Oxygénia

controlling the weather. Maybe if the citizens of our planet had tried
to solve these tasks with joint forces for peaceful purposes and wellthought...
But the different people built their giant research
institutes and industrial facilities in competition to each other, one
overtrumping the other. Nuclear tests in the atmosphere caused
heavy downpour on one location and droughts on another.
Underground nuclear explosions rattled the earth's crust of
Oxygénia, and all of a sudden, terrifying, inexplicable phenomena
ocurred. At the beginning, plagues spread out, plagues that were
unheard of for centuries. Oxygénias inhabitants turned all yellow,
their liver swoll, and they got very high fever. The newborns often
were crippled, rashes with bubbles covered the skin of the people.
Tumors formed inside their bodies. The scholars researched
frantically. And they found out that the ground, the ocean, the air
was polluted at a vastly increasing rate. First, the environment was
flooded by invisible microbes, then the danger became more and
more obvious. In living waters, the animals perished. The water
turned into a thick dirty brew. Seaweed and algae, plankton and
other water plants were annihilated. The animals died, and a stench
burned ones nose when getting close to waters. The woods turned
pale, the fresh green of the leaves vanished, the trees died under
their suffocating, yellow and brown turning leaves. More and more
rarely, the blue sky was to be seen above the big cities. Grey, yellow
and rusty brown smoke clouds sailed on the sky. At the beginning,
people didn't realise the danger. The food industry substituted the
missing natural ingredients with thousands of articifical well-tastes.
The colorful lights of the cities, the noise of the amusement sites
distracted from the smoke layers and let them forget the strange
storms. The weather had changed, too. The distinction between the
seasons was gone. There were no real winters and no real summers
anymore. The regular rhythm was missing.
If the inhabitants of Oxygénia would have stood together back
then... but their smallest concerns were bigger to them than that.
Rivalry between tribes, deeming better than the others and pursuit
for power encouraged them in producing weapons. Conquering,
occupying other's territory, profit, power... do you understand these
terms?"
"Once, they were known on Earth as well", Peter replied and
nodded.
"There were some who took advantage of this threatening danger.
Since flowers, grass and trees had been exterminated in the densely
inhabited cities, they produced artifical flowers, artifical grass and
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