Expect a Headache. Really do.

[[AN:
This started as a 101, but it got way too long way too fast.
Gawd.
Don't expect to be able to understand a word; I just needed this out of my head the way a veteran needs an ancient bullet removed from their backside.
Yeah.]]


They had had little choice in executing population control; the more the medications, restrictions, and protocol was discussed publicly, the more senators went face-down in the street, their remains of their skulls paling in comparison to the crowd's red passion.
They began to rely on the occult; psychobabble princes and tzars of the unknown powers, who promised and promised, and continued to deteriorate the brave government's image. They were the ones responsible for the Rift.
It was brilliant. Split the world from its identical energy copy, allow it to settle, heal, regrow, and then repopulate; two perfect earths capable of sustaining twice as many lives. They planned and charted for years, giving their occult princes and pseudo-psychotic lords whatever they desired or required until, at the end of Earth's 25th Century, it was, as they had thought at the time, ready.
Without the public's full knowledge, the levers were thrown, pulleys activated and the entire rending operation performed, with initial success.
Initial lack of effect, more like.
The disappearances didn't begin until four months after the rending; they began, one very cold april, and grew, exponentially until whole houses were emptied at once, leaving only charred and pulled-apart floorboards and what the Arcane experts insisted was the distinct odor of a freshly torn, then sealed wormhole.
There was no sign that it had truly worked, that the vanished had survived the trip to the Other side for decades; the only indication that the vanished had once existed was left in the form of a memorial built far too soon before the end, and an eternal loathing towards the higher government that seized the hearts of all who remembered. Science, it seemed, had betrayed us all, and in return, we gave our Earth what seemed like the Apocalypse. With only a fraction of our inhabitants left, there were few who could divert their attention from survival long enough to attempt to contact the Other side, yet, miraculously, a small company succeeded.
It was a hasty operation, to be sure; a portal of sorts torn through dimensions that we still regret the scars from, even today- but a success, all the same.
We discovered not only that the people transported to the Other "side" had survived, but had been split in number further; instead of successfully splitting the Earth into a single Energy copy that would eventually have hardened, cooled, and regrown its own Energy, the Occult experts were shocked to discover that, in the manner that a deftly played card may conceal many others beneath it, the energies of the Earth had been folded and shuffled perfectly. We were not simply looking at one side; we were looking at fifty-six.
It was decades before a human could do more than look between the spaces; somewhere past the 27th Century, the first Mender was trained and deployed.
A mix of the ideals of the Occult forerunners and the remaining people's vigor, the Menders went back and forth between the Other Worlds and the Home World, attempting to restore peace, and, as our name may imply, mend the Astral, Psychological, and Genetic wounds left behind by the Rift.

My name is Lauriel, and I am a Mender, appointed by the 56th division of the 38th Century. I, myself, have never seem the Home World; I have grown and resided, until today, on Dwi. It is believed to be the first energy world formed after the Rift, as I am proud to admit. I'm being required to record my journeys through the Other Worlds and state what I've mended, and by what means I have completed the mend.
Oh. Personal quote, required, according to the hand-out. Damn.
On the Home World, centuries ago, I suppose it was believed that the best thing you could do was strive to change the world, and that was considered an immensely honorable and difficult undertaking. I've been asked to do that, fifty-six times over, and they still want me to write a Sill-damned personal quote.
There. Quote that.
Damn.


[[I suppose an explanation would ruin it, but I'd like to offer a little insight. This morning, during the bible study I'm doing with my sisters and mom, Lauren mentioned Obama's hiring of someone known as the "science czar". She went on to outline some of his beliefs, and I was very disturbed; the man believes in forced population control through the most terrifying of methods. That anxiety, combined with my mind's coal-furnace nature exploded this all over me in the middle of the day, and I just needed to write it out before the festering government-hatred had me headbutting the Probama grafitti all over West Chester with my bleeding skull.]]