Geosynchron (71 page)

122 Prengal Surina publishes his universal law of physics.
130s Major advances in hive birthing bring the technology
to the public for the first time. A small minority that
resists these advances begins emigrating to the Pacific
Islands and Indonesia, where Luddites encourage isolation from the outside world. The remainder of the
system comes to know them as Islanders. The Islander
emigration continues for the next fifty years.
143 High Executive Toradicus begins a campaign to bring
the L-PRACGs under Defense and Wellness Council
control. He enlists Prengal Surina to lobby the LPRACGs to construct a joint governmental framework with the Prime Committee. The Congress of LPRACGs is founded.
146 The Islander Tolerance Act creates the Dogmatic
Opposition.
150s Teams working under Prengal Surina make startling
advances in the control of gravity using maxims from
the universal law of physics. Key members of these
teams (including Prengal Surina) become the first
board members of GravCo.
153 Par Padron is appointed high executive of the Defense
and Wellness Council. He is nicknamed "the people's
high executive" because of his actions to rein in the
business community.
160s The business of multi technology booms. By decade's
end, most connectibles live within an hour of a multi
facility.
162 Union Baseball adopts radical new rules to keep up
with the times and to even the playing field among
bio/logically enhanced players.

168 Death of the Bodhisattva of Creed Objectivv.
177 A coalition of business interests forms the Meme
Cooperative to stave off the harsh populist reforms of
Par Padron.
185 Death of Prengal Surina.
196 Libertarian rebels, funded and organized by the bio/
logics industry titans, storm a handful of major cities
in an attempt to overthrow the Prime Committee and
the Defense and Wellness Council. Par Padron initiates martial law and puts down the disturbances.
200 The bio/logics industry attempts to pack the Prime
Committee with its appointees and paid lobbyists. Par
Padron pushes through a resolution declaring that the
people (via the Congress of L-PRACGs) will always
hold the majority of seats on the Committee.
209 Death of Par Padron.
220s- A time of great economic and cultural stability world-
230s wide, dubbed afterwards as the Golden Age. A resurgence in creedism results in the formation of the
Creeds Coalition.
247 Birth of Marcus Surina.
250s Almost all infants outside of the Pharisee and Islander
territories are born and raised in hives. Life expectancies rise dramatically.
268 Creed Thassel is founded.
270 The first fiefcorp is established, and rules governing its
structure are encoded by the Meme Cooperative. Most
people see fiefcorps as a boon to society, helping the
underprivileged gain skills and putting them on a
track to social empowerment.

First successful tests of teleportation technology are
conducted by a team that includes Marcus Surina. The
IliT:';'"i
present The Great Boom, a time of economic prosperity, is
ushered in, fed by the new fiefcorp sector and the
promise of teleportation technology.
ment guide.
Birth of Margaret Surina.
Len Borda appointed high executive of the Defense
and Wellness Council.
Marcus Surina dies in a shuttle accident in the orbital
**
The Economic Plunge of the 3 1 Os, a time of economic
stagnation. Len Borda keeps the system afloat largely
through the use of Prime Committee ca[satal to fund
research projects. Critics grumble about the return of
the * and centralized authority.
Rioting in Melbourne threatens the Prime Committee, but is put down by High Executive Borda.
Creed Thassel is nearly disbanded after scandal caused
by the drudge Sen Sivv Sor's expos6 on its membership
practices.
Birth of Natch.
Warfare erupts between the Islanders and the Defense
and Wellness Council. Although the official "war"
lasts * a few years, unofficial skirmishes continue to
present the

339 Margaret Surina founds the Surina Perfection
Memecorp, and the drudges begin to whisper about a
mysterious "Phoenix Project."
351 The world economy officially surpasses its previous
peak, achieved in 313, before the death of Marcus
Surina and the Economic Plunge.
359 Natch demonstrates the power of MultiReal technology to the world in Andra Pradesh. The first infoquakes strike.
360 Present Day.

Ever since Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon in ancient times,
humanity has sought to establish a permanent presence off the Earth.
Despite the longevity of this dream, however, it's only in the past few
hundred years that technological and economic factors have aligned to
make it a reality. Yet even today, many observers doubt the offworld
colonies' prospects for long-term survival in the face of a Terran global
disaster.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ORBITAL COLONIES

The first permanent human settlement in space, Yu, was commissioned and built by the Congressional China Assembly in years of
antiquity. Named after the legendary founder of the first Chinese
dynasty, Yu was seen by its contemporaries as a way to solve the
pressing population problems of the day. The colony housed ten thousand people in a series of interlocking rings.

Unfortunately, the colony's engineers made a crucial miscalculation by placing the reins of Yu in the hands of the thinking machines
known as the Autonomous Minds. The sabotage and destruction of Yu
by the Minds (and the colony's cataclysmic landing in the great ancient
city of New York) triggered the Autonomous Revolt. The Revolt
claimed billions of lives and put the prospect of offworld colonization
on hold for many decades.

Orbital colonization remained an unattainable dream until 61
YOR. It was in that year that Jesus Elijah Muhammad (the last of the
fanatic religious prophets known as the Three Jesuses) commissioned
the construction of 49th Heaven. The colony was intended to be a
haven for the faithful seeking refuge from the extremism of the Pharisee Territories and the religious pogroms being executed by many of
the remaining nation-states.

Although 49th Heaven did not exactly succeed in the manner its
founder had hoped (about which, see below), it proved that the construction of orbital colonies was technologically feasible and thus
inspired a rash of other developers to follow suit. Over the next century, the prosperous colonies of Allowell, Patronell, and Nova Ceti
were all established.

LIFE IN AN ORBITAL COLONY

Given all of the technologies that dominate modern life-teleportation,
multi, SeeNaRee, OCHREs-life in most of the orbital colonies is not
radically different from life on Earth, Luna, or Mars.

The main differences have to do with the extremely high premium
put on space and the reliance on the quasi-governmental agencies
GravCo and OrbiCo. The science of gravity control is simply not
mature enough to provide one hundred percent stability, resulting in
the occasional fluctuation with comic (or disastrous) consequences.
And OrbiCo interplanetary shipping, while a necessity, has long been
called one of the most unreliable services in the history of humanity.

MAJOR ORBITAL COLONIES

The Prime Committee only officially recognizes orbital colonies that
have been in continuous operation for ten years with a permanent population exceeding two hundred persons. By this standard, there are several dozen orbital colonies in the solar system, ranging from the
prosperous city of Allowell to the small scientific outpost of Ducenzia
out beyond Jupiter. The amount of small, unrecognized orbital
colonies is thought to number in the thousands. While most of these
colonies are clustered in orbit around Earth and Luna, there has been a
rash of building lately in the asteroid belt.

These are the major orbital colonies as of this writing:

* 49th Heaven (founded 61 YOR) was built as a religious refuge
by Jesus Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad's grand plan was eventually done in by the economics of the nascent hoverbird
industry, which put the cost of travel out of the reach of religious pilgrims-but well within reach of the bio/logic scions
looking to evade Terran law. By the mid 100s, 49th Heaven had
become a sybaritic resort notorious for its gambling, sporting,
and black coding cultures. Today the colony hosts approximately twenty thousand permanent residents and an uncountable number of tourists.

* Allowell (founded 83) might have quickly descended into the
same decay that awaited 49th Heaven if not for the leadership of
military veteran Tul Jabbor (later the first high executive of the
Defense and Wellness Council). Jabbor smoothed out Allowell's
early engineering difficulties and set out a strict, conservative set
of laws and regulations that has withstood the test of time.
Today the colony boasts a quarter of a million inhabitants and a
strong economy.

* Furtoid (founded 293) was the first major orbital colony constructed in the asteroid belt beyond Mars. As such, the colony
has been plagued with logistical, economical, and technological
problems. Not helping matters is the fact that Furtoid is
dependent on Terran supply shipments run by the everunreliable OrbiCo company. The colony, with its eight thousand permanent residents, is therefore a constant drain on governmental resources, and many politicians have won elected office
by promising to shut it down. The colony's status as the most
distant major human settlement has given rise to the phrase
"from here to Furtoid."

* Nova Ceti (founded 85), once the home of the great painter and
sculptor Tope, has become a haven for artists (both real and selfproclaimed). Many a promising young painter or musician has
packed up for Nova Ceti to make his fortune in the arts-and
many have ended up living in lazy servitude to the wealthy
patricians who run the colony. Nova Ceti is home to about
110,000 people.

* Patronell (founded 147) orbits Luna and boasts around
130,000 citizens. While technologically stable, the colony has
never been the most politically stable and has hosted a number
of violent rebellions over the years. The current administrators
of Patronell have been currying favor with the Defense and
Wellness Council for half a century. As a result, the offices of the
Meme Cooperative and several other minor central governmental organizations are located here.

Founded by a group of dissidents known as the "Band of Twelve," the
Islanders largely inhabit the archipelago once known as the Philippines and parts of the ancient nation-state of Indonesia. The nationstate called the Free Republic of the Pacific Islands maintains a skeptical position towards bio/logics and blocks many modern technologies
that it considers dangerous or morally corrosive.

HISTORY OF THE FREE REPUBLIC

Though many unconnectible historians romanticized the achievements
of the Band of Twelve in breaking away from the nascent centralized
government, the reality was somewhat more prosaic.

Of the dozen that made up the Band of Twelve, three were fugitives from what many considered to be politically motivated prison
sentences for theft; five were wealthy tycoons who preferred to buy
their own country rather than pay the exorbitant taxes their governments were charging them; and one was scheduled to go on trial for a
brutal rape. While hiding out in the Pacific Islands, they combined
their assets and bought out several of the impoverished local governments around Manila.

But largely through the efforts of Tio Van Jarmack-a former
political speechwriter who was the only one of the Band without any
money of his own-the newly christened Free Republic became known
as a bastion of independence and free thinking. Frightened and
angered citizens around the world had been looking for a place to flee from the rapid change that bio/logics had wrought during the late first
century YOR. Many fled into the already established Pharisee Territories or the newly minted orbital colonies, but the Islands attracted a
largely Texan population of technological skeptics.

The Free Republic of the Pacific Islands remained a haphazardly
organized collection of independent estates and towns for nearly a generation. It was an ailing Van Jarmack who brought a sense of unity and
purpose to the Islands in the early 140s, culminating in a treaty with
High Executive Toradicus of the Defense and Wellness Council.
Toradicus's Islander Tolerance Act of 146 created an official framework
for enabling the Islanders' skepticism: the Dogmatic Opposition.

From 146 to the present day, the Islanders have largely defined
themselves as a Luddite culture opposed to the relentless advancement
of bio/logic technology.

THE DOGMATIC OPPOSITION

The Islander Tolerance Act of 146 mandated that all bio/logic vendors
and providers recognize and respect the Free Republic's right to ban
their technologies. In the beginning, these so-called Dogmatic Oppositions were few in number and mostly revolved around broad technologies such as hive birthing. But by the mid 200s, the Islanders had
developed an entire bureaucracy (the Technology Control Board) to
study, test, and vote on technologies to be blocked. At the time of this
writing, dozens of Dogmatic Oppositions are presented to the Prime
Committee every day.

Objections to bio/logic technology are required to be classified
under one of three broad categories:

* Moral Oppositions. Technologies that the Control Board opposes
for primarily ethical reasons (example: hive gestation)

* Practical Oppositions. Technologies that could cause undue harm to the Islanders because they are incapable of running them
(example: multi technology, which the Islanders cannot run
because they already do not run neural OCHREs)

* Skeptical Oppositions. Technologies that the Control Board does
not necessarily deem harmful, but require further study
(example: telescopic programs)

In many cases, it's not the technology itself but rather its implementation in the human body that's considered objectionable. For
instance, the Islanders have no objection to the use of telescopic technology to allow superhuman sight; what they object to is the ability to
run telescopic programs inside the eye such that people can easily be
spied on without their knowledge.