JS: Earth That Was had a great many wonderful things. It also had horrible things. In the end, the Microsoft Wars were good for the planet because they eliminated the excess population and many horrible things. Oddly enough, the planet was about to do the same all on its own.

SK: What are you talking about?

JS: As I said, nothing I tell you will be of any use without a frame of reference. Here, now that it is booted, let me click on this slide show.

SK: Slide show? Oh, pictures. What are these?

JS: A series of photos of, from and about the international space station.

SK: The international space station?

JS: The cost of building, launching and assembling a new space station became too much for one country to bear. NASA teamed up with the space agencies of other countries, even those in countries that had not yet gone to space themselves, in order to build a series of modules, which could be launched into orbit and connected together to provide an ever-growing laboratory in space. Every country that participated managed to get some scientists assigned to the ISS for at least one tour of duty conducting experiments in zero gravity.

There! That picture is the same one you see on my wall. It was taken from the ISS on a clear day by one of the scientists.

SK: What has any of this got to do with the Microsoft Wars?

JS: As I said, frame of reference. Would it surprise you to learn that we, the people of Earth, sent many different science teams to the ISS over the years, but the last team must have all died.

SK: What do you mean must have?

JS: We have no way of knowing. There! Let me hit pause. See all of these people?

SK: Yes.

JS: This is the last team to ever be sent there. However, they died; it wasn’t pretty.

SK: What are you talking about?

JS: When the Microsoft Wars started, the planet got distracted. A group of scientists had gone to the ISS with twelve months’ worth of food and water. The air filtration system should have operated for years, if not decades. They had more than enough work for the four months they were supposed to be up there. Nobody gave them a second thought.

The various militaries focused on trying to win the war. The scientists focused on completing the mission. Before either group achieved their objective, we lost the ability to retrieve them. Eventually, we lost the ability to even communicate with them. Nobody knows how their lives ended and nobody really wants to know.

SK: You are simply making all of this up. I cannot believe I was sent all the way out here to talk with a madman!

JS: Do you see that tube sitting next to that folded-up tripod?

SK: Yes.

JS: It’s a telescope. When it gets dark out, we will take it outside and point it up to find something, which looks very much like the pictures you just saw.

SK: It still exists? Why hasn’t anyone written about this before?

JS: Yes, it is still up there. You will even see there are lights on in some sections. As to why nobody writes about it, that’s easy—it was forbidden. The law has been on the books a long time in many different places. Before everything went to hell, the surviving governments banned conversation about it or writing of it in order to try salvaging the people’s morale.

SK: That’s absurd!

JS: Is it? How do you think an entire people would feel knowing there were seven of their own trapped in a tin can orbiting the planet and the only thing we could do was let them die of starvation or by their own hand?

As I said, you don’t have a frame of reference to ask about the Microsoft Wars. You don’t have any concept of Earth That Was. Until your readers have a concept of Earth That Was, they cannot begin to understand how we got here.

Please, let me shut this computer down. Once the battery fails to take a charge, I will never be able to use it again. I haven’t heard of a place in the world that has the ability to make a new battery for it. Like many portable computers of its day, power passes through the battery instead of around it, so when the battery fails, the computer is useless. A sad, yet effective, marketing technique to sell more batteries.

SK: You mean to tell me someone knew all this information and when they passed a law, everybody went along with it, never talking about it?

JS: It only applied to the reporters and news outlets. The various governments of the world got in front of the story. Missions to the station were so commonplace that the vast majority of the world simply never thought about them. Whenever something really bad happened with the space station, we heard about it on the news or read about it in the paper, but normally, we heard nothing. It was just some project our tax dollars went to and we believed that some day, we might see some new medical advancements or some other such thing from it. The world was quite accustomed to the space program developing things, which trickled out to the general population, greatly improving the quality of life.

SK: Such as?

 

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You are reading a special promotional version of “John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars.” This is the third book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:


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