Yoon Jong Woo was trying to survive this new awful world.
He tries to stay out of trouble, but when a new Leader with unconventional ideas see the potential in his unique talents, his quiet life soon gets turned upside down.
Seo Moon Jo was the Lea...
Disclaimer: I own nothing of it—including the pictures, audio/video and characters. However, I do own the plot. And this story was not made for money—just for fun.
Warning: A bit out of character, and original characters included.
Audio titled: RUN WILD
Chapter 001 • Society (A New Cruelty)
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20 years ago society collapsed.
There was no other word for it; one day it was still there, barely being kept upright, the next day there was nothing. It was amazing really, that humans fought successfully against increasing natural disasters, climatic changes and the most vicious viruses, with a seemingly infinite amount of new innovations, techniques and ideas that allowed them to adapt ever so quickly to anything nature threw at them.
Until the hunger came.
Until there were simply too many mouths to feed.
And everyone started to concentrate on one task alone: find, steal, produce, share, kill for food.
The society that was so successful due to the specialisation of every human, was doomed the moment there was only one goal worth concentrating on.
Without the maintenance of basic public services and the production of medical drugs, chaos and diseases spread throughout the world, allowing only the luckiest ones to survive. What once was a normal pneumonia became a death sentence, and due to the lawless environment no one was safe—your neighbour for ten years might shoot you every second now if he saw you had a leaf of bread.
The incredible high number of individuals that humans spent the last few centuries on producing was decimated to several thousand in only a few years.
That might have the survivors allowed to start over again, but once society was destroyed it could not be revived that easily, even though the cause of destruction—too many humans—was not a problem anymore.
After about 5 years of total anarchy and pure chaos, humans once again proved that—even though if it came down to it you only looked after yourself—they were in fact social creatures and began to form groups.
Completely random in the beginning, without any meaning further than social interaction and shelter, few years later they formed the core of the new society.
Persons known as 'leaders' began to arise, forming a group of selected people around them. Even though group dynamics was still an ever-changing process—new groups constantly being formed and disbanded, split into several smaller groups or merging with others—now the leaders provided an unchanging centre, around which it all gravitated.
Strong groups did not automatically have more members. The ability of the leader to lead them and establish discipline was far more important. Strong leaders had the power to conquer more and more territory from other, weaker groups, leading to more food and shelter and thus even more power.
Of course raw physical power of the members was an important factor in these fights, but as the years passed, clever strategies, new weapons and alliances often were far more important.
When humanity finally settled down in this new system and started once again—slowly—to bring up children, 10 years had passed.
Every child conceived during the first 10 years of chaos was abandoned and had no chance of surviving. The same counted for the little children before the collapse. When families died or parents were killed there was no one to look after the children. Any child that couldn't keep up with the adults had little chance to find food for himself, thus everyone that wasn't at least 10 years old before the collapse had almost no hope to survive.
The last decade before the collapse and the first after led to a roughly 20 years gap between the newly conceived children, in the new society known as 'first generations', and the fully grown-ups—veterans—who survived the chaos, all now at least in their thirties.
The gap between was known as 'lost generation'—not cared for like the first generations and not sharing the memories of another world with the veterans, the new society had little use for them.
It was amazing that even after all what humanity has been through, there was always a group of people who didn't belong.
Yoon Jong Woo was one of them.
How he had survived was a mystery even to himself. He was one year old when society collapsed. He had no memory of his parents or anyone else, only his birth certificate somehow remained with him.
Now 24 years old, he was exactly in the middle of the lost generation. It didn't help that he looked even younger. If he looked older, he could have pretended to belong to the veterans. As it was, he was a rather small but elegant young man with a beautiful face, pitch black hair and startling dark brown eyes.
If he had a different personality, his looks would have provided him with enough to 'earn' his living among the veterans. He couldn't care less. Most of the time his face was covered with black coal dust, his delicate hands covered with blisters and small cuts and his too big but comfortable clothes covered in grease.
So Jung Hwa called him an engineer. She said that was the term that was used for people who invented new stuff, exploring machines. Jong Woo didn't argue since he did built new gadgets but his passion was science.
Chemistry especially.
Building self explosives or nerve gases with a mixture of otherwise harmless chemicals fascinated him.
He knew everything about science and technology that was ever written in a book, even though most of the things described there, he never saw in his life.
Jung Hwa found it odd that of all people, a lost generation with no memories or education of the old world, was probably the best engineer that remained in the new world.
Whatever you wanted, Yoon Jong Woo could build it. You wanted something to transport you over a wall? He built a package with airscrew worn on the back that could hold you in the air for 2 minutes. You wanted a new weapon to take out dozens of people without killing them? He built a gun that produced sonic waves that rendered everyone within 10 meters immobile.
The things he built bordered on magic. And no matter who examined the gadgets afterwards, no one could rebuilt them, too complex was the inner machinery.
That's why no one in the town bothered him. You didn't want to get on his bad side, the pen he was holding in this moment could be a deathly weapon for all you know.
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*** To be continued...
Author's Note: Another AUs, that you guys probably don't need and/or wanted. But! I so so so much wanted to write sci-fi, borderline to science-fantasy! It bothered me so much not to do so. And here it was—the byproduct of my insanely imaginative brain. Haha!
