The Change

[0111narwhalz]

Ours was once a strong and prosperous civilization. Space was but a step away, the stars within reach. Huge ships departed from Kerbin, carrying their payloads to the far reaches of the system. Laythe sported a booming colony. Duna was a vast trade center. The dozens of presumed one-way missions to Eve had been recovered. Even Eeloo was populated.

But that was before the Change.

Although wars were fought in space and upon the planets, peace was still the usual state of affairs. Nearly the entire planet of Kerbin was unified, and the frontier worlds did not have enough people to develop internal strife. The most that happened was an occasional knifing in the streets of a city on Duna. Largely, the planetary nations cooperated.

And then the Change came.

It was not the first event of its kind, but it was the most calamitous. Previous events had unlocked new technologies, like the possibility for maneuvering thrusters to use mixed fuel. Others had, seemingly, killed the old gods. The altars their apostles had once ridden into space fell to Kerbin, their motive force suddenly absent.

But the Change was different.

Our physicists saw it coming. They saw all the previous events months prior to the incident itself. In this respect, the Change was familiar. Soon after each event, the physicists saw, in broad strokes, the effects of the next one. The effects of the Change, however, were so widespread and so severe that very few physicists believed there would be anything left.

Little did they know how right they were.

Upon its arrival, the Change brought widespread chaos. A mothership en-route to Jool lost its entire cluster of NERVAs to sudden, catastrophic overheating during its midcourse burn. Airliners in the skies above Kerbin and Laythe alike violently flew apart. Several probes in the outer system failed, due to the unexpected loss of efficiency of their solar panels. An SSTO shuttle lost nearly all power to its engines, in a rapid change of the thrust curve. That same shuttle subsequently burned up in mere moments, losing all aboard.

Those were not the only results of the Change.

The Change modified the way the universe worked. Our physicists could no longer interpret the data given by their instruments. Nobody knew when the next event would occur. Some estimated within the next year, while others postulated that there would not be another event: the universe was done with its spasms and its growing pains. But that did not matter.

We had bigger problems at hand.

With the loss of the massive supply freighters, the outpost on Eeloo starved. Only five souls made it to the return window. Laythe’s colony imploded in a bitter civil war. Kerbin’s world-spanning union fractured, the old nation-states rising again to squabble over the scraps of the old era. Only Duna stayed largely self-similar, although that was not much better than Laythe. Our greatest libraries burned, millennia of knowledge razed to the ground. The worlds forgot about one another after a couple of years, focused solely upon their own survival. The five kerbals from Eeloo dwindled to only one fractured scientist, his mind destroyed by the horrors he had witnessed. He landed on Laythe, mere weeks after the war had ended. Duna’s largest manufacturing centers ground to a halt, starved of labor and vision. Kerbin’s fresh water became sour, bringing most small towns unlucky enough to rely on rivers to their knees.

Yet still, we persevered.

Decades became centuries, and finally a light shone through the grit and dust of Duna’s skies. The ancient shipyards returned to production, giving birth to a new generation of ships. The vessels ranged outwards from their home, first to Ike and then to Kerbin and Laythe. Upon the surface of Kerbin they found only ruins, sorrow, and desolation. But Laythe was a different story. Laythe had become a veritable paradise, full of flowering plants and flowing water and beautiful sunsets.

The Change seemed to be firmly in the past.

But the exchange of knowledge brought forth a terrifying revelation. The Laythers had built up their understanding of physics back to the pre-Change level, and so they saw what the Dunans did not. A new event is coming.

One that will shake the universe to its very roots.

Edited April 17, 2016 by 0111narwhalz
Readability

[KAL 9000]

Ooh!

[Andem]

MOAR. I LOVE!

[max_creative]

Awesome! 

Subscribed! 

Sounds like this "change" is 1.0... Is the new event 1.1? If so, MOAR!!!

[0111narwhalz]

It looks like I have some explaining to do.
Firstly, the Change was, indeed, 1.0, with all the catastrophes it caused.
Secondly, the new event is 1.1.
Thirdly, I wasn't really planning on another installment. This was intended to be a one-off. Of course, I might spring one on you in a couple weeks, or a couple months, or whatever, but that's not planned at the moment.

Also, each prior event was linked to an update. We have:
   ...maneuvering thrusters to use mixed fuels... That's when the Vernor engines were released. Don't remember the number.
   ...killed the old gods. The altars fell... 0.23.5, when the joints stiffened and killed off all the old kraken drives.

As for the Change itself...Well, 1.0 was pretty devastating.
   ...sudden, catastrophic overheting... Thermal!
   ...airliners...violently flew apart... Aerodynamics rework.
   ...loss of efficiency of their solar panels... Pretty sure this happened in 1.0. The sunlight obeys inverse-square now.
   ...lost all power to engines... Related to aero rework, the thrust curves were all changed.
   ...subsequently burned up... Thermal again.

In 1.1, all I'd really have to write about is, "Oh, all our wheels seized, so there were a bunch of accidents. Some planes crashed too." That's kind of lackluster compared to the apocalypse of 1.0.