God Of A Man

Chapter One:
“Hatsu Saisho”

Human beings would perhaps be the strangest of all animal forms that ever existed on the face of earth. While on one hand they claim themselves to be the most intelligent of all creations, an epitome of evolution, yet they always manage to skip the learning process associated with every bad experience. They would sell their souls to let anyone believe otherwise but when the time comes for the crunch time decisions, they invariably make the same mistake. About 400 years ago in the summer of 2011, they wrote an encyclopaedia of mistakes that changed the face of human existence, along with every other conceivable life form, in a way that was by far the most dramatic event of the entire recorded history.

As the United States prepared itself for war on Iran, for harbouring and training Taliban militia on it’s soil, tensions between the Korean twins were at their peak. On April 16, 2011 the NATO forces launched the first offensive, deep into the heart of Tehran. For 5 days, the Naval might of the US, Great Britain and France was on full display. Iran however was no Iraq, and put up the resistance good enough to dispel any land based direct offensive, even from the Afghanistan side. NATO’s problems were compounded by the strong reservations raised by the entire Middle East.

Meanwhile, taking the opportunity of the US fighting a battle which it couldn’t quit anymore for it’s prestige, North Korea thought it to be the right time to settle all the issues with it’s brother from the South. A second front opened up for the NATO forces to take care off.

China, which always had clear intentions of dictating the terms in the region, thought it might just be the right time to express it’s stature as a world changing power demanded an immediate halt of all hostilities be the NATO and let the Korean decide their future on their own, or else threatened to join the war.

Since the end of cold war, no one had dared question the US might and authority and the US had become habitual of bulldozing it’s way through international affairs with it’s NATO allies hanging behind like a pack of wolves waiting for a lion to finish of his meal so that they can have the remnants of his kiss as their share. The US refused to budge and China joined the war from the North Korean side.

Sensing the fluidity of situation and the resulting weakness of the NATO presence, Taliban along with the helpful tribal warriors from the troubled North Western Frontier Province in Pakistan, launched an offensive with an aim of getting access to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. With US and NATO not in a good position to help as they were busy fighting on two fronts, Pakistan was caught in a mess that it was itself responsible for creating in the first place.

Taliban’s strength was not only in the ferocity and swiftness of their attack and the support it received from the local radical elements in Pakistan, but the fact that the only country that could have helped it at that time was India in whom, unfortunately, Pakistan had little trust.

Sensing trouble from the volatile situation in Pakistan and the attack of Taliban, India started to gather it’s troops on the Pakistan border, in order to counter any misadventure, if it were to be, by the Taliban against it’s sovereignty. Unfortunately Pakistan thought that perhaps India was planing to take advantage of the situation, it could not divert adequate number of it’s forces to counter the radical offensive.

Pakistan didn’t fall, but what fell was much more important than Pakistan. What fell was the fate of the whole world and entire life existence on the world know at that time. Taliban was reversed but not before the Pakistani nukes and their technology had been completely compromised to the radical world.

It is surprising how it takes ages for the good words and deeds to spread among humans, but how quickly the evil designs and desires make their home to the farthest of corners. A vaccination for a disease takes longer to be dispersed in human civilization, but the formula for nukes has more takers than the entire human population size. Perhaps it’s some kind of a romance that’s associated with doing what is wrong that drugs human minds and corrupts their souls.

Iran was soon busy getting ready for a final war, thanks to Taliban’s generosity. Human civilization as anybody had ever known to have existed was about to be wiped out to near extinction level.

NATO was fighting two wars, neither of which seemed to move towards an end. Political parleys were falling apart, partly because the neither the Chinese, nor the Americans were ready to yield, and partly because America was getting and impression that it’s forces will soon end the Iranian resistance and then only one battlefield would be left to take care of.

Iran was facing desperate times. To divert attention, on 10 November, 2012 Taliban nuked New Delhi. It’s hard to tell whether the resulting destruction was the worst, or the political chaos and the people unrest. International pressure on India to act with restraint was immense but people pressure on the Government forced India to launch an attack on Pakistan.

Pakistan had already been weakened by the fight with Taliban and resorted to the last step first. With a fear of nuclear assault by India in retaliation, they jumped the barrel and used what ever nukes they had. India joined the mayhem. Iran, whose defences were about to collapse nuked whatever it could pick out of the hat. Israel had to pay for siding with US and torturing the Palestine brethren, while NATO ships were attacked by nukes.

North Korea used it’s crude nuclear developments on South, and US had to join the line and China followed. Within the next two months, most of the humanity had been wiped out either by the nukes or by the resulting radiation.

The leaders of the most fearsome of nations had to run and hide for their lives, not from the enemies or from the public questioning their senses, in fact, there were none left to question anyone, but from the radiations.

But fate and time have their own ways of taking care of the garbage that needs to be disposed off. The Japanese who never made even one mistake in this whole mess found themselves at the receiving end of the hard fate brought on them by some idiots first up. An earthquake broke the construction of their arc, and the radiations took care of the rest. It takes ages for radiations to diminish to human body acceptable levels even after using all kinds of technology and protection. The Russians ran out of food, while Indians had only themselves to blame for their corrupt practices that even the arc they had build was of sub-standard material and gave in. The Americans and one by one the rest of the nations, they all ran out of food and died. The Chinese were strict and tried to ration by making a top priority list and culling the list from the lower end until only one of them was left, who died of cancer.

Humans saw it all before they finished along with all they had for themselves but what they never learned to share with each other. When food ran out, friends killed and ate friends, husband killed wives, mother’s killed children. The basic instinct of hunger made a mockery of all humanity if there was any left in any human.

Far from all this, there was a small team of researchers who were working in Antarctica that were saved by nature to a limited extent as the radiations somehow didn’t spread to the farthest south of the world, perhaps because all the stupidity was staged up north, and inspite of all the idiocy, to a level that somehow limited it’s affect to a limit of a couple of hundred kilometres of Antarctica. By fate or by science, but one of the most hostile environments on earth was the new human home.

The researchers were joined by a few hundred people from the countries that lay just north of the south, who were not rich or powerful, or talented enough to make the arcs but who’s will to survive was enough to push them down south in search of a safer home. A new and the only human city left on the face of this earth developed. They called it “Hatsu Saisho” meaning “New Beginning” in Japanese, to laud the Japanese for not committing the biggest sin against humanity, yet suffering the doom that was the least theirs’ in making. All the knowledge available was stored for future reference, solar power was the only source of power, and houses were dug in snow using all the equipment they had at disposal. One thing was clear, once they ran out of clothing, food or medicine, or damaged their equipment there was no way of getting any new. Conditions were harsh and resources were limited and needed to be rationed and carefully used. Once again, the human instincts of hunger and protection were testing the last remaining worn out threads of humanity.

But once a human, will always be a human. Sharing is a phenomenon that doesn’t come naturally to humans. Perhaps the animal origins had left their irremovable imprint on human psyche. To save the resources, the first thing they did was to kill each other. Only very late did they realize that they are the last ones of their kind and killing each other means, effectively wiping out human existence forever. Conditions were harsh, but one thing that always surprising about human spirit is it’s resilience.

The last human inhabitation “Hatsu Saisho” tugged along it’s lonely existence. Humanity was pushed literally back to stone-age, except that they still had the vast knowledge bank safe and ready to be shared with their posterity. The only question was, would there be any posterity?

The humans had finally learned to live at peace and work together to make a life of it, but their fate was not in their control anymore. Infact it never was. Humans only thought they were masters of their own destiny. All they were was, masterminds of their own destruction.

Humans may have survived the direct impact of radiations, but they were not completely safe from radioactivity. The fish they depended on from the sea brought the radioactivity, even if in negligible quantities, straight into their bodies. Human life span had shortened, and reproductive organs were reduced to ornamental in general, and pleasure seeking bodily features in particular. The power to create posterity was lost. Cloning was the only alternative left. Life in general became a curse to live. Without any fuel to cook, their diet became as animal as it could have ever been. Clothes wore out with repeated use. Penguins became their food as well as dress. Bathing and hygiene was an yearly occasion. Imperative to say, loss of faith was gradual but complete and the desperate times pushed the moral limits into oblivion. Humans that used to kill in the name of religion and fought so many crusades defending their GOD lost all faith in HIM. Faith was history, along with most of the mankind.