A future world revealed through the tales told by those who travel its tightly controlled new public transport System. In a world where the Lockdown went for 5 years only now are urbanists emerging from their local hubs.
Carbon powered vehicles are no longer allowed and all urban petrol stations have been closed as fuel outlets for years. Emergency vehicles are electric. Only essential workers are allowed to have a vehicle and only under exceptional circumstance.
Travel of distances larger than 5km from your house to nearest station would require a train trip, even if it meant just one station. Of course they know where we are, well at least where our devices are.
No-one talks on the train, we have forgotten how, its not like we aren't communicating, we are. We are just communicating to each other via our devices through proximity apps.
Not like the old days when the PSI used to roam the trains, with the cameras, the devices, they know who's travelling from the moment you approach the station they can see who's coming, the only thing to our recent advantage has been the pandemic which requires forced mask wearing once you leave your house, even if it's in to the backyard you have been wearing a mask, for five years a mask.
A mask who's only retreat is inside your house and then there is a limit to how many have been able to visit these last five years, that 6 months with no visitors and no-one leaving the house, everything delivered by people in white iso suit, leaving the items at the door.
I heard whole families suicided under the pressure.
That was the toughest period ever, that was full on ISO
War is no longer an option anywhere on the planet, this is about survival of our species, of our families and our friends
Despite attempts by the government to support fiscally the millions displaced by the pandemic, there was only such much they could do
The First wave of five months with the JobKeeper and JobSeeker bonuses and a belief we could beat this thing prevailed.
We were able to see a light at the end of the tunnel, we suffered, we emerged and just as we were starting to feel safe our government screws up the vaccination. The virus mutated in India and our third waves decimates us as it did them, mortalities at 10% now stable, most of the dead and dying have gone, its ISO which is keeping the remaining alive alive as we watch the news of other countries around the world collapse under higher mortality rates..
Like a volcanic cloud the virus now drifts in the clouds and while rainwater after x hours because of exposure????. some rainstorms are not your friends and the weather report now includes are likely measure of viral load in approaching rain patterns.
The Pandemic turns out to be not the only crisis
Turns out the Tobacco companies weren't the only ones hiding information from the worlds population. The Fossil Fuel companies had known for at least 50 years they were destroying the worlds atmosphere and yet did nothing hoping science would advance a solution in time to avoid any drastic action on their part.
So when were we meant to do something before eminent environmental collapse was much sooner than we thought. Drastic action was needed.
So now its only drastic action. In the end the pandemic meant we couldn't go anywhere anyway
Fossil Fuel use was banned forcing the trains to become urban delivery systems with merchants and cyclists waiting fir the produce for their shops
Sometimes a train would be of such value that to travel through the badlands they build steel cages around the whole line approaching the station
It gets bleak and we can continue to colour in the backstory to what is now, the mergence of people after this correction
5 years later its looking good, we can emerge, emerge into what though
We had to figure out our own ways, some hubs did that well, some hubs sadly didn't and are regarded as unsafe or off limits.
You are not allowed to do anything other than destination to destination, you cannot be found wandering at a hub which is not your departure or arrival point. It is for our own safety, its how we can re-emerge slowly, controlled, test, analyse and over time allow for more freedom of travel. it will be another 2 years at least before we can travel by train interstate.
Electric planes have emerged for the ultra rich, yet few are going anywhere other than try and seek refuge in countries like Australia and New Zealand. Carbon fueld planes were banned when the cars went.
This is the narrative on how we take various groups of people from other hubs to other hubs to experience something outside their own hub of 5 years. It