1: The world is saved, the world is ruined and Jeb, the richest man in the world.
The year is, to the day, precisely 65 years from now. Terribly convenient, isn't it? Certainly not some kind of lazy attempt to establish a setting that can never quite be reached in order to appease such people as like to debate amongst themselves whether fictional scenarios could or could not occur. Just 65 years from now. And if you stop reading and pick this up a week later, it'll be 65 years from then. I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you, I don't make the rules here. Life is, for the most part, very much the same. People are born, usually into crowded cities, are educated, choose a career path, burn out, have a midlife crisis and retire feeling like they've not really lived for most of the best years of their lives. But that's all perfectly normal and nothing that can't be overcome with a little therapy. We've gotten quite good at therapy recently. The world has, however, changed. Of course it has, it's been 65 years. ...