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.