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.  But there are 3 changes which, anyone with any kind of opinion will unanimously agree, were in the common vernacular referred to as the "biggies".

1.  World peace

It was around 50 years from, what for convenience, we'll refer to as the present.  You remember the 65 year thing?  Good.  Lifekind was poised on the edge of horrible, horrible war.  This wasn't a scuffle between a handful of nations, it was a conflict between all peoples sufficiently advanced enough to be able to rustle up an army.  The cause couldn't be pinned to one inciting event.  No singular assassination, no violation of treaties.  It was almost as if all our disagreements over the thousands of years of human development had finally brought us to boiling point, that we couldn't stand the sight of each other any more.  Political analysts agreed, mostly from the safety of concretee bunkers deep below the ground, that we were a single faux pas away from the human race bowing out and allowing the cockroaches to take over what was left of the charred remains of society.  Every nuclear weapon was primed and ready.  Drones surrounded the Earth, armed and ready to release thousands of missiles, dirty bombs and orbital laser weapons (which every nation had stubbornly refused to admit bein gin possession of for years).  What little was left of our planet would be so radioactive, its radiance would rival the Sun's.  Something had to be done.

In an undisclosed location, far from the eyes of the media and the public, a number of unmarked cars parked at a small office building in Switzerland.  Long since abandoned but still with power and heating, it would make for a discrete place to focus the attention of a delegate from every country, state, province, even the larger cities.  All anonymous, simply to be referred to by their country of origin.  Cubicles were converted into bedrooms, provisions were flown in.  Humble lodgings, perfect for ensuring that they would remain focused on the task at hand.  A world put in detention, the most naughty of all naughty steps.  The doors were locked from the outside and they were sternly informed that nobody, but nobody, would leave until all this was taken care of.

A fight broke out within 10 minutes of the first bottom hitting a seat in the main conference room.

Some delegates fought.  None had conventional weapons, except those permitted for cultural reasons (mercifully never used), but those who were there for the event witnessed pulling of beards and neckties, wrestling, kicking, biting and occasionally bludgeoning with staplers and other office accoutrement.  Fighting in that particular way that only truly incensed geriatric men can, slowly but with dire intent.  The younger delegates took to the edges of the room, watched in horror, often whilst openly weeping.  They knew this was the end of the world and they were privileged to see how it would begin.

From out of this group came the Belgian delegate.  A controversial choice, they'd risen to the height of their country's political system at the very young age of 26.  Many had cried out that this had been madness, but they'd been a representative of an ultra progressive left wing party at the time which had recently been voted in in the hopes of shaking up the country a little.  This person stepped out to the centre of the room, carefully picking their way through the mildly wounded, the incapacitated and in some cases, simply the asthmatic (who weren't used to this much excitement of their time of life).  They climbed atop the table in the heart of the room, cleared their throat and uttered a single sentence.  One that would ensure their favour with the Nobel prize committee.  A phrase that would be written into the leading chapter of every history book in every school for the rest of linear time.  One simple sentence.

"Guys, please, could we not just be cool for, like, five minutes?"

Shock caused the fighting to cease for a moment.  The Russian delegate opened their mouth to respond, but stopped.  He started to laugh.  Gently at first, but soon an uproarious bellow.  Those near him began to laugh, too.  This statement, this plea had been so ridiculous, so ill thought out but so... sincere, that it cut through everything.  The tension was gone, the anger and hostility.  All of it.  They began to help each other back to their feet, shook hands, even embraced.  They decided as one group that this wasn't the way to negotiate. They would instead go to the modest kitchen area and they would cook.  Dish after dish came out, a grand buffet, a steady stream of simple, nostalgic meals, each learned from a loved one in a youth long forgotten.  Rather heavy on carbohydrates, sure, but solid comfort food.  Sated, they sat down and began to draft documents.  They agreed on boundaries, trade agreements, even a very small number of baseline laws applicable to every global citizen.  It was a surprisingly brief job, taking no more than 2 days, pausing for nothing more than to request that the security staff outside send out a runner for more rice, flatbread and "some of that salted liquorice, you know what we mean, Sweden's got Barbados absolutely hooked on the stuff".  But in the end, it was done.  No more war.  No fighting.  Every army would be dedicated full time to aid during natural disasters.

2. Scientific advancement

With military spending now at an all time low and the Belgian delegate now living a life of unparalled luxury, now heralded as the saviour of all humanity, there was plenty of money in everyone's national coffers.  Debt was eradicted first, it only seemed right, but then what?  It went to a public poll.  We could invest in science, conservation, space exploration... anything, really.  All suggestions welcomed.  The idea of investing in medical science was attributed to a middle school student in China and it really captured the hearts of the world.  After all, wouldn't it be poetic if money that had once been used to fund munitions and training in the name of defence was still being used to preserve life?  Billions of pounds, dollars, yen, rupees, euros, they all came pouring in.  Our knowledge of viruses, genetic abnormaltities, almost everything that could be diagnosed, it was all done away with.  It took 5 years.  45 years from "now" (still with me on the 65 years thing?), all know disease had been eradicated and the only things we collectively feared were cancer and death by aging or accidents.  But even then, it would have to be a severe accident.  We'd gotten pretty hot at surgery, too.  Of course, money was still pouring in, and cancer research laboratories grew to unprecedented sizes.

This meant a couple of things, from a wider perspective.  For one, the average lifespan of a person increased significantly.  For another, birth survival rates skyrocketed to the upper 95th percentile.  Our population exploded.  And so began the third biggie.

3.  Green Thursday

Increasing populations and a heavy bias away from physical labour and into business and office work had created a population that very much favoured a city structure.  Office blocks surrounded by cheap housing, ringed with cheaper office blocks were the standard template.  Every city retained something of its original culture, of course, mostly in its food and entertainment, but we became a more homogenous whole.  Some wept for the loss of identity but what choice did we have?  We were running out of room.  Floating islands were built in the ocean, that helped for a while, then we began to build up.  Skyscraping apartment buildings, dangerously tall offices and shopping centres, in some extreme cases huge stacks of single occupancy studio apartments, hundreds of units high.  "Towns" suspended in the air from arrays of static cranes.  Undergound colonies (free vitamin D supplements included in your rental agreement, naturally).  But still we needed more.  National parks had to go.  Mountains were levelled (we needed the building materials anyway, that kiled two birds quite nicely).  Still we needed more.

3 years from the present day, Green Thursday occurred.  The name given by the media, always on the lookout for a catchy hook, to the date of the purchase of the last remaining piece of viable farmland in the world.  Attempts to colonise the moon had met with little success, the terraforming would be too expensive, and Mars wasn't likely to be viable inside of the next century so this was, in fact, "it".  The end.  A swarm of rabid real estate executives had been swarming the 100 square metre property for years now.  "Jeb Jones' Hog Haven" (prime porkers for paltry prices, tractor rides for the kids, open 7 days, 9 'til 4, closed Christmas and Easter).  A pig farm in the heart of Iowa.  On every side, Jeb was surrounded by skyscrapers, natural light only available for 4 hours of the day.  He'd do his daily chores, mucking out and feeding the pigs the way his family had for generations, then he'd generally retire to his old rocking chair on the porch and sip a bourbon while teams of reps in power suits literally threw money at him.  Not even offers, they paid him to CONSIDER offers.  Every day, Jeb laughed and laughed as he watched himself become the richest single entity in recorded history. His personal wealth was greater than that of some first world countries and rising.  But one day, a fairly sunny morning on the last Thursday of August, he decided he'd had enough.  He was ready to retire.  And so, with a legendary proclamation of "Aight you crazies, let's start fuckin' BIDDIN'!", the deed was done.  Every floor of every building around him erupted into cheers.  Great for Jeb, but bad for the world which now had a nervous eye on its rapidly dwindling supplies of food.

Science had seen this coming.  It had been, to a degree, the cause of our problems and it was ready to step in with a solution.  We'd long since experimented with meal replacement powders, supplement drinks and the like.  What if they could be made cheaply, artificially but enough to ensure a certain standard of living for every person?  Every country had their front runners in the race to get the perfect balance of cost and function.  "FudCo" in India looked promising for a while.  Eastern Europe's "Meal Genie Inc." were getting close.  Then right as Japan's "Happy Meal" company announced they were but 6 months from a viable product (somewhat hampered by legal battles with a certain quick service restaurant that baffled all economists by continuing to trade despite no longer being in possession of meat patties), a winner emerged.  Quite an unlikely one, at that.  GastroTech Industries, working from a small production facility in Bridlington on the east coast of Britain quietly announced that yes, they'd worked out the problem and were ready to go to market.

Their operation increased in size by a factor of 50 in a matter of months.  So great was the demand, so absurd the potential for profit that they purchased the east coast of the entire land mass.  From south to north tip, they purchased an unbroken mile wide strip of land.  The labs were based in Scotland, the offices in the south (handy for London, naturally) and the intervening hundreds of miles were taken up by factories.  Miles upon miles of factories.  Housing was bulldozed but that didn't matter, GastroTech had enough money to almost literally buy the occupants.  Those rendered homeless by the agressive expansion were rehoused in patented "NuBuild" settlements, hyper-focused and 100% identical housing developments.  Whether you lived in GTech 1 (Bridlington central) or GTech 2503 (Sunderland), if you knew your way around one, you knew your way around them all.  Living conditions were often cramped, but with the promise of a well-compensated job for life and all living expenses promptly paid, nobody truly complained.  In truth, standards of living had been at rock bottom for years.  At least GastroTech planned in artificial green spaces as a concession to their corporate and social mental wellbeing initiatives.

Their product wasn't imaginitive.  It wasn't interesting.  By God it worked, but it wasn't what you'd call fulfilling.  It wasn't fun.  They called it "Log" and it came in a can.  Various sizes were available, from "Family Log" containing enough food to supply a standard nuclear family for one meal's worth of nutrition to the single serving "Log Viper" aimed at the gullible bachelor market, or the infamous "Captain's Log", a less calorific offering for the older consumer.  The product was always the same, regardless of branding.  A flavourless grenish-brown gelatinous mass that retained the shape of the container.  Your only options were hot or cold and it made little difference.  But what it did offer was 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals, containing an optimal calorie density for your working day.  In a sense, it was pet food for people.  You bought according to your age bracket.  The general standard of global health was fantastic once the product was rolled out, malnutrition was a thing of the past and obesity a distant memory, but when food no longer had flavour, who'd want to overeat?  And for those suffering from depression related to this absolute lack of choice, GastroTech offered zero-calorie flavour supplement crystals, in "Beef", "Chicken" and "Salad" flavours.

The world was saved.  And GastroTech used its wealth to ensure a total global monopoly.  So powerful had they become, they'd trademarked the conept of edible matter and would ruthless sue any contenders into oblivion.  They would never reveal what "Log" actually contained, of course.  That was a closely guarded industry secret.  They weren't above regulation, but any health inspections or audits were well known to come away from their visits with their resignation letters already written, citing no need to work another day in their lives.  Bribery?  No.  Unregulated corporate "hospitality"?  Probably.  It became commonplace for very well liked regulators, auditors and accountants to be given assignment G2, the "GastroTech gig" as they approched retirement age as a kind of severance package.

So, that's the scene set, then.  A world of peace, prosoperity and endless identical urban sprawl, long since sunk past the brink of ecological collapse, overpopulated and sustained entirely on a factory-produced mystery substance.