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and laws were devised which everyone had to obey as a way of preventing the carnage, but the instinct for power reigned supreme and wars continued unabated until modern times when they took on more monstrous and terrifying proportions. Better training for soldiers, huge armies with better management and new technologies that could annihilate whole cities with one blow.

Every individual craved wealth, for wealth translated itself to power and a situation arose where many had created so much wealth for themselves that they could live on it for a thousand lifetimes. The cities competed, each battling to outdo the other in producing goods for sale and therefore more wealth for its citizens and a better ability to protect themselves from the aggression of other cities.

All these ever-expanding activities were carried out using mainly oil as fuel and this began to run out. Each city looked desperately where it could to find new sources, but there was only so much as the resource was created over hundreds of millions of years and was finite and the cities with the most money and power were the ones with the ability to take it.

The wealthiest and most powerful city was Amca. Its population was around four percent of the total of all the cities but it had the privilege of consuming over a fifth of all resources. Despite their wealth and position of power, they were an unhappy people because the more they had, the more they wanted and they existed in an unending cycle of greed without end, competing against one another for ever-bigger houses and ever-more goods, for no other reason than to own them and appear one step ahead of their neighbours and friends. Their leaders considered this good, as it kept industries working and everyone in employment until they became old. The people, however, realised this was an intractable problem and most of them visited psychiatrists to straighten their lives out, unable to tolerate the pressures of work and competition against their peers for a whole lifetime.

As Amca was the wealthiest and most powerful, other cities looked on with envy and tried to follow its example but few were successful at this art of hoarding vast, unnecessary amounts of wealth locked away in banks. People became like the mythical dragon who, having obtained all the gold and power of the world, put it in a cave and sat at the entrance guarding it, proving how useless it was to a finite life, for it had no other function than to be called wealth.

Being

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