User:CreedogV/TheWorldEntire/Volume Two

Volume Two
The next generation rises...

Volume Two: Progeny is a fan fiction series written by Creedog VanDrey. It is the third part of his The World Entire series. It takes place in an alternate continuity during the Exposed Future shown in I Am Become Death. It takes place between December 22, 2012 and March 2029, with the main storyline taking place in 2029. It features a large cast of characters.

Chapters

There will be at least 13 chapters. Each chapter begins with a monologue, presumably by Mohinder, with the common theme of science, which reflects Volume One's monologues concerning religion.

The Lonely Neutron

Chapter 1

In 1934, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi created the first nuclear reaction via neutron irradiation. He showed that when a tiny neutron collided with radioactive material, a sustained reaction would occur. This discovery would later become very important during World War II, when scientists with the Manhattan project would successfully put Fermi's discovery to work, producing bombs capable of destruction on scales never imagined before. Truly, the most minor event can set off a chain reaction that can write history.

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Storm Clouds

Chapter 2

The speed of light is some 88,000 times the speed of sound, which would seem rather poorly planned. In the event of a lightning strike, the warning signs—thunder—would not arrive until long after the disaster has occurred, while the actual visible demonstration of it... is instantaneous. This is so much like life, where tragedy comes in a flash, and it is only long after that we hear the rumblings that announce the decimation. Perhaps it’s just Mother Nature’s way of saying we ought to bow to the storm cloud rather than try to tame the wind.

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Survival of the Nicest

Chapter 3

It seems that most of the natural world did not get the memo on "survival of the fittest", because everyday animals of all types flout this principle. Richard Dawkins wrote a book entitled The Selfish Gene, noting that "selfish" was such an unsuitable term. Rather than selfish, nature tends to be altruistic. Why else would the majority of ants and bees be sterile, spending their lives protecting and pampering their mother, the queen, if their own genes will not be passed on? The theories of kin selection and inclusive fitness tell us that we are not alone in our generosity; it is encoded in our very DNA. It is the deceit, the envy, and the hatred that is unnatural. The one who works for the benefit of the community, the enemies that lay down arms to embrace one another as brothers, the parent who sacrifices everything so that their child may prosper, these people are fulfilling their duty as a citizen of Earth.

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Stages of Life

Chapter 4

Dutch developmental psychologist Erik Erikson proposed a theory of psychosocial development. He split the human lifespan into eight stages, from infancy to seniority, attaching to each stage an essential need to be met. Children grow to understand the world. Parents learn to care for a child. And for those fortunate enough to grow into old age, they have the opportunity to look back on their life and determine meaning. We watch as each new generation takes its place, molding the world, making it better.

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Welcome Home

Chapter 5

By studying animals in the wild, we can learn a lot about ourselves. Note how wolf packs and primate troops usually consists of only related members, yet it is far from uncommon for unrelated individuals to be allowed to join the group. These tenderfoots must learn the rules, not the least of all, the pecking order. Though the hierarchy is dynamic, they must always know who the alpha male is. These skills teach us how to function in the world, in our workplaces and in our families. It is our differences that allow us to live in harmony, though these same differences also lead to strife. What is the meaning of this contradictory dichotomy? That only harkens to questions as old as time.

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The Immovable Object

Chapter 6

The Chinese word for paradox is máodùn, or spear-shield. It comes from the third century philosophical book Han Feizi, which contains the story of a merchant trying to sell a spear and a shield, claiming the spear could pierce any shield and the shield deflect any spear. His potential buyer asked what would occur should he use the spear on the shield, rendering the seller speechless. He could have very well asked about God creating a rock He could not lift, an immovable object meeting an irresistible force. Science has long since answered the question. The Big Bang released all potential mass and energy (both quantities unimaginably great but by no means infinite) into the universe, and the two are kept in a delicate balance. This balance is defined by the most famous equation of all: E = mc². What a tangled web is weaved.

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The Hard Journey

Chapter 7

The scientific method is the cornerstone of the modern sciences. Sometime in the eighteenth century the radical idea arose that truth could not only be discerned by faith, but also by reason. It was centuries before, that Egyptian scientist Alhazen stated, "Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough." Often, the journey to a goal is long, hard, and rough. To make a real difference requires time, effort, ingenuity, and luck in abundance. And perhaps that is what this world needs.

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The Outcome of an Event

Chapter 8

Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment to understand the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics, where particles could be assumed to exist in multiple states until observed. He likened this to a cat in a sealed box where poison gas either was or was not released. Until the box was opened, the cat must be assumed to be both alive and dead simultaneously. It’s a larger way of saying we cannot know the outcome of an event until we have participated it in. So, we must trudge through life judging ourselves ultimately as both successes and failures, sages and fools, heroes and villains. At least until we prove ourselves one way or another.

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Past, Present, and Future

Chapter 9

If there is anything that has perplexed not only the scientific community, but the religious and philosophical communities too, it's the notion of time. The Greek sophist Antiphon said, "Time is not a reality, but a concept or a measure." Yet Science could do little without time. It is a fundamental physical quantity, which must of our understanding of the universe would cease to exist without it. The speed of light would be meaningless. Energy, defined as the agent of change, disappears if we can't understand the differences in an object from moment to moment. And what is this cause-and-effect that is so close to the heart of science? In the last hundred years, physics has been overturned; Einstein and his successors thought of time as tangible, something relative to space and the observer. They state that time did not exist before the Big Bang. For those of us living in the moment, time is all too real. The past is like a ghost, haunting us. The future is the shoreline in the distance that we race toward. The present is a hurricane that we're in the middle of, utter chaos that we have no hope of controlling. We cannot avoid it, though. We can do little without time.

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See Also

• For the prequel to this fic, see The World Entire: Volume One: Cataclysm.