They thought they had found the solution to overpopulation when they ordered everyone to live in the towers. A lot of good that did to them.
We're getting ahead of ourselves already. For the sake of clarity let us start at the beginning.
The Earth As It Was At The End Of The 21st Century
It was the year 2099. A new century was fast approaching and the old one had witnessed some interesting developments. In the year 2060, global economic woes had caused the economies of nation states to crumble. A situation that made the hands behind the curtain step out to safeguard their enterprises.
The oligarchs who ran the affairs of nations behind closed doors, had decided to pick up the ashes and start a new order. They held meetings around the world where they formed "Collectives"; organizations designed to consolidate their financial interests. Clumping what was left of the nation states into vast empires.
By 2071 eighty percent of the Earth was ruled by the Collectives. The most prominent of them being the Hungarian Collective.
By 2086 the world's population levels had gone critical. There were 11 billion people on the planet. Resources were dwindling, the environment was degraded, and social unrest was the order of the day.
The Luxembourg meeting of 29th February 2088 laid out a plan to tackle the problem. After years of planning and research, the brightest minds of the Hungarian Collective had figured out a way to contain the ever expanding population.
They were going to build arcologies. Massive structures that reached out into the skies, and had the capacity to contain hundreds of thousands. By 2093, the first set of arcologies had been completed and citizens were relocated to the towers.
In the long run, the Collective had to commission more towers. Population pressures had forced them to extend the project beyond their preliminary estimates. Something was obviously not right.
The existence of the towers had given birth to a new social structure; one based on levels. The higher your level was on a tower, the higher your status in society. The authorities had no problems regulating population growth in the higher levels, but it was a lost cause at the bottom.
No amount of sensitization could stop the plebeians from breeding like rabbits. The spate of open migration didn't help matters either. When the population became too much for a tower to handle, the Collective had no choice but to build another one.
This continued for a while until the economic burden became unbearable. Social security for over 6 billion citizens, a war of attrition with the other Collectives, and over a decade worth of social instability had weakened the economy.
When it become clear that building more towers wasn't going to solve the population problem anytime soon, the Collective elite proposed a more radical solution.
They halted all funding for constructing towers and reinvested it into their radical solution. A sleeper ship codenamed "Ark". The elite were going to leave Earth.
Without the funds the situation worsened. Population levels were at breaking point, and the system was at the brink of collapse.
The elites didn't care. After 15 years of research and development, the Ark was ready to fly.
On 27th January 2127, the last batch of shuttles left the Earth. The whole world knew of the Ark, as it was impossible to hide an object large enough to contain 50,000 people.
On the day of the launch, the launch sites were a scene of chaos as numerous plebeians tried to maneuver their way into the shuttles. It was a fruitless exercise that resulted in tragic loss of life.
33 years have passed since that day, and the world of 2160 is no different from the way it was a century ago. The population is still expanding, the endless wars are still ongoing, disease, poverty and suffering are still the order of the day.
I pity the lucky few who found their way into the Ark. They think they've paid the price for paradise; a world where everything goes the way to they want, but they're wrong.
Some have likened humans to a virus. We get to a location and we expand, draining resources and occupying all available space. When it becomes filled, we move to the next location and repeat the cycle.
Humans have moved to another planet, and in the years to come the new Earth will suffer all they problems of the old. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. A lesson the elites will understand in its totality.
This is an entry to the Tell Me A Story Contest run by @calluna.
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