May 3rd, 2080
Without any extravagant introduction, on May 3rd, 2080, an unheralded mathematician named Marcus Landsbury uploaded a groundbreaking dissertation on the Information Reclamation Project's online platform, provocative in its title: 'The Expanded Laws of Gravity'.
The audacity of his claim was indeed jaw-dropping. Launching one's academic reputation with a 'Law', particularly on such a hallowed and unfathomable realm of science and mathematics - gravity - was bound to attract skepticism. Gravity, after all, was the very conundrum that had famously stumped and subsequently humbled the great Einstein. Initial reactions to Landsbury's paper were dismissive and, in some cases, even derisive. However, these scoffing opinions were soon to be swallowed back, as the implications of his work proved to be not only staggering but also demonstrably valid.
Landsbury's groundbreaking thesis had introduced an era where humans could effortlessly generate, neutralize, or modify gravity. This revelation essentially upended established physical laws and disrupted our understanding of the universe. The domino effect of this groundbreaking research filtered into every scientific discipline, causing the world to hastily and enthusiastically re-align itself to this new reality. A convenient and abundant source of free energy was discovered less than a year after the paper's release, drastically altering the world's resource map.
The advancements spurred a total overhaul and rapid enhancement of transportation systems. Now widely equipped with potentially infinite resources, flawless health, and an undefined lifespan, humanity started to proliferate at an unprecedented rate. Many members of the Information Reclamation Project had survived the first grand collapse and were quick to see the ominous pattern returning. They simultaneously realized that this looming second collapse had the potential to be significantly more catastrophic, but the silver lining this time was that humanity had developed the stepping stones to reach the stars.