Post-Deterrence Era, Year 6

It is four years since the Great Feast began.
The representatives of the remaining human nations gather in Canberra, capital of the human reservation on what was once Australia.
Every one of them is naked, in the fashion of the time, displaying their soft feminine Deterrence Era bodies, swollen now by political success, in a gesture of simultaneous faith and dominance to each other.
Their governess, the ambassador of Earth's new masters, meets them by the dried lake. She is as slender and dignified as ever, a true incarnation of the celestial dignity that will never again belong to humans.
"Welcome, fellow victors," she teases.
She leads them to the World-Eater statue, erected to commemorate humanity's contributions to the planet, on the former site of the Monument to Human Courage.
As two entire species watch her on their screens, she jumps atop the statue and begins the ceremony.

The Feast was only supposed to be temporary. For just a few months humans would eat each other, just until their population was small enough to sustain itself on their prison continent, and until the invader fleet arrived with their utopian technology and granted them the small, comfortable existence that was their consolation prize for fighting well.
But the invaders liked what they saw. They enjoyed the depths to which their enemy sank at their command. And when their fleet arrived, they did indeed bring material comfort to the human reservation, but by no means was it an end to the entertainment.
Humans were biologically altered into predatory machines as part of their registration, capable of incomprehensible pleasure in victory and terror in defeat. Sadistic predation became a points system, hidden to the humans but highly relevant to their survival. At the end of a certain interval, whichever nation was judged to be the least voracious, according to the hidden system, would be fed to the others.
Of course, all the nations convened, and enacted draconian measures to ensure none of them tried to edge ahead. Their manners became defined by painstaking acts of trust and civility. But of course it was paper thin. Of course the game continued underneath.
Hence the ubiquitous nakedness among elites. "Here is my body," every powerful citizen communicated, as they moved between the pod cities that passed for nations. "It is yours, if you would take it. I have nothing to hide." And at the same time, "look at me ripple and jiggle with the flesh of your countrymen. This will be your people's legacy."
When the time came, all of the leaders answered the summons.

The governess gestures around the circle of leaders with her sword, drawing out the moment for far longer than necessary.
At last, she stops on Gaius Frank, Princeps of the European Union.
"Princeps Frank," she says, and the terror on the Princeps' face fills screens across the planet. She tosses him a leather strap. "Tie Emperor Lu's hands behind his back. President Moss, you can help."
The Emperor struggles, but he is no match for the combined strength of his enemies. In the desert pods, a million citizens of the People's Republic curl into balls and wish for families to hold them. None think of escape. Their fate is not theirs to dictate.
"Step back," says the governess, holding her sword ahead of her. "An equal distance. Whichever of you eats this weakling, his people belong to yours."
The Emperor holds himself erect, with all the grace of 6000 years spent manning the tiller of Heaven. "It is as expected. When all men turn to monsters, China alone remains human."
The governess laughs delicately, and slaps him with the flat of her blade. The plump fat all over his body quivers. "You have had twenty-seven children in your big girly bowels, Emperor. Do you think the rules of this game allow any human an ounce of solace in heroism? Have at him, victors."
The nations fall on him, without a single thought of history or pride or culture. Princeps Franks, President Moss, Empress Kotobuki, Maharani Chakma, and dozens of other sovereigns claw and tear at each other for the honour of closing their unhinged jaws around the soft bag of flesh that might once have been the world's greatest kingdom.
That it is the Maharani who in the end prevails, and settles at the foot of the World-Eater statue to digest him, while the other dignitaries slink off jealously, is inconsequential. They all know it may well be her turn next. In the mean time, her social status will be greatly improved, and she will wield it magnanimously as though it were earned through charity.
Throughout the reservation, citizens of the People's Republic are meekly ushered by cheery helper robots into the dormitories of their conquerors from the Raj.
The next day, a million Indians greet their neighbours with a little more arrogance, a little more girth, and a post-feeding cheeriness that will fade by day's end. The longest lived culture in history, the masterwork of Qin Shi Huang and Gaozu and countless other great men, gurgles in the antiseptic sewers of the human reservation, to be disinfected and shot into space.
And so it is in turn with the other nations, until language and love are forgotten at last and the invaders finally let their defeated foes die.


Seriously though, everyone read Remembrance of Earth's Past. It's frackin wild.

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