Rocky and I managed to make it back to the gang hangout before dark. This is where we would usually come to trade the goods we steal every day.

Today was a bit different since we would have to deal with The Receptionist at the big table. The Big Tables were only for leaders, and we were not leaders of our section of the gang.

Or… at least we weren’t until Rodge kicked the bucket.

The building was somewhat rundown, but the inside pulsed with unique patterns and beautiful lights. It was a location that debtors would gather to give out ‘favors’ that you would never be able to repay.

Adults ran places like these in almost every slum across the world. They offered us some semblance of protection, and we did whatever was necessary to keep that protection and not starve.

Usually, Rodge would be the one to approach the adults, but this time Rocky and I were facing the music. Well, more Rocky facing the music and me watching from the side.

“And what do you have for me today Omari?” The Receptionist asked.

I loathed the woman who would stay behind a fancy counter and direct kids to their death without batting an eyelid. Yet, I could not truly blame her because we were all victims of circumstance in the end.

She wasn’t always like this, there was once a time when she would cry for each child that didn’t return from our daily ‘scavenging’, but time hardens even the softest of hearts.

I guess watching less and less of us come back every time was too much for her fragile heart. She also had a family to feed, a sick daughter to take care of, but some of us were just trapped in the slums without a choice.

I was one such person, she was another such person, and Rocky was the definition of someone who could never leave the slums in his life. It was a sad ordeal but the reality was often sadder than our perception could handle.

Of course, they were reasons for our stagnant states.

We were included in the 5% of the population who were either hiding for survival (me), owned by the mobs (the receptionist) or had too much trauma to pass the Corporation’s Integration Test (Rocky).

I often wonder when was it that everything went to shit.

There was no specific point in time where anyone could say ‘this shouldn’t have happened’. I think the progression of the world was for the better. I still do think that in a way, even if I currently have the short end of the stick.

It wasn’t like there were no opportunities to improve your state of life…. Just none available for some of us. After all, there was no way to make everyone happy all the time.

If I could go back to a point in History and pick an event that led to my current reality… that would be six years before I was born – 2014.

That was the year everything changed.

∞∞∞

Dr. Goober was a well-respected scientist that theorized that a Super Hadron Particle Accelerator could be the key to limitless energy.

It wasn’t the first time Humanity had heard such bold claims, but Dr. Goober seemed the most promising to make such a claim thus far.

Years passed and he couldn’t make any leeway on his bold claim. Dr. Goober grew fanatical and he was eventually dismissed as just another crazy scientist.

And he was a crazy Scientist… for the most part. It was even rumored that he would pull his hair out whenever he couldn’t solve a problem.

Pretty normal for a genius right?

Well, apparently Dr. Goober took things a bit further than all the other geniuses.

He eventually went bald due to pulling his hair out but he couldn’t stop his unique thinking technique.

So he started pulling out the hair of assistants, lab technicians, laboratory mice… basically, anything that had hair would be pulled.

This led to the dismissal of his research.

The Super Hadron Particle Accelerator was a bust and that caused all Governments that invested in the project to take a huge hit: USA, Australia, Russia, England, Africa, both North and South Korea.

Every Government scrambled to try and recover the capital they invested in the facility. The Governments came to a consensus to send in Dr. Toozy - a money-grubbing, dime-chasing, Doctor of Economics.

It was said that Dr. Toozy could sell a beak to a chicken without the chicken finding out that he just re-sold the chicken what belonged to it.

Toozy was once rumored to sleep with a man’s wife and convinced the man to pay for the room he used to sleep with his wife.

Toozy even sold the wife back to the husband in such a confusing way that the husband went bankrupt the following year. Safe to say, Toozy was sent to make money where money was the most impossible to be made.

Yes, Dr. Toozy was a financial genius whether it was eCommerce, online banking, creating paper trails. Anything to do with money, Dr. Toozy could do it brilliantly… and that’s exactly what he did.

In 2018, Dr. Goober somehow managed to pierce the dimensional barrier of a dimension called ‘Dimension Z’. This unlocked a limitless energy known as Quartz.

With this, Dr. Goober’s legacy could have been considered fulfilled, but Dr. Toozy had other plans.

Toozy did what he was brought in to do, he sold it. First, Toozy sold the quartz energy to big franchises: Nike, NBA, Disney, Facebook, Visa, Verizon…

Toozy and Goober became the richest two men overnight. One the brains and the other the sales. It was a match made in heaven.

Due to the unique nature of Quartz energy, these franchises tripled their rate of growth within a week, and within a month… they had grown beyond what governments could contain.

Still, Government systems would not fall so easily, it was a system that had thrived at least two hundred years. Soon, these franchises found themselves being pushed against a wall and a hard place.

Assassinations, corporate espionage, blackmail… Governments started a secret war with influential Franchises across the world. It was a bloody, chaotic battle and soon the franchises were beaten into a desperate situation.

Franchises went from billion-dollar companies to thousands of dollars in revenue by 2019. It was a pitiful fall.

That’s when the franchises grouped together and came up with an idea that would change the course of history.

The Franchises thought that the best way to survive Governments was through the aid of families that had fought off Governments and won.

That’s when Ancient Families and Organizations from each Continent came into play: The Eutopia Family of Africa, The Antrum Family of Antarctica, The Xiao Family of Asia, The Smorgon Family of Australia, The Rothschild Family of Europe, The Rockefeller Family of North America, and The Amazonian Family of South America.

Each of these famous families were wealthy before Government systems thrived, and still somehow managed to keep their wealth even while being suppressed intensely by Governments across the world.

The moment Ancient and Famous Families were brought into the folds, Government Systems collapsed overnight. They went from the bully to being bullied.

From the ashes of the weakened Government bodies came Mega-Corporations, the new rulers of the earth.

By The Cosmotic Calendar Year 2022

The Continents had been renamed….

Eutopia of African States, The Great Antrum of Antarctica, United Asia of The Chinese States, Smorgon Corporations of Australia, The Rothschild Europa, The United States of The Rockefeller Corporations, and The South Coalition of Amazon.