In the Beginning


The time is in the year 2155. Yet the story begins over two centuries before, in the 1930's, a time when surface vehicles on Earth burned fossil fuels. It's all hard to imagine now, of course, getting from place to place in a dangerous noisy machine with an engine that set fire to spurts of prehistoric goo. Makes one shudder. Humans had another quaint oddity in those days; it was a little box called a radio that transmitted a mindless mix of music and speech. The radio was a harmelss diversion, really, until the radio towers got taller and the broadcasts got stronger. Until the transmissions began to pulse out into the vacuum of space, riding electromagnetic waves throughout the universe. It wasn't long before the broadcasts from Earth reached distant stars, and several alien races took notice of this new evidence of life on the far-off blue planet. One of the species listening was the Ur-Quan, a life-form devoid of conscience or character, a race genetically compelled to conquest. As early as 1940, the Ur-Quan began to formulate sinister schemes to attack Earth. Other aliens, meanwhile, benign species that wished only peace, lay plans to warn Earthlings of the Ur-Quan threat.

The Scrutiny of Earth Intensifies


From their strange worlds many light years away, both good and evil aliens watched with growing interest as Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the planet in 1961. Less than a decade later, a tremor swept through the advanced life-forms beyond the solar system as American Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin became the first men to tread Earth's satellite moon.

Alien scrutiny of Earth intensified. Meanwhile, the fratricidal conflicts that had scourged mankind since the species evolved continued unabated. The Small War of 2015 came close to obliterating civilization on Earth when nuclear combat broke out between several Middle Eastern countries. Fortunately the exchange was relatively small, limited to less than a dozen warheads, and a global conflagration was narrowly avoided. Even so, nearly a million people died. The terrible loss of life and the near-thing of a planet-wide Armageddon sobered heads of government around the world. The leaders of the industrialized nations and the Third World met at the United Nations headquarters in New York and agreed to cooperate in an immediate strengthening of U.N. authority. Within six months, the U.N. Security Council had assembled a large Peace-Keeping Army and assumed worldwide control over all weapons of mass destruction. "Mass-kill" devices were gathered up from every country that possessed them. The weapons were then dismantled and their componenets stored in huge subterranean bunkers that came to be known as "Peace Vaults." Simultaneously, the U.N. outlawed the sale of smaller arms. It took nearly a decade to end all armed conflict on earth. Yet the goal was finally achieved. Ten years after the U.N. Summit, in 2025, the Earth experienced its first year without war.

To ensure the total destruction of the arms trade, the United Nations prohibited future weapons research, including the development of nuclear fusion and fission technologies that might be adapted for bomb-making purposes. Laser applications were also closely monitored to prevent the design of "Star Wars" like weapons.

Despite these restrictions, science continued to advance across a wide spectrum of disciplines, escpecially bio-technology. Brilliant Swiss Scientist Hsien Ho combined the now-complete human genome map with sophisticated genetic-engineering techniques and perfected the artificial parthenogenesis - cloning - of humans at the Zurich BioTeknik in 2019. Though the clones were, to all external appearences, human, Hsien Ho modified their genes to that they were not capable of producing offspring.

Meanwhile, a new religious order, known as Homo Deus, or "The Godly Men," was founded in the aftermath of the Small War and the emotional termoil caused by the destruction of the Holy Lands. It's charismatic founder, former car salesman Jason MacBride, built his worldwide following on the theses that the Millenium was near. MacBride even predicted a specific date, March 11, 2046, when Heaven and Earth would join, and each devout person would be elevated to a divine status. The movement captured the imagination of millions of poor and disillusioned individuals worldwide. Within a few years, "Brother Jason" was one of the most powerful and influental people on the planet.

For most of the people on Earth, the following two decades were a golden time of peace and prosperity. This was not the case for Hsien Ho's now adult clones. Seeing Ho's creations as a threat to his "Godly Men," Jason Macbride fought to have the clones declared sub-human. Calling them "Androsynths," or the "fake men," he used the vast resources of his Homo Deus organization to strip the clones of their human rights. Sadly, as the years passed, the Androsynths became little better than well-treatd slaves.

Not unexpectedly, March 11, 2046 came and went without the arrival of Jason Macbride's promised Millennium. Citing a "lack of genuinely devout people," MacBride withdrew from public life and faded into obscurity, his power and fortunes rapidly declining.

By the middle of the 21st Century, Earthlings had begun to colonize their solar system. Planet orbiting factories led to lunar bases and soon there were mining and research outposts scattered across the Asteroid Belt. Yet the expansion of mankind into deep space was limited by the relatively slow speed at which spacecraft could travel. Research began in earnest to develop a ship that could warp toward distant starts faster than the speed of light.



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