The following is an excerpt from my upcoming sci-fi novel, THE SHOWDOWN: An Esoteric Odyssey by Alex Anico. The following was originally written in 2019 as a speculative fiction and has been adjusted for recent history. Any similarities to persons, places, things or events are intentionally coincidental. All text and images property of Studio Mogura. No part of this work may be reproduced without consent of the Author/Illustrator. THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. Artificial Intelligence was not used in any way to write or create the images in this piece. MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.
CHAPTER TWO:
The War to End All Wars
The war began when radical religious conservative clerics teamed up to claim control of the White House as well as the UK parliament and conspired with other conservative major powers in Asia and throughout Europe to seize global control for the purpose of establishing the greatest roundtable of dictatorships ever created, overthrowing NATO.
Russia had exhausted it’s resources trying to overthrow it’s neighboring countries as well as NATO. But once European sentiment had enough of their lies and human meat grinder tactics they worked to overthrow the Putin regime and exterminate its successors and subsequent followers. Russia would be broken up into separate states with it’s land and resources carved up among Europe and Ukraine as repayment for their years of unprovoked terror.
“A necessary evil to establish peace and stability. ” Words of the French Prime Minister via a worldwide broadcast that admittedly shocked it’s viewers. NATO had done what it was to protect itself and the the world.
Yet, America refused to evolve. Much of what you will read is based on historical documents and witness testament but let it be known to readers that this particular FACT was the opinion of this writer and the easiest most personal explanation one could give. While the rest of the world seemed to advance, the United States, once the most powerful nation on the planet, had continued to give voice and power to conservative leaders that ignored scientific research were desperate to maintain control of a free nation and had no issues with filtering the minds of their followers with lies and propaganda. It was a political cycle that merry go rounded for decades. Though it was nearly impossible to cure the disease of ignorance, it was greatly nullified with the advancement of technology, specifically the internet.
While much the internet was a mixed wasteland of information and contradictive propaganda the 2020 riots brought a greater desire for clarity and a fact based program that journalist could use to prove they were the target of systematic harassment.
After the COVID pandemic killed .125% of the population ( around 10 million people, a rough underestimate according to the W.H.O.) the struggle between the left and the right exasperated and conservatives urged the citizens and followers to ignore science based information and vaccination. Many Republican followers casted away their logic for greed and confirmation bias. They allowed the Wall Street boom of the 1980s to create an addiction to money not seen previously. It was a hard addiction similar to heroin and other opiates. That had been a topping for the addiction to the monetization of war that been rampant in congress since the end of World War II. Fast forward to the time when people had been driven to desperation in order to achieve the “American Dream”. The propaganda worked perfectly in getting the Americans to buy into the idea of the American worker. People worked them selves to living paycheck to paycheck as the pendulum blade swung closer and closer.
The Internet Social Media Boom of the 2010s force fed everyone the idea that the American Dream was a global dream. Fame and fortune were a touch away. At any given moment one of you videos could go viral and that would grant you a life worth of financial security which this period many Americans were all deep into the workface trying to attain. Housing was skyrocketing as was the price of Education. Lower tier jobs became the easier thing to do until basic AI models replaced the minimum wage worker. Content creation morphed into an occupation major companies offered legitimizing social media further allowing corporations to lay claim to creativity. People could no longer just create to create. Now everyone of creating to make content in order to survive. There was no inherit artistic desire as that would be snubbed the moment likes and views became monetized.
But none that compared the power of monetizing misinformation. Misinformation specifically from the right wing conservative space had been a powerful tool in controlling the populous, especially the uneducated lower class part. From 18th century to the 21st there was a non stop battle between the rich and the poor, where the rich used their resourced to dissuade the poor into believing they needed not only to work for the rich but be satisfied with their own position as a nonrich. Accepting your own fate. Working yourself to death for the benefit of barely getting by. We had evolved from peasants & princesses to CEO’s and grunts. And now the CEOs had seemingly banded together using all their combined forces, ideas and technology not to better mankind but to ensure it’s domination and control for the foreseeable future.
The Republican Reich lasted nearly two decades. After the reelection of Donald Trump in 2025 Republicans who had full control of media and the judicial system effectively rewrote all the laws. Trump became the first four term president until dying of a heart attack four months into his term. By then he had made his first son Donald Trump Jr. his Vice President as he continued to give his family prominent positions. When Trump Jr would perish in an airplane accident off Palm Beach, his next son Eric would take over with Ivanka Trump taking the position of Vice President. The would do their best to continue raping the country until they were challenged by one of their own. A investigative journalist unconvered that there was a struggle happing between the surviving members of Trump’s vast wealth which had ballooned during his final years to that of some of the richest conglomerates. An estimate 8.656 Trillion Dollars. Soon a succession of unexplained accidental deaths similar to Russian methods popularized in the mid 2020’s began to widdle down the family until all that remained were Eric and Ivanka Trump, who by now had revealed their incestous relationship and their younger brother Baron, who had used his connection with Tech Oligarchs and the youth vote to propel him forward overtaking Eric and Ivanka in overall wealth and popularity. Soon it would matter as Baron’s older siblings would also meet their end in a strange way this time via car bomb while visiting their oblast in Greenland. Baron would have total and absolute control of the United States and his father’s vast wealth which had absorbed other prominent companies like the site formerly known as Twitter which became X after being bought by Elon Musk who would eventually sell it to Trump who would rebrand it under his Truth Social label along with Facebook. While Mark Zuckerberg did his best to keep up his penchant for overflow lead to a saturated social media ownership that nearly bled him dry.
While the rich got richer the poor got poorer as this was some of the hardest times faced by Americans. Ravished by Climate Change across the country, unemployment at an all time high of nearly 48%. Concentration Camps in every city to house immigrants and people of color. Reeducation centers took over the Public School system and segregation made a comeback.
Baron Trump would preside over the collapse of the American Dollar, the return of daily public executions, the enslavement of the female population, with the stripping of women’s reproduction and voting rights. A flash flood of radical orders that went far beyond anything his depraved and demented family did before. This would ignite an all out war in America while the rest of the world was rapidly advancing both technologically and liberally. The remnants of NATO and Alliance made of of EuroAsian nations and countries from Africa.
When the last city in the world was finally connected online and the creation of an automated fact check computer software program called FACT an acronym for Factual Analytical Computation Technology, was approved for public release, it was the first of many big changes. It was a calculated indisputable response to centuries of propaganda for personal gain. There was finally something an average person could use and trust and believe. But the proverbial shit hit the fan when FACT deemed the Bible as propaganda.
Religious groups backed by centuries of corrupt money fought with tooth and nail to get FACT decommissioned, but the more they had to reveal in order to prove the rulings in their favor, the deeper they dug a grave for themselves. Eventually when the Catholic Church was subpoenaed to appear in World Court in order to defend itself against charges of corruption, genocide, and propaganda, the religious hierarchy crumbled with the lack of evidence. Faith was no longer something you could hang on to. You had to prove it. Without proof the Church devoured itself. Eventually belief in major religion became a back alley fad relegated to underground houses of worship. Science became the true religion and the money that was once pumped and wasted building a religious network now was being filtered into all forms of science, technology, engineering & mathematics. In about 25 years the entire world evolved faster than it did in 2000 years.
Diseases, cured. Poverty, ended. Homelessness, housed. Starvation, Fed. Education, available for all. Equality, achieved.
It was a futuristic cross between Ancient Greece, with the entitlement of the roaring 20s, and the overindulgence of the 21st century, all with a safety net underneath. It was paradise. All decadence, no consequence. So much original thought and decency all covering a interior of debauchery and self gratification.
Everything was on the table. Sex became universally accepted since there was no fear of transmitted diseases or fear from judgement. The rabid advancement in robotics and Virtual Reality allowed those with alternative tastes to act out their darkest desires without actually hurting their partner, physically, emotionally, mentally. Even murder became something of a hobby. “Murder Worlds” or places of business where registered members could participate in legalized murder. A virtual reality system would create the space and an animatronic cyborg would play the victim.
Drugs not only became the corner stone to healing and longevity but also for escapism and entertainment. Illicit drugs of the past become over the counter party favors that could be bought at your nearest convenience store or vending machine. Because of its widespread availability, synthetic forms that proved to be too dangerous for human consumption were no longer needed or wanted, The potency of natural drugs shot through the roof once well-funded agencies put their time, money, and minds to it.
When people felt they had reached their intellectual and desirable limit, they even had the choice of committing suicide. Death was no longer feared as self-consciousness was now something that could be grasped. The discovery of the molecular makeup of the conscious mind lead to the creation of a machine that could transfer your mind, memories, personality into an artificial body. They were the first cyborgs known as the “Transmitters” and were made up the most wealthiest and elite minds since the procedure was the most expensive in the history of the planet. Immortality had been achieved and The first Projectors would soon evolve and become a group of robotic thinkers known as the Cyborg Philosophers.
It was all splendid and quite twisted and it all came it a halt in the blink of eye.