Proximal Flame's Fiction

Capricorn City was, by pre-War standards, not a terribly large place. Its population was less than a tenth of Minneapolis... had anyone still lived in its crumbling wreckage. Many major population centers were dead and had been for decades. Only places that the Hegemony had prioritized in rebuilding like Garamond gave some semblance of human civilization returning to Earth. Five billion people died. Some starved as crops were poisoned and stores ran out. Others fell to disease; many through the filth of war but others from the Hegemony’s bioweapons. Riots, civil wars, radiation sickness – the ways that humanity had used to tear itself apart were both many and varied. After Johannesburg, when the Coalition’s last, desperate chance for victory had failed, the killing had truly begun in earnest. No... not killing. It had been too sterile, too clinical for that. Culling. The eradication of defiant populations and anyone who could pose a threat to the Hegemony and their damned High Human Culture. And that bitch upstairs was the one who had made it all possible. Why couldn’t she have just died? It wasn’t an angry thought. If he’d seen Savoy revelling in this new world, it would be easier to find that hatred. Instead, it was almost despondent.