Elya raked a hand through her hair, despairing, as the assault continued. Unrelenting, the barrage worsened, firing nails with unerring accuracy into society’s new coffin. Unbelievable. Had it really come to this? It was almost a case in favour of pseudo-neo-fascism, though of course she didn’t really subscribe to that school of thought.
On the flexi-screen in her hands, a man’s lips quivered with emotion as his announcement was relayed across the Solar System, live translation allowing her to understand his Terran Standard words. In a few hours, every human to have ever been washed with Sol’s light – excluding a small number of asteroid miners in the farthest reaches of the Kuiper Belt – would have heard the news.
“…again, I repeat: just hours ago, the Terran Confederacy voted in favour of leaving the Solar Union. Already a tsunami of economic crises has flooded the system, their effects only restricted by the maximum speed of light. Aphrodite, the first and largest of the Venusian settlements, met with disaster merely minutes later, when separate riots prompted by celebration or anger caused each and every defence against the planet’s heat and pressure to be overwhelmed, resulting in significant destruction across the city. It is estimated that upwards of 16 million are dead, with a further…”
Mouth hanging open, Elya became vaguely aware that she was going into shock. She looked away from the screen, out of the thick glass of her ceiling. Normally she felt joy and pride when her eyes fell on Earth, its white-streaked blue a testament to what humanity had become and what it had overcome. But now…
Somehow enough Terrans had been convinced that they would be better off without the benefits of all the other bodies in the system, the ones that they had peopled and broken and helped and befriended. The populace of Earth had voted in favour of turning their backs on their cousins, on their kin, and for no real reason. They had cited overcrowding, conveniently forgetting the Population Wars of the early 21st Century. They had demanded fair treatment in the face of terminally ill off-worlders receiving treatment in Earth’s hospitals. They had cried out against their government sending money to sustain the very water-mining stations that slaked their thirst.
More words bombarded her from the screen that had dropped into her lap. No less than three Martian kingdoms at war. Research stations in Saturn’s rings colliding as they were abandoned. Selene, the lunar city-state she lived in, declaring martial law. Her eyes filled with tears as the sounds of actual explosions began peppering the bombshells dropped by the newsreader, but she found herself unable to look away from the planet of her ancestors. As the political commentary replaced the news, as comparisons were drawn to the famous EU referendum of 2016, her room shook, and the glass before her eyes cracked.
Alarms blared, and klaxon-like voices began declaring the percentage of oxygen left in the building. But it didn’t matter. Selfishness and foolishness had won the day.
Humanity had strolled to the door of widespread catastrophe and knocked.
They had knocked loudly.
The Masked Merchant 