[ WP ] The Earth does not rotate . One side always faces the sun and is in continual daylight . The other side is in eternal night . Cultures on both side develop around this .

Professor Chiang closed down the video conference with the Chinese National Security Council. The scientists at the Shanghai Astronomical Institute had confirmed Chiang ’ s measurements: the Earth was wobbling on its axis again. After 400 years of stability, of humanity crawling back from the brink of extinction following the passing of “ The Stranger ”, the ejection of the moon, and the 200 years of chaos and turbulence that followed, the light and dark sides of the Earth were shifting again. 
 
 The entire Pacific region had been encased in perpetual darkness for centuries. Even the Pacific equatorial zone was perpetually below freezing, and glaciers had frozen from Antarctica to Australia and from Alaska and Siberia to California and the Koreas. There were few people living in this shroud of darkness – some tens of thousands huddled here and there around nuclear power plants that provided warmth and light for hydroponics, scavenging the detritus of the Lost Age to eke out a few more generations before oblivion. Much of Europe, Africa, and western Asia were scarcely better off, being encased in permanent sunlight. In the equatorial zones, the highest temperatures approached 80 degrees Celsius with regularity. Africa, the Middle East, and Europe south of the Alps were completely depopulated. 
 
 
 While humanity was ever present, civilization clung on only in a few remaining areas. North America had a surviving technical and industrial society on the Eastern Atlantic, extending into Canada and Greenland. There were pocket city-states in northern Europe and Russia surrounded by chaos and cannibal bands. And, since recorded history to present day, there was China. 140 million people strong, it was still the most populous nation on Earth, the least changed and the most robust since the Calamity took the Earth ’ s population from 7 billion to 150 million people before recovering to present day numbers of maybe 250 million. 
 
 
 But all of that was going to change. The best computer models were predicting the Earth would settle on a new alignment in just under a year, with a complete reversal of the terminator zones. Europe, Africa, and Asia would be in perpetual darkness, most of North and South America in perpetual light, and the thin, optimal terminator bands would be in Eastern Siberia, Australia, and Brazil. In 3 months, it would be impossible to grow crops in China. And in 9 months, all of Africa, Asia, and Europe would be cloaked in darkness – except for eastern Siberia and Japan, which were currently sitting under 200 meters of glacial ice – it might take centuries for them to thaw to where conventional crops could be planted. And with the lifting of the glaciers would come earthquakes and volcanoes. The Chinese would have to migrate or die. The Europeans would have to migrate or die. The least affected areas would be the Americas. 
 
 
 Chiang could guess what the Security Council and the Politburo would be planning. War. Genocide. The only questions would be who to attack, the North Americans or the South Americans. 
 

