However, whether you believe in karma or not, the ebb and flow of the world has a funny way of equalizing the playing field. Those who soar too high must eventually crash. Those who sink too low must eventually drag others down to their level. This would be the ultimate experiment in society, as we know it. This would test what humans do when finally struck down and forced back to that primal chord they were originally tuned to. Had we forgotten what it was like to feel the cold grip of true instinctual pressure? Would our inner animal remember what our brains, filled with pointless figures and philosophies, had since pushed into hibernation? The honor and rever- ence of risking your life every day, fighting for your livelihood, was certainly dead. Now it would be a flat-out struggle, and not the one we had lazily, slobbishly slipped into over the years. Missing the morning carpool, preparing a presentation for the afternoon meeting, finishing your quarterly report with your spell-checker and your laser color printer and your hundreds of instantly-checkable internet references - people no longer knew the true meaning of stress, the true meaning of fighting for their lives, their lives at the very core. This was not intelligence. This was not evolution. We had tampered with the very fiber of nature in determining what was desirable for the next generation.

It could not, would not, would never again be a question of what strength was left, how much of this so-called superior intellect could be used for raw, bare-knuckled survival. The question would be if the ability had dried up completely, and perished a cold, lonely death.

This would be Judgment Day.

The morning of October 31st that year hung over Los Angeles in an overcast and uncommonly cold blanket of gray. No one knew to take this odd change in the weather as an omen of greater change on the foggy horizon.

At approximately 3:12 pm Pacific time, the fear of a third world war was completely eclipsed by a newer, darker realization; a chain reaction of varied blasts - everything from nuclear to missile - shook every cranny and corner of planet Earth from Mount Everest to Stone Henge to Death Valley and back. The explosions were so large and so massive in number that nearly no place was spared, and those that weren't directly hit suffered their damage in aftershock. The days afterward were a strange sort of malaise, a slow motion recapturing of something that should happen with the sudden jolt of unbearable reality. Important things happened quickly, but it seemed to drag on forever due to the turbulence of the situation.

No one knew why it happened. No one knew how it happened. There was no television, no radio, no one to report the damage. There was no way of the world uniting to find out what went wrong. There had been no warning. There had been no telltale signs, no nothing. The only ones who perhaps knew - the governments - were, as far as the remnants of the world could tell, not around or not able to report the reasons this happened, or the events leading up to it. They were forced to band together to work for a greater good, and rebuild each portion of their broken home without any sort of outside aid, or any true idea where to begin.

Many were completely lost. Many despaired. But even when some things may have lay dormant, other things, such as spirit and persistence, burned brightly. Up out of the smoke and ash of the greatest genocide came rebirth, and the phoenix of mankind spread its wings to encompass as far as it could. The smoldering embers of renewed industrialism ignited, and people worked together to try and return some sense of normalcy.

That of course could never be, not in the current state. Too much was lost, and too much was changed. A new majority reigned, and they did not share the best interest of a peaceful public. And thus it was that rather than the people in charge's interests changing, it was the public that had to adapt to a new, more brutal way of life. Nothing was certain. Nothing was secure.

The only definite, cold fact in this new world was that it was time to start coping and start toughening up, or else suffer the ultimate consequence...

Thirty or-so days after the catastrophe, with the smoke now clearing and survivors struggling to gain a foothold, a large chunk of southern California was now its own stand-alone nation, cemented ten miles off the mainland. Some of those already on it quickly turned to crime to try and retain their dominance (and their lives, for that matter), while others tried to restore order. Whatever the case, after a few made the risky trip to try and get back to the main continent to find their families, they quickly discovered that things outside of Los Angeles were even more upside-down, and it was much safer to stay on the secluded isle and deal with the chaos there than face the complete hell that was the rest of the world - at least, as far as they knew. A mysterious organization named LOCK filtered to the forefront and began organizing factories, jails, and most importantly, a sort of new police system in which the public was told who was dangerous, and sent out with proverbial torch and pitchfork to take care of it themselves for a hearty reward.

There is now a constant stream of immigration into Los Angeles. While a lot of boats are shot on sight, as no one wants anyone new coming into the island, there's never a shortage of new blood due to the semi-lax porting at Bay Dock. Those that fall in the harsh lifestyle are always quickly replaced by new survivors, hoping it's even a pinch easier on the Isle of Angels.

Only a few years past the initial explosions that allowed the Earth to emerge reborn from the flames, more sinister and cold than ever, most people - at least on the Los Angeles side of things - had settled into how things were, as harsh a reality as it may have been. Survival of the fittest has always been a running theme in the lives of all things. However, before, while the 'fittest' was beginning to be a standard of wealth and education, the tides are now turning to something more primal... something more ancient.

Something more planned.

We join this island and this world fifteen years later.