January 2076

“What do you mean the cloning facilities are gone?! Those are buildings bigger than starships, they cannot have just disappeared!” Norman was furious. Never in his life had such a thing ever occurred. 

He had woken up to his communication device blaring an emergency alarm. That alarm was never to be used unless the world was truly on fire. The buildings disappearing might as well have been such an emergency. Those labs, which were ordered shut down due to the New Year conversation, were stocked full of the new breeds of humans. Homo Vampiric, Homo Kanis, Homo Elden, those were the children of Ed. The labs to disappear meant that the clones meant that Ed must have taken them somewhere. 

“Where is Ed? Place him in custody! Lock him down!”

“Ed’s not here.” Ashley said. “He’s out in the forest in north Britain. He’s supposed to be looking for the last remnants of dragons.”

“Send whatever we can out there to find him and his children and place them under house arrest until we can figure out what happened to the cloning facilities.”

Ashley nodded, picked up her communication device and walked out.

Norman looked out the window and stared out into the space that was Chichgo, it was in a state of constant repair and construction. Buildings were known to fall and collapse. The city engineers that kept the city beautiful for hundreds of years, all left to construct new cities in space. 

Norman had been left in charge of Earth. He was the highest authority left on the planet, but that rule only applied to men. The gods and goddesses that were left seemed to ignore the laws of men. That sounded bad enough as it was. Who knew fifty years ago that gods would be real?  At least the real one hasn’t shown himself yet, or perhaps he had and that was the real cause of the abandonment of the planet.

“Get me Earl Taylor.” He said to his secretary.

Norman may have been the highest authority of men, but he still had advisors to help him. Earl Taylor had been one of the few military men to stay. Though most of the military had contracts with cloning, the actual might of the military laid within the robotic division. 

There was such delight for what used to be machines of wonder and fear. But when people left, wars left with them, the robots now sat cold and useless in hundreds of warehouses.

“You wanted to see me?” Earl Taylor said walking into the office. He was an older man, in his early fifties, but not quite out of his prime. His muscular figure was a sight to behold, he truly was a man not to mess with.

    “Earl, I need your robots. The magic that we sought will soon be our undoing. We need to stop it from rising and wiping out the rest of mankind.”

    “Do you intend to kill you freakshow experiment?”

    “Yes, the time has come. Men need to retake what was taken. Ed has outlived his usefulness. Send some of your bots to be fitted with magicule trackers. We have got to stop them before more can come.”

    “I’ll get right on it. To tell the truth I have been looking forward to it for some time. Just been waiting for the word to proceed.”