(The following is a free form essay I wrote about the world inhabited by Mirov. A lot of the hypotheticals here influenced me throughout my writing. The Houston description at the bottom is certainly the novel's intended depiction. Aside from Houston, I don't consider this essay to be canon. It's more like a brainstorming of themes I possibly wanted to explore. It also explains why section three of the book is dubbed "More and Peace." Yes, it's my cheeky play on War and Peace, but I do think it's a fair description to where our current world is headed. Anyway, if you want a little insight into the mental homework I went through to write Mirov, this essay is an essential window into my thinking.)
In the current age of this story, the threat of the Rubary had dwindled to a headline. "Someone else will handle it when the time comes," was the zeitgeist of the day.
Perhaps the real tragedy for humanity was there never came a post-Apocalypse. In its stead, the modern world grew, deepened, and deepened until layers of modernism, post-modernism, and post-post-modernism blurred into one future-come-present world of shit.
Perhaps the often predicted Biblical Second Coming was meant for a million millennia from now. What if we were never meant to be The Chosen Generation that would be raptured out of here?
What if all of the religions with an end-of-day prophecy were wrong?
What if there was no "Second Coming" coming?
What if all we had now only intensified and magnified? More electricity, not less. More oil, not less.
What if oil was a renewable, molten-core-produced-goo and not dissolved dinosaur bones?
What if we improved public transportation to reduce the need for personal vehicles, but we kept owning cars anyway?
What if the microwave cooked even faster and light bulbs lasted even longer?
What if what awaited humanity was only more concrete, more marketing, and more progress?
What if the government became even more extensive, but individuals increased too, with even more social media to showcase more of our ordinary lives?
What if the future was simply a whole plethora of "More?" No reset buttons were ever pushed. No lives were re-evaluated. No cleansing nuclear wars. Only ample amounts of more.
Aside from the Rubary and the turmoil of the colonies, what if everything was okay?
Aside from the Rubary and turmoil in the colonies, what if corporations brought about world peace and the common good?
Aside from the Rubary and the turmoil of the colonies, what if all of us do have equal rights?
What if 'war and peace' had given way to 'more and peace'?
Can we handle such an abundant world?
Houston
Flashing marketing and non-stop video graced the glass skyscrapers of the Bayou City. Everywhere you turned something was now electrified, interactive, and branded—a Ridley Scott Orgy with a trillion-dollar budget. The oil money, investment money, and import money had now mixed with the new capital of alien technology and created an unforeseen hub of American culture near the Gulf of Mexico.
The roots of humanity's endeavors in space will forever be tied to Houston. We had NASA and the Space Race of the 1960s. Those days led to the Gulf Coast becoming the international hub for the "fight" against the Rubary via Unidom.
A true Third Coast had formed to be a capital of thought and commerce. New York City stood tall to the East. Los Angeles anchored the West. Houston now took its place in the South. There was no light from the North.
Each capital had its beacon. Houston had its own. The Hollywood Sign and the Empire State Building immediately told a moviegoer where their movie took place. So had the Unidom Towers taken their place in our consciousness.
To the side of the downtown skyline, the two tall towers of Unidom stood out, hovering over the city—a glass and steel Godzilla. Black and lean, the towers were attached three times via skywalks connecting them. The South Tower stood one floor shorter than the North Tower, which came in at one hundred and fifty floors.
Below the towers at its base, glistening socialites soaked up the marketing, ate the food made by the ever-diversifying working class, and hopped from nightspot to nightspot. But make no mistake. The working class was not the only class with increasing diversity. The American WASP had now been joined amongst the so-called "elite" by the oil-producing Arabs, the resource-mining Africans, and the technology-centered Asians.
The curveball of exploding industry had thrown out many of the cultural rules and replaced them with the one thing that could replace them—money. The divisions and class boundaries were no longer cultural but strictly monetary.
Despite the Cold War mentality versus the Rubary permeating everything, this was the most golden of the Golden Ages. There was peace between the nations, plenty to eat, and plenty of water.
The time was now the era of More and Peace.