One hundred and twelve years ago, the heavens fell.
Not as a figure of speech. Rocks the size of city blocks came down from wherever rocks that size come from, and they hit, and a significant portion of everything that had ever existed stopped existing.
We call it Day Zero, which I've always thought was generous. Most days deserve a name. That one deserved a verdict.
Here's what they teach you: the meteorites carried radiation equivalent to somewhere between fifty and three hundred of the old nuclear weapons, depending on which one hit and who you ask. Here's what they don't teach you: that number is so large it stops meaning anything. Your brain hears three hundred nuclear weapons and just — gives up. Files it somewhere between very bad and inconceivable and moves on.
Which is fine. That's probably healthy.
What followed was less healthy.
The planet, apparently having had enough of its primary tenants, decided to join in. Animals evolved. Plants evolved. Things that had spent millions of years being reliably harmless grew teeth, or worse, and the food chain got reorganized overnight with humanity somewhere near the bottom. The sun disappeared behind debris clouds for long enough that the survivors — scattered, starving, being hunted by creatures that used to be dogs — started calling it the dark days.
Both literally and figuratively, as people who lived through it apparently felt the need to clarify.
I don't blame them. When you've lost that much you hold onto precision where you can find it.
Extinction looked like a reasonable outcome. Then the first spark user appeared.
Nobody knows the name. History swallowed it, the way history swallows things it doesn't think it'll need. What we know is that someone, somewhere in those dark days, woke up and found fire where fire wasn't supposed to be — inside them, answering to them — and decided to use it. Against the beasts. Alone.
For however long alone lasted.
I'll be generous and say a year. Those things were not easy to kill even with powers. Without them they were essentially immortal to anything human shaped.
He died. Obviously.
But he'd already done the important part. Others began to awaken. Slowly at first, then in numbers, and then in numbers large enough that humanity stopped being prey and started being a problem. The first one became a symbol, and someone with more optimism than taste named the ability after him.
The spark.
A hundred and twelve years later and we're still calling it that. Some ideas survive purely through institutional momentum.
The newly awakened organized. They fought. They carved out a perimeter and held it and expanded it, slowly and at enormous cost, until there was enough safe ground for everyone who remained to breathe without something trying to kill them. That safe zone is now most of western Europe, the Scandinavian territories, and a generous stretch of North Africa and the Middle East.
We needed a desert for some reason.
Once there was safety, naturally, we built everything back exactly the way it was.
Democracy. Capitalism. The particular social architecture where the people with the most resources spend most of their energy making sure it stays that way. You'd think near extinction might have adjusted something fundamental about how we organize ourselves.
It didn't.
If anything it gave the new hierarchy a better excuse. Spark users are roughly eleven percent of the population. They explore the wild zones, secure new territory, dig up the resources that keep the lights on. Without them the safe zone stops being safe. Without them everyone dies.
This makes them valuable.
Valuable things get hoarded.
The most powerful spark users are registered, ranked, and trained — either by the government, which handles the standard intake, or by private institutions that don't accept anything they consider below their standard. The greatest of these is Helios Academy. Elitist in the specific way that things are when they've convinced themselves the elitism is justified.
They don't accept sparks ranked below B.
Rankings run from F to S. Or so most people think.
Spark users are essentially deities to the general population. The president is almost always a normie, which the population finds reassuring. The illusion of civilian oversight. The comfort of a face that looks like yours at the top.
Anyone paying attention knows what's actually running things.
Power. Just power. Same as it's always been, dressed in new clothes.
I'm not telling you this to be cynical.
I'm telling you this because it matters. Because the story I'm about to tell you is a story about what happens when someone decides the way things are isn't good enough. Someone with the ability to do something about it. Someone who looked at everything humanity had rebuilt and decided it was either going to change or burn.
I knew people on both sides of that decision.
I still think about which side I was on.
You'll figure it out eventually. Or you'll think you have, which is almost the same thing.
Either way.
It started at a school.