Zane walked towards home, despite his sister's insistence on driving him. He was almost always forced to put up with her. Today, though, his sister hadn't even arrived. That was strange, to say the least.
He raised his head, but what he saw made him sigh. He didn't know why he tried anymore.
There wasn't a single person around him who was looking up from their devices. Automatic GPS implants were one of the first things most people got, and as such, had quickly been mass-produced and sold at a much cheaper price by a company that had since gone bankrupt. The economy was as unstable as it had ever been.
The advent of the Titanium Age came soon after someone had managed to create the then-valuable metal in an extremely unstable form by removing protons from calcium. The lab had promptly exploded, killing the original creator, but according to a recent law, his work had instantly become public domain, meaning companies had almost immediately begun to use and refine his process of transmutation, causing a mass influx of titanium for a few years, until the procedure had been adapted enough to create other things.
That had begun the manufacture of implants, but then, a couple dozen decades later, the Plasma Age had arrived, which really kicked industry into overdrive. Every day someone came up with a new idiotic way to get more people killed. Drugs, weapons, wars, factions, everything was enhanced by the new near-renewable energy processes, leading to more robots, more powerful guns, stronger drugs, more physical enhancement stimulants, and just generally more chaos, blood, and destruction all around.
That's why, the day that the world ended, Zane wasn't surprised. In fact, he was grateful. The world deserved it. This was the universe's holy retribution.
And when he became the strongest in the new world that rose from the ashes of the apocalypse?
He was even more sure that it was.
Because he was ready to rule.
By any means.