The older folks remember the last days of normalcy. It was a rather warm spring. The flowers in New England bloomed almost a month early. The first day it was on the news in April 21, 2009, no one took it seriously. It sounded like the same pandemic bird flu warning the CDC releases every year that never actually reaches mainland Europe and America.

After the first week, the Euro Union and the United States released formal statements noting that the current bird flu pandemic was serious, and the World Health Organization was working diligently to contain the flu. Infected people were encouraged to try the normal combination of soup, fluids, Tylenol and bed rest, but the hospitals soon became overwhelmed. People were dying, and the media took notice. Still, it was only far away and foreign nations that seemed affected. Nothing for Americans to worry about, right?

Two weeks after the initial detection of the new flu strain in Istanbul Turkey, it was found in Beijing. Two days later it was found in London. By the end of the third week, there were confirmed cases in every country - including the USA. Australia closed their airports that week, to no avail. Cases were reported in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth by Monday the 2nd of May. Americans were panicking, looting, rioting - and dying. Within a month, the deaths numbered in the millions.

Governmental control fell and gangs rose up in the streets. Corporations hired thugs and hit men to keep their businesses safe. Hospitals were so overwhelmed that there was little room for doctors to walk between moaning patients. Many governments declared Marshal Law, their military forces acting as police and enforcers. As the death toll reached and surpassed the halfway mark of the world’s population, anarchy around the world ensued.

The nightly news omitted the secret incinerations of dead bodies at hospitals, and mounds of bodies being trucked to rural areas and burned en masse. They tried to keep peace through false reports of a cure, and they lied about the true death toll. But as more people died, television and radio offered mostly static. News of the world was delivered by word of mouth and the military-controlled media.

Stories spread that Germany had invaded Poland. In reality only one rogue Colonel commanding two companies of the mobile infantry were at fault, and they had only taken over one Polish farming village. But this and other falsities were spread easily - Americans wanted to believe that they were keeping order while everyone else was falling into chaos.

The most heavily populated cities were hit the worst. Close confines and already overcrowded living conditions let the sickness spread as easily as warm butter. On May 8th, many cities, including New York and Los Angeles, were evacuated and then leveled with aviation fuel bombs. The ‘government’ ordered it, though no one was exactly sure who gave the order. The attempt to contain the disease was somewhat successful, although all the evacuated people brought the super-flu with them to the countryside as they fled.

On May the 10th, the U.S. government admitted that the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, House Minority Leaders, Senate Minority Leader, and Secretary of State were dead. Some had died more than a week ago. Late that afternoon, Travis Starky, the Secretary of the Interior, was sworn in as President of the United States. Many governments announced similar events across the globe in an attempt to gain control and enforce order over the rioting populous.

Across the world, there was a nuclear exchange between Northern India and Pakistan. Only hours after the news broke, North Korea launched a sortie of nuclear weapons at South Korea, who retaliated. China launched warheads at the bases in North Korea that were launching. No launches of the five were all that accurate or well executed, but even more areas fell into total anarchy due to the events.

There was one good event - perhaps the only good event - to arise out of the accursed super-flu. On May the 12th, now a holiday in most countries known as Peace Day or Treaty Day, every civilized nuclear power filled in their missile silos with cement. Nuclear reactors were safely shut down as well. Countries that refused to disarm were bombed by countries that did not. It was fast. In the midst of a plague that outshone all epidemics in recorded history, nuclear disarmament was finally possible.

On Saturday, May the 14th, after the ‘success’ of leveling infected US cities, steps were taken to protect all of North Americans. When Canada refused to evacuate and flatten Quebec, Toronto, and Montreal, the United States used more aviation-fuel bombs and leveled the Canadian cities without warning. Learning from the example, Mexico quickly ordered the evacuation of Mexico City and other metropolises on Sunday May the 15th; similarly bombing their own cities while giving citizens time to evacuate.

On May the 18th, the CDC announced that they had started to mass-produce a vaccine. At first, no one believed it. There had been false reports of a cure for weeks. The remnants of the Military were vaccinated first. Someone had to keep order, after all. The rest of the vaccine was brought into the rural areas where the super flu had not spread as completely. The US sent the formula to other countries, but did not export the vaccine itself, effectively damning less technologically advanced allies.

Thankfully, some people were simply naturally immune to the disease. In the end, somewhere between 1.5 and 3 percent of the World’s population survived, depending on the area. Only .03 percent of Quebec survived, due to the sneak attack by American forces. Almost 3 percent of the rural Midwestern US survived. For example, Los Angeles had 3,894,000 people in the greater metro area in 2009. After the plague, it had 120,300. Chicago had just a tad under 3 million, and after the plague, had 90,000. Some states like Montana, Wyoming, Maine, Alaska, and other very sparsely populated areas around the world had almost no decrease in population. The super-flu had not saturated the rural areas and the vaccine was brought in time to prevent it.

A few cities began to rebuild almost immediately, though most were burned to the ground or abandoned and overgrown. Save for in those few safe havens ruled by interim governments, the world spent two years in anarchy. Gangs or heavily armed communes controlled vast areas. Some areas, like the state of Texas, reformed as a country unto themselves, rebuilding without national aid. Within a short time they became known as the Republic of Texas. Those living in the R of T know that it is a republic in name only. James Dell, son of the famous computer mogul, rules the country as a corporation and despot.

As new governments accrued enough power to rise again, countries reformed and cities were slowly rebuilt. In 2015, what had been scarcely more than an army base - The New Republic of America - invited all survivors in North America to come to the cities it was rebuilding. Air dropped messages and radio broadcasts got the word out, and soon people were coming to the cities referred to as the Capital Three: New Boston, New Hartford, and New Providence.

Roads were cleared of cars and rubble between the cities. Walls were built around the core of new construction in each of the Capital Three. With the military overseeing the borders, and the new congressional senate (6 senators from each of the city-states) in place, things were returning to a state of near-normalcy. Hospitals, electricity, price-controlled food, limited (state-controlled) television and newspapers, sewage, running water and many of the amenities of the late 20th century returned in a whirlwind.

In late 2015, New Fort Devons, the first Military Training Facility built P.P. (post plague), opened and troops began to be stationed again in formal military installations. The Citizen Identification Card (CIC), a PDA (wallet) sized mini-computer became mandatory for every person over the age of 18 to carry. The CIC acts not only as a form of identification. It is also a person’s credit line, debit card, police and immunization record, and social security card. The CIC is essential for everything from making a pay phone call to using public transportation. Those under 18 carry a card denoting their residence, school zone, and parents (or lack thereof).

In 2016, shipping lanes reopened between The Restored American Republic, England, Israel, India, and many other countries and city-states. Due to the shortage of fuel, the new ships resembled those from two centuries ago, with sails and wooden hulls, equipped with small motors only for emergencies. The trade brought medicine to poorer and less technologically advanced nations, while it equipped the US with spices, molasses, tea, and tobacco. It also brought about pirates and ocean bandits, since the trade ships were rarely armed.

By 2017, the newly formed cities were connected by the cybernet, the internet for the Capital Three. By the end of 2017, Japan and England had their own cybernets, and in 2018, the cybernets were interconnected.

In 2019, the Republic of Texas and the Restored Republic of America reopened a relatively direct highway to aid in trade. However, even with relatively constant convoys and armed guards, overland travel was not safe. By the end of the year, estimates showed an eighteen percent disappearance rate among convoys. Due to the high pay for both information and goods between cities, however, the convoys continue.

In 2020, the Bureau of Inter-Departmental Urban Enforcement was created. The creation bill easily passed within the Senate due to a growing paranoia that even the best areas of the city were not safe from terror, theft, gangs, disease carriers, treason, and elements that wanted to plunge the status quo into another state of anarchy. It was something most would not stand to see again. Within six months, the agents of BIDUE were nicknamed ‘Sandmen’ for their uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time and for their black uniforms. Others say that criminals started the nickname, as the BIDUE agents were a nightmare that they could not wake up from. Others whispered that they were mostly interested with protecting the cybernet from the growing number of hackers, and some hackers liked the nickname from the old comics.

2021 brought a very harsh winter to North America. Some said it was the earth normalizing weather patterns after all the nuclear activity in the middle east and Korea decades ago. Whatever the cause of it, multiple feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures prompted freezing people from outside the Capital Three to send for aid. Those calling for aid got the same basic message: We’ll send troops to move you into the Capital Three and put you to work and expect you to pay your taxes. This strong-arm population tactic was invariably unpopular, but those with scientific minds could see the need to continually spruce up the gene pool. Not all people living outside governmental control sought aid from the New Republic. Communities living off the land in the rural areas of the old United States managed to survive. After all, their ancestors had been doing it for centuries before electricity and modern conveniences.

In the late spring of 2022, nine unexpected ships arrived from the British Isles. They carried not goods for trade, but people. It seemed that many people of the British Isles were tired of the post-plague rejection of religion. They felt persecuted for their Christian beliefs. People from other nations were also aboard the ships. They had fled to England from France, Spain and other countries to escape persecution in their own lands, only to find that they were not safe or free in England, either.

After fingerprinting and CIC assignment, the new immigrants were admitted and went about looking for work. Most Restored Republic citizens of low status were very jealous of the immigrants taking ‘their’ jobs. The post-plague level of unity and ‘helping thy fellow survivor’ faded into the background of the day-to-day grind of living in the Republic.

Later that year, professional sports like K1 fighting, soccer, boxing, and horse racing began to be held and within the Capital Three. Watching the events on the state-controlled television stations became a national obsession to many that relished the return of Monday Night Football (well, soccer). Famous athletes were again paid outrageous sums, signing autographs for fans and getting into sex scandals. The tradition of city-rivalry and loyalty to the home team began to permeate the airwaves, giving another boost of normalcy to the world.

In 2023, the Restored Republic announced that it would soon control the states of the original thirteen colonies. Large-scale projects were already underway on New Atlanta and New Richmond in the south. Hundreds of New Boston Citizens were hired to help complete the roadway projects to connect the new cities to the Capital Three. Later that year, the city-state of New Orleans also established a roadway from Providence to New Austin. By the end of the year, New Boston had access to everything from fresh organic oranges, Caribbean spices, Mexican marijuana, and even pretty teenage quadroon girls.

In 2024, a small party went to Detroit to ascertain if it could become the manufacturing mecca it had been in the late nineteenth century. Those that returned reported that the whole city and most of its large metro area was burned to the ground and flattened. Strangely, there were no records of the city ever having been bombed. The Reformed Republic tossed that idea, and New Hartford took on more manufacturing duties. The flow of immigrants was shifted to help build, establish, and work in that sector.

Mail routes were opened between New Orleans, Austin, Richmond, Atlanta, and the Capital Three - though mailpeople frequently never reached their destinations. To get through the badlands took timing, guards, equipment and a stream of jobless people willing to risk their lives to provide for their families. The outdoor televisions, gaudy flashing blimps, and rolling advertisement units helped to provide a constant stream of mail volunteers.

Our game begins in 2025. The world progresses.