Stasis

[first lines]

Future Seattle: [narrating] Seven billion people were killed in the last Great War. Not all at once, though. It takes time to wipe out an entire species. We are the survivors. Some say we were the lucky ones. But when I was a kid, my mother used to tell me stories about what life was like back then, before the radiation, before the plague, before the drought. At first, I didn't believe her. It all sounded too good to be true, like some sort of crazy fairy tale that spun horribly out of control. Now that there only are few of us left, something has become clear to me... We have a choice. We can either carve out a new future for ourselves on this tombstone of a dying planet, or go back to that fairy tale. And try again.