Backstory

Synopsis: 
As a result of the climatic warming caused in large part by the Industrial and Petrochemical Age, by the start of the 22nd century, Earth has lost 95% of its ice sheets. Ocean levels have risen over a hundred feet.


Huge populations have been displaced. The global economy is struggling to survive.
Alternative fuels, emissions-free vehicles supplant petroleum-based fuels by the mid 21st
century but big agriculture is slow to follow. Dramatic shifts in the weather cause crops to fail and people starve in the millions. As the surviving humans struggle to adapt to lost coastal regions and the new weather patterns, many find comfort by turning more to fundamentalist religion beliefs as science struggles to keep modern civilization and the infrastructure it maintains together. 


A new world war comes that pits religion against science. Science has the technology and is victorious. As remaining population the world over begin to regroup, the outcry and demand for corporate control by the new world government leads to a schism segregating the newly formed science-based government from the Old World views. People who follow dogmatic religions are relocated to North and Central America and Australia to experimental subterranean environmentally contained domes. The domed structures, called Grôköpol [grow-CAW-pull], are numerous in some areas and connected by underground tunnels and passages but are sealed from the outside where the climate is quickly becoming difficult to sustain human life. Europe and most of Asia form the a new world government based on science and technology tempered by a new world spiritual movement. 


The spiritual science movement is a slow, hard struggle as deposing powerful and influential politicians and corporations has only been made possible by a world population decimated by famine, disease and extreme weather (searing heat waves and bone chilling cold).


As resources for rare earth elements, fossil fuels and biomatter dwindle, the race to colonize and mine space accelerates. Colonies are established on the Moon, Phobos, and Mars. Large space stations called EBOS (Exo-Biological Orbital Systems) start being built around Earth, Venus and Mars. By 2150, nearly 20 EBOS are functional. The development of artificial gravity soon after brings about the construction of LIST (Locureticular Interaxial Superstructural Tectonics). These allow enormous ecosystems to be domed over, cut from the Earth's surface and transported to space. This not only fundamentally changes how humans live and work in space, a mass exodus begins. 


The scientific community which now control most of the world's government impose limitations on who can leave Earth and who must stay. The Earth-Bounds (EBs) are a dying breed due to the devastation to Earth's climate. the UTC ( (Universal Terran Consociation) determines that bringing the mostly religious factions to live in space would corrupt and destroy the delicate balance of life and society in space. They decide instead to build large domed eco-cities on Earth that will sustain several millions.


Within the eco-cities, life can be maintained in a pristine environment but populations must be carefully monitored and controlled. Some eco-cities manage better than others. Some find limiting the number of children they can have in conflict with their religious beliefs. Others find it difficult to maintain a cohesive society as people from all nationalities, cultures, religions and languages are put together under one roof. The structures are gigantic. Five miles long and nearly three miles wide in a central cross shape. Each eco-city can support a maximum of 20,000, Most of the land is devoted to plant life and agriculture. Forests cover more than half the land supporting lakes, streams (even small rivers), hills, valleys and many mammals, birds, insects, lizards, fish and other creatures.


There is a strange symmetry between the eco-cities and the LIST--one on Earth and the
other in space. The big differences are the tech on Earth stagnates and stays pretty much
the same, while its counterpart, the LIST, have ever-changing and adapting technology.
The Eco-cities come to be a kind of new "dark age". Superstition, especially about the outside world, becomes rampant. A mythology develops that the domes are the universe and nothing can exist outside them. This is all that there is. God punished the rest of the universe and only the righeous, the believers, have been protected by God in the domes. Many even believe that God Himself created the domes to reward the righteous and punish the wicked outside world. Over the ensuing decades, many of the connected dome 'suburbs' begin to fail. Communications between domes in different parts of the continent and around the world break down once the communications satellites orbiting Earth begin to fail when the UTC refuse to repair or replace them. The Ebosians do, however, maintain the satellites for their own purposes and assist in the repair and integrity of the eco-cities for many decades after they are built. 


As time passes, more and more Ebosians begin to distrust and disfavor sending resources and maintenance crews to Earth's surface to tend to Terrenes, those bound to Earth. The time comes when all Ebosians are born, live and die in space on LIST  or one of the colonies of the Moon or Mars or other satellites. Eventually the UTC, the governing body of all humans terrestrials, places restrictions on all Ebosians travel to Earth. Only those on legitimate government or scientific research business can travel to the surface. After a century of no outside communications, Terrenes of Grôköpol believe and teach that they are all that is left of humanity. One domed city in what was once northern California began with 23 domed eco-cities. A viral outbreak 80 years before [Start-of-Story] wiped out more than 65% of the population. Some eco-cities had to be shut down while others fell into such a state of disrepair they were no longer habitable. Only eight are currently in use. One of these is where Merit, our protagonist, and his family live.


LIST 4-12 is the space city where Derk, Ray and Lily live. The LIST supports a population of
some 3,000,000 and has eight EBOS integrated (attached) to it. Lily has been the senior
admistrative scientist of these EBOS for 18 years. Ray is an anthropologist who studies Earth Bounds and is one of the few Ebosians with permission to visit Earth. He has been monitoring the situation and functionality of Earth's ~500 eco-cities for nearly 24 years. As an Ebosian, he sees Terrenes as savage, unpredictable, irrational, superstitious, uneducated. This is a natural cultural bias as he lives in a world with such advanced and fanstastical technology that most all Terrenes would think the tools he uses to be magic or works of the Devil.