[Especial thanks to Larry Mann for permission to ... well, wait and see.]
Prelude to Federation
by C. Richard Davies
Part Two: 2041-2078
Genom was dead.
The destruction of the main tower in MegaTokyo should have been a lethal blow,
but not a fatal one. However, in the early stages of the Boomer Revolution, the
entire board of directors had been invited -- somewhat forcefully -- to take
refuge in the tower for the duration of the "troubles". Similar invitations
were
given to most of the senior executives of the company. The explosion wiped out
virtually the entire upper echelons of the megacorporation, leaving the
survivors struggling without direction, and often without access to the
resources they needed. Still it's plausible that Genom could have survived
this, and the ferocious power struggle that was sure to follow. Most likely the
corporation would have been reorganized under the control of one of the
surviving executives, and scapegoats for the disaster would have been found.
Indeed, Lawrence Mann (1971-2084?), a junior vice president of research and
development at Genom SoCal, who'd found himself catapulted into a position
where he controlled most of Genom's southwestern American holdings, was
apparently making preparations to take over the rest of the tottering giant as
early as December 25, 2041. "At which point," he wrote in his biting
autobiography, "my carefully planned schemes for world domination were undone
by yet another blow from a direction no one anticipated."
At midnight on December 25, someone uploaded a certain document to one of the
last public filesharing services on the worldwide computer network, and sent
pointers concerning it to several media outlets -- specifically those owned by
megacorporations other than Genom. It took less than six hours for the document
to propagate globally, and when it did, the wrath of the people had been
aroused.
The document in question, "A Diary, 2011-2041", presents itself as the personal
journal of Dr. Katsuhito Stingray and of his daughter, Sylia (2010-2041). After
her father's death, Sylia and her younger brother MacKinnison (2015-2079) were
supported by his estate. She eventually became a moderately successful
entrepreneur while he followed in his father's footsteps at the University of
Ingolstadt. The younger Dr. Stingray is one of the prime candidates when one
looks for the anonymous uploader of the document, though partisans of the other
suspects insist that he had no motive to reveal to the world that his older
sister had been hopelessly insane, and that his father had been a monster who
experimented on both children.
That argument is questionable, however, as is most of the Diary. While elements
of it can be corroborated, especially many of the entries allegedly written by
the elder Dr. Stingray, most of "Sylia's" words cannot. It is for this reason
that her claims -- that Genom had murdered her father to prevent him from
revealing secrets, that she had led the enigmatic Knight Sabers, and that
boomers of almost every variety were almost, if not in some cases completely
sentient -- have not been incorporated into the main text of this history, as
other histories of the period have done. It cannot be demonstrated that the
whole of the text is accurate, which casts doubt on every part of it, although
textual analysis suggests that all the sections allegedly written by Katsuhito
Stingray were written by the same author, and that a similar situation applies
to those apparently written by Sylia Stingray[1].
But the truth or accuracy of the text is ultimately irrelevant, when one
considers its impact on history. During the months following the Boomer
Revolution and preceding the publication of the Diary, incidents of vandalism
against Genom-owned properties increased nearly two hundred percent, both in
frequency and in property damage. Despite desperate spin doctoring, the public
remained suspicious of the corporation's role in the revolution. The
publication
of the diary, containing the first public revelation of the existence of the
OMS, and information about incidents in the 2030s involving "street tests" of
military boomers in MegaTokyo, seemed to confirm all those suspicions, and the
simmering anger and fear exploded into fury. There were riots in virtually
every
city on Earth where a Genom tower still stood. Police forces were hard-pressed
to stop the rioters, and in some cases even joined with them.
The end result was that Genom, now the most hated corporation on Earth instead
of just the most feared, could not hope to survive. Within two months, the
embattled Lawrence Mann was forced to sell the assets Genom SoCal still held to
Genom's primary competitor, Gulf & Bradley[2] and entered semi-retirement. He
subsequently emigrated to the extrasolar colony of Elenore when it was
established in 2074, and which was one of the founders of the World Wide
Welfare
Corporation which served as Elenore's government, and later the backbone of the
United Gallactica.)
Other second and third tier megacorporations snatched up other Genom assets,
until Karl Wayland (1997-2074) acting president of Genom Johannesburg and de
facto CEO of what remained of the corporation, negotiated a merger with the
Green Food Corporation under the direction of Green president Andrew Yutani
(1991-2074). The resulting corporation, Wayland-Yutani, inherited Genom's key
African factories, granted them an edge in cyberdroid manufacture that would
not
be matched until the Conseption Corporation opened its Martian plant in the
next
century.[3]
The shakeups in the business community were by no means limited to those who
profited from Genom's demise. It had been an open secret for many years that
the
SDPC essentially danced to Genom's tune, but the death of Daniel Dixon, Jr.
(1997-2041), chairman of the SDPC's board of directors, in the explosion of
Genom tower still surprised many. With the strings cut, the puppet SDPC no
longer had much direction. The Board disintegrated into several squabbling
factions, each putting forth a different candidate for the chair. Ultimately, a
compromise candidate was found in the person of Linna Yamazaki, the recently
installed president of Crystal Millennium Aerospace and a minority stockholder
in the SDPC. From surviving journals, we know that her colleagues expected her
to be easily influenced to their ends. They were in for a rather rude surprise;
despite her eclectic beginnings as an Olympic athlete turned aerobics
instructor, someone had clearly taught Yamazaki how to play economic and
political hardball.
Despite this, her first press conference after becoming the chair (Jan 23,
2042)
was viewed as a mild public relations disaster. When asked whether the
disintegration of the world's premier manufacturer of cyberdroids would have
any
impact on the SDPC's colonization plans, Yamazaki replied, "I certainly hope
so.
We need to focus on getting real people out into space, not more robots." The
seemingly innocent comment ignited extreme controversy on two fronts. In
retrospect, this may even have been what Yamazaki intended.
The first front was a rather sizeable subculture which had begun to believe
that
boomers were people, or at least could become people given the opportunity.
This
movement had begun in the mid-2030s and gained considerable ammunition from
certain revelations in the Diary. Early in 2042, an independent investigation
was convened to study, for the first time ever, the algorithms and coding used
to program boomer brains. Their report concluded that cyberdroids constructed
using brains that followed Dr. Stingray's designs were not sentient and could
not become sentient -- but that was only because of several large blocks of
code that inhibited certain types of cognitive processes, in some cases
preventing them from taking place entirely, despite "older" code which should
enable them. Essentially, the brains were imprinted with laws of robotics which
proclaimed "Thou shalt not" rather than following the more efficient route of
not programming them to be able to do the things they weren't supposed to do.
Wayland-Yutani, in a desperate attempt to raise public opinion (and thus stock
values) began to modify the brains of Venerian cyberdroids to remove the
programming blocks. This done, the Venerians exhibited progressively greater
initiative. Within a decade, many would be traveling off-world either legally,
as the ultimate stage in the Venerian research project, or illegally, as
escapees from the plantations who often eventually fell into lives of crime.[4]
Other, comparable incidents eventually prompted a gradual decline in cyberdroid
sales, and thus a comparable decline in their design and manufacture. Economic
historians have suggested that the generalized economic slump that began about
this time had as much to do with it, but the era of armies of boomers, whether
for military or labour purposes, was effectively over by 2043.
The other front that Yamazaki's remarks offended was the nascent colonial
independence movement on the off-world colonies, to whom her remarks seemed to
indicate that she (and by extension the entire SDPC) viewed the first
generation
of colonists as little better than robots themselves. For the most part,
colonial alienation manifested itself in lengthy debates and arguments in
various media, but there were also many incidents of vandalism, violence and
even piracy.[5] But the directors of Spaceways were not blind to the parallels
between their own situation and that of the British governors of the American
colonies nearly three centuries earlier, and they had no intention of
witnessing
a similar revolution.
The strategy that they settled on was one which would play into the elitist
mentality that the colonists often exhibited. Through education and propaganda,
they sought to instill a sense of obligation and reverence towards Earth in
prospective astro-emigrants. For five years Spaceways pursued this strategy
with
only moderate success. But in 2047, they were suddenly handed a potential tool
for social change more potent than they could ever have imagined.
Harlan "Noisy" Rhysling had been one of the first generation of new astronauts,
working as an engineer's mate on several of Harriman Enterprise's first ships.
He had earned a minor reputation among his colleagues as an author of risque
poetry when an accident blinded him. Unable to afford cybernetic replacements,
he tramped around the solar system, making his living as an entertainer and
polishing his verses. His songs spread through the data networks and through
word of mouth. In early 2047, Rhysling signed a contract to have several of his
most popular songs recorded. But while returning to Earth for the first time
since his blinding, the ship he was on suffered an accident in its power supply
which the Blind Bard sacrificed his own life to repair. While dying of
radiation
poisoning, Rhysling sang his last ballad over the ship's intercom.
That song was "The Green Hills of Earth". Even three hundred years later, there
are many Earth-born spacers who will quietly (or noisily) recite the climactic
verse before departing into the sea of stars. But it is difficult for the
contemporary reader to read the entire text of the song without noting, as some
commentators did at the time of its composition, that it is a song that could
only have been written by a blind man. Leaving aside the portrait of the solar
system that seemed more influence by pulp magazines than reality, by 2047 there
were few skies on Earth that could be called fleecy, nor many hills which were
green, let alone cool.
Still, the song was powerful, and the circumstances of its composition seemed
to
be perfectly designed for the psycho-sociologists of the SDPC to exploit.[6]
Spaceways paid a small fortune for the rights to "Green Hills" to Rhysling's
publisher (who arguably didn't own them) and set about making it the most
popular song in history. Idols from every nation on Earth were hired to record
it in their native languages. Careful manipulation and outright bribery ensured
that it became the most requested song from every audio-video broadcaster in
the
system. SDPC lobbyists used the phrase "green hills of earth" in virtually
every
one of their speeches in the months after Rhysling's death.
The final stage in the campaign was the most dramatic, and also the least
subtle. The SDPC produced an incredibly manipulative two minute advertisement,
featuring an orchestral performance of "Green Hills" directed by Minoru Saotome
(2019-2068) who was even then being called one of the finest conductors of his
generation. The first six repetitions of the theme were visually accompanied by
images drawn from the colonies, with the Spaceways logo quietly present in
each.
After the pictures of Titan dissolved, the shot slowly panned through space to
show a tiny image of Earth from orbit, under the penultimate verse of the song
sung by Diva Spears-Aguilera (2011-2052) in what was to be her last major
recording. After her high soprano closed on "up up and onward yet," the screen
went black, and Rhysling's own voice, the scratchy recording of his last words,
played over the blackness.
The spot was incredibly successful, both as an advertisement for the SDPC
(their stock values nearly doubled after the first few airings) and as anti-
independence propaganda. The hard core of the colonial independence movements
were unimpressed, to the point where there were several different parodies of
"Green Hills" in circulation. But the song and the ideas that it represented --
the longing for humanity's one true home -- united the opposition to these
movements, allowing for a pooling of resources between several groups that
might
otherwise have had nothing to do with one another. It has been estimated that
the "Green Hills" movement set back the cause of colonial independence nearly
thirty years. Ironically, few of those who embraced the nostalgia of the song
ever actually returned to Earth. Those who did often experienced extreme
discomfort, both environmental and social. They often returned disillusioned,
or
just as often fired with determination to work for a future where Earth would
be
as comfortable as one of the colonies.
By the late 2040s, the planetary economy of Earth had recovered to levels
comparable to those of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Unfortunately, this proved to be a mixed blessing. Genom's total domination of
the corporate landscape in the 2020s and 2030s had kept most of its rivals in
competition with it, rather than with each other. With the death of the dragon,
squabbles over how to divide the horde began almost immediately -- they had
resulted in the formation of Wayland-Yutani, and left a number of formerly
second-tier organizations in the space formerly occupied by Genom alone. Almost
inevitably, genuine corporate warfare began.
Findley's definitive study of the Corporate Wars, _Shadowar_ (2182) contains
the
most complete picture imaginable of this period in Terrestrial history, and
this
survey can add very little to it aside from a confirmation of the guide's basic
thesis: no one who lived through these twenty-odd years went untouched by the
economic, guerilla and open warfare of the era. Instead, a single demonstrative
example, drawn from Findley, will suffice for our purposes.
In 2049, a young scientist was employed by Wayland-Yutani's Propulsion Physics
Research and Development division. While working after hours at their main
laboratory, he witnessed a break-in by saboteurs (or possibly by burglarizing
industrial spies) and promptly called in security. Not only did the scientist
narrowly escape death at the hands of the intruders, he became the company's
scapegoat for the failure of security to apprehend or eliminate any of them.
Despite the fact that he had been ordered to take unpaid overtime in order to
finish a project, the Disciplinary Board found his presence in the lab to be
highly suspicious, and all but accused him of being the intruders' inside man.
The scientist was immediately fired and unofficially blacklisted throughout the
aerospace industry, until Linna Yamazaki defied the blacklist and hired him for
Crystal Millennium Aerospace, at less than half the salary he'd made at
Wayland-
Yutani, and with significantly fewer benefits, but without granting the
corporation title to anything developed on his own time.
The scientist was Zephram Cochrane (2030-2366). What makes the account even
more
intriguing is the evidence (discussed completely in Chapter 11 of _Shadowar_)
that the raid which cost him his job at Wayland-Yutani was orchestrated by the
director of CMA's small covert operations division, quite possibly for that
purpose alone. Apparently, Yamazaki had expressed a mild interest in some of
Cochrane's university writings, and her aides seized the opportunity to "head
hunt" him at surprisingly little cost.
In any event, Cochrane's reduced administrative duties at his new position with
CMA gave him a greater amount of personal time than he would have ever enjoyed
at Wayland-Yutani. (Furthermore, not sharing Yamazaki's extremely liberal views
on personal time, they would certainly have claimed anything he developed
during
it.) He began to take a greater interest in the theoretical side of his
discipline, engaging in a lively correspondence with Charlotte Richards-Summers
(1998-2078) and several other visionary physicists. Despite this, according to
Cochrane's own notes, it wasn't until 2052, with only a few months remaining in
his three year contract with CMA, that he realized just what his independent
studies had uncovered.
Taking an enormous risk, Cochrane declined to extend his contract with CMA for
another three years, and spent his life's savings on a one-way trip to
Christopher's Landing, Titan. There he met with another of Dr. Richards-Summers
correspondents, tycoon Micah Brack (2001?-2076?) and convinced him of the
feasibility of his theory. The independent, eccentric trillionaire financed the
next eight years of research and development as Cochrane worked to turn theory
into fact, working largely in secret.
Some historians of science have asserted that the development of the Cochrane
superimpellor would have taken only half as long, if that, if Cochrane and his
small team hadn't worked in secret. These arguments smack of hindsight, and in
any event the secrecy was vitally necessary. Quite apart from the dozen or so
megacorporations who would have ecstatically taken the technology Cochrane was
developing and turned it into a monopoly, a much greater threat had begun to
blossom in the mid-2050s.
Despite any claims to the contrary, no one knows the true name or origin of the
man called Colonel Green (2016?-2078?). As stated earlier, the best guess
places
him as an enlisted man in the U.S.S.D. who participated in the abortive Towers
coup. But if so, he apparently had major reconstructive surgery before his
first
televised appearance in 2054, for the man who appeared then resembled no one in
the extensive Patrol databases.
Green spoke, in his first appearance, of his strong, personal conviction in the
infinite perfectibility of the human species, and how it was imperative for
humanity to achieve its optimum potential -- immediately, by any means
necessary. Those who failed to do so were worse than cowards or fools, they
were
traitors to humanity's manifest destiny. It was a song as old as the hills
themselves, and the only genuinely new element of the Optimum Movement was the
way that it managed to unite so many divergent, apparently opposite brands of
extremist elitism. At times, this lent Optimum broadcasts a surreal quality.
Ultra-African Optimate spokesmen stated that of course their leader, Colonel
Green, was African -- an exiled prince of the Wakandas, in fact -- and that the
man who appeared on broadcasts was nothing but a showman to trick the foolish
Europeans; Nordic supremacists asserted that these were nothing more than the
lies spouted by slaves desperate to deny their slavery, and that Colonel Green
was of course as White as the driven snow -- an exiled albino aristocrat from
Denmark, in fact; and Colonel Green spoke glowingly of each group whenever he
pirated the airways. Despite this confusion, there was definite and decisive
coordination between the various Optimum groups in the early stages.
Perhaps the most disturbing form that the Optimum took could be found in the
United States, where the movement, normally atheistic and even contemptuous of
"superstitionism", marched hand-in-hand with violent, reactionary form of
Christianity preached by Nehemiah Scudder (2011-2078?)[7]. Moreover, there is
evidence to suggest that Colonel Green (or the man who appeared as Colonel
Green) had met with Scudder in the form of a photograph of the two men
together.
If it is a fake, then more than three hundred years of progress in the
detection
of fakes has not sufficed to reveal it.
A bit more is known about Nehemiah Scudder's background than is known
concerning
his partner in crimes against humanity. He was born in rural Tennessee to an
unwed mother who insisted that "the Lord Almighty Christ Jesus our Savior" be
placed in the blank for the father's name on his birth certificate. After a
drunken and dissolute youth and early manhood, he experienced a revelation of
some sort in 2037, after which he exhibited an awesome talent for inflammatory
preaching. (Despite his usual appellation of Reverend, he was not associated
with any branch of the Christian faith, even the most radical Fundamentalist
sects.) His preaching was, again, nothing new: a melange of "return to
traditional values", "America alone against the evils of the world", and
"technology as the Devil's great tool". But Scudder's preaching was more potent
than any previous example of the type; even those who went into see his tent
revivals or watched his broadcasts fully intending to mock the hateful little
man came away feeling terribly uncertain, and hungry to hear more.
Into this disturbing period came a wonder: the second major piece of evidence
for the existence of life elsewhere in the galaxy. Midway through 2058, an odd
piece of space junk drifted into scanner range of an SDPC cleanup crew in the
vicinity of the asteroid belt. When they realized that the vector of the junk,
which was obviously a manufactured object, suggested that it had originated
outside the solar system, people sat up and took notice. The object was
recovered and brought to Earth. There, the descendants of the twentieth
century's SETI enthusiasts rejoiced to discover that it was, in fact, an
unmanned space probe of extraterrestrial construction. Designed for one
purpose,
shielding a single computer chip from the rigors of vacuum, it had been
voyaging
for over three hundred thousand years.
The "chip" had a data capacity slightly larger than any contemporary super-
computer, and it was almost completely full. Unfortunately, the enormous amount
of data had become slightly corrupt over the duration of the voyage, until it
was thought that more than 20% of the data was completely unrecoverable. Even
the interpretation of those sections which were salvageable would be the work
of
decades. Within the first year of the project, though, it was known that the
probe had been created by a species which apparently called itself "Solenoid",
which was engaged in a war of mutual annihilation with another species called
"Paranoid". (They were not the strangest false homophones discovered in the
translation, but they became the most well-known.) With the final battle
approaching and both species on the verge of extinction, the Solenoid had
uploaded the whole of their species' accumulated knowledge onto the chip, and
sent it into space in hopes that another intelligent species would discover it
and inherit their legacy.
Perhaps in another time and place, the possibility of uncovering such a
treasure
of knowledge would have set the world on fire, but perhaps not. In this time
and
place, the Probe Interpretation Project, which included such luminaries as
Charlotte Richards-Summers and her partner, Michael Samms (2001-2078), were
viewed as basically harmless eccentrics engaged in a quest that couldn't have
any practical value. More skeptical observers wondered how the data produced by
the project could be independently verified, with a handful doubting the
authenticity of the probe itself. The Reverend Nehemiah Scudder incorporated
the
Project's revelations into a famous sermon he delivered in Washington, where he
baldly stated that both Solenoid and Paranoid had deserved their fates for
failing to heed the self-evident gospel.
On July 17 2060, Zefram Cochrane determined that the superimpellor was as safe
as he could make it, and board the small, one-man shuttle christened the
_Bonaventure_. She was launched from the Oort cloud and shot on a course for
Centauri at a velocity of Warp 2.3, or slightly more than twelve times the
speed
of light. Four months later, Cochrane turned off the superimpellor and found
himself just outside the Centauri binary star system. Navigating the remainder
of the distance on ion impulse thrusters, the _Bonaventure_ landed on Centauri
B-2, one of two Earthlike planets in the system and the one which spectrography
had indicated might have life.[8] On December 5, 2060, Cochrane became the
first
Terrestrial to set foot on a planet outside the solar system. He spent only two
days, taking holographs and soil samples, before returning to the Sol system on
March 18, 2061. In two hundred forty-three days, he had traveled a distance
greater than any human before him.
For reasons that baffled observers at the time, Brock and Cochrane published
the
complete specifications of the superimpellor to the systemwide dataweb,
forfeiting the estimated billions in licensing that it could have made for them
in favor of allowing its construction by anyone who could to raise the money to
purchase the raw components. The reasons behind their decision became
abundantly clear when an agent of the Optimum attacked Brock's estate on Titan,
killing dozens of those gathered to celebrate Cochrane's achievement, but
failing to capture or eliminate either of his primary targets.
Cochrane later stated that Brock had hoped to begin a tidal wave of extrasolar
colonization, aided by the recent developments of artificial gravity and
inertial dampening pioneered by Dr. Ben O'Neill and owned by General Services
Inc., a company in which Brock was a minority stockholder. The inertial
dampener
allowed for incredible accelerations and decelerations, making "normal" space
travel faster, safer and more comfortable. Combined with the superimpellor, it
could open up the universe.
But it didn't happen that way. By 2079, there were only ten colonized
extrasolar
planets, significantly fewer than the dozens Brock had envisioned. Despite the
increased safety and comfort, space travel retained a mystique of danger that
kept many people ground-bound. And despite the rapidly worsening situation on
Earth, which was neither safe nor comfortable, the majority preferred to stay
on
"our lovely mother planet" and hope that things would get better.
And the superimpellor was actually less safe than it originally appeared -- or
rather, it opened the door to a whole new set of difficulties. Fully three
quarters of the first generation of FTL spacecraft encountered fatal
difficulties, most often ascribed to the superimpellor field's tendency to be
catastrophically affected by encounters with hyperspace phenomena such as
unstable wormholes. Some were tossed millions of light years away from their
intended destination, such as the ill-fated Robinson expedition of 2069, while
a lucky few went nowhere in space, but vanished for a period of weeks or months
before reappearing in their original coordinates -- the first documentable
cases
of time travel in history. Cochrane's initial, immediate successes came to be
seen as proof of his almost inhuman luck instead of being viewed as proof that
the technology had matured. Those who followed in his footsteps had to work
to get the bugs out of a prototype which had functioned flawlessly on its first
operation, in contravention of every law of engineering.
One of those who did follow in Cochrane's footsteps was a Russian-American
engineer named Ezekiel Cherenkov (2005-2078), whose efforts focused on
improving the field so that it could function without disaster deeper inside a
star system's gravity well. He made some key strides toward this goal in 2063,
though he is better remembered for his other major accomplishment in that year
... and he is also the most unfairly maligned figure in recent history.
In 2396, Starfleet produced a documentary drama concerning the 2373 Borg attack
on Earth, and the subsequent attempt by the Borg to time travel and change
history by provoking the assimilation of the Alpha Quadrant in the 21st
century.
For reasons known only to the producers, this "docudrama" asserted that Zephram
Cochrane had been involved in these events, attributing to him the actions
undertaken by Ezekiel Cherenkov.
Such egregious calumny! Totally inaccurate, obfuscatory! Nearly 31 per cent of
those surveyed believed that _First Contact_ was a completely accurate
representation of these events! Even aside from the marginalization of a
significant historical figure, the portrayal of Zephram Cochrane as a greedy
addict verges on slander -- or to more accurate, a triumphalist degradation of
the past. "Look at how far we've come!" the drama crows, "Look at how worthless
everything before us was!"
In any event, Ezekiel Cherenkov's experiments in 2063 attracted the attention
of a Vulcan science vessel which had recently arrived in the Sol system to
conduct routine maintenance on a monitoring station in the asteroid belt.
Judging by the human invention of warp drive (and the therefore inevitable
development of warp drive detectors) the captain of the Vulcan vessel felt it
best to begin first contact procedures before Vulcans and Terrestrials began to
meet under much less formalized circumstances.
It has been stated (notably by the authors of _First Contact_) that meeting
with
the advanced, peaceful Vulcans was the key event that led the planet Earth out
of the dark ages of the twenty-first century. While there is an element of
truth to this assertion, it ignores the fact that the process not only did not
happen "overnight", but took took four decades -- and that for twenty of those
years, what united a substantial minority of Terrans was hatred, especially for
the not-so-little green men. The revelation that the Vulcans had been spying on
Earth for nearly three hundred years won them no friends. Paradoxically,
neither
did their voluntary surrender of all the observational data which had been
collected, as its revelation of a large number of covert extraterrestrial
presences in the Solar system over that time left many with a deep suspicion of
all aliens. The Optimum Movement took this as one of their core tenets, of
course, and there were several attacks on the Vulcan embassy to the New United
Nations that bore their mark.
All in all, the thought of a already heavily populated galaxy was another key
factor in the overall "stay-at-home" tendency of Terrestrials in this period.
And from what the Vulcans revealed, the galaxy was not only filled with life,
it was filled with chaos as well. The Karsid Empire had disintegrated late in
the twentieth century, and the Klingons were engaged in a prolonged war with
the Orion Pirates for control of its remains. The Andorians were only slowly
spreading out from their homeworld, though they had scored a vital coup in
their non-aggression pact with the Vegans -- who had destroyed almost every
other species they ran across. The Jurai and their allies in the Beta Quadrant
were engaged in a war with the Oniboshi that kept their attention out of the
Alpha Quadrant. The Romulans and the Cardassians were still planetbound as
were -- at this stage in their history -- the Bajorans, as well as the Ferengi
(although in their case, accurate records are hard to come by.)
So instead of a tidal wave of emigration, there was a trickle. On Earth, the
Optimum Movement grew in power, and began to encourage imperialist attitudes
towards the colonies. As more and more Optimates usurped control of governments
and corporations -- and seized several seats on the SDPC's board of directors
--
the colonial independence movement underwent a quiet resurgence. It proved
especially forceful on Venus, where human colonists and Venerian cyberdroids
found themselves united in common cause for the first time in the short history
of their world. Eventually, this alliance managed to declare that the cities of
Venus were independent of any Terrestrial authority in 2068.
The colonies on Mars had a harder time of it, largely because of the Utopia
Planitia shipyards which had been built there in the 2040s. Roughly 40% of the
ships which crisscrossed the Solar system every year were constructed there,
along with virtually every interstellar craft in service. The wealth generated
by this single outpost far exceeded that produced by every plantation on Venus,
and the owners on Earth had no intention of letting it go. Despite the signing
of the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies in 2071, Earth retained
a stranglehold on Mars.
In 2072, Nehemiah Scudder was elected President of the United States of
America.
It wasn't even a remotely fair election; only ballots from the fifteen states
with Optimal majorities (such as Florida) were considered, with the rest termed
"spoiled" automatically. Scudder immediately declared a state of emergency,
suspended the Constitution (with a puppet Congress' full approval) and began
calling himself the Prophet Incarnate. There was resistance -- very potent
resistance -- but the Optimum protected "their" President, though he also
exhibited astounding luck in avoiding numerous assassination attempts, some of
which were clearly planned by his "allies".
Similar situations prevailed in Great Britain, in France, in Scandinavia; in
Nigeria, in Israel, in Thailand. Other governments were under siege. But
success
was slowly poisoning the Optimum movement, as coordination began to turn to
competition and conflict. Colonel Green kept making his glowing pronouncements,
especially in the wake of every new atrocity, but the stress fractures in the
Movement were beginning to show. The New United Nations began to seriously
consider evacuating from its Swiss headquarters (it had been evicted from New
York in 2067) to Centaurus. All that remained was for a single spark to ignite
the gasoline in which the world had been doused.
It happened in June 30, 2078. Prophet Incarnate Nehemiah Scudder was delivering
yet another televised sermon against the enemies of God and His Agent on Earth,
when there was a sudden disturbance in the anteroom of the Oval Office. Before
Scudder could say anything further, a young woman -- no older than fourteen,
according to witnesses -- sprang into the room, bright pink hair flowing behind
her, and ran him through with an sword, pinning him to his chair. Immediately,
the President's bodyguards seized her and began to beat her to death in front
of the camera, but the signal was immediately cut off. The bombs had already
begun to fall.
Many questions remain unanswered about that night. Did Nehemiah Scudder
actually die? (With the White House atomized within the hour, it is almost
certain that he did, but doubt remains.) Who fired first? (The question is
academic; the various silos opened fire with disturbing synchronicity.) Why
didn't the orbital particle beam satellites shoot down the weapons before they
could reach their targets? (They sid shoot down several missiles, but nowhere
nearly as many as the planners predicted they could; sabotage is suspected.)
What became of Colonel Green? (None of the surviving Optimum leaders, when
captured, would confirm his death.) And most importantly, why did an assault on
the figurehead leader of the American Optimum provoke such a massive
retaliation, if the strike was orchestrated by them, or such an opportunistic
response, if by their enemies? (No one knows.)
What was definitely known was that thirty-seven men, women and children
perished
in that single night of fire.[10] And in the opinion of this historian, all
else
concerning the episode, when considered in light of that fact, becomes trivia.
It has been said that the single night of World War III -- the true World War
III, as recorded by the Vulcans -- marked the end of the dark ages, just as it
has been said about first contact. But that claim also seems premature. The
twenty-one years of the American Interregnum were yet to come, for example.
What the night of June 30, 2078 actually represented was the Winter Solstice of
that age -- the darkest moment, after which things had to improve.
To Be Continued
Footnotes
[1] Some argue for three different authors; one continuous voice writing as Dr.
Stingray, a second writing as Sylia Stingray from ages six to twelve, and a
third distinctive voice for Sylia after age twelve. Others, who admittedly
accept the Diary at face value, cite the immense mental breakdown that Sylia
Stingray apparently suffered after her father's death as the source of
personality changes resulting in the "third voice".
[2] To describe Gulf & Bradley as Genom's competitor actually misrepresents the
largely symbiotic nature of their relationship. A descendant of twentieth
century oil giant Roxxon, by the 2030s G&B had largely converted their oil
refineries into factories for the production of gasohol, the synthetic fuel
which powered virtually every car that Genom produced. Gulf & Bradley is
probably the second most successful megacorporation in history (after the Coca-
Cola/Deneva Fizz corporation); it still exists today, having relocated to
Deneva.
[3] The Tyrell Corporation, founded by Eldon Tyrell (2014-2119) and other
members of Lawrence Mann's R&D division, retained the edge in cyberdroid
design,
however.
[4] One of the most infamous of these was Yarol (2039-2064?), boon companion of
the notorious smuggler and outlaw "Northwest" Smith (2013?-2064?).
[5] Although the term privateering might be more appropriate, given the
likelihood that most of the "pirates" were actually employed by one of the
megacorporations.
[6] This has provoked speculation that Spaceways had deliberately caused the
accident which claimed Rhysling's life. The arguments for this position strain
credibility.
[7] Despite occasional claims to the contrary, no comparable Optimum movement
appeared in any Islamic state. Some historians of the Optimum suggest that
Green viewed the Islamic world in the twenty-first century as sufficiently
extremist that no more intensely fanatical position was practical. (Others note
that green is the traditional color of Islam, and develop excruciating
conspiracy theories based on that fact.)
[8] Ironically, Cochrane was in such a hurry to land on Centauri B-2 and
replenish his oxygen and water supplies that he neglected to conduct even a
cursory examination of Centauri B-3, or he would have discovered it was
inhabited by the Centaurians (or Rannites, as is the preferred name of that
humanoid species for itself). Centuries earlier, before their advanced
civilization began its decline, a scientist whose name is lost to history
erected an electromagnetic screen that caused long distance astronomers to see
Rann as a barren wasteland, to discourage interstellar conquerors. As it
happened, the Centaurians would not be discovered until 2065.
[9] The war ended in 2082, when Jurain Emperor Azusa (875-2107) conspired with
radical members of the Galactic Union to set off annihilation weaponry on the
Oniboshi homeworld, virtually exterminating the species. The public revelation
of this toppled Azusa in favor of his great-grandson Tenchi (1977-) and broke
up
the Galactic Union, leaving the Beta Quadrant in as much chaos as the Alpha.
[10] As it happens, casualties were much less than had been projected by
military theorists of the twentieth century. This is probably more due to the
reduction of nuclear weapons as a factor in military strategy in the twenty-
first; had any of the nuclear powers been maintaining their arsenals at
twentieth century levels, it is likely that there would have been at most
thirty
-seven million survivors -- if that many.
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