“It is simply far too improper!” 
Her voice had adopted its threatening calm mode.  This was three in the morning and this was not the first time this week that she had caught Clarissa sneaking in from another late night at the ship’s casino.
“How many times do we have to go over this?” Jessica continued, maintaining an air of calm toward the immature woman who stood, head bowed, before her.  “If you hope to maintain the small scrap of the credibility that out family name once held, you cannot be up gambling until small hours of the morning,” here she began pacing, “especially on a vessel of this class, within such close proximity to those who are positively chomping at the bit to see disgrace fall upon us all.”
Turning to glare at her, she grasped at a family photo that sat on the mantle.
“Think of Anthony and Aurora,” thrusting the fame into Clarissa’s hands, “what will happen to their futures if they have no good name, who will marry them, who will want to continue a line of gamblers, I ask you?”
Here she paused as though waiting for an answer that she knew would not be coming.
“I don’t know,” came a timid reply, with a further lowering of the head.
Jessica shook her head, “No, didn’t I suspect that you did.”  She motioned for them both to take a seat.
She waited until Clarissa was properly seated before taking a perch on the edge of the sofa.  The soft cushioning begged her to lean back into its open embrace and drift off to sleep, but keeping a stiff back, a straight face and a firm resolution to have this dealt with, she faced the woman sitting opposite her.  Sighing, she couldn’t help but take in her gaudy appearance.
Far too much make-up had been applied before leaving the rooms that evening, now it was smudged and faded in places, giving her face an, otherwise humorous tone.  The slightly too-tight dress that she wore did nothing for what was really only a slightly chubby figure.  It clung to the small rolls and enhanced them, not only her stomach and her arms, but her bust.  The shawl that was supposed to retain her modesty had somehow to here waist and been tied there. 
Sat there in the living room area of the set of rooms that their family shared, she looked vastly out of place, in a collection of Faberge eggs, she was a badly wrapped Easter egg.  The soft creamy carpets and faded green, deeply padded sofas not to mention the green hangings that gave the room a certain elegant feel to it, they were all at odds with the pinkish red hue that was the colour or the dress that was sitting in the midst of the finery, a colour that Jessica had come to think of as violent pink.  The woman sporting such garish garments could almost have passed for a common street walker to anyone that did not know her.
Sadly at this perception, Jessica felt only shame for, or rather of, Clarissa.  Such a pity considering that no more than a year ago they were as close as mother and daughter would ever hope to be.  But since a loving husband and father’s mysterious death, Clarissa had turned out for the worse.
She took Jared’s disappearance as though it were nothing until he had been found dead in a derelict church yard, with no discernable reason or cause of death.  At the very news the entire family felt the grief that a close, loving family should feel.  However it was when Clarissa had gone to speak with the mortician, upon her return, or rather her delayed return, to the family home, did she appear to be a changed woman.  She had been such a strong woman, but seeing the corpse of such a beloved on had seemingly changed her into another person entirely.
At the time the change was barely noted, under the circumstances it seemed to be just a way of coping.  But after several months had passed, despite the support and encouragement of her family, Clarissa was still drinking and gambling as often as humanly possible.  She had become distant and estranged for those who had been closest to her, speaking only to complain or curse at whoever she felt suited it.  More than once she would be found to have been ‘escorted’ home by an eager gentleman, who, despite many attempts and arguments, was turned away before he could even reach the door.
Jessica would have given anything to be able to go back to a time when everything was right, even this two month cruise, on a high class ship, had seemed like an opportune way to escape for a while, to relax and calm things down a little…
She shook her head.
A quiet cough brought her mind sharply to the present.  She gave a sad sigh and regained her feet.
“I am too tired to do this now, I will speak to you at breakfast.”  And turning towards her room she walked away.  “Please,” came a pleading voice from behind her, whose only motive to not be thought ill of was the motive that she should be allowed to still walk freely around the ship, maybe into the casino…
“No Clarissa, tomorrow” she replied in a wearied voice, taking hold of the door handle and turning it.
“At least call me what I am to you, it is at least my right.”  A slightly more steady voice came this time.
To much
Throwing the door open with a crash, Jessica turned to bare the full force of her scowl upon her.  “I will call you mother when you act like one,” she snarled through her teeth.
Then moving swiftly into her room she slammed the door leaving Clarissa alone in the dark.

It was all she could do to maintain her demeanour until she was by her bed.  Laying one hand on the duvet she sank to her knees, her shoulders heaving with such sadness, tears spilled unchecked down her cheeks, and silent sobs threatened to choke her.  It was a year exactly since she had lost her father

and her mother.

Chapter 2

Ever since the devastating Global War, the world had changed.

The war had lasted the better part of the twenty-seventh century and though in all more than a billion lives were lost in conflict and unhindered combat, the real devastation was the lives that were ruined, the homes destroyed, the civilisations ripped apart.
There were no opposing countries, the oppositions were formed within them, however every country on the earth, save one, were at war, the fighting was more within, although most countries had agendas against others.
The one group that sparked the wars was a large group of activists that called themselves The Stands.  They were mostly young rebels that had no other ideas in their head than to live their lives the way that they wanted, unrestricted by rules and laws.  They would often be head saying that they wanted to “Cast off the shackles that our very own governments are holding us down slowly choking us with!”  This would be the sort of thing they would cry as they burned down the house of yet another member of parliament’s house or mercilessly slaughtered another group of police officers.  They believed that everyone should have the choice to commit whatever good, or evil, act that they should want or need to without anyone making these restrictions that men put in place. 
They quickly inspired an enormous following and all over the world groups were formed to attempt to overthrow authority.  Anybody who refused to join them was threatened, taken advantage of, or made extreme examples of. 
In the first few months alone several hundred possibly a few thousand innocent people were brutally murdered to be made “examples of” and to be put out of power or just out of the way.

For several decades the world went to hell but an end was finally coming.
Several fleets of men and women from both sides, about a hundred million from either side, as well as a flag ship from the neutral country, took to earths orbit to end it. 
Nobody is sure whose idea it was but there were many different stories as to why so many went up.  Some said that those folk had been trying to escape, some were told that there would be an almighty battle, there was even talk of some negotiation of a massive scale.  But despite each story, most people found themselves believing that they went up to simply save a world that had fallen into chaos, no matter what the cost.
Off all the millions of ships that left the earth’s surface, only one returned, its name was Saviour and it was the flagship from that one neutral county.
On board were three men, one who was of that country, one who was a Stand, and one who was of the remaining side.  However it mattered little who had come back, the mere fact was that they had returned, and they had returned together.  They, all three would not speak of what happened, save one thing.  When the doors to the ship opened and the three men stepped out, the formally highest ranking officer of them, a man named Tobias Jackson, formally a commander, stepped out ahead of the others and addressed the crowds that had gathered and spoke three words.

“It is finished”

And just like that it was.
Nobody understood it but equally nobody questioned it.  Those that had heard the commander had listened to the tone of his voice and seen the look on his face and those of his companions, all turned from their foes and enemies and returned to their homes, to their friends and loved ones.  Peace, in its most basic form was restores to the earth.

However, with peace, came poverty,
to most at least.

The only country that had somehow remained neutral throughout the ongoing conflict had profited greatly through minor open, arms trade to either side and through food and goods trade.
The rest of the world seemed to have all but forgotten about providing for themselves and had fallen into disrepair and scarcity, and so heavily relied on the only remaining country to be able to help for provisions and, rather importantly, guidance and direction.  With all but that country lacking any kind of leadership it fell on them to reclaim world order.
Within mere years colonies were set up all over the globe, providing food, work and civilisation for all.  The families of the men chosen to leave their regulated, safe country to run the colonies were well rewarded in being resettled in surroundings far beneath themselves.  The division caused the remaining populous into different classes, classes that were very similar to those that were to found around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The colonist families, convinced that they were far superior to those who had allowed the world to be torn apart, took themselves to be the upper-classes fully.  They felt in their duty to be moral examples to those less likely than themselves, and so seeing the similarities, that the division had caused, to that of an almost ancient era, they set into society a need to act in the same fashion. 
Soon arranged marriages into higher money became the norm, at least one in every three men would have mistresses or at least regular visits to or from companionable women, and people were to address another as formerly as possible, by their title and surname.
It did seem that women were given the short end of the stick, never being allowed to fully express themselves and rarely allowed to love or even experience passion. 
However, those subjected to this new lifestyle soon learnt to accept it, several sank into it remarkably well and for most the idolised era that was being emulated was thought of one of romance from films and books.
Only a handful of women chose to rebel against such a dramatic and sexist change to their lifestyle, even more so as it had been implemented over such a short amount of time.  They felt that it was to them ill justice considering to themselves that they were just as capable as men.
These women tended to be shunned by the rest of society and in some extreme cases were even sent to work in the fields or factories for their ignorance, it seemed only fitting that they should prove themselves, though very few ever did, and none of them were remembered.

And so, as advanced technologically as the earth was, its civilisation had still been set back nearly a millennium.
This time people may be less hasty to move forward into the future.