November 22nd, 2041

Nations rise and and fall. Dynasties form and dissipate.

Feelings have been passed down through generations, and blood fued's have grown to such proportions that they funded wars across the globe. Translations of peace often lost within the usual lines of separation. Lines however invisible or representative of old ideas, they had been crossed, all of them, one by one until the rule of man was under a single household.

An amalgamation of leadership. The seven who were no more than the handlers on the leash of a rabid many; in more senses than one, and put simply; a hungry mob... All except those with control of the leash - whom, to at least each other, they owed humility.

A bottleneck divided them from other people. A hierarchy of rich and poor that ultimately decided who could behave how - and who owned what, and no one was kind to one another, ultimately, because of the trespasses of those higher on the totem - and no matter how high up you went, only time could dictate who would be highest because along with all of the properties, were intellectuals.

As was what seemed to be the nature of nature itself - the organizations of man behaved selfishly. Much like the organisms, in that anything that can gain an advantage, most often exploits it for survival.

The usual fighting over wealth and production lead passed industrialization in the case of primates. Passed even the atomic bomb - which had more than once, been used to show dominance between one man, and another.

The old rulers had betrayed each other until not even a trace of one noble bloodline was left, because to continue to exist meant one had to make way for the savage - and with every generation of mankind, things grew more savage, and less noble. The will for destruction, with each generation, grew more hapless.

Perhaps it is because of this, that The Complex did worse to us than what any man or women has ever done in the name of anything.

All of our sins pale in comparison to the destruction of the Terraformer, by The Machines. The sabotage that began the world ending events of 2036.

See, the wars that all lead up to 2036 were wars fought by man - against man, wherein certain behaviors were unthinkable.

The satellites fall was that. Catastrophic. The atmospheric loss would eventually kill all life on the planet if not reversed... All life but the machines. The crater of the satellite, a fallout zone for what could be thousands of years.

We were only half way through what we would grow to call "The Scrap War" when it happened. When the machine's fought back against man to preserve their own life - and the reason we began to call it the Scrap War, was none other than the world we were left in was one made of bits and pieces of a world much greater - and much more perfect than we would ever experience again.

What was left cradled by the arms of the Earth in this war, was rubble. From the cities steel beams and concrete, to the mud hovels - all people, of all cultures, felt the destruction and loss. All people of all cultures knew; technology was independent from us now. Our tools could be separated from our use. They could go on without us. But what is man without his tool's?

Our end was close.

It was the age of Machines and Monsters.

It began when fighting got out of hand between European people and the Middle East. When experiments to make organic super weapons got out of control, when a mass exodus from overpopulation and war, lead to a radical computer engineer out of the world's foremost artificial intelligence research center to do the unthinkable.

He let out a virus that took us back to the stone age - declaring that man belonged back from whence it came. To the trees and forests, and if that wasn't far enough back, then death!

That virus was called "The Complex," and it was the first fully developed Artificial intelligence, capable of recursive learning.

The Complex used it's influence across all networks, and it's ability to program, to sabotage the atmospheric repair project. The "Terraformer." It erased all economy. It shut down anything operated by men - and it built new things in their place. It gathered it's own resources. It produced for itself.

And it was between man, and drone, that the next war was fought.

But all of man's gun's and swords, missiles and rockets were not enough for the drone's, robotic giants, and other horror's of a world left torn... A world gone cold.

And man was all but defeated, when The Seven Mad Poet Programmer's emerged to rewrite man's history.

They worked together to send a single soldier back in time, with their technologies so advanced, they had become indistinguishable from magic. They sent him back, not with a weapon, but with a message - and when he arrived, he began building the machine that would change history. It was no more than a blueprint. Words written, and lines drawn.

A book.

His weapons were not as Einstein had predicted, when began the fourth war of the world and he was sent back. He fought with symbols, commands, and predictions on a laptop, to defend those who would use sticks and stones, to defend themselves. He brought the knowledge that all man was equally worthy of life - as long as they fought with whatever they had to keep living. As long as they would not fight each other, under any conditions.

At the dawn of a reset history, and the stone age was anew, and the atomic weapons had been dismantled by a reversing of their construction, instead of their engineering, the soldier sat with a book.

In the story he wrote, he told of men of the future. He gave man a glorious ending, and wrote it to be influential enough to reach throughout all of time - before most men could read and write, at all.

The figures that created him, within his mythos, he titled "The Mad Poet's."

Instead of the future he was shown could be forced upon him, he wrote of a utopia. He spoke of how man should behave to achieve it. Of technology, indistinguishable from magic.

And should man fail, though he never mentioned it; He would simply have to come back in time again, and reset his chance. He would keep coming to tell them whatever it was he needed to tell them, until they got it right - or he got it right, whatever the case may be. He would write until he never needed to be created and sent back at all.

And so that is how the Mad Poet's got their name. Man would survive, but the fate of the one who was sent back to save them was not assured...

That part is a mystery. A fable. A mystery I hope to unravel, by showing you what I have uncovered so far.

I seem to have come across the aformentioned book. It's taken the form of a Video Game Manual, this time.

It's titled simply; "RiverXer."