Nightfall

It almost seems hard to believe now that once humankind were the masters of this world. At the dawn of the 21st century, humans touched almost every part of the Earth save its most barren and hostile places. Their seemingly limitless adaptability, and the implacability of the human spirit had led them to accomplish great things, marvelous things. Men had plumbed the deepest depths of the ocean, and even reached out into the heavens, even putting a man on the Moon, that great orb that so many of us have now only seen in ancient books.

The end of the 20th century had, we are told, been met with much trepidation by many, feared to be the date of some great apocalypse that would doom all men. When the century turned to largely nothing more than a few glitches and then business as usual, humanity relaxed, now convinced that where once they had feared doom, there was now only an uncertain and exciting future. Optimism seemed to rise again, and mankind looked forward to it's next great triumph, as many talked of travel to Mars, and cures for seemingly incurable diseases, and bringing peace to torn lands.

And then one day, without any warning or cause or explanation, the sky went black. From that moment on, no light shined on the Earth, not the light of the Sun, nor the Moon, nor even the stars shone on our world. Whatever had blanketed our skies allowed only just enough heat through to keep the planet from simply freezing over.

First, there was panic. Hope was shattered, and now the certainty of doom was all too clear, written in the heavens with great swaths of black ink. Riots and fighting swept the globe. Leaders of nations rattled their sabers at anyone and everyone who had ever done them the slightest wrong, seeking someone to blame for this mysterious catastrophe. Halls of learning were attacked by frightened, confused people desperate for answers and receiving none. Stores of food were looted and ransacked. Countless people lost their lives in this global chaos.

The chaos eventually gave way to acceptance, and those that remained after this great tumult faced a very grim future. The lack of sunlight had killed crops in a matter of days, and famine became the true master of the world, as those that remained struggled to grow their own food under lamps, or scrounged through the cities in search of whatever food remained.

Then, in the midst of this time of great fear and trepidation, they came to mankind as knights in shining armor. They called themselves the Aralia, and they declared that they would now take control over the Earth, that they had lived for millennia underneath the Earth and knew how to survive in the darkness. They said they could give us food and shelter, that they had built machines that would keep the air breathable even as the plants had all since perished, but in return they demanded eternal servitude, life as beasts of burden for their great empire. The alternative was to be eternally branded a threat to their domain, and any who dared resist would be slaughtered, and even their bodies would be used as food.

They claimed to be our saviors. To many of the starved and frightened people that remained of a now shattered civilization, they may as well have been. And so, as these new conquerors poured from the Earth, much of what remained of humanity was simply absorbed into their massive machine, as they set up outposts all across the globe, endlessly patrolling for any humans who remained outside their grasp, or dared resist their might.

It has been ages since the Aralia took control over the Earth. Since that time the Earth itself even has changed, as what life remained after night forever fell over her lands has twisted and changed, struggling to adapt to this strange new circumstance. Scavengers reign supreme, twisted beasts roaming skeleton forests, devouring anything that might satiate their hunger, even each other. Rot and mold run rampant, giant fungal fields of towering spores and pulsating living soups of bacteria feed off the miles of dead and dying matter than litters the earth.

So much of the Earth seems to have forgotten that humankind once was it's master. The animals no longer fear him, not even the most docile of beasts that remain, and even much of mankind seems to have simply resigned itself to a life beneath the steel boots of Aralia battle armor.

Yet some of us have not yet forgotten. We still thirst for our opportunity to once again take back control of our world, and we will not go quietly into the dust as so many lost species have before us. We remind ourselves often of the days when the human spirit brought us to do great things, incredible things that so many had though impossible, and that even in the face of the most terrific odds, we triumphed.

Hope is our greatest weapon, and even should it prove only vanity, it should never be lost. Humanity must survive.