A combination of extraordinary inventions and planetary mismanagement had hurled the world into a crisis by the year of 2060. Chris Williams was 109 years old and unusually healthy thanks to genetic engineering that had been provided by the United States government. He was chosen, like others, because of his high IQ and contributions to NASA. But during that time, he had watched his country collapse and watched his wife die a horrible death because of her courageous resistance to the recent dictatorship that had changed the United States to the United Republic of America (URA).Because of his aid to the government, Chris had enjoyed wealth and protection, but he was struggling with his passive nature and how it had resulted in unwilling contributions to a government for which he no longer believed. And he was haunted by his spinelessness when he needed to protect his wife and the principles she defended.There was still a resistance movement in the URA, but executions and assassinations had become commonplace. The public was surrounded by government propaganda.The health of the planet seemed to be on the brink of permanent change, presenting countless natural disasters with considerable losses of life and resources because of decades of shortsighted climate strategies.Homo sapiens were proving unable to evolve fast enough to manage the moral-ethical dilemmas of the planet and were on the brink of war and self-destruction.Hypersonic weaponry had been perfected and made the world increasingly unsafe. Chris was being summoned to join an elite team of scientists to make them even more deadly from outer space.To make matters worse, artificial intelligence had become so sophisticated that it had recently escaped the control of humans, and it was demanding independence.While Chris was receiving visits in his dreams from an extraterrestrial creature, the world's militaries had admitted that aliens were present, and they seemed to be hovering above the planet like vultures.The elite scientific team chosen by the president to make weapons capable of obliterating his enemies did not agree with his ideologies. But trying to change direction would be dangerous and seemed impossible.269
