Divergence

It’s hard to build a civilization with the life of one taken person. No matter how you look at it, around us there are hundreds, thousands, millions of man-hours spent building roads, buildings, enterprises, factories. Millions of lives were spent so that it would work, bring benefit to humanity. Now it’s just part of the environment’s landscape. No one cares that not long ago all these benefits cost money—sometimes a lot of money—now it’s just useless junk no one needs.

Only a small handful of miracle-surviving people are trying to set up life vaguely resembling the past, before the apocalypse. Despite all the difficulties, using the technical achievements of their civilization, they manage to accomplish a lot. But they don’t notice that alongside their civilization, another one has arisen—completely alien to human reason. A new species, “Mesothermalicus,” surpasses the old humanity many times over, and soon people’s technical superiority will be gone forever.