Episode 1: Ashes of Earth

My name is Damocles Brannsteiner and this is my diary:

01 January 2099

So close to 2100, yet so far from any expectations. The year is ending not with celebration, but with the slow death of our beloved planet — and, sooner or later, the end of the human race. We did all we could over the last 200 years, from WW1 to WW5, from ecological annihilation and militarized global politics to exponential overpopulation. During the same period, luck wasn’t on our side. We faced the rise of uncontrollable super-viruses and made our first confirmed contact with extraterrestrial life. Planet Earth, once a galactic phenomenon full of life and progress, is now a ghost — devastated by our hubris. It looks less like the world we knew and more like a decaying set from a dystopian film once labeled “science fiction.” The only fiction now is our denial.

All oxygen resources are destroyed. The forests of the Amazon, the Congo, and Southeast Asia have long since burned in megafires visible from low orbit. The last major glacial melt in Antarctica occurred in 2074, raising sea levels and submerging countless coastal cities — Jakarta, Miami, Lagos, and large parts of New York among them. Atmospheric CO₂ levels reached 850 ppm by 2082, triggering the runaway greenhouse effect first theorized in the 20th century by climate scientists like James Hansen.

The air is no longer breathable. Most wealthy people wear masks or custom-made filtration devices outdoors. The poorest are left to breathe the toxic air, hoping to survive the bacterial clouds and airborne viruses. The few remaining oxygen reserves are produced by artificial biodomes or genetically engineered algae arrays. This was supposed to be part of an evolutionary solution, but in the end, it was started far too late. The average surface temperature now hovers around 35°C (95°F), with heatwaves reaching 55°C (131°F) in equatorial regions, turning much of Africa, India, and the American Southwest into uninhabitable wastelands…

Most people wear custom-made masks. The same masks that I wear in order to hide my emotions..