My name is Tom. I'm a survivor of The Event.
What is The Event, you ask? About five years ago, everything changed in three milliseconds. Our satellites had detected the large alien spaceships orbiting our planet, but for weeks, that's all they did: orbit. No radio transmissions from them indicating they wanted to communicate, no attempts to come down through the atmosphere and land, no probes sent to test anything, just a bunch of spaceships orbiting. The world's governments deliberately kept it off the news, because there was no need to panic the population, and the governments figured they'd eventually fly away. There were a few people posting videos on social media about it, but they were dismissed as conspiracy nuts.
Then one day, the large spaceships simultaneously released billions of small ships, not larger than a hardback novel. The small ships were weapons. In a simultaneous attack all over the globe, every person, organization or object that They deemed a threat was destroyed. Every human who was part of a military was killed. All military objects, from submarines and nuclear weapons down to trucks and rifles, were destroyed. If your job description was "politician", "financier", "executive", "judge", or any job that involved using a weapon, you were killed and your weapon, if you used one, was destroyed. All faith-based religions and large religious organizations were wiped out. (If you wanted to worship something powerful from the sky, you could worship Them instead of some made-up sky fairy: They were very real.) All criminal organizations, terrorists, militias, gangs, guerrilla groups, etc., were annihilated -- no more Al Qaeda or Oaf Creepers or MS-13. All mega-corporations had their leadership destroyed and were either eliminated entirely or taken over by Them, if the corporation still had some use (like, for instance, a broadcasting company.)
(Yes, one of the groups annihilated was prison guards. What did they do with the prisoners, you ask? Well, They had the ability to scan through human memories and determine the truth. If the prisoner was guilty of a violent crime like armed robbery or rape or murder, the prisoner was killed in the general purge. If the prisoner was innocent, or if the prisoner was serving 20 years for smoking dope or 25 years for shoplifting a loaf of bread and some cheese to feed their starving kids, the prisoner was released.)
You're probably thinking, "Geez, Tom! How much did that even leave -- like, a million humans left? The categories you described are like 99% of the population!" Well, it was a lot, but it wasn't THAT much. There were about 1.5 billion humans who survived The Event. And for us survivors, things changed dramatically. Since there was now a massive power vacuum, They seized all power for themselves. All women who had hit puberty had their eggs stripped and stored, and all girls who hadn't hit puberty had it automatically done when they had their first menstrual period. From that moment on, if you wanted to reproduce, you would ask one of Them and They would take the sperm from the man you wanted, artificially inseminate your egg with the sperm, and implant the embryo into you.
Also, the concept of "money" was abolished. All humans were automatically provided with the necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter, Internet, and cable TV) by Them, plus some luxuries, like solar-powered cars (everything was solar-powered: They installed a series of satellites to absorb solar radiation and beam it down as microwaves to power everything.) Illicit drugs were destroyed: no one had a need for them anyway, since people didn't need to blot out the pain of reality. People who had been addicted were rendered unconscious for long enough for the withdrawal symptoms to pass, then integrated into the new society. Medical technology advanced dramatically as They passed on their knowledge: broken bones could now heal in 24 hours, for instance. Microtransactions in computer games vanished, and games that relied on them had to be modified accordingly. Sports was drastically altered: contracts were "You sign with Boca Juniors for five years." No money was involved, and the profession of "agent" became obsolete.
And all disease-causing viruses and bacteria were permanently eliminated. (Don't ask me how: They had far superior technology to us, that's all I know.) With no STD's, no religious prohibitions, and no chance of getting accidentally pregnant, the only reason to have sex was for pleasure, and there was no reason not to. People from the ages of 18 to 118 started thoroughly enjoying themselves -- it was a great way to pass the time, and with money obsolete, people had a lot more time. You didn't HAVE to have a job just to survive -- you only worked if you wanted to. Teachers still taught, and students still went to school, but it wasn't a drudge: if you weren't academically inclined, you weren't forced to be there. Scientists still went to the lab, and performed scientific experiments, but only because those scientists had a genuine love for it. And things like middle management were now useless. I had been a 27-year-old middle manager when The Event happened: I no longer worked.
