Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 220: Aniversary

Two years since the beginning of the [System].

Two years with more death and chaos than any since the world wars.

Two years that had restored magic to the world.

And now, it was Isaac’s job to hold a speech about that mess. The university higher-ups were very eager to have him in the public eye as much as possible, to hold him as a shining example of “This is our university”.

Of course, everyone else would be making speeches too. Bailey and Kass would be giving ones similar to Isaac’s, while the rest of the team would be giving more informational ones. Basically, they’d be taking this as an opportunity to share their research once again and show off.

“Today is a day of speeches. A million speeches, with a thousand different messages.

“The world isn’t ending.

“The world is ending.

“I’m sure everyone here has heard both of those speeches a hundred times before, which is why you’ll be relieved to hear I’m not planning on making that number one-hundred-and-one.”

A few polite chuckles swept through the crowd.

“In the past two years, we’ve seen the world change in a thousand different ways. The creatures out of myth and legend have returned, and I’m sure most of us here have taken this as an opportunity to look at a dinosaur. Or twenty.

A few more polite chuckles.

“We’ve seen the chaos that came with the [System], but we’ve also seen incredible boons as well. I’m sure almost everyone here has, at some point, been stuck waiting for hours in the emergency room for one reason or another. Nowadays, it’s practically a ghost town, and someone not getting healed within minutes of showing up happens maybe once or twice a week. Laboratories around the world have started producing technology we could only speculate on a couple of years ago.

“But we’ve also seen chaos on a scale that is unmatched outside of globe-spanning conflicts.

“Humanity stands at a crossroads, one path leads us into darkness, the other can take us higher than we’ve ever dreamed of.

“If we do this right, if we exercise caution, if we use our heads.

“In the past, I’ve heard proposals for how the world could be brought onto the correct path.

“I’ve heard suggestions that someone should conquer the world and enforce cautious summoning. Hell, I’ve gotten a couple of letters asking me why I haven’t declared myself emperor of the world.

“But this is not something that we can fix by declaring that the world stops summoning recklessly, or by trying to beat all of humanity into good behavior.

“This is a battle that each and every single one of us must fight, this is a situation where each and every single one of us must ask ourselves: what do I want the world to look like in ten years?

“We’ve beaten the Ozone depletion and the hole torn into the Ozone layer was closing even before a couple of [Aeromancers] flew up there and accelerated the process.

“Events started out as disasters, but nowadays, they’re just like any other day.

“We, humanity, we’ve overcome a lot, grown beyond many of our mistakes, and if we grow beyond mishandling the [System], well, the sky’s the limit. Literally.

“We’ve put more people on the moon in the last month than in the entire previous history of spaceflight. Two missions to Mars are being prepared as we speak, and they’re expected to reach it in less than a hundred days once they launch.

“So, let me ask you this, do you want to see the universe? Do you want to explore all there is to find? Do you want to create a world straight out of your wildest dreams?”

This time, he earned cheers.

All throughout his speech, Isaac had been using [Lessons of History] to communicate exactly what he was talking about to all those listening, making it perfectly understandable what he was talking about, and which lessons should be taken away from it.

Yet for all his speeches, Isaac had no plans to let the fate of humanity be solely decided based on whether or not people did the right thing. It would be amazing if it worked out that way, but he wouldn’t rely on it.

The world would not end, not if he had anything to say about it, if there was one single thing he could do to improve its odds.