We were flown to the University of Virginia. Major universities were now functioning like state capitals, offering survivors food and a dorm room in exchange for work. A Web site—Survivors.org—had been created to locate family and friends.

I was relieved, but not surprised to learn that my Uncle David was alive.

Andria’s broken ankle was fitted with a walking boot. We lived in a tent and worked in the fields.

A month later, in July of 2025, representatives from seventy-two university communities convened in Topeka, Kansas—the geographical center of America—in order to create a new framework of government. What emerged from this six-week convention would have made the founding fathers proud. No more political parties. Term limits for all elected officials. Most important—the elimination of future financial influences on elections, safeguarded by a Supreme Council, which would ensure that each candidate operated on equal footing.

The first president of New America was a professor of ecology and agricultural science, elected by the founding members of Congress. Her vice president, Dr. Lee Udelsman, was a fusion expert who had worked on the Omega Project before society had collapsed.

Uncle David showed up in Virginia a short time later, our reunion soured when he learned I had no interest in finishing my work on GOLEM. We negotiated a consultant fee—a research grant and lab that would allow me to experiment with a new pet project, along with Andria’s acceptance at the soon-to-be established Space Energy Agency in Cape Canaveral, where we would share an apartment while she trained to pilot mining shuttles to transport loads of helium-3 back to Earth.

Could we rebound as a species? I had no doubt. If anything, humans had demonstrated, both as individuals and as nations, a fortitude born of courage. Still, ours was a resilience strengthened by numbers; when we divided as a people the strong feasted upon the weak, manifesting our worst attributes—man’s ego unbridled. The Great Die-Off had served as yet another reminder of the devil lurking in each one of us; its aftermath mind-numbing, more than five billion people wiped out.

For now at least, it appeared the reign of the Homo sapiens subspecies known as “Petroleum Man” had officially ended, and with it Big Oil’s stranglehold on clean, renewable energy sources.

The question was: Had we learned anything?

Part Two: 2028

PART TWO

2028

Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?

—JARED DIAMOND, Easter’s End

Chapter 5

5

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

—BUDDHA

NORTH CAROLINA
37 MILES SOUTHWEST OF FAYETTEVILLE
SEPTEMBER 19, 2028