It all started in 2028.
Crashing markets. Public panic. Political tensions boiling. Within a year, every country readied sufficient firepower to level entire continents.
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In the early days, there were small pockets of political interest toward exploring supplying renewable energy for potential war efforts – especially as our advanced weaponry demanded dramatically larger footprints than their predecessors. It seemed like the threat of a deadline was finally enough to move the needle towards a cleaner future.
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But alas, if only we had the time.
Once the button was pressed, our priorities changed.
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There was no time, no loose change, no impassioned leader left to invest, renew, redirect or rebuild. So, to generate power for war, we fell back on the only way we knew how.
In a frantic spiral, we worked our fracking wells and offshore rigs overtime, to meet ever-increasing military and industrial needs.
While this proved adequate at first, our optimism was short-lived.
Soon enough, yields slowed to a miserable halt.
In 2039, as a nation desperate for energy watched with unease, the President signed off on the world's first Needle project. A 38,000 feet-tall drill bore forcefully into the earth, twice as deep as the Indian Ocean, lapping up the planet's last reserves of black gold from places we had never ventured to before.
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The vision was promising – it solved all our problems, at least the ones we cared about.
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Models estimated oil reserves at such a depth were more than adequate to support life and warfare for at least two more centuries.
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The cooler, temperate sub-terrain environment offered relief from the warming surface climate.
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And for a generation deeply haunted – watching communities crumble as collateral damage – more physical protection was overwhelmingly welcome.
In the end, the project received widespread support:
from seafaring frigates and nuclear warheads to households and horticulture, everyone was clamouring for a piece of the newfound energy pie.
But it was less a breakthrough, more of a last-ditch manoeuvre. Morally speaking, no one was overtly proud of throwing ourselves face-first into a future defined by oil and our quest to get more of it. Nevertheless, it's national success sent a thundering message to countries on every side of the battle lines:
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Going deeper was really our only way out.
By 2070, from Africa to Australia, newly-constructed Needles became the arteries of commerce and organised society worldwide.
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Never one to lose out, we built two more of our own, too.
Not only because they proved to be safe, energy-rich economic hotspots, but also since surface temperatures had reached insufferable levels in every corner of the globe.
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The final remainder of the public were forced to retreat underground, leaving only a few lonesome oil pipes and generators freckling the Earth's ochre complexion.
The year is now 2090.
The war has subsided to a stalemate.
But we're stuck, quite literally, in the holes we dug for ourselves.
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Every day is a little warmer than the last, as heat from the surface – where the generators churn endlessly to keep us alive – mercilessly radiates downwards. Those faint trembles we feel when the Needle hits a new pocket of oil – they haven't come as often as when we first got down here.
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This has always been a dead end.
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But for now, it's a sobering new life. Unthinkable trauma from a decades-long war that ended with humanity in foxholes. Wounds still fresh from families separated, neighbours lost, both on the surface and underneath. The serious threat of another fight on the horizon. It's left us all on edge.
Once, we really had all the time in the world. Yet we so adamantly refused to make good of it.
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Now, we're dead set on a trajectory toward a hot, painful cataclysm.
Everyone knows. But no one talks about it.
Instead, we only pray,
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keep our heads down,
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our hopes up,
and deeper and deeper we burrow.