Solar Storms Recycling

Preamble

Half a million years ago, humanity learned the secret of fire. Setting themselves apart from the animals that surrounded them, mankind took its first step out from under the oppressive thumb of Nature.

Seventy thousand years ago, humanity learned to speak. Though they were able to communicate before, no longer were they limited to nasal grunts and clicks of the tongue. From Africa, they conquered the Earth.

Twelve thousand years ago, humanity learned to harvest. Where once there were thousands, in time, there would be billions.

Six thousand years ago, humanity learned to write. Where once the knowledge of previous generations had to be endlessly repeated, it could now be known for all eternity.

Not so many decades past, humanity unlocked the power within the atom. For good, and for ill, even the most ignorant amongst the masses could not help but respect the smallest of things.

As the third millenium sent humanity into a frenzy, the secrets of aging itself were laid bare, and Science found for mankind the Fountain of Youth.

At the dawn of the 23rd century, the people of Terra have colonized many worlds within its star system, and plans for three worlds in Alpha Centauri are already underway. The terraforming of Mars is nearing completion, and work on making Venus habitable is well underway. The light barrier is being bent apart, with tachyons allowing for nearly instantanious communication and construction of great stellar gates is underway to literally cut the vast distances between the stars. Some three hundred million do not call Earth home, and billions of artificial intelligences happily slave away for the betterment of mankind.

But above all, in their quest to bend the laws of existence itself, humans have discovered something best described as magical. In just six years time, the discovery of the mobius patterns has accelerated mankind's progress by tens of thousands of years.

The vast expanse of space stretches before humanity, cold, but inviting. All of its knowledge, all its wisdom, all its power, seems like naught but a tiny candle amidst an endless night. The Solar System is the Third Cradle of Man, out of Africa, off of Earth. Not satisfied with mere immortality, humanity gathers its resources and hones its intellect, preparing to storm across the Milky Way.

Small, and fragile, but it only takes a single flicker to light the inferno.

Redux

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.