This is a pure fiction novel based on a very vivid and lucid dream that I experienced in early 2009. It was a dream (or perhaps nightmare vision) from my subconscious which envisaged a World War Four (IV) scenario in the first decade of the 22nd Century. In my dream I saw only three major powers. The Eastern Empire. The Western (Catholic Empire). And a third force called the Cartels grouped into a Northern and Southern faction. The entire planet Earth was the battleground. This Fourth World War started around AD 2030 after a thermonuclear and catastrophic Third World War from 2017 to 2023. All the 196 or so nations were wiped out and the world's population reduced from close to 7.5 Billion to only 600 million. The Western Empire was formed by survivors falling back on their religious faith, which I dreamt was primarily Catholicism. The rest of the world was non-Christian including the loose amalgamation of warlords called the Northern and Southern Cartel. The Western Catholic Empire was ruled by a self-styled Vice Cardinal. His Clergy were in revolt during the first decade of the 22nd Century. However, he was a secular as well as an ecclesiastical leader and the Army and the Imperium still supported his government. The Clergy leaders, Bishops and Prelates, had their own vast private armies or Militias. Civil War was about to commence at a time when the seven Western Armies still loyal to the Vice Cardinal were losing the Fourth World War all around the globe from Europe to Asia to the Pacific. This work of fiction took 5 years to write and is approximately 557,900 words in length. It is just one vision of one person from one dream as to one possible scenario for a world at the brink of annihilation amongst countless other visions and possibilities of the future to come. It is not a heart-warming vision but a harrowing tale of terror, fanaticism, pathogenic psychological madness and brutal conspiratorial plots to achieve factional and individual supreme power at any cost, regardless of the ultimate consequences for mankind and the already devastated and irradiated environment in a world where technology has regressed almost to a standstill and which has been polluted by a Nuclear Winter has predicted by Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University.
About the Author: David Peter Ehrlich was born in Sydney on 6th August 1959. He attended Sydney Grammar School from 1965 to 1977. He graduated from University of NSW in 1985 with the degrees of Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Economics. In 1988 he graduated from Sydney University with the Degree of: Master of Laws. He is currently a; Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and; Barrister of the High Court of Australia. He is also a Lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve.