Earth | Age of Essence

He stood at the front deck, looking at the data the sensors pumped to his laptop. His laptop, riddled with decals showed some abuse around the edges. While being one of the newest models, this laptop was obviously heavily used. The safety rails at the front of the ship were comically low compared to Liam's stature. Though his face was surprisingly lived-in for his age, the corners of his lips suggested he was someone who smiled often. He looked slightly annoyed as the polar winds kept blowing his dark hair in his face while his gaze was fixed on the illuminated computer screen. 

The brown leather jacket was high-quality, but had seen better times. It was one of the few things Liam still had from his time in California. The stitching on the back had been removed, as he grew tired of people feeling sorry for him. It had been a vain exercise as the sun scorched outlines spelling "UCLA" were still visible. He pulled his hood up as the memories hit. The quakes, the riots, the hoarding. And then the water came. It wasn’t like there weren’t enough warning signs, humanity just got really good in ignoring them. Labelled America’s biggest disaster ever, even though there had been so many earlier that year. Over 18 million people died when half of the state disappeared in the pacific. 

These huge losses led to the creation of the United States Scientific Taskforce. As finding solutions to this suffering had become priority number one in the world. Military spending took a deep plunge as huge numbers of environmental research teams with nearly unlimited funding scoured the globe, looking for ways to stop the destruction of the world as we knew it.

Liam had an infamous reputation and was well known with the authorities. At age 15, he hacked the U.S. Scientific main server, leaking hundreds of documents that all implied the same thing; the earth wouldn’t be habitable for humans much longer. Congress planned to gradually release this information, but the opening of the floodgate meant massive protests and riots all across the country. His father, Admiral Nicholas Smith had to pull some serious strings to spare his son a Snowden-like exile. 

That was 10 years ago.

Since then the government had made a huge effort to enlist all the brightest minds in the country. They’d attend special education, prepping them for the Taskforce. The last 4 years Liam had been all over the world, researching new ways to revert the earth to a more stable state. 


ADM. Nicholas was assigned to build the scientific team for the artic expedition. It’s because of this connection the other crew members often joked around about the “smith” favouritism, but fact of the matter was Liam was the man for the job. Being top student in his Geological and IT classes, he was the guy to pick for digital sediment analysis. He was just about to reboot the drill, as it would break down in a matter of seconds, when he heard a sound.