Editing Amaryllis in the Ice Country:Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 6===

It was a rumor regarding the ‘End Times’.

It was just before the ice age came upon the world. Back then, humans were thoroughly troubled by the lack of resources. Crude oil, coal, natural gas, uranium, all of them were dug up and depleted, leaving a dry, barren land. However, the social structure that has been thoroughly ingrained in the concepts of mass productions, mass consumption and mass wastage continue to seek energy. Just as how their massive bellies continue to seek food, humans became hungry monsters that seek energy. Every day, there has been conflicts and wars fought over limited resources.

However, such ugly scuffles came to an end one day. What stopped it wasn’t the military might of a massive country, nor was it a compromise born out an economic agreement, but instead, it was the invention of a new technology.



Crystal Plant



This invention was born out of coincidence.

Since the start of the previous century, there had been competition over mobile facilities, and in the late years, it became a race over highly potent batteries; during this process, a high powered battery called the ‘Recycle Quartz’. This Crystal Plant was of high purity, contains small traces of Germanium and carbon; as the name implied, was a unique metal that could be grown as ‘stalks’ like planets. By soaking them in fluid pools of melted carbon—commonly called ‘farms’—and preserving them in low temperatures, they would sprout like ‘plants’, and within a week, they could be duplicated.

The Crystal Plants contained vast amounts of energy. The power efficiency could be compared favorably to uranium, and there’s no radioactive waste to worry about. Also, the Crystal Plants could also be produced indefinitely due to ‘grafting’, which meant that there was no risk of them running out like cruel oil and coal.

It was truly a miraculous energy. Like a rising market stock, the Crystal Plants expelled all other pre-existing forms of electrical generation, like fire, water, wind, nuclear, and there was a fad of Crystal Plant electric heating in the world. The production of Crystal Plants was very easy; all one needed was a stalk. Thus, the technology to generate electricity through Crystal Plant furnaces was pervasive throughout developed and developing countries. Developing countries in particular obtained an explosion of development due to the mass usage of electricity and industrialization, and it marked the start of a new age called the Crystal Revolution, a technology revolution that could be recorded in world history.

However, this miraculous material that created a massive amount of heat just by adding large numbers suddenly became a demonic material. A certain year after Crystal Plant furnaces started running for more than fifty years, in a country called Robium that is located in the Far East, a furnace core in the first generator suddenly dropped drastically in temperature. The reasons for that were unknown. The safety installation caused the Crystal Core to suddenly stop operating, but the temperature kept dropping. Later, the furnace was completely frozen, and even the surrounding facilities were all caught up, until the area surrounding the generator became a frozen land. Such a freezing phenomenon kept on happening, and there was a freezing cold wave that started from the generators—which would later be called the ‘Ice Age’. Like a bonfire, the cold flames devoured the small country in the Far East. (TN: Plant is named after a species of Orchid called Dendrobium

Like a dried sponge sucking up water, the Crystal Plant furnaces absorbed all the heat from Rodium. The cold wave ran rampant, as all the heat formed seemed to have been sucked back.

Though small in country size, the fact that Rodium became a frozen land within a mere three months shook the entire world. Some did manage to escape overseas, but the citizens who were frozen alive as ice sculptures due to the sudden astronomical rise in airplane tickets took up the majority.

Faced with such decisions, countries around the world ceased operations of the Crystal Plant furnace. Despite the prior tragedies however, there were countries who selfishly continued to generate electricity through Crystal Planets. Large countries in particular bent the safety regulations and evaded the issues by stating that Rodium, the lost country, was a developing country with low skilled populations, or errors. Also, as the freezing phenomenon in Rodium seemed to have abated, this led to debates on both ends. There were many citizens who pleaded to stop the operations of the Crystal Plant furnaces, and researchers who have repeatedly beseeched against such dangers, but they were all ignored in favour of the huge profits from the Crystal Plant furnaces.

And so, a second tragedy struck, one that left humans in a state beyond any point of return. The developed countries that were the first to accept Crystal Plant electricity generation started to show signs of freezing too—‘An Ice Age’. This was of an unprecedented scale, and all involving countries were overwhelmed by the trail of ice, the cold wave spreading beyond the oceans, and throughout the entire world.

After that, the world entered an ice age. Faced with such a rampant cold wave, humanity was left with no choice by to escape from the source, to warmer areas. They mobilized all the robots in the world, and built emergency escape houses. Of all the countries, only the richer ones, who form a minority, could occupy these evacuation shelters. After the shelters were built, the robots who were gathered to build them were mercilessly scrapped except for a few used to maintain the faciltiies. Hordes of citizens who swarmed in were massacred by military robots. Such evacuationshelters were a form of extreme egoism, built all over the world, burrowed into the underground, as humans awaited the day the ice melts.

And so, a hundred years passed.