Created for Open Hangar, the Super Robot OCG that you can download here: https://kiaayomahkwa.itch.io/open-hangar

Intermingling within the cytoplasm of every living cell, there exists the substance that determines the rate at which cells mature, age, and die. For most of mankind’s history, the systems through which this happened was a mystery, unknown and within the realms of mythology. It wasn’t until a laboratory in Singapore discovered this substance and named it: Charged Ionic Nucleotides. The lab’s PR team gave it the much catchier and trademarkable name Chargon.

At first, the world gave it little thought, just considering it another mildly interesting fact taught in middle school. But then, the Indian government made the world-changing discovery of C.I.N. Extraction, in which the chargon within a living cell could be removed with minimal damage to the cellular structure using reversed ion compulsion.

They had removed that which caused the cell to age.

On top of this, the free chargon was an incredible source of energy, many times more efficient than nuclear fission. A single banyan tree could power a major Indian metropolis for well over a year, and with proper care, that same tree would stand for many more years to come. This ground-breaking discovery was freely spread around the world to any nation who had the resources to take advantage of it, ending the energy crisis for 90% of the world in only 2 years and halting the rise of global climate change almost immediately. And for the less-developed nations of the world, the Indian government created the CINE-Daan Project, in which they would stockpile free chargon and chargon extractors within vast catacombs underneath the Himalayan peaks bordering India and China to lease out to nations in Oceania, Africa, and South America. The world was not yet a utopia, but the finish line was in sight.

Until the stockpile, along with most of the Himalayas, went up in cataclysmic flames.

Nobody knows who had done it or why, as anyone involved joined the billions of Indian, Tibetan, Nepalese, and Chinese civilians who were eradicated in a single moment. The best anyone can guess in retrospect is that something had caused the energy in the free chargon to cascade into itself, igniting the energy all in one massive burst. Those who claimed to have seen it and lived long enough to tell anyone else about it said that it looked like a massive, multi-colored flower erupting out of the ground, its petals spreading across the sky. This was the free chargon dispersing into the atmosphere, blanketing the planet and infecting all living beings.

The death of billions in the two most populous countries on Earth sent immediate ripples throughout all of mankind, the world’s collective grief blinding them to the effects of the free chargon in the air. It was Asia who was hit first and hardest, obviously, but Eastern Europe and the Middle East quickly felt it, too. The closer one lived to the blast site, the faster one aged and the faster the wildlife evolved. A newborn in Beijing taking her first steps before the family had finished celebrating the new life, young men in Manila developing rheumatoid arthritis overnight, a town in Laos becoming blanketed in a never-before-seen poisonous lichen.

The entire world had become one giant existential nightmare.

The wealthy, the learned, and the world leaders among the world’s population immediately fled to Brazil once they understood what was happening, hoping that a close antipode of the blast site would give them the most time to determine a solution. One scientist had an idea, and it was the only one considered: use a variation of the CIN Extraction to draw in the free chargon from the air, place it in a suitable vessel, and launch it into space. “How long would it take before the chargon levels returned to normal?” an investor asked. “By my estimates, if hundreds of facilities are built around the world and work in tandem while being run by a skeleton crew of volunteers” the same scientist responded, “at least a couple of centuries.”

The room reportedly erupted in fervor, people with no ideas asking for a better one. The requests went unanswered. “Then it’s clear. We need to leave Earth behind while it’s cleaning up.”

This meeting marked the beginning of the first year of the ADA (After the Day of Abandonment) calendar, in which 80% of the Earth’s population escaped into the stars, abandoning those below to live and die in squalor in the shadows of the Launch Base Zones, massive automated and semi-automated city-sized complexes which slowly absorbed the residual free chargon in the air, compress it, used giant bipedal vehicles known as Lanzers to load it onto pre-programmed rockets, and launch them into space to be collected and stored. Properly, this time, or at least it is understood so.

It’s been about 100 years since then. The free chargon in the Earth’s atmosphere is now estimated to cause all living things to mature and age at a rate about 96% faster than they did before the Himalayan Impact, down 1% since last year. Meanwhile, the Lunarians that had chosen to colonize the Earth’s moon became deathly afraid of Chargon, regularly purging it from their bodies to extend their life, usually around double the length before the Impact.

Some look up to the violet night sky in envy, while others look up in righteous fury, and yet more do their best to not think of the lights on the moon at all. All those who look down on their poison home planet, do so in pity.