THE KING OF DETROIT (An Original Dystopian Sci-Fi Novel – Episode 1)

I’m very excited about the journey you and I are about to take together. The King of Detroit is a novel I wrote about three years ago. It was originally titled “Detroitopia,” although I think the new title is much more fitting. So sit back, buckle your seat belt, and keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times. Things are about to get...interesting.

A massive volcanic explosion has left the world in ruins. The kings and queens of city-states—like the King of Detroit—rule over the few people left.

Unlikely survivor Adam Reese's gentle nature drives him to take care of his mother and sister as best he can, but his shyness also keeps him from approaching Elise Bradshaw, the woman he loves, even though they've never spoken.

But the King's sentries are making survival harder than ever. Their high-tech armor makes them completely invisible, and now they're taking food, supplies…and women like Elise. For Adam to keep everyone he loves alive, he must learn to take a stand against a seemingly invincible foe, even if the cost is his own life.

We did it. We blew ourselves up.

It was a cataclysmic event with a sting that was felt throughout the world. It rocked the very foundation of civilization and permanently altered the lives of every living being. All that lived, that is, which wasn't very many. No one was spared from the wrath of its anger. There was no mercy, nor was there any warning. It all happened in an instant, like an unexpected summer storm that appeared out of nowhere on a sunny day, drenching those who didn't see it coming and couldn't reach protective shelter in time. Except this storm was a killer.

It didn't happen the way everyone always thought it would. It wasn't a nuclear war that destroyed nearly all of mankind, although it was nuclear testing that triggered it. It wasn't a pandemic, an asteroid impact, a reversal of the earth's magnetic field, a particle accelerator mishap, or any of those other things we all used to fear. It was the eruption of a super volcano. It was the eruption of Yellowstone.

For so many years people visited Yellowstone and were awed by its beauty, entertained by its geysers, and enjoyed the quiet tranquility of its streams, meadows, and valleys. How many ever stopped to consider that they were standing over a veritable ocean of angry magma just beneath their feet? How many realized as they watched their children laugh at the eruption of Old Faithful that the land they stood on was as thin as an eggshell when compared to the rest of the earth's crust? How many realized the very ground they stood on covered a ticking time bomb more powerful than all of the nuclear weapons ever made combined? Too few. It was nothing more than a playground for them, a vacation spot.

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Towns and villages sprung up around the majestic national park to cater to those who came to see it. The people inhabiting those places were the first to die when it happened. They were the lucky ones. Their deaths were nearly instant, like those unfortunate souls who had their lives snuffed out by the pyroclastic flow and unbreathable gasses from Mount Vesuvius centuries ago. Perhaps someday, hundreds of years from now, archaeologists will make plaster casts of their bodies, too. They will make castings of their silent screams, of mothers protecting their babies from an unknown nemesis, of those curled up in fetal positions as they struggled to inhale their last breaths. Perhaps someday.

Yellowstone didn't erupt on its own, you see. It had help, although indirectly. No one specifically set out to cause an eruption and it wasn't the result of a terrorist attack. It was the indirect result of underground nuclear testing. The countdown to world destruction started in the Middle East, a region with a long history of instability, warfare, and strife. It all started when a certain Middle Eastern country detonated its first nuclear weapon…an underground test, of course.

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For years the leaders of this ancient nation whispered sweet nothings into the ears of other world leaders, assuring them they were only spinning centrifuges to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. They said it was for nuclear power, medical isotopes, and other such malarkey. Any fool could see what they were doing. Their talks of peace were nothing more than delaying tactics to give them additional time to enrich more and more uranium for a bomb.

And the world leaders bought it. Not all of them, of course, but enough decided to look the other way while the regime secretly―or perhaps not so secretly—constructed their own nuclear doomsday device. In their lust for power, the leaders of this nation wanted nothing less than to be a nuclear superpower, to thumb their noses at the world, and to control the Middle East with the threat of nuclear annihilation. “Give peace a chance,” the world leaders said. “We have to give the sanctions time to work,” they repeated, as the factories of doom continued enriching uranium day and night.

And then it happened. They conducted a successful test of a nuclear device.

The first indication that something had happened was detected by earthquake monitoring stations around the world, although initially there was no cause for alarm or concern. According to their seismic monitoring equipment, it looked like nothing more than an earthquake, albeit a small one. It was nothing unusual to these guys, who were used to seeing small earthquakes on a daily basis all around the world.

In just a few hours, however, an announcement was made by a representative of the regime on a popular international news network, an announcement that would forever change the world. It was announced that this country had just joined the exclusive club of nuclear powers. All around the country there was great celebration. People shot guns in the air in jubilation and national pride, but there was no celebration for the fledgling nuclear power's neighbors. There was only great concern.

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That one nuclear test triggered a nuclear arms race across the Middle East. To counter what was perceived as a threat to regional stability and security, a neighboring nation quickly developed and tested its own nuclear weapons, just as it had promised it would if its old rival ever had the bomb. Another neighboring nation quickly followed suit. It made no sense to its leaders to be defenseless against nuclear-armed neighbors, so it developed its own nuclear weapons program as well.

Other nations in the region quickly followed with nuclear programs of their own. And, of course, with all of these new nuclear weapons programs, there was a large spike in underground nuclear testing. One country would test a bomb, and then a neighboring country would set out to test a more powerful bomb. And so it went, each nuclear bomb test more devastating than the previous one, each nation trying to one-up its neighbors.

What no one realized, or even considered, was the powerful pulses of energy that traveled around the world through the earth's crust every time an underground nuclear explosion occurred. Like ripples in a pond after the throw of a stone, these pulses of energy were not felt by most people, save for those closest to the blast sites. But Yellowstone noticed. With each new underground nuclear test, the ground covering the ocean of magma under Yellowstone grew weaker and weaker until it could take no more.