Yuri’s War

Yuri is 72 years old. He has a fragile frame and his frame shows the years of hard work he put into this project. His eyes had deep circles under them from countless sleepless nights. He wore a vague expression on his face. His hair was messy and his clothes were tattered. It was obvious that he did not care about his appearance. He had one cat named Black. Black was his only friend. She was a s black as night with one single white patch in the shape of a diamond. She was sleek and feisty. Yuri took better care of her then he did himself. He never came out of his home. The outside was chaotic. He preferred to stay inside and work. He was secretive; he had been since he was a boy. He spent long hours at his computer. He had worked in several space agencies in his younger years. He was old now. He did not have much time. If he was ever going to do this, it would have to be soon.

More than anything else, Yuri wanted to save humanity from the inevitable. But this was impossible. Several countries were armed with powerful nukes. Pollutants were embedded deep into the atmosphere, blocking the sun out almost entirely. Gunshots echoed through the streets all day and into the night, usually stopping around midnight. The planet was in World War 4, and millions had died. Bodies were laying on the streets, sometimes for days, until they were hauled away to the ocean, which had become a mass grave. The weapons the soldiers were using were radioactive and produced more greenhouse gasses. Everywhere was in a state of pandemonium, possibly because their own technology had turned against them. There were threats of nuclear weapons since the beginning of the war, most of them were not carried out, but if they were, this would thrust the planet into a nuclear winter and the evolutionary clock back hundreds of millions of years.

Yuri could not let this happen. He knew exactly how to do it, but he had not yet been successful in making his theory a reality. Several years ago, he had introduced his idea to the scientific community. They had dismissed his idea as impossible. From then on, he had worked feverishly on this project, sometimes temporarily delayed on an obstacle or a technical difficulty.

He was working on a nuclear pathogen that would have a reverse effect. The pathogen would effect the mechanics of the weapons, so that they would explode and target the pollutant particles.