Pt. 1

6 Tin Pots and Boat's Cut.

It was at first thought to be a wonderfully romantic event. Seven bright stars appearing in the sky just a week before St. Valentine's Day. By the end of the week, Valentine's Day had been officially canceled for the year by the Catholic Church. The buzz word on everyone's lips was "Invasion." The stars were not stars, and they were getting closer. One broke free and fell into orbit of Saturn. Four more circled Mars, and one disintegrated into hundreds of tiny(by comparison) landing craft. Of the two remaining, one slipped into solar orbit behind the Earth, a menacing follower. The last disappeared behind the moon and apparently set down somewhere on the backside. The myriads of "Cut-Boats" (as they were being called) were spreading all over the solar area, many circling the earth, shooting down space telescopes and communications satellites.


The Nations of the Earth United was the new name of the old UN; the flag was the same save the color. The Blue Berets now wore Red. Mass conscriptions were underway, men in blue suits from the worlds air forces were embarrassed to show all their old canceled plans for exotic engines and space craft. Particularly embarrassing were the notes and letters that suggested we were aware they were coming and were afraid to tell based on projections of world wide panic.

The People of the Earth were organizing, calmly, and already under construction were some of the largest and most advanced objects ever. They were crying "Mars is Ours!" in the streets and three days before the 4th of July, Britain stunned the world by launching an Orion-Drive powered Dreadnaught from north of the Arctic Circle. Financed almost entirely by one newly appointed CBE Branson, the Virgin Earth was the largest man made moving object in history. She was destroyed with all 23 hands lost just a week after her launch, having racked up 17 Cut-Boats destroyed and 9 damaged.

The first of an armada, she'd fallen before anyone had managed to give her any support besides CERN's massive ground based particle beam weapon. They'd reconfigured their massive accelerators, blowing apart boat after cut-boat.

The retaliation was brutal and atomic.

302 million dead, 470 million displaced.

The Bugs were building bases on Mars, and were shelling the Earth
from entrenched positions on the Moon.