Prologue:

It is 5,000 years into the future, and an unpredictable tragedy has happened. History has repeated itself, and an enormous meteor has slammed into earth. A 100,000 square foot community of astrologists and their families has prepared for this event. They had a breakthrough in technology one week before the meteor hit, and have created a force field that could withstand the blast; however they were unable to release this to the world before the meteor struck. They were still alive, but the outside world was destroyed and covered in a thick layer of toxic dust. They have no place to go, other than down, because if they disable the force field, the dust will fill into their sterile environment and kill off the rest of the population. The community has dug down and created a slightly larger living area for the population to re-produce. Nobody is sure if the “miners” will hit the bottom of the field, or how the field would react to a disturbance like that.

Story:

Henry P. is an average businessman, or at least he was before the meteor changed everything. He used to work for a spaceship company, manufacturing the ships for private travel. He liked his job mainly because he could take his family on expensive trips for little money on travel. He heard the rumors of the meteor, and moved into the location of the astronomers. He felt that if he could at least protect his children, Jake and Samantha, his life’s mission will be complete. He was unaware that the astronomers were working on a force field, but he was ecstatic when the green film covered half of his home.
He was at work when the meteor came into view. Tornado sirens started whining, and everyone ran inside. Except for Henry, who jumped in his car and tore through town towards his home. By the time he got to his home, the meteor looked one inch in diameter. ‘I have just enough time,’ He thought to himself, ’To get inside the field’. He went inside and ran through his home looking for his kids and wife, Karen. He found them nowhere, and decided that they were already inside the field.
Henry ran inside the field and started frantically trying to find his family. A person came over a loud speaker

“10, 9, 8, 7,”

‘I hope my family is in here’ Henry thought to himself

“6, 5, 4,”

“DAD!” A familiar voice yelled “Dad, is that you!?”
Henry turned around. He started to cry as he saw his family, alive and well

“1, 0, Impact” The voice finished.
The entire world started to shake. He saw people running around in fear outside of the field, abandoning their shelters.
‘If only we could have shared this field with the rest of the world’ Henry thought. He saw the Earth open up, a giant canyon that ran straight up to the force field, and out the other side. People were falling and jumping into the pit, just as a large plume of dust and smoke was visible over the horizon. Magma started pouring out of the new canyon, and people were catching on fire as they ran. Henry and his family watched in awe as the world started falling apart in front of them. Unable to help the people outside, his children started balling in sight of the dying people. Henry and Karen comforted the children as they walked away from the wall, farther into their protection field. The sky started to darken as the dust moved in front of the sun.
‘Good god’ Henry thought to himself ‘They weren’t kidding when they said that this was going to be bad. I just hope that the community has enough resources to last until the dust settles.’
Little did Henry, or any of the others within the field, know that that the sun would be in hiding for over 1 year. For an entire year they would need to ration food, find potable water, and survive inside of their shield, which the community has started calling ‘The Hamster Ball’.
Half of Henry’s was destroyed, but the half that remained intact was where all of the family’s rooms were. That meant that Henries family would have clean clothes for a while, and after that they could still change clothes.
‘One more thing to keep us going’ Henry and his wife thought to themselves one night. They had run out of their own supply of food, and had been being supplied by the community garden that was planted where the “Industrial Zone” used to be. That section of land had been demolished and moved underground. In this new community you were either a miner or gardener. As a miner you cud tunnels for people to expand underground in. If you were a gardener your job was to water the garden and change the ultraviolet lights used to feed the plants. The community was powered by a small power station inside of the community. The main power was generated with part of a nuclear reactor, but some was provided by some wind turbines outside of the field. These were placed by specialized people who had undergone rigorous training because nobody was sure what the outside environment was like. Still, we needed power and when the first “explorers” went outside they found the landscape was solid, but very windy. The scientists used nanotechnology to make some parts and build wind turbines.
The maintenance group for these new wind turbines suddenly died on a maintenance run. The community sent out a rescue group, and sent them to the section of the hospital that was saved. The coroner ruled that the group died from poisoning. The scientist community took an air sample from the outside of the field, and found the same poison that was in the group’s blood. This new discovery made the adults in the community loose all hope, because they knew that there would be no hope of taking the shield down in their lifetime.
The community had realized that there was now no possibility of any civilization outside of the field, no living thing could survive the new super poison. Because of this, there was talk of a new system of government being developed.

‘Great’ Henry and Karen thought when they heard the news ‘More hot-shots trying to rule us’
They were right. There was an entire new list of laws, one of which being that you had to work for the government if you were over 18. That meant you had to do a horrible job that the upper class didn’t want to, or get sentenced to roaming the barren earth until you die of poisoning. Henry’s new job was a judge that sentenced people to death. He had to tell the government what they wanted, and what they wanted was to kill off the population for a ‘more controlled living space’. Even if he wanted to let someone free, he couldn’t. If he did that, the person he let go and himself would be shunned and sent outside the field to die
Karen’s new ‘job’ was to service the governor. She cooked, cleaned, and everything else a mother would do for him for minimum wage, which is now a mere $1.32 an hour. The job was horrible and she now couldn’t care for her family. Both parents were unable to care for their young children, and sent them to the care center, an old widow’s home in the middle of the field, who neither Henry nor Karen had ever met. Their children were the only ones there, but at least they didn’t have to pay her.
Nobody was sure when they would see the light of day again. There was little hope found anywhere in the dome, and there were little children. This starts the world over: Year 1 in ‘The Community of Impact’. Good luck.