The Twofold Comeback

Synopsis

The Twofold Comeback – a synopsis The setting, and background information The story is set about two hundred years from now, and a hundred and fifty years since a series of catastrophic events depopulated the planet and splintered civilization. And a few decades since the waters stopped rising, the weather calmed, and people in their scattered communities could live, as people always do, their normal lives. The background rationale is that within a few years or decades from now, we will have developed sources of cheap, plentiful energy - I've assumed mainly from improvements in the technology of solar power. Crisis over: it's a brave new world of limitless energy, boundless prosperity. Unfortunately climate change has already passed several tipping points, and the cessation of the use of fossil fuels is too late to prevent the irreversible melting of the ice. All of the ice. Greenland, Antarctica - it all melts. The seas continue to rise for the next century and a half, eventually by 20 to 40 metres - enough to inundate all of the world's coastal conurbations. And there are the catastrophes. Something explodes in the western areas of the USA; something big enough to throw up clouds of dust that bring in a worldwide winter that lasts for years. I'm thinking it might be the super-volcano under Yellowstone, but for the purposes of my story it's in the distant past and by now who cares? There's famine, obviously, and extreme cold. Many die. But then even more are taken off by the virus that spreads inexorably among the huddled, hungry, weakened congregations of remaining people. When at last the sun shines again the virus is still raging, the planet is still warming, and for decades to come extreme weather events are normal. Civilization collapses. However, all of that is, by the time of the events reported in The Twofold Comeback, history. People have short memories. Your grandparents tell tales of storms and devastation, and you can't help but be aware that once, long