The twenty-third of May 2015 marked the end of humanity as we know it and the beginning of what is now called the post-Event era in the western world (Disappearance as it is called in East Asia). What followed immediately after the Disappearance is a 100-year period which local historians have chosen to name the “scavenging century” in which the people who were the earliest to reappear tasked themselves with rebuilding civilization out of the bones of humanity. This period is usually considered of importance because of how it is seen as the time period during which most of the new nations formed themselves and established their power base, despite this also being the time period during which the world was the least populated by a wide margin. Estimations rate the global population anywhere from a measly 20.000 to 100.000 (all species considered, without expeditionary forces) by the end of June 2015.

This production intends to relate the events of the Disappearance and the creation of the World Seafarer Union, which is often considered the bonding agent of early post-Disappearance civilization and by far the group with the most capabilities in this day and age (save for the HPI, obviously). The reader should however be advised that the WSU shares strong ties with said HPI, often carrying out missions in their name and keeping a continuous cooperation in the fields of intelligence, high tech trade and data recovery activities. Said cooperation hasn’t always be looked upon kindly by populations which do not harbor a lot of former humans.

The unenlightened reader will be happy to learn that even now, 500 years after the cataclysm, we can still trace most of our international groups and maritime organisations back to the efforts of the WSU. A lot of it can even be thanked to precursor groups back before the Disappearance, responsible for building and setting up much of the infrastructure used by the WSU. Praise the IMO.

An extract from Griffon historian Fleetwing’s Impact of the Event on the Maritime Industry, Imperial University of Beijing, 512AE (master thesis, controversial, translated from Mandarin).

North Sea, 23rd May 2015, anchoring station « West Hinder ».

It was almost a moonless night out on the North Sea, not that anyone would have noticed with the large cloud cover looming above the sea. A light drizzle was falling, but despite that the weather was relatively quiet. If previsions were to be trusted, that weather would keep going for the rest of the week.

Saying today had been a busy day would have been an utter lie for the mismatched crew of M/V Amandine but it wasn’t something any of them felt like complaining about. For the past month and a half, they had been busily sailing their fairly sized car carrier all over the North Sea, dropping off trucks and cars here and there along the shorelines. Now, they were at long last free to enjoy a couple quiet days at anchor in front of the port of Zeebrugge before the beginning of their next assignment. All inspections were done, all publications updated dutifully and the paintwork couldn’t be in a more pristine state.

The ship was a white and grey roll-on/roll-off vessel with a large superstructure at the back, a semi-protected deck onto which they usually loaded trucks and trailers, and a pair of ramps on either sides of the vessel to go with the bigger stern ramp. She had a bright yellow stripe running around the surface of the superstructure, along with the logo of the ship's owner painted on her single yellow funnel, on the port side of the superstructure. The ship, being unloaded except for a sparse amount of ballast and her fuel reserves, had quite a large freeboard. Furthermore, not being designed to carry passengers meant that she had a tendency to roll that would make most people queasy. The bridge's clock showed midnight and all her deck lights were on. A lone crewman was smoking on the main deck, but most his shipmates had already regained their cabins for the night.

As usual since he had begun working on that ship, Third Officer Vadim was taking charge of the first watch, which, considering they were lying at anchor, was nothing but an excruciatingly boring affair. After wishing a good night's rest to his colleague and friend, Micha, a Pole and Amandine’s Second Officer, the 26-year old Ukrainian grabbed himself a large mug of coffee and set about double checking the folder in which they kept all of the ship’s pre-planned routes. Not really a necessary process, but the Chief Officer was always adamant about fine tuning and optimizing their routes, or adding little details and subtleties that made their voyages easier. After all, anything you don't have to do later on is time you've gained to catch up on sleep, and oh boy was that in short supply in the industry.

Coffee thankfully wasn't, Vadim thought to himself as he downed his first mug and poured himself a refill. He was exhausted, having barely managed to sneak in six hours of sleep in the last three days. Still, job's gotta be done and slacking off is a deathwish at sea.

This state of affairs kept on for about an hour of leafing through the folder and giving periodic looks at the instrument panels before fatigue began to set in for the young man. Grumbling, he filled in the first part of the logbook for the night and went to the back of the bridge to get himself yet another mug of coffee.

Being the youngest officer of the ship, Vadim didn’t have the more rugged look of the other crewmen yet but he did carry himself with a certain assurance. He was a 1m74-tall male of Slavic descent, which was quite clear in his round face and dark brown hair and eyes. He wore his hair very short with a thick mustache –not what he’d prefer, but per order of the Captain it was the only authorised type of facial pilosity, so that they all could make use of breathing apparatuses in case of a fire-. He wore orange high visibility coveralls with the initials of the company on his back, ankle-high safety shoes and an old black faux-leather jacket in which he liked to keep his cigarettes. Right now, he had a bit of a limp due to a fall he’d had earlier that day in the mess hall (because of this he also sported a bandage around his knee and a tablet of painkillers to go with the cigs in his jacket) and he had the beginning of bags developing under his eyes.

As he took the first sip of his new cup, Vadim heard a crackle of static over the radio and what he thought was an announcement of sorts. He made his way over to the radio station and pressed the replay button on the VHF panel. The system replayed the message and out came a short burst of static followed by a garbled message... sounded like Dutch to him but he didn’t speak the language so he just shrugged and assumed it wasn’t meant for Amandine and went back to his oh so important and fascinating task of monitoring an unmoving and unloaded vessel.

Seconds later, before he even had the time to contemplate how bad the coffee tasted, the radio came to life once more. This time it was a longer burst of static which came from the short wave receiver. It wouldn’t have mattered much if that hadn’t been followed by another bout of static on the long waves, then another via VHF, and another... Soon, all of the radio equipment was crackling with an unending stream of static. He leaned over the equipment and tried to figure out was the hell was up with the radio but the problem ceased as fast as it had appeared.

Vadim scratched his hair in bewilderment and walked outside, coffee in hand to check if anyone was on the roof of the bridge messing with antennas – Carlos from engineering did love to mess around with the ship’s electronics so it wasn’t that far out of left field- but there was no one there and the antennas looked fine. He wrote a note next to the radio station about the incident so as not to forget to look into it the next day –he didn’t feel like waking anyone up over some meaningless static, however weird it may seem-.

But just as he stuck the post-it note to the radio station and moved back to pick up his coffee, he spotted a pink flash out of the windows of the bridge, followed shortly by an electric crackle that lasted a couple seconds.

Completely forgetting his coffee, he ran to one of the bridge wings to investigate. Just as he stepped out, he spotted the sky flashing a bright pink, once, twice, thrice, and then the electric crackle followed yet again.

Vadim thought about warning the captain and reached for the interphone, but before he could type the right number, the sky flashed but like a stroboscope this time. A coppery taste filled his mouth as a stronger crackling sound rang out, louder than ever. Dropping the handset and pressing his hands against his ears to block it out, Vadim gave the sky one last look. It was shining with all colours of the rainbow. Shortly after, he whited out, unaware of the significant turn his life, and that of the entire world were about to take.

Elsewhere in the aether, forces long left dormant stirred.

Author's Notes:

Greetings folks and welcome to the first story I ever bothered to publish on that marvelous thing we call the Internet.

Feel free to leave feedback as I'd be glad to hear how this story is received. English isn't my mother language if you hadn't noticed so I'm sorry for any odd turn of phrase you may find, SMCP based English isn't the best kind of prose to learn from after all.