Ep·och (ěp’ək, ē’pŏk’)
noun.
a. A particular period of history, especially one considered remarkable or noteworthy.
b. A notable event that marks the beginning of such a period.
‘Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.’
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is the year 2036. High technology reigns, but not in the ways those in power had once imagined it could; the fallout of the 2016 bomb threat against Japan launched by the U.S. is still heating the land, and making any joint ventures, commercial or political, taken up by the Land of the Free and the Land of the Rising Sun…difficult. There is no longer a land of the ‘Brave’, but of the ‘Knave’. The implicated ‘ruthless’ and ‘barbaric’. Routines of the economic class are strained and pushed from sea to sea; volleyed back and forth by only threat of retaliative force on the battlefront…and by the efforts of the younger generations to maintain commerce and culture, on a more base level. An upheaval of mass proportions in city, state, and common man was seen emerging shortly after the initial threat was unleashed at the push of a button thought long retired; the public demanded that peace be maintained at all costs save annihilation…and war. Revolution exposed its fangs, yet had no ultimate need to brandish its venom. Those in governmental standing relented; the ‘Nowar’ effort was a success, and the call to arms was circumvented.
This effort of ‘Nowar’ is an ongoing affair, a righteous campaign. It is a constant, mighty stroke, and partaken of by both countries’ burgeoning delegates, therefore maintaining a drive to achieve a thriving, duplicity-free era. The past twenty years have been hellish, but rewarding on the whole. A third World War was escaped by mere inches upon the map, and few scratches upon paper, splashes of munitions upon the coasts of Hiroshima. However, the violence of men propels thoughts of safety, of protection for loved ones and the procurement of funds; land necessary and gratuitous. The nuclear age was proclaimed dead, yet advanced to a state of resurrection; new weapons of mass destruction were inducted into multiple nations’ arsenals, and with all ready to launch, none were inclined to do so, if only to restrain their citizens against anarchy and exodus. But the means were justified, and remained.
The burden of comely, marketable politics are a thing of the past, and the not too distant past, beside. Weapons technology, tracking and a contingency plan alone had saved the fate of the Eastern provinces; affairs of the same, cold nature keeps their tasks of revenge at bay. A palatable treaty had been reached in quick, necessary strokes of time, and had wrenched the seats of station – of Presidential and Empirical machinations – into an affixed, stationary frenzy; those refined weapons of mass destruction are now placed, suspended, on ‘readily-active duty’. They abolish the induction, the inclination, of ‘world peace’ that had been an opportunity in the year 2000. No such thing can exist, it was decided upon, and not only by the anti-warring, sparring nations of America and Japan, but by hundreds of others.
The world has changed…
It has reverted.