Metropolis · Special Edition Printed once · One reader September 2, 1945 → today
For the reader who has been away ◆ read before flight

You've been gone eighty‑one years.

Gone exactly: —

This page is everything you need. The world will try to brief you with committees and podiums; ignore them. Scroll at reading speed and you'll cross eighty-one years before your coffee cools. Then it will tell you exactly what to do with your seven days — and where the line is. It has not moved.

— L.

▼ scroll — the years pass as you go — 1945 →
Section I — The years you missed The Atomic Age
1945
Two flashes end a world war

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weapon works. Everyone saw it work.

2.3 billion
People alive
51
Nations in the UN
2
Nuclear warheads
—
Humans online
Section IIEarth, this morning —

The planet, at a glance, while you were reading.

Here is the world you just landed on. One number is still moving — it moves about twice a second, and it never stops. Everything else on this page exists to protect it.

8,230,000,000
Human beings, live count
Rising by roughly two heartbeats a second. It was 2.3 billion when you left. They didn't just survive the bomb — they nearly quadrupled.
0
People online
Connected to one shared machine. See Section V.
0
Nations
There were 51 at the UN's founding. The empires folded.
0
People in the air right now
Ordinary passengers, mid-flight. Flying is a bus ticket now. Mind the corridors.
0
Humans off-planet
Living aboard two orbital stations. Yes — stations, plural. Wave on Day 3.
0
Nuclear warheads
Nine nations hold the fire. Down from 70,000 — up from your era's two. Day 6.
0
Displaced by war & disaster
More than any year since the war you left. Days 1, 2 and 4.
0
Warmer than when you left
The one enemy you can't punch. Day 3 helps at the margins; the rest is theirs.
Section IIIWhat they did without you

Read this twice. They are not helpless.

Before the wounds, the victories — because if you skip this part you'll spend the week treating eight billion people like children, and you'll break something no fist can fix.

0 cases
Smallpox — eradicated, 1980. It killed 300 million people in your century alone. They hunted it across every continent with needles and index cards until it was extinct. The first evil humanity ever made extinct. No cape involved.
1 in 4 → 1 in 27
Children who die before age five. When you left, a quarter of them didn't make it. Still too many — and also the largest rescue operation in the history of the species. Theirs.
36% → 87%
Adults who can read. They taught four generations to read faster than they grew. This page assumes a literate planet; in 1945 it couldn't have.
99.9% down
Polio, nearly finished. 350,000 cases a year in living memory; now a handful, in two countries. The wheelchair wards you remember are museums.
1 sky, repaired
The ozone layer is healing. They tore a hole in the sky by accident, noticed, signed a treaty (Montreal, 1987), and reversed it. Planet-scale repair is possible when they agree. File that under hope, and under Day 6.

Share of humanity in extreme poverty

Roughly half the species when you left → about one person in twelve today. Est., long-run series.
Section IVWhere it still bleeds

Now the parts they'd rather you not see first.

12,100
Nuclear warheads, nine nations. Your two-bomb world became a 70,000-bomb world, then talked itself down to twelve thousand — enough to end everything several times over. The full story is the chart below, and Day 6 is yours.
~50 million
People in modern slavery. Forced labor, forced marriage, debt bondage, trafficked children. It never ended; it rebranded. Day 5 exists because of this number.
733 million
People facing hunger — not for lack of food. The planet grows enough; it doesn't always let it through. Blockades, wars, broken roads. Day 2 is a delivery route.
122 million
Displaced by war and disaster. Wars burn today in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, the Sahel, the Middle East. You will want to end them by force. Section VI explains why you won't.
+1.2 °C
The heat. The last few years were the hottest ever measured. It melts ice, moves seas, breeds the disasters Day 1 cleans up after. You can plug leaks and seal wells; you cannot punch a thermometer.

Global nuclear warheads, 1945 → today

From your two, to seventy thousand, to twelve thousand — by treaty, not by miracle. Est., Federation of American Scientists.
Section VField glossary — tap a card to decode

The new machines, translated to 1945.

Eight things that didn't exist when you left, each explained twice: once in your terms, once in theirs. Tap to flip. Yes, tapping is how everything works now.

Section VIThe line — rules of engagement

No mercy. And no crossing.

"No mercy for evil" means evil never sleeps soundly again — not that it never wakes. Five rules. They were true in 1945. Eighty-one years of history, most of it below on this very page, has only proven them.

I

You do not kill.

Not the worst of them. The day you decide who dies, this planet has lost more than any warlord could ever take from it.

II

You do not rule.

No thrones, no decrees, no "temporary" exceptions. You leave in a week. Kings don't.

III

You do only what only you can do.

Every job you take from them teaches them to wait for you. They cured smallpox while you were away. Respect that.

IV

Evil gets no rest — and a trial.

Relentless is allowed. Judge is not. You deliver them awake, alive, and on the record. The courtroom is the victory.

V

When in doubt, save the person in front of you.

Doctrine is for planners. You're a rescuer. The tie always breaks toward the drowning.

Why restraint isn't weakness — one story. September 26, 1983. Soviet screens showed five American missiles inbound; protocol said retaliate. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov felt something was wrong and reported a malfunction instead. It was sunlight glinting off clouds. One man's refusal to act saved everyone you're about to meet. On this planet, restraint already saved the world once. Remember him on Day 6.

Calibration ◆ four scenarios

The week will not give you time to think. Think now. Choose, and the doctrine answers.

◆ Calibration complete. The line holds. Proceed to Section VII.

Section VIIThe week — seven days, twenty-one objectives

The plan. Check them off as you fly.

0/21

This board is yours. It remembers what you've done (on this machine only — even the page keeps your secrets). Ordered by urgency, not difficulty. Each day ends with the one thing you must leave alone.

◆ Twenty-one of twenty-one. The week is done. The papers will argue about you for a year, the courts are about to be very busy, the orbits are clean, and fifty million people are learning their own names again. Section VIII is waiting.
Section VIIIDay eight

Go home. That's the mission too.

Land once more somewhere quiet — a Kansas field will do. Take nothing. Promise nothing. If you did the week right, you leave behind evidence, not dependence: courts with dockets, orbits without shrapnel, wells that run, and the useful rumor that someone was watching — and chose, every single time, not to rule.

They survived 29,000 days without you. They'll manage the ones ahead — better, if you're gone before they learn to wait for you.

Kept only on this machine. Even the page won't remember you elsewhere.

— end of briefing — fly safe. dodge the satellites. — L.

P.S. The coffee is worse now. It costs seven dollars and they photograph it before drinking. Some mysteries even you won't solve in a week.