The following dialogue between characters Adrienne Ainsworth and Dr. Tremain is taken directly from the novel.
As Adrienne spoke, she leaned forward, her blazing red hair dropping over her shoulders to her chest. “I studied history in school. I loved learning about life on the surface, water so abundant that there was more of it than there was surface to walk upon.”
As her face developed a passively dazed look, Adrienne traveled to days gone by, remembering lessons once learned. “But at some point in studying the history of a very stupid race, you have to learn about the downfall of the Upperworld and the migration. Studying about the migration depressed me. The instructor would talk about the rapid decline of the environment while the Underworld was slowly being formed. I kept thinking; how can more than one hundred years be considered too fast to stop it?” She glanced up, momentarily returned from her daze and appearing as though she was expecting an answer to her question. “That’s how long it took before you couldn’t walk on the surface without a mask.”
The doctor nodded solemnly. “The human race was in survival mode. It was a terrible time.”
Adrienne shook her head lightly. “The human race was stupid. Even after the migration, fragmented into territories that couldn’t agree, we nearly destroyed ourselves through famine, plague and the inability to keep the oxygen plants running. Until the reunification, when we were formed into this grand union that we exist in today.” Adrienne’s eyes again encircled the room as if the surrounding walls were the representation of the migration’s results. “Even Vada Winslow, architect of the reunification died after giving in, after his speech on the decline of the state of the union.”
With a deep sigh, Adrienne pulled her hand away from the doctor’s and towards her as she leaned back in the chair. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there’s nothing here to lose. If we do the wrong thing, the worst that can happen is we destroy the future.” There was silence for a moment, Adrienne’s eyes finalizing her tale with a deeply locked stare towards the doctor’s. “But there is no future here.”
The story of The Psych© is told through the eyes of it's characters, citizens of a world within the Earth who have inherited a history of a better time from their ancestors. That history tells of a time of tantamount desparation as the Upperworld decayed, it's life-giving resources fading in a frightening metamorphosis that ultimately left the surface of the planet uninhabitable. Humanity retreated into the protection of the planet, creating synthetic habitats enclosed far beneath the crust of the Earth.
At the beginning of the migration, the search for the perfection that could be achieved within synthetic habitats had already resulted in high-end underground communities. Sprinkled across the North American continent, these complexes that began as luxurious retreats became places of salvation when the Earth's surface began to decline. Ultimately, a government on the verge of collapse began the expansion of underground life, though as surface life grew to near impossibility bands of renegade forces pushed their way uninvited into the Underworld communities. It was a terrible time when many of those communities sealed their entries in protection not only from the corrosive elements within the air, but also from the desperate nomadic souls that had not made their way into underground salvation.
Contact between the underground territories became fragmented as the migration was finalized. Nearly a century after that time, many of the communites had expanded like fingers reaching out connecting assorted communities together. At the time of the reunification effort, five main clusters had formed along with the small area known as the Washington Central Core where government attempted to continue. With the formation of the Unified Territories, Washington was returned to it's original intention of being the central seat off government, with each territory controlled by it's governor.
The Unified Territories was formed with many of the spaces within the territories continuing to maintain the names that once designated the surface areas above them. Once communication and transportation between each was restored, the union was finalized and humanity began to thrive once more. As seen throughout the history of mankind, however, not all new chances become the grandiose vision that intention foresaw.
Below are the territories that form the Unified Territories:
- The California Territory
- The Territory of Texas
- The Alberta Territory
- The Midland and Ohio Territory
- The Territory of Boston and Quebec