The central holo painted Mr Lee’s face in shades of orange and green as he paced the class, regaling them with tales of Old Terra’s final world war, when the door opened.

The classroom hushed. Tis came in first, pausing on the threshold, her eyes wide and her face just a little too pale, before scurrying to her workstation. Dorian came next, his face as pale as Tis’s. He didn’t pause like her, or scurry, or cast his eyes downwards, instead his gaze locked with Hero’s and he glared at her all the way to his workstation.

Grey was nowhere to be seen.

“Right,” Mr Lee said. “As I was saying, the Final World War…”

Dorian’s eyes bored into hers.

She smiled, grimly, and turned her attention back to the central holo as the political conflict between New Australnesia and the East Asia Alliance morphed into war.

In June of 2111, a longstanding disagreement between New Australnesia and the East Asia Alliance over territory and resources escalated into a conflict that became the start of the Final World War.

The war, which lasted for ten years, was the last war to involve all of Earth’s major governments. During the course of the conflict nearly a fifth of the world’s population died, either as a direct result of the fighting or from the food shortages and rampant sickness that accompanied it.

The war was ended by Unified Earth, a grassroots movement and quickly spread across the globe. The United Arabic States was the first to call for a ceasefire.

The ceasefire lasted for just over a year during which the ruling world powers, spurred by United Earth, agreed to unite under a single governing body, the United Earth Government.