Prologue to Earth Escape
In 2024, Russia, China and several other nations including Turkey, Syria, Mongolia, Chad, and Libya in North Africa, as well as North Korea, declared themselves a united geopolitical coalition under the mantle of The Triumvirate – an allegorical reference to the three pillars of power; with Russia and China forming two of those pillars, and the other nations combined forming the third.
Although the announcement of the Triumvirate caused shock waves around the globe, the truth is that the signs were there to be seen long before.
For years, Russia and China had been warming up to each other. Ever since the aggressive stance taken by Russia against Ukraine during the Crimean debacle of 2014 and later in 2022, and the sanctions imposed upon Russia by Europe and America as a result, Russia had been distancing itself from the West.
The Syrian war, which had resulted in a literal ocean of human beings forced from their homes, millions of people who were either killed or who had fled into Europe to escape that brutal conflict, had brought about a divisional state of mind, where Europe began to systematically close off its borders. Russia and China, who backed the Syrian regime of that time, and America and its allies who opposed the regime and were financing rebel forces to fight against it, had only deepened the rift between East and West.
An attempted coup in Turkey in 2016 began the devolvement of that nation from a pseudo-democracy to a dictatorship which had closed-down relations with many Western lands.
And of course, North Korea’s tyrannical regime and its continued aggressive stance against the West, not to mention threats of nuclear attack, made it the perfect rogue recruit for the Triumvirate.
Overall, the stage had been set for Russia and China to invite these other nations into their league – forming a brotherhood of sorts, capitalizing on their sense of disenfranchisement from the West and using this to form a partnership that would enhance economic ties as well as political and military might. It was a clear intent to announce to the world on which side of the fence these nations stood.
China, being the global manufacturing leader at the time, stood to lose the most. However, the need for global commerce to remain intact proved a greater force, so, China’s commercial ties were not affected – but relationships were certainly strained, and trust and credibility began to fray at the edges – an incremental breakdown that would eventually reach a boiling point.
Within the year of that announcement, the Americas, that is, the United States of America, Canada and South America, the Oceania, the European Union, Great Britain, South Africa, South Korea, and Japan, announced The Alliance – a cooperative partnership of nations, the oppositional-global-power to the Triumvirate.
Amid this wave of change, a council of the most powerful Imams declared the formation of the Republic of Islam – a league of Islamic-faith-based nations, who, without compromising borders, unified themselves as an embodiment, an avatar of sorts. These Imams declared to the world that they, as a unified league, would no longer permit rebel extremists to exist within their composite borders, those who claimed that their violent jihadist campaigns were compelled by religious conviction, and that they would take unified action to rid their lands of these terrorists while also closing the door on further western intervention. This new umbrella-republic, which included such nations as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and several others, also demanded that all foreign military powers leave, forthwith and immediately. And while trade and diplomatic accords remained intact, the days of American and other allied boots landing wherever they chose, were over.
As man faced off with man, Mother Earth was not taking the back seat and she too was flagging her own issues, demanding restitution for the impact on her domain. Global warming, the progressive polar ice-cap melt, dramatic climatic changes resulting in blighted farmlands around the globe, flooding, drought, oceanic-pollution compounded by the depletion of marine life, and more, were all on the rise as Mother Nature declared her right to defend her one and only child - Earth.
In 2028 two Canadian scientists announced to the world that they had broken the code on something which would change the very nature of quantum physics, in what would come to be known as Quantum Propulsion – a technology of repulsive electro-magnetic-force, one which could catapult humanity to the stars in the lifetime of one human being.
Three global forces were now racing against inevitable time; the ticking-bomb of tensions between the geopolitical powers, Mother Nature and the new frontier, deep space exploration, which had suddenly opened new vistas, including the opportunity to find a new home for us.
The question was – who would win?
