by Paul Fortunato
World peace was mankind's biggest mistake. United under one banner, humanity erased war, hunger, and disease. A utopia of peace, compassion, and cooperation. Then the stars took notice. The Intersol called us forward, claiming we’d earned a place amongst them. But their judgment was swift—our kindness was weakness, our mercy a joke. Too soft. Too fragile. Too naive to stand among real civilizations. Earth was declared a game reserve, a zoo where we could live out our little fantasy of peace. The price of safety? Biomass harvesting—our people taken as food for the cosmos. But there is an escape clause. Wargames. A brutal bloodsport where species prove their worth—or are eradicated. A hundred thousand humans thrown into a meat grinder against billions. A species that abandoned war, fighting civilizations that never stopped. The aliens think they’ve already won. But they never studied our history. They don’t know about our fallen blood-soaked empires, the instinct for cruelty, the hunger for dominance lurking beneath our progress. Humanity hasn’t forgotten war. We’ve just been waiting for an excuse.
