Location: Lagos State, Southwest Region, Nigeria.

Area: 3588 km2

Population: 66 million.

Year: 2079

Thanos was right. Seventy years ago, that is.

Now, Thanos was just another martyred prophet like Richmond Valentine, Pamela Isley and Ted Kaczynski. Commonly reviled by society, the world danced over the corpses of these heroes until the malodour became too apparent for any more jamborees. Their skeletons were then cremated and their names flushed into the sewer of history, forever identified as megalomaniacs hell-bent on displacing humanity from its rightful place.

Granted, the people had no way of understanding their true intentions. Foresight has never been the forte of human society; instead, it's a wilful ignorance reminiscent of a blind rhinoceros charge off a precipice. And what a precipice it was, that is— the years between 2049 and 2052.

Global population figures had risen to well above 13 billion and with sustainability posing a major problem, entire ecosystems were overturned and species like the elephant and polar bear were driven to extinction. Nature was on its knees.

Then came The Great Woe.

3 and a half years of global catastrophes ranging from floods and hurricanes that submerged islands to heat waves that halved ice shelves, droughts that dried out sea beds and winters that froze magma. Nature was miffed and three and three quarter billion people paid for it.

But from the ashes of The Great Woe rose a full-feathered phoenix. The aftermath fully consolidated the power of the United Nations, which set in place measures to prevent a second cataclysm. These measures included maintaining global population levels at nine billion, severely limiting the use of non-bioresources, and the planetary engineering of Mars. These measures, along with intensive recovery efforts brightened the prospects of a weary planet. This was why when Arnthor Agnarsson, the Secretary-General of the UN, referred to The Great Woe as The Great Cull; no one marched down streets demanding his resignation.

Enter Lagos.

All coastal cities suffered great damage during the Great Woe, but the sheer devastation wreaked upon this tiny state drove global sympathy and global aid through the roof. Recovery efforts had been arduous: sixty percent of the land area had been damaged, over ten million people were dead and thirty million more were displaced. But the aid dollars were relentless and so was the will to reclaim the commercial nerve centre of the nation. By the time Harmattan rolled into the scene in 2069, Lagos had been restored, to the joy of Nigerians worldwide. Now Nigeria could fulfil potential.

Fast forward to the year 2076.

All the joy and enthusiasm that dominated the early 70's had been completely forgotten. A famine had just been quelled up north and a fresh outbreak of Lassa fever was sweeping through the Niger Delta region. Public trust in the government was at an all-time low. For the five hundred million people jostling for survival each day, Nigeria offered very little hope. Calls for secession yet again began to gather momentum; online polls indicated that well over two-thirds of the public were actively demanding their right to self-determination. The pressure was mounting and the government eventually cracked.

It completely restructured the nation, creating six autonomous regions out of the six geopolitical zones. The public was pacified. It wasn't secession but it was the next best thing. In the Southwest and Southeast regions, people danced in the streets and gifts were exchanged. It is said that the lights of Lagos were visible from space.

It’s here, in this tiny state, where the story begins... three years later.