Umbra of the Frontier- Cosmic Children

(The actual story of Umbra of the Frontier actually begins in the next part. However, I would reccommend reading this part because it will explain a lot of the etymology of the series and set exposition to any events or references made in the story. Thank you for your understanding and consideration)

The year is 2354. Humanity, having substantially dwindled down from the projected 10 billion inhabitants of Earth by the year 2100 as a result of the Third and Fourth World Wars, as well as the First Inter-World War, now finally has re-stabilized at 5 billion humans and 3 billion interstellar denizens. Just how did aliens find us? Why did we accept them as fellow cosmic citizens rather than driving them out? 

The answer, which may not be suprising to you, was curiosity. Human curiosity led us to allow these foreigners onto our planet, where they traded technology with us in exchange for knowledge about human customs and Earth. It was also human curiosity to want to understand the biology of our far-out friends, with both sides offering subjects to be dissected, experimented on, all to gain knowledge and satiate our curiosity as a race. But even more importantly, it was our intrigue and impulse in how we could assimilate, with millions of human-alien hybrids being produced as a result. Did we reject these mutts, as they possessed traits of both our kinds? No, to some extent. While most humans and aliens alike welcomed these offspring as a true sign of our ambivalence towards one another, a select few found that they were unclean and harbored abhorrent misfortune for both races should more be allowed to be born. Thus, this led to the Civil World War, where some odd 50 million anti-assimilationists, more coloquially known as Jaspers, were either killed, taken as prisoners and tried for their crimes of hate violence, murders, and slander, or were extradicted to other parts of the galaxy.

But, like with every good human development, we must take a step back with every step we take forward if we are to understand the scope of anything we may bring about, and as such, I feel we should establish a bit of background knowledge for those of us misinformed, or those who have been born in this day and age and need to know this as we teach it in primary schools to never repeat it again.

For starters, around the year 2045, humanity had used up the world supply of petroleum as more and more inventions, such as subterranean hyper-transit trade units (SHTUs) and the advent of particle accelerated weaponry relied on both the plastics and processed fuel forms of said chemical. Pretty soon thereafter, world oil production powers, such as Saudi Arabia and the then established country of the World's Republic of Antartica (which was only made possible after the Antartica Treaty of 1961 was repealed in 2040 to tap into the oil reserves under the ice) began implementing massive tariffs and regulations on exported petroleum that went as far as to impose civil taxation on plastic goods, allowing such countries like China to reach first-world status, as they were the oil giants' largest buyer with the advent of mechanized mass-production in China around the year 2032, and since China also supplied these countries with military aid and a reduced cost of exported goods, these countries in turn established a bill known as the Petro-Defense Pact in November of 2043 detailing the above. 

Naturally, other first-world countries such as the United States were furious with such demands, but as they were desperate to keep their petroleum industry at least somewhat profitable, they had to comply with such heavy tariffs and taxations. By 2040, it had been estimated that nearly 40% of the US working class was involved with petroleum, whether it be engineering, processing, marketing, or any other associated profession. But, these small misgivings would have to be set aside as North Korea, after spending the 30 or so years after attempted war threats in 2013 building up a nuclear arms force that could rival even smaller first world countries such as Russia or even the United Kingdom, declared war on Japan in 2044, launching an all-out nuclear guerilla warfare, wiping out 70% of the nation's population and taking nearly all of the country's nuclear arms. Other countries allied with Japan began declaring war on North Korea, and by June 2044 World War III had begun. As more countries like Russia and Cuba began allying with North Korea, having still shown some signs of communist support for one another with the Prime Minister of Russia elected in 2042 strongly emphasizing Stalinist government and Cuba still under dictatorship, the war quickly turned into a war of attrition, with the Allied Forces (Consisting of the US, Canada, Mexico, Austraila, Japan, Western Europe, and all of Eastern Europe ending at Macedonia) not wanting to cause senseless civilian casualties on the Axis side (consisting of China, the Pacific Rim except for Japan, the Middle East, and the World's Republic of Antartica). The war lasted a grueling 15 years, resulting in 3 billion casualties, the most of any war in world history combined, on part of the nuclear onslaught. Everything seemed to be going in favor of the Axis Powers, who had the immensive arms reserves of China, as well as its interdependence and global control of nearly all exported goods against the Allies, until  August 2060, when Cuba was wiped clean off the face of the world. No scientist could explain the phenomenon, an entire country vanishing, leaving only ocean behind, with witnesses calling the spectacle "extraordinary, as if it had never been there in the first place."