Synopsis: The Darwin Elevator

Darwin, Australia. Last city on Earth.

It was 2283. Sixty-four years had passed since the elevator arrived -- a gift or a curse, depending on who you asked. Constructed by beings unknown, for reasons equally so, the cord had been lowered from high orbit to implant itself deep into the ground in a neighborhood called Nightcliff.
The sleepy beach town turned metropolis in less than a decade. Exotic technology combined with cheap access to orbit brought interest from every government and corporation across the globe, and not all with good intentions.

And then, some thirty-two years ago, the plague started. Like humanity itself, the disease first appeared in Africa. It spread with vicious speed, to devastating effect: stripping humans of their capability for higher thought. Their souls, said some. Either way, the infected became like animals, forming packs and killing without remorse.
Within a year, a billion people had died or become infected. Inside a decade, only fifty million people were left, struggling to survive.

No cure in sight, and only one place to hide: Orbit. Those who could afford it, or had some knowledge to offer, bought passage up the Elevator, to live and work in the strictly controlled environments built by the ruthless business man Neil Platz. The Orbitals, they were called, soon numbered fifty thousand. A council was formed, led by Neil and other power brokers. They alone determined who would be allowed up.

Deals were negotiated. Platz had built vast orbiting farms, and advanced zero gee manufacturing stations. From space would come the food and necessities. In exchange, fresh water and precious air was shipped up the elevator.

Promises were made, rumors were spread. The only chance to truly survive was to get off Earth, and the only way to do that now was to get to Darwin. And so humanity, what was left of it, gathered there, over the years. The city that was a beacon of hope became a vast slum where the survivors huddled, some fifteen million of them. They lived in shanty structures built from anything they could find, or in the abandoned buildings of the old city. A no-mans land formed around its perimeter, to keep the infected out.

Above, progress was slow. Building habitat in orbit took time. The citizens of Darwin grew restless, hungry. Disillusioned.
Angry.
A fortress arose around Nightcliff, to protect the base of the Elevator. Little attempt was made to govern the millions of souls surrounding those walls. The occasional dispatch of food barely kept them at bay.

Gradually, the new world order solidified.

In high orbit, at the far end of that great cord, Anchor Station was built to study the shell of the alien craft that had spun the elevator. It was here that a brilliant young scientist would make a startling discovery that would change everything.

(really more of a setup than a synopsis. the novel starts where this ends.)