It all began in 2007

when scientists in Germany figured out how to control a living organism using light. Neurobiologists, neuropsychiatrists, scientists, doctors - they all jumped on the bandwagon this amazing breakthrough promised for the future.

They didn't consider other uses, though - at least not back then. They thought grand thoughts and dreamed grandiose dreams of curing Parkinson's and restoring the use of limbs whithered by brain-damaging illnesses such as spina bifida or polio. They thought about how they could "fix" bodies bent and twisted by the whims of an indifferent God; how they, indeed, could become gods in their own right, meting out physical repairs to financially viable customers.

They didn't think about what this new technology implied. What could be done with it. Where it might lead. They did not see what was about to become. And for that, they lost everything; this shining future was ignored because of their arrogance. Instead of a utopia of perfectly healthy bodies strolling across the planet, grooving the greed of the corporate insurance machine, the HMOs and the mega-hospitals, instead of having the chance to have a positive influence on the future of humanity, instead, they opened the lid of Pandora's Box and unleashed something entirely different, and more devastating than the diseases they initially desired to conquer.

---

Evan reached into his duffel, digging amongst the empty magazines, bits of metal he'd found on his foray into the old part of the city and a few pieces of camo-cloth for the little bundle of jerked rabbit he'd hidden there. There were no feeders around, at least that he could see, and he needed a boost for the next part of his journey.

Perched as he was on the barely standing cornice of a blasted apartment block, Evan had an almost 360-degree view of the sprawling, devastated and crumbling remains of the city. The remains of skyscrapers still clawed their way toward the sky here and there, backlit by the lights of the megalopolis, the wall visible even from here, hundreds of blocks away from where the New City started. Black clouds scudded across the sky, glowing from the lights of the fortress city below, seeming to snag and be caught by the barren branches of the old skyscrapers, their now glassless, spindly trunks winding their way up into the bruised atmosphere.

Evan could see the layers of exhaust gasses from this vantage point - yellow sulfur clouds creeping through the valleys the streets had become, oozing over the hills formed by the slumping hulks of buildings that once populated a thriving city.

No feeders, no lurchers, no gnashers were visible. A break. A respite. A little tiny piece of quiet. For now.

Gnawing on his jerky, Evan wondered again what it was like inside the megalopolis. He stared at its silver facades, bright and steely, with stacks behind the glowing walls belching forth the crud that Evan and his fellow grubs were forced to breathe and call air. Occasionally, an observer could see the trails of launches from further back in the city - shuttles carrying this doomed world's privileged to live in the space stations, or even to go on the great transports which were even now plodding their way toward distant stars.

Go,thought Evan. Leave. Let us, us HUMANS fix the mess you made. We can. We will.

Evan and a few of the youngers like him thought this way. Good riddance to the "Society". Let them blast their way off the Earth. Leave. They'd done enough damage anyway. Leave the Earth to the people, the Remnants who weren't rich enough or subservient enough to make it into the City.