Re: Lack of carbon
Far in the distant past, three advanced civilizations took actions that would forever seal their fate. Led by well meaning, but misguided activists and spineless politicians, the decision was made to minimize the amount of carbon produced by the industries of the planets within those galaxies. While troubled at first by flawed economics and technology and political sectors ripe with graft, the carbon sequestration initiatives did eventually pay off. Industrial efficiencies soared and natural resource reserve estimates were increased by orders of magnitude, due to the huge reductions in manufacturing waste. For a time all was well with the inhabitants of these galaxies.
Eventually the same industry leaders and less than honest politicians who started it all realized that their systems were no longer capable of growing, or of filling their pockets. A new movement was begun to reduce carbon even further with the eventual conclusion that carbon could be eliminated completely by eliminating the basic elements of carbon construction. Stopping more carbon before it could get started.
Slowly the less productive members of society and those who protested too much were sent out of the galaxy to find new homes on a carbon rich planet with an abundance of water and compatible atmosphere. A planet far distant where it could not affect those who remained behind.
With the more useless and annoying members of their society gone, the greatest minds of all three galaxies devised the ultimate carbon elimination plan. An enormous device was constructed that pulled the galaxies together with the ultimate goal of creating a release of energy so powerful that a rift in space would be created and all carbon within those galaxies would be sucked into the rift. The machine worked well. The entire timeline was so long that living citizens were not concerned, they would be long dead before the rift opened.
Time passed however, and certain people begin to second guess the decisions of their ancestors. Many attempts were made to stop the device, but to no avail. Everything was tried, nothing worked. The machine churned along, unstoppable and insatiable. Escape from the galaxies proved impossible as the machine grew more powerful the closer the galaxies became. Fear and panic swept the galaxies and the decision was made for the largest mass suicide in the history of the universe.
A powerful drug that caused instant, painless death was created and released simultaneously into the water supply on all inhabited worlds. Now there was no more carbon production. The journey which began so long ago was complete. Everyone was dead and safe from all carbon. Only one being from those galaxies survived. A being who had become immensely wealthy and powerful doing little more than observing the actions of others. A being that consumed only bourbon (which counteracted the suicide drug) remained. That being, known now as Don Jefe, simply unplugged the great machine. The smartest of people overlooked the simplest solution. Now unbelievably powerful and having sole dominion over those galaxies, Don Jefe followed his ancestors of long ago to a tiny planet called Earth.
Don Jefe was greatly saddened that events on Earth were progressing as they had on those far away galaxies but he was powerless to stop it. Crooked politicians and an overwhelming scientific illiteracy among an extremely poorly educated public were problems beyond his control. So again, he waits and watches. Soon he will take a select group back to their ancestral homes but the rest will perish. Victims of their own greed and ignorance.