Solar Storms Recycling

Sometime, in the year 2202, humanity cheated. This much humans know. The mobius patterns seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics, offering no explanation for their capabilities. Most are small, and fragile, but they are something else.

They are life.

It may be aeons before humans are aware of just what they have done. Before their intervention, the multiverses... omniverse... whatever, were happily colliding away, self-immolating, only to be reborn anew, with no such thing as a memory if their previous state.

But now, humans have brought a piece of this immolation, this rebirth, into their own realm, and are bending it to their will. This delicate flicker threatens to become an inferno that may one day consume this Universe, and whatever lies beyond.

Without fear of disease or hunger, without worry of age or even death, the overwhelmingly vast majority of humans are called the Content, paragons of Nietzsche's Last Men, both male and female. They live their simple lives, either in quiet ennui, hedonistic frenzy, or somewhere in between, caring not for a future they believe to be garaunteed. By their own actions and decisions, they are second-class citizens, fourteen billion humans united in apathy.

But the future is not yet written, and, whether through circumstance or raw personal drive, some seek to guide or alter the status quo. Those who belong to this fractured lot are the authors of humanity's future - however minor. They manage and guide humanity and its creations, trying to forge their vision of what the future should be. Due to this, some call this section of humanity the gerents.

This is no consensus. The current dominant body is the Solar Consortium, which formed after the Martian Compact had taken control of Earth. The old powers who held sway over Earth's people before that incident have not forgotten, and neither have the masses who have rejected technology entirely, living outside of the great Arcologies as the original humans once lived, fortelling of the days when the sins of Man will be brought low.

Not half a century after the rise of the Consortium, it already finds its power threatened. Humans, transformed by the meddling of science into affairs that should have never been possible, are displaying abilities beyond the ken of current knowledge. Hunted, these rare humans banded together to build Ouranos Prime, a mighty space station resting inside the orbit of the seventh planet. There, they built a new weapon, revealing its nature in an event now known as the Jovian Massacre. This bought them many enemies, but also a measure of safety, at least for a few years.

Out across the vast gulf of space, the recent destruction of Kennedy Station has alerted another intelligence to humanity's presence. In a fit of panic, they have expended centuries of carefully harnessed energy in order to reach the nascent civilization. They have no idea what they will find.

Mankind knows little better.