Liquidsun
The Way Things Were
- Timeline
- The Big Crazy
- Black New Year
- Chicken Little Redressed
- Pave the Planet
- The Dinosaurs Pass Away
The Way things Were
Timeline
| 1993 | Then |
| 1995 | Microsoft dominates software industry |
| 1996 | Internet hype in full swing |
| 1997 | Republican Congress passes Gates aCC Act |
| Megacity bill passed in Ontario Legislature,Greater Toronto Area created | |
| 1999> | The year of the big crazy |
| 2000 | Black New Year |
| The Reign of Captain Billys | |
| 2003 | IPFY:International Plague Free Year declared |
| U.N.'s new headquarters officially opened in Melbourne,Australia | |
| 2004 | President Letterman elected in newly re-organized U.S.Washington re-opened and celebration lasts for 2 months |
| Ontario and Western Provinces formally seceed from Federation of Canada.Michael Harris voted first president of Republic of Ontario.London declared national capitol of Ontario. | |
| 2005 | The rise of the Zaibatsus |
| 2006 | Work started on London-Windsor MacroCity |
| MacroCity principle gains popularity in re-organized U.S. | |
| 2008 | First occurence of HIV2 documented in Dallas Urban Zone |
| President Letterman loses bid for re-election | |
| Kagi "Action" Nado,CEO of Sony-AT&T aCC elected President of U.S. | |
| 2010 | Ultradigital tv replaces digital as new broadcast medium |
| 2012 | President Nado re-elected for second term. |
| 2013 | Surubaya flu re-occurs in Bali |
| U.N. ratifies resolution 14221A,use of neutron device to eradicate "flu" presence.Entire population of Bali descimated. | |
| 2015 | Green Dawn releases petrophage in Kuwait |
| Second Oil Crisis | |
| 2016 | Microsoft aCC merges with Sky Channel to form Microsoft-Stellar.Largest data/communications conglomerate. |
| US constitution suspended by board of directors for Sony/AT&T | |
| Corporate War begins | |
| Linear City project underway in Eastern U.S. | |
| 2018 | Sabi - virtual tech division of Sony/AT&T - releases 1st trideo unit for personal use |
| 2020 | Dunholme Genetics releases news of viral surgery success |
| 2021 | First diagnosed case of Human Immuno-Dissolution Syndrome reported in Mexico City |
| 2022 | End of the age for legitimate democratic governments-corporations control most aspects of national operations |
| 2023 | Kromozone Ventures anounces first Parthenogenetic Person |
| 2025 | Viral surgery becomes commercially available(in the beginning only to the rich) |
| sens-U-ality tm networks take over trideo as new broadcast medium | |
| 2026 | The Great Net Crash |
| The Second Dark Age | |
| Re-emergence of national governments | |
| 2032 | Emergence of Trading Blocs|
| 2033 | Discovery of previously secret corporate orbital enclaves |
| Bloc Data authorities established-with exception of NAMTZ | |
| 2035 | Emergence of minicorps |
| 2037 | Derouard Genome Census Act passed by NAMTZ.Similar legislation forthcoming in Pacifica. |
| Icarus Seven P2 released | |
| 2040 | Pacifican air force launches strike at Spirex orbital factory in retaliation for Spirex blockade of Pacifican Air Transport. |
| Spirex owned mass driver sitting in L-5 orbit bombards Melbourne ,Osaka and Manila with 10000tonne kinetic projectiles | |
| Orbital enclaves declare themselves autonomous from terrestrial laws | |
| 2043 | Welcome to Tommorrow |
The Big Crazy
"Sanity has left the Building".
1999 saw the culmination of two years of lunacy with every Millenial cult and religious organization that had a cause to promote crawling out of the woodwork. All the individuals and groups who had predicted the end of the world in the few years preceeding this year had decided that 1999 would be their swan song(after all the world would be gone by 2000....wouldn't it?).
The sheer number of terrorist attacks that occured during that year was simply beyond counting.Any maniac with a charismatic face and a believable(or not believable) line garnered the instant support of a thousand willing followers, looking desperately for a cause to believe in as the millenium drew to a close. There was panic in the streets.
In September, the Fronte de liberation des francophone threatened to detonate a 200kg nerve gas cannister at the opening session of the House Of Commons in Ottawa unless Ottawaimmediately recognized the sovereignty of Quebec. The national government was given24 hours. Prime Minister Manning indicated that the government would never capitulate to terrorists. At noon the following day, a cloud of Sarin gas erupted out of an emptyelevator shaft in the main building. The final casualty list included the Governor-General,200 M.P.'s, the deputy Prime Minister and 1000 public employees working in and around the House of Commons.The War Measures Act was read 2 hours later by the P.M. from Canada 1.
Governments just couldn't keep up. The best security systems, the best trained anti-terrorists, the best negotiators simply could not keep pace with the technology of these new terrorists.Draconian security policies became the order of the day for international travellers. Some countries began refusing entry to visitor's from certain political regions of the globe.Overseas travel was greatly curtailed .On September 30 , under pressure form the new cabinet, P.M. Manning ordered all international airports in Canada to be closed to international travel until further notice.Canadian went out of business within 6 months.
The end of the millenium brought the proverbial last straw. A millenial death cult-"Final Death"- announced that at midnight on New Year's Eve, it would release the "bringer of the golden age" in eight world cities. There was to be no negotiation, no rationalization, the group did not want anything...but anhilation.At exactly midnight in New York,London (U.K.), Paris, Rome,New Delhi,Jerusalem,Tokyo, and Johannesburg; members of Final Death gave the world its knockdown punch.
All of them stationed at significant New Years celebrations opened vials containing an artificially created flu virus,Surubaya constant shift 1A, or as it would become known in North America "Captain Bill's". The virus had the peculiar characteristic of constantly shifting the antigen it produced. In plain terms this meant that every time the body produced antibodies to fight the virus,the virus changed its structure so the antibodies wouldn't work.The first patients didn't start to show symptoms for 48 hours. Hospitals at that point were flooded. There was no treatment, no vaccine. The mortality rate was 100% and death occurred 5-6 days after initial presentation.
The new millenium started not with a triumphant yell but with a hushed death rattle.
Black New Year
Don't Fear the Reaper
With the coming of "the flu", international travel ceased. Countries with little or no infection became armed enclaves. Visitors from known flu regions were turned away with threat of being shot if they did not. The United Nations complex in New York was closed with all delegates inside, and sealed in concrete. At Shannon Ireland, a Northwest 747 was held on the tarmac at the airport, under armed military escort. When it was rumoured that passengers were attempting to leave the plane, the military pulled back. A Harrier from Royal Dublin Air Station was brought in armed with Hellfire missiles. The plane was torched on the tarmac.
Overall casualties during the three year period from 2000-2003 were 500 million people worldwide. North America saw the deaths of 175 million.American casualties reached 100 million. The Canadian casualties accounted for about one tenth of that. Numbers worldwide would have been much higher had it not been for the simple reason that the virus apparently burned itself out. Canadian casualties weren't any higher because Canada virtually dissolved into small armoured enclaves. The flu simply was not allowed into most places in Canada. The highest casualty rate was centered in the Greater Toronto area. The city was eventually closed and made a no travel zone.
January 28,2003 was the date that the world thought would never come. The World Health Organization, from their temporary offices in Surubaya-free Iceland declared 2003 to be International Surubaya Free Year. The flu was officially over.
Chicken Little Redressed
The Sky is Falling
By the end of the 20th century, many scientists and researchers were more and more convinced that we had long past the point of no return with regards to the environment. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that destruction was more than evident.
The ozone layer has collapsed in the most northern and southern regions of the globe and thinned dramatically everywhere else.The unimagined increase in exposure to UV radiation has driven up the instances of cataracts and melanoma-type cancers by a factor of 4000%.
Alaska,Southern Australia,Finland,Greenland,Iceland,New Zealand,Norway,the Northwest Territories, Cape Horn, and Sweden are saturated with UV radiation, very little grows in these regions.
Even in the regions where the ozone has thinned, few people venture out under the daylight sun.The tradition of the afternoon siesta has taken on new meaning as a tool to avoid the most dangerous UV rays.
The new population has divided itself into two camps. The daytimers, who go through a ritual of SPF 200 sunscreen,ultrapowerful eyeshields,and special genetic alterations to survive the direct exposure of the suns now lethal radiation. Then there are the "vampires", the night time population who avoids the sunlight all together.The night-timers are a strange breed, more emotional and aggressive than their daytime relatives.
The increased CO and CO2 in the atmosphere gave rise to a green house effect as well. The major result of this effect was the increased surface temperature and subsequent melting of the two polar ice caps. The resulting flooding caused by the increased water depths caused coastlines to surge inwards. Florida now has a constant flood warning in effect. Low lying coastal cities are now mostly underwater. The remainder of which keep large staffs of dutch engineers on retainer to deal with the threat of imminent submersion.
This led to a mass exodus of millions of refugees,from Cairo to Miami, from Bangladesh to Venice; floods of refugees fleeing the floods of water.The resulting instabilities caused by the number of displaced people led to an even greater atmosphere of political instability.
Massive and unregulated harvesting of the oceans has led to an extinction of almost every saleable fish type.Years of unregulated toxic dumping finished the job.Most ocean life has disappeared, accompanying the land based life.
The unstable ozone layer destroyed most of the arrable land across the globe. A new dustbowl exists in the Great Plains as the water table disappeared.The farms lands of the central European plains have turned to dust as well.The overall effect of this was to produce famine conditions across the globe, thinning the population even more. The famine still largely exists in some areas, while others with the resources and the technology manage to survive and even prosper.
Pave the Planet
"Avarice, the spur of industry.....David Hume"
It would seem that following the flu, the one sector of the population to exit the plague years remarkably unscathed was the corporation. This has given rise in the decades since to suspicion that Surubaya may not have been the terrorist event it was purpotted to be, but rather a carefully orchestrated plan by corporations to take control of everything. But that idea is quickly dismissed as it would imply that the corporation mentality includes mass murder as a means to an end, and surely they are not monsters are they...
As to the years immediately following the flu, the corporations were more than willing to help rebuild the national and international infrastructure, provided they were able to retain some controlling interests in the the decision making process once the structures were re-established. Many leaders were hesitant to make this sort of "deal with the devil", as this was a conflict of interest was it not.
One new political leader was more than willing to tie himself to industry. President Harris of the new Republic of Ontario rushed headlong into a deal with several autonomous corporate combines(aCC's) to organize his once failed vision of a super sized metropolitan complex, the MacroCity. A plan was established with LondonLife/Citibank aCC to finance the massive infrastructure project which would link the new Ontario capitol of London with the city of Windsor,which bordered on the flu ravaged sprawl that was Detroit.
The deal was quite simple really, in return for completely underwriting the 125 billion new dollar enterprise,London Life/Citibank would retain consulting priveledges on the new MacroCity Adminstative Assembly as well as veto authority in any issue relating to the interest of L.L./Citibank .
The stampede by other supercorporations could be heard around the globe. The rational was simple. Look at Ontario, the corps said; they are not selling their souls. Many U.S. regions that had been ravaged by the flu saw this as an opportunity to spur a well needed boost to the local economy. After all, the massive construction would require a work force. That meant jobs, new services. The plan looked good for everyone involved.
The corporate development of these new megacities ran rampant for close to two decades before the result of the corporate intervention was fully appreciated. By agreeing to "corporate restructuring contracts" metropolitan and regional governments gave up their freedom as well as their land.As of 2022, most national governments had been superceded by the interests of the corporations who ran the MacroCities.
The corporations soon became absolutely powerful.Everything in the urban areas came under corporate control.From law enforcement to health care to automobile licenses; the aCC had complete control over all aspects of the ordinary citizen's life.
As the corporation also controlled actual citizenship census records, they also controlled who could be citizens.In the North-American continent, the term "CRC" or citizenship registry code came to be the difference between being one of the macrocity living or one of the living dead.It refered to a genetic tatoo stencilled into the forehead of all legal citizens of the various MacroCities. This code identified legally registered citizens of a specific MacroCity. No one could legally make purchases,travel or own property without the presence of a CRC.
Token macro governments remained in office, but they were voiceless puppets at best. The company line was the only line they were capable of (or allowed to) recite. They did have their limited uses for the corpses as well. The local governments still looked after the rural regions where corpse influence was still underdeveloped.
As with many great empires though, too much reliance was placed on certain institutions. One institution in particular was taken far too much for granted.
The Machine Stops
"Do you hear that mother, the machine stops......."
The world wide internet that became so popular at the end of the 20th century developed to an entirely new level in the early half of the 21st century.The development of more intuitive software and hardware gradually increased the ability of people to interface with each other electronically. However, all of these functions were still limited by both the memory capability and processor speed available. Super high density optical media developed right at the turn of the century increased memory storage capacity by another factor of ten, but the envelope had been hit as far as that medium was concerned. A new process, a new paradigm was needed.
A research team working for Sun-Fujitsu in 2012 perfected a technique for storage of memory in the electron shell of atoms of a liquid polymer/crystal matrix.The change in the machine had finally come.Memory storage capacity increased by a factor of 1000. A personal computer with a storage capacity of 500GB fitting into an assembly the size of personal cassette player (Walkman) was not out of the question.
A similar team working at the new St. Francis Xavier university in Nova Scotia developed a processor that communicated with a laser signal. This allowed for almost instantaneous communication of information, the amount of information being limited solely by the amount of memory the processor had available. This development in concert with the new espm (electron shell polymer matrix) memory opened the door to processing speeds exceeding 85Ghz with combined RAM approaching 1TB (that's one terabyte or 1000 MB).
These two advances opened an infinity of new opportunities for development of virtual technology and interface options. With the technology at this level, it was not long before the corporations decided to transfer all of their activity to the net. It was the dawn of the true paperless society. The development of advanced VR interface devices meant that all transactions could now be accomplished in a virtual setting. Once the ball started rolling,all major corporations followed quickly. Followed again shortly thereafter by the remaining government and private users.
The technology was such that anyone with the skill and the resources could now possess the same computer power that major research institutes used, and it fit in their briefcase. This also meant that secrets were becoming more and more difficult to keep on the net.It wasn't good security when the hackers had access to the same or better equipment than your private database .Overall, this started a trend that was essentially the exact opposite of that envisioned by the designers of the new processors. Private data enclaves began popping up as corporations became more and more paranoid about the net's ability to maintain security. In the end though it was only a handful of corporations that had the resources to establish a seperate network which would interface as well with the regular net.It was these corporations that were spared somewhat when the net came unravelled.
July 20, 2026 will herafter always be known as Psychotic Saturday. At approximately 16:00 GMT, a group of eight elite hackers affiliated with the Welsh Seperatist group Red Sword released a series of virus onto the net, the virtual plagues. In approximately eight and one half minutes these programs effectively eliminated the financial datacores in: New York, Neo-Tokyo,Frankfurt,Hong Kong,(LondonU.K.) and Vancouver, and destroyed all transaction records for a period of 1 year prior to the event. Within one hour of the virtual plagues being released, eight multinational banking corps collapsed.Within 24 hours, the loss of all the financial records led to the default of hundreds of thousands of loans, the collapse of hundreds of corporate entities, and the bankruptcy of many nation-states. The two dozen or so entities that had created dataclaves were spared much of the brunt, but despite their damage control the net collapsed down around the globe in one sticky mess.
The real sufferers through all this were not the corps, or the countries. It was the individual who bore the brunt of this situation. As the environment and the economy collapsed, the cities began to self-destruct as well.There was no longer a corp in control, and everything reflected that. Food became scarce, electrical power became non-existant for months at a time.Millions of people, out of work through the circumstances, began to revert to a lifestyle of subsistence farming or began to prey on each other. Major industrialized Macro's began to stagnate as all available resources were diverted to quelling the growing civil unrest. Everyone was looking for a charitable donation...there were none forthcoming.
A New Economic Deal
The economic chaos that ensued as a result of the Data Crash saw an end to the corp stranglehold (with some obvious exceptions) that had held most nations for the past 2 decades.It saw the beginning of a sort of economic democracy. All but a handful of aCC's survived the Data Crash. These survivors still hold the monopoly on most of the world's essential services and products including energy production,biogenetics,communications and interface technology. The net itself has been drastically altered. Given much more autonomy and a greater semblance of life. It utilizes quadruple-redundancy, self-checking virus detection ware to ensure that events leading to the data crash never repeat themselves. Likewise, the available technology has been cut back quite a bit to ensure that those with the secrets that need protecting have the greatest access to technology.The other bright spot to become evident in this period of rebuilding was the introduction of the mini-corporation.Born of a whole new set of economic principles, it excelled at mastering the datastreams and navigating the maelstrom of economic and information chaos surrounding it.Having at the least only a handful of staff, these mincorps probably started as gangs, or attempts by employees of recently defunct companies at co-op businesses. Surrounded by dead and dying corpse dinosaurs, they have learned to be quick , flexible and capable of responding to their markets'demands.Everything that had become a commodity, the mini-corp was selling. From information to machine parts, to cheap sens-U-ality ware, if there was a demand the mini-corp was capable of meeting that demand.
The grand old supercorps looked at these puny insignificant upstarts and laughed. These little players, these companies with no fixed address. They would be swept away like yesterday's garbage. When it came down to the wire though, it was the aging corpses who faded away like the wind and the mobile, aggressive minis who held the day.
The minis are urban nomads. Every one of them equipped to stay afloat in the hostile environment that surrounds them.The new nuclear family,each member has skills and resources that are essential for the survival of the mini as a whole.
Welcome to Tommorow.
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