The second day of January, 2035, began like any other day.
A grey, dirty blanket of smog covered most of the Earth. The toxic mist had spread from cities and towns far into the countryside, and hung over most of the seas and the oceans.
In New York, a sparse, sooty snow began to fall around ten in the morning. Li Yang was far from feeling sunny that day, even though it was his birthday. He had now spent a full sixteen years on this Earth, and every year things got worse.
He tried to improve his mood by sticking out his tongue to catch a snowflake, then spent a full minute spitting to get rid of the awful taste. He was thirsty and hungry, but the ten dollars in his pocket weren't enough to buy even a small cup of coffee.
He needed to make some money fast. He looked around: he was standing in the corner of a big parking lot near the United Nations building. It had been a park when he'd been a little boy. He used to play there with his older sister, Li Chen. But Li Chen had died several years earlier, hit by a car.
The plants in the park died at about the same time, poisoned by the city air. After a failed attempt to revive the park with new trees and grass, the space was converted to a parking lot. There was never enough parking space in New York.
Li Yang's eyes stopped on a courier van that was just pulling into the lot. It halted at the barrier and its driver started a shouting match with the parking attendant in the glass booth. He probably wanted to park his vehicle free of charge for a couple of minutes while he delivered a package to a nearby building.
Li Yang saw his chance. Crouching, he ran into the lot and in between the parked cars, tugging on doors on both sides. He was in luck! The fifth door, the driver's door of an elegant Mercedes, was unlocked.
He dived in and over the driver's seat, reaching for the compartment on the passenger's side. It was locked. He was pulling himself out of the car when he noticed white plastic peeking out from under the passenger's seat.
He reached out and pulled. It was a small shopping bag, and it contained a pair of muddy but almost-new sneakers. Li Yang knew exactly where to sell those sneakers, of course after he'd cleaned them. He would get at least fifty dollars, maybe even seventy if they were a popular size. A new pair cost over a thousand dollars.
He slid out of the car and closed the door softly and froze.
Suddenly, the air was filled with the sound of wailing, whooping sirens.
A couple of hundred meters from Li Yang, a river of black limousines swept along FDR Drive, preceded by a phalanx of police motorcycles, patrol cars, and secret service SUV vehicles. Their sirens gradually fell silent as pulled into the underground parking of the United Nations Building. The black limousines followed, like long black snake sliding in under a rock.
Inside the underground parking, the limousine doors opened to disgorge the delegations to the most important general congress of the United Nations in history. All the heads of state of countries around the world were present: presidents, prime ministers, marshals and generals, even an admiral or two.
In contrast to Li Yang and billions of others like him, the delegates were all well-fed and well-watered. Some were so well-watered they had difficulty walking in a straight line when they made their way to the Grand Assembly chamber.
They all felt unease as they walked, trotted, and staggered to take their seats. They felt unease because they knew they had to reach an agreement on how to save the dying planet: Earth. It is not easy to reach an agreement for people used to imposing their will on others.
But they knew they had no alternative. The changing climate and the economic crisis that gripped the world for the fifth year running left them with no choice but to agree to a plan that would save the Earth.
Of course, they were wrong. Earth did not need saving. Earth had gone through many calamities in its history, and had recovered. What the assembled leaders wanted to save was themselves, with the people they ruled coming a distant second. Humanity as such was an even more distant third.
The assembled delegates were to hear speeches made by three people recognized as geniuses in their chosen fields. The first speaker was Olaf Troll of Norway. Considered a madman by almost everyone who had encountered him, he had stunned the world by winning the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for three years in a row: 2032, 2033, 2034. Olaf Troll was to outline a plan for saving the world economy.
The second speaker was Sonia Patel, the famous environmentalist from India. Like Troll, she had won many prizes for her work in preserving the environment. Unlike Troll, she was very good-looking, with rich black hair, smoky grey eyes, and a body that made many professional models green with envy. Many of the assembled delegates, especially the men, were really looking forward to seeing her take the stage.
The third speaker was to be the current secretary general of the United Nations: Nelson Odongo, from Uganda. Nelson Odongo was credited with bringing peace to the African continent after many years of strenuous effort. He was widely respected for his ability to make hard decisions when needed: over 15,000 people were executed during his quest for peace. That was less than the monthly death toll in the ongoing conflicts, and was a very acceptable price to pay for an end to all African wars.
The speeches were to start at ten thirty, and last twenty five minutes each. The five-minute pause between speeches was meant to let the delegates get their overworked, aching heads around the information they had just heard.
A three-hour working lunch was scheduled at the conclusion of the third speech. Rumor had it that there would be fresh lobsters among the other, very attractive choices on the menu. It was essential that the delegates be in excellent moods when they reconvened at three to agree on solutions to the crisis. Well-fed, well-watered people are happy people, and happy people find it easier to reach an agreement.
Exactly twenty nine minutes past ten, the lights in the General Assembly chamber dimmed slightly. A spotlight softly illuminated the lectern on the stage. Into this pool of light marched Olaf Troll, looking as crazy as ever.
He was bald save for a fringe of hair long enough to brush his shoulders, and compensated for this with a pair of red whiskers that reached past his chin. His nose resembled a turnip that had survived a very bad accident. His small grey eyes glittered the way crazy eyes glitter. He was wearing a rumpled brown suit, a yellow shirt, and a green tie. Many delegates nodded their appreciation when they saw that: Olaf Troll had chosen to wear the colors of Earth.
Olaf Troll stood silent for a moment, glaring at the assembly. Then he said, spit flying from his mouth:
"I am wasting my time. You are all insane. You came here to find a magic solution to your economic problems. I already said what the only solution is fifteen years back. Twelve years later, it won me my first Nobel prize. No one listened, everyone was busy drinking champagne. All of you know already what the problems are, and what has to be done."
He paused to glare again at his audience. The great chamber was full of guilty silence.
"Problem number one," said Olaf Troll. "We are facing a complete collapse of the global financial system. Money is not worth the plastic it's printed on.
"The world has over eight thousand currencies at the present time. The vast majority of these are cryptocurrencies: imaginary money. Money that doesn't really exist except in our collective imagination.
"There is only one way out of this. The whole world must adopt a single currency that is real. A currency in which money has value in itself. A global currency that uses coins, and in which each and every coin is worth exactly what is shown on the coin. Right now, coins are officially worth next to nothing. But the metal they are made from is worth many times more than the value shown on the coins! This is nonsense.
"It will be up to you to decide what coins you mint, and what you call them. You can make and use gold coins, silver coins, coins made out of metal alloys. It doesn't matter. But the value shown on the coin must always be the value of the metal in the coin.
"The second problem is the collapse of the the world's economic system. Imaginary money is just a part of this problem. As I said almost twenty years ago, capitalism is like a bicycle. It has to be kept moving, or it falls. Capitalism relies on growth, but growth is exactly what's killing us.
"You will say that a lot of people have no work. You will say we must continue to create new jobs. You will say that if it weren't for billions of unnecessary, artificial jobs - jobs that can be done better by machines - even more people would be out of work. That is true. Robots and other machines have made us so efficient there just isn't enough work for everyone.
"The only solution is to provide every single living human being with a guaranteed minimum income. It must be equal everywhere, all over the world. It cannot be large for obvious reasons. But it must be enough to stay alive. We will raise the money needed by introducing a global tax - equally high everywhere - on all consumption. We must limit consumption instead of trying to make it grow endlessly in order to promote economic growth.
"The third problem - "
Olaf Troll did not get to say what the third problem was. Because at that precise moment, there was an ear-splitting explosion. All over the world, the sky suddenly turned a brilliant white as millions of lightnings merged into one.
The first global electromagnetic storm ever witnessed by humans had begun.
All over the world, everything and anything that used electricity - power stations, water pumps, vehicles, computers, phones - exploded, burned, stopped working. The General Assembly chamber was plunged into total darkness. All communications were cut. No one knew what was going on.
What was going on was the greatest catastrophe the human world had ever known.
It lasted for only a single hour. During that hour, millions of people died. The people who had electric cardiac stimulators were the luckiest: they died very quickly, and relatively painlessly. The people who got trapped - in rooms, inside elevators, behind any electrically operated door - these people weren't so lucky. They took a long time to die.
Cars crashed into each other and into buildings, exploding in fireballs. Airplanes fell out of the sky. Electric power transformer boxes burst into flames.
Fires started everywhere, and spread quickly aided by the howling winds. For a while, it seemed the whole world was aflame.
And then the rain started falling.
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