Tales from 2100

Chronicles of an ending civilization

By Gabriel Matias Castilho

The 90s were one of the greatest years of human history. It was when humans first stepped on Saturn’s moon Europa, when the flu was finally eradicated, and when the first person reached the age of 150 years old. Wait. You didn’t think I was talking about the 1990s, right? Of course not! How could you possibly confuse the two?

Now that we are in the 2100, humanity has reached its peak! Color is everywhere. When people noticed just how boring their cities looked with those old-fashioned, gray brutalist buildings, they demanded for a change in design—and so did fashion: a combination of creative texture patterns and vibrant colors took over the industry. And, believe it or not, artists are finally well-paid.

Besides the Lunar Resort built in 2080, we have not established colonies outside of Earth yet, but we are on track to do it by 2130! The International Space Agency currently is constructing the first outer space rocket base—through using the existing infrastructure of the EISS (Expanded International Space Station). Soon we will be constructing rockets directly in space, a much more convenient—and cheaper—method, as it skips the necessity for additional stages and decoupling processes that could result in many catastrophes.

Culture has not changed much. When I said we reached our peak, I meant it. Population reached its peak pretty fast. Now, there is a much lower fertility rate worldwide, and efforts by governments to implement boosts to birth rates have either failed or resulted in mass rates of rapes and violations in women’s rights. Everybody was very excited when we reached 10 billion humans in 2060—when new cities were built to accommodate the growing population and different food production techniques were developed evenly distributed. Nobody was excited when we reached 9 billion in 2099. With higher life expectancy rates and a lower number of kids, culture has stagnated in time.

Nevertheless, recent breakthroughs have been seen throughout the globe, and soon humans will be able to legally clone themselves. Scientists and government officials are working together in the hopes that this will be the solution for humanity’s demise.

The future looks…the same?