The Garbage Monsters

Humanity is at a tipping point. Garbage is everywhere, and more created all the time. We have lakes of acid in China, and a ball of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. No matter how many landfills we create, more garbage comes flowing from the cities of the world.

Antarctica offered a elegant solution. In 2050 it was decided that all the worlds garbage would be routed to the frozen continent at the bottom of the world. So on trucks and ships, it all went down there through South America, and over the Drake Passage.

Many hundreds of years passed this way, and the garbage formed into great mountains. The waste treatment chemicals gave these mountains a faint green color. Frozen and inert, it bought the world some time at least. The people took great pride in their solution.

The lakes and oceans were cleaned. As long as the garbage was out of sight, it was out of mind. Humanity flourished, and technology advanced. New material sciences were unlocked, but one constant was the flow of garbage down to Antarctica. If anything, more waste was created, and so the garbage mountains grew taller.

Antarctica soon became nothing more than a garbage dump. Eventually storing vast amounts of nuclear waste in addition to the everyday trash. Instead of solving the waste problems at the source, people just took for granted that everything got wisked away under the rug.

Everything might have gone well for humanity, but mother earth has a mind of her own. After many more decades, unexpected volcanic activity disturbed the balance. Cracks formed beneath the nuclear waste containment faciliy, and the toxic green sludge mixed with the lava below.

Eventually the mixture of nuclear waste and lava ignited in a mighty blast. Vast amounts of the rare elements beneath the earth were consumed and blown out into space. The blast so large, a small but permanent white hole was created. Some blasts are so big, they just keep coming.

The area around the white hole became known as the Cosmic Expanse; a scorched flat plane of black ice, interupted only by deep purple volcanic glass spikes jutting out randomly. It was an area hostile to human life, and declared a no man’s land. Tales were told of strange creatures emerging from the crack in the universe.

The white hole created a gravitational shift. Earth was now very slowly moving out of standard orbit. In the blast, the multitude of communications satelites lost syncronization, and smashed together. This created a swarm of deadly metal chaos. All space exploration was halted, leaving Earth’s population locked inside. The small hope they had of colonizing Mars seemed hopeless without a vast new source of power.

It was now known that Earth itself would eventually, very slowy but surely, leave the solar system. So a new calendar was invented using the galactic center as a reference instead of the sun. The Galactic Aligned Calendar was created, and started on year zero.

This was a dark age for humanity. Many wars and political systems came and went over the decades. In time, some adventurous people decided to live near the Cosmic Expanse. These people hoped to tame the power of the white hole.

It was hoped that they could draw energy from the white hole. Perhaps even to find a way to reclaim space, and travel to Mars, or even distant planets. With the Earth locked in by damaged satelites, some great power would be needed to clear the way.

The land of Antarctica had thawed enough that small forests and streams had emerged. The areas near the Cosmic Expanse had magma pockets which could be harnessed as a power source. So it came that deep underground, hidden in secret geothermal farms, a new form of life evolved.

Similar to humans in every way, except resistant to the cold, and with pulsing blue veins behind the ears. These “Antarcans” as they became known, thrived undetected by the rest of the world. But this could only last so long.

Once discovered, the Antarcans were shunned by the rest of the world. They became known as The Garbage Monsters. Soon enough, war was declared pitting the Antarcans against the Humans. One by one the hidden farms were found and erradicated. The Antarcans given no quarter, and treated as nothing more than insects; their farms describe as “Hives”.

The year is now 1978 of the Galactic Aligned Calendar. Our tale begins with Mori, a young Antarcan girl, at the last geothermal farm. The last refuge of the Antarcans. A chance encouter is about to change everything…