Greetings & Salivations!
from your friendly & faithful Vargr historian
(woof woof)
Hereby presenting the hump episode of...
Traveller Tales
being an encapsulated history of future time
Copyright 1991 Jim Vassilakos
(for whatever it's worth)
A.D. 2568-3516 * The Corporate Era
2568-2597 The Beanstalk
2597-2663 Unearthly Plunder
2663-2710 Foundations of Anarchy
2710-2741 Open Defiance
2741-2872 The Corporate War
2794-2911 War Technologies
2887-2969 Post-War Exodus
2969-3130 Total Producer Monopolization
2981-3210 Age of Wonder
3210-3223 The Tomorrow War
3223-3309 Mutant Rebellions
3309-3516 Period of Recovery
2568-2597 The Beanstalk
With the 2568 U.N. creation of a standard-human zone around
Earth, advancing biogenetics was effectively forced off-planet,
causing the displacement of tens of millions of highly educated
corporate personnel. With the sudden influx of out-world traffic,
combined with the industrial, service, and clerical personnel who
were sure to follow, the U.N. stepped up plans for the renovation
of the world spaceport, culminating in the construction of what
was to become popularly known as the Beanstalk, a ground to space
station over seventy thousand kilometers in overall length.
2597-2663 Unearthly Plunder
With the beanstalk's finalization in '97, space imports grew at
an alarming rate, flushing out entire earth-bound industries as
the use of "mutant" labor gave off-world firms a competitive
advantage. Mitsubishi invested heavily in offworld trade and
transport, sinking considerable assets into a major corporate
gamble. During this period, samples of alien bacteria and
primitive lifeforms began appearing on earth. Some were sold for
research, but others were distributed through the black market to
wealthy collectors for exorbitant prices.
Although most of these organisms proved less hardy than their
Terran equivalents, wide-spread outcry resulted concerning the
public's protection. Following the discovery of an advanced
ecosystem on Darwin IV, the U.N. instated the Orbital Quarantine
Command as a protective measure against the infestation of alien
organisms. However, the passage of the Nakamura Resolution in '63
caused the OQC to evolve into a protectionist trade barrier,
crippling off-world industry from doing business in the Terran
market.
2663-2710 Foundations of Anarchy
With the close of the Terran market in '63, competition between
off-world corporations intensified eventually forcing the
interstellar conglomeration of what was to be known as the big
three: Mitsubishi, Aster, and Femm. By the turn of the century,
the tensions of trade competition threatened to spill over into
open conflict. Fleets of war vessels were built, and each
conglomerate controlled its offworld business as though it were a
separate nation-state, creating it's own laws and effectively
ignoring the edicts of colonial governments. The ice finally
broke with the Martian ultimatum of 2710, when the Aster
Corporation charged Femm with contract violations in the joint
terraformation project. Due to political interests, both parties
refused U.N. arbitration, but instead set-up a private
arbitration council consisting only of non-Terran interests.
2710-2741 Open Defiance
With the success of the Martian accords, the terraformation of
Mars, Venus, and Titan which all began in the early 23rd century
neared the completion stages. However, the inner-system
importation of "mutants" in the early part of the 28th century
led the U.N. to threaten police action for the violation of the
standard-human zone. Aster and Femm agreed to submit the issue
for arbitration, but only to a non-Terran arbitration council.
The U.N. refused to agree to this condition, and sent warships to
enforce its will. Before they arrived, however, Femm's public
affairs office, on Earth, threatened the release of undisclosed
biological contaminants if the Terran warships reached their
destination. The threat was later proven a bluff, but it gave the
big three time to organize fleets within the solar system,
resulting in the 2nd Martian accords of 2741.
2741-2872 The Corporate War
The 2nd Martian accords saw a cessation of U.N. domination of the
solar system and a loosening of quarantine restrictions with a
corresponding collapse of Terran trade barriers. However, the
accords also brought Mitsubishi to its knees with the
domestication of its Earth-bound facilities which came under the
control of the newly formed Terran conglomerate. Despite this,
however, Aster and Femm continued to grow in power, waging a
trade war against the untested Terran Corporation until
Mitsubishi managed to claim reparations for it's domesticated
facilities. It was, thus, clear that the megacorporations were
acting as a single economic entity.
The quasi-peace was short-lived, however, as within a decade,
news arrived from Durhael, one of Earth's most distant colonies,
that the shattered core of a nova had been discovered. This news,
though unheralded by the mass-media, carried extreme weight with
the scientific community, as it was hypothesized for several
centuries that the eka-metals (heavy elements) to be found within
such an astronomical find could be used to tear the "fabric" of
multi-dimensional space at the subatomic level, in effect,
opening the possibility for faster-than-light travel.
Although technically owned by the Terran Corporation under the
2741 accords, the Aster corporation was in a far better position
to claim the find as it's own, and this is exactly what it did.
In order to protect its position, however, Aster began a conquest
of the entire arm leading to Durhael. Noting the opportunity to
rid Terra's influence in corporate space, the Mitsubishi and Femm
conglomerates jumped to Aster's side, their offensive sweeping
the entirety of Terra's immediate colonies, culminating in the
decisive corporate victory in the battle of Osgiliath in 2872.
2794-2911 War Technologies
The Corporate War led to the hastened development of mutant
technologies, when in 2794, Femm geneticists located the psi-gene
and later incorporated psionic attributes and biocybernetics in
its infamous line of mass-cloned Okuma war-mutants of the early
29th century. The 2830's saw major breakthroughs in artificial
sentience, and various degrees of self-aware computers were
deployed in Aster's Shambler series of self-replicating predator
vessels akin to the Von Neumann robotic miners of the 23rd
century. The discovery which ended the war, however, came in
2852, with the Mitsubishi-AI's derivation of the famed Deagol
equation which, utilizing Eka-metals, actualized hyperspace
travel as a technical hypothesis. In a joint venture with Aster,
Mitsubishi developed the technology during the late 50's, and
actual starships were in deployment by the middle 60's.
Several spin-off sciences were either invented or
serendipitously arrived at during the following decades,
including the rudiments of matter transportation during the late
80's, genetic reconstruction of the 30th century's first decade,
and the anagathics discovery of 2911.
2887-2969 Post-War Exodus
After the conclusion of the Corporate War, the big three began
consolidating the conquered territories, driving out the smaller
independents and monopolizing huge chunks of the colonial
economy. Psychohistorians predicted a future war far bloodier
than the Corporate War, this to be fought between the big three
with a sharp trend toward political-economic centralization
during the interim. A symposium of wealthy industrialists met on
Terra in 2887 to discuss these economic developments and
psychohistorical prognostications, and a coalition of
independents was formed the following year, the focus of the pact
turning toward a mass-exodus of the colonized regions.
Plans were made, and the exodus began with the departure of
the Ash in 2909, which carried over a million cryogenically
suspended colonists. Other vessels departed over the following
six decades for various systems in the Persei and Cassiopeiae
clusters. The project finally failed in '69 due to the bankruptcy
of its sponsorship.
2969-3130 Total Producer Monopolization
With the failure of the Exodus Fund in '69, it became apparent
that the ultimate goal of the big three was total market
monopolization. By the 80's, even Earth was not exempt from the
trends, the Terran corporation finding itself slowly crushed and
later purchased at bargain rates by Mitsubishi in 3010. Standard
human labor was largely replaced with mutant slaves from the
frontier, and by the turn of the millennium, billions of Terrans
were effectively selling themselves and their families into the
same corporate institution which had deprived them of their
livelihoods.
During the next hundred and twenty years, the Aster-Femm-
Mitsubishi conglomerate carried out a meticulous campaign of
isolating and destroying the millions of smaller independent
firms which still remained, finally officially merging into the
AFM Corporation in 3130. The three controlling families became
intertwined by a series of arranged marriages, and the ancient
institution of nepotism became a model for ensuring the future
peace.
2981-3210 Age of Wonder
The era of peace gave rise to many new sciences as AFM's separate
components competed against each other without traditional
government restraints. Thus, although there were tremendous
technological advances, the median standard of living actually
declined during the period, leading to urban unrest which was
largely contained via brute force techniques employed by the
corporate authorities.
During this period, teleportation and hyperspace projection
technologies became widely utilized as forms of transportation.
Communication technologies evolved to encompass a wide host of
FTL-particles, making interstellar communication next to
instantaneous. Finally, the first Tau-fields and pocket universes
became realities.
However, with the rapid pace of technology, a great deal of
power fell into the hands of those with the most direct control
over scientists and knowledge-based resources. Thus, corporate
power became more and more decentralized as individual upper
managers and groups of middle managers combined resources in
several ill-fated attempts to overthrow the ownership and seize
control of AFM or to create breakaway divisions under independent
ownership. As always, the corporate response was as ruthless as
it was decisive.
3210-3223 The Tomorrow War
What followed the Age of Wonder is perhaps the least understood
period of history. Apparently, an era of terrible warfare between
the corporate divisions erupted sometime in the 35th century, but
spread backwards in time, to the year 3210. This was the year to
which the Mitsubishi Division, in its dying gasp, sent a
prototype starship capable of travelling through both space and
time. The starship, named the Mitsubishi Maru, was expected to
arrive before the discovery of alternate temporal realities and
to destroy Asterian and Femm research centers, thereby creating a
timeline in which Mitsubishi might rule all of humanity.
However, another vessel followed the Maru backwards through
the temporal continuum, this one named the Asterian War Dragon.
The two vessels met several times in battle until 3216 when they
destroyed each other in a fiery climax. The captain of the War
Dragon, nicknamed "Draconius" by the war's spectators, survived
the final battle and was appointed admiral of the Asterian fleets
a year later. With the war now ignited, the corporations
continued to fight until 3223 when Mitsubishi was finally forced
to submit unconditionally.
Returning to Terra, Draconius turned against corporate
ownership in a surprise bombardment of his own victory parade,
assassinating each member of the ruling family in a single
stroke. The attack left a vacuum of power, to which Femm's
management could only have a single response.
3223-3309 Mutant Rebellions
The Femm Corporation had never had large war fleets. Instead of
technical hardware, it concentrated on the manufacture of
biological organisms. However, within each organism it produced,
it created a sort of emergency-lever which could be pulled via
the application of trace amounts of a specific chemical. Once
pulled, the organism would be psychologically transformed from an
obedient slave into an insane killing machine.
Thus, the 3223 assassination of Femm's ownership saw the
beginning of the Mutant Rebellions and the corresponding
breakdown of corporate government into total anarchy. Over half
of the human population perished during the first ten years of
the rebellion as Draconius used his fleets to crush one outbreak
of violence after another. It wasn't until the middle of the
century that the cause of the rebellions was even understood, and
not until the 80's that antidotes were synthesized. The fighting
finally ended in 3309, with over nine-tenths of the human
population slaughtered during the interim.
3309-3516 Period of Recovery
The next two centuries saw a slow period of recovery as Draconius
"entitled" old AFM executives and their families with large
provinces while charging them with various duties including
social welfare, economic recovery, maintenance of the peace, and
the administration of justice. This policy saw the foundations of
Imperial bureaucracy and the caste system within which it became
rooted, resulting, ultimately, in the coronation of Draconius as
Emperor in 3516.
_ /|
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