The Great Grieving

On June 14th, 2128, the last of The Seven Sisters died. This initiated a series of events prepared in advance by the last sister herself, to ensure that all humanity would suffer the most terrible loss and regret the day of her death.

The first, and most terrible event was the immediate and complete destruction of every fusion power facility in existence. A signal, sent as a result of the Sister's death, and transmitted through the interplanetary system control and maintenance networks, triggered a doomsday circuit built into every system, apparently from the beginning. The effect was that each power plant raised power output to absolute maximum, dumped an excess of fuel into the reaction chamber, then disabled the containment fields. The result was a catastrophic system failure that resulted in the destruction of the device itself and, in most cases, the building or space ship containing it. Aside from space ships, nearly all of which were lost with all hands, there was very little direct death from this, as the nature of fusion limited the damage to the immediate structure where the device was housed, and very little damaging radiation was released. The following days, however, saw massive loss of life. Across the thousands of asteroid mining operations, without power and without transport to safety, one by one the facilities went dark, their inhabitants dying as life support failed. On Ganymede the loss of power meant no more life support, no more light or heat, and a slow death by freezing. Less than 200 of the moon's over one billion inhabitants survived. On Titan the great crawler cities stopped where they were. Within a week every single one had sunk with all inhabitants. There were no survivors on Titan. Luna had backup solar systems, and most inhabitants survived, although the Luna leadership closed off the local mining operations immediately, leaving all of the miners to suffocate or freeze within 24 hours. Mars, likewise, had backups, and it turned out several of the hated Underclass had disconnected a few fusion plants from the maintenance networks. Those few plants kept most of Mars' two billion inhabitants alive until new power facilities could be built. Earth, however, had few backups and with the teeming masses of the megacities entirely dependent on fusion power, the death toll was horrendous. It took longer, as the air was clean, water remained, and few froze or suffocated. The masses of the megacities did, however, starve. With the planet unable to grow enough food, the vast areas of former farmland already returned to wilderness as the food from the orbital food satellites took over the burden of feeding humanity, the people of the cities simply could not obtain food. Over 5 billion starved that year on earth, before the factories could be restored, and new orbital shuttles built. Humanity survived, but the collective psyche was forever scarred.

Thereafter, every year on the date when one of the Sisters' had died, another tragedy took place. The Corporate bank lost all account records, the Interplanetary Network dissolved, the Employment records were erased. Seven years of chaos for Seven Sisters. The last was perhaps a blessing. The entire Corporate Archive, the record of everything ever done by and for The Pleiades Corporation, was erased. It was as though, apart from a few lingering records in other archives, The Corporation had never existed. Throughout all of this chaos, somehow, all record of The Sisters, their names and personal details, even their place of rest, was lost.