Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[Trenacker]

Kellerism attracted adherents worldwide.

Tribalism, also called Kellerism after its founder, was an early twenty-first century reaction to the loss of hope in Middle America. From the 1980s, coinciding with the decline in heavy manufacturing in the Western world and the advent of the World Wide Web, personal and community identity became disconnected from shared physical space. Teenagers adopted avatars that reflected their imagined selves, while various political and social groups adopted explicitly global perspectives as they struggled to scope problems of economic dislocation and climate change. New problems were identified: opioid and Internet addiction, pervasive underemployment, increasing dependence on social services, and high rates of divorce.

Jean-Baptiste Keller was a failed farmer, lay preacher, and radio personality active during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries int he Midwestern United States. His favorite rhetorical targets were offshoring, agribusiness, partisanship, wealth inequality, and, of course, the Internet. Despite a relatively small live audience, tapes of his thrice-weekly Jeremiads were shared through the English-speaking world. His "congregation" saw reflections of themselves in his depictions of life as lonely struggle, rarely yielding spiritual fulfillment or dignity.

Some historians now trace the movement's formative inspirations back as far as the right-wing paramilitary ethno-nationalism of the mid-1990s and the parallel flowering of conservative talk radio, but though Jean Baptiste-Keller spoke to the same problems, he was neither a xenophobe nor a secessionist, much less a bitter-ender. The fundamental underpinnings of Holnism, to which Kellerism is customarily compared, were nihilism and individualism. Holnists denied the very legitimacy of positive law and attempted to recast natural law as the extension of the individual's own Id. Holnists did for themselves in the expectation that they would be rewarded with the opportunity to inflict themselves upon others after societal collapse.

The Holnist will set your town, including his own home, ablaze because he thinks he can snatch something of yours from the blaze. - Weekly Address of the President of the United States

Kellerites aimed to avert that collapse through a program of self-improvement on behalf of the wounded community. Its foundational concepts were hope and community. A Tribe was to supplement, and perhaps even to stand in for, the absence of central government, but should not reject its value in principle.

Keller's thesis was simple enough: the atomizing and amplifying effects of the Internet, by giving false hope to every radical, made it impossible for communities at any level--local, state, national--to engage in the collective problem-solving that is politics. Just ten years into the new millennium, "truth" was in the eye of the beholder on both sides of the Atlantic. Keller interpreted current events through this dark prism. The outbreak of Red Flu and climate-driven mega-disasters that preceded America's second great sundering were only so ruinous because their impacts was exacerbated by those who had something to gain from the suffering.

This analysis led Keller to three conclusions. First, that central government, though not to be feared, was unreliable because of the problems of distance, faction, and bureaucratic inertia. Second, that physical communities--especially blood communities--as defined by close geographic proximity and daily personal interaction were more important to the wellness and survival of the individual than virtual communities. To ride out the storm Keller insisted was coming, the wise would retreat from their device and narcotics addiction and live "in the moment," cultivating the practical skills and face-to-face relationships they would need to ensure basic survival.

With the end in mind, Keller called for Americans to take up Scouting, learn to swim, take advantage of the courses offered by local community colleges and technical schools, practice target shooting and reloading, and buy cars that didn't rely on computers. As a "prepper" of the second generation, he took a distinct communitarian perspective, instructing his listeners that guns, ammunition, food, and medical supplies should be stockpiled and held in trust for one's family and neighbors.

The one who prepares shall be shepherd, not king. - The Annotated Broadcasts

Keller's emergence as a potent political force coincided with the destruction of Davenport, IA by anti-government militias, during which his son Brian was killed while serving in the National Guard. Keller initially urged communities to open their doors to FEMA and the U.S. Army during the unfolding national emergency.

As the cogs of federal power ceased to turn, Keller hit upon an alternative: he propounded a Charter, or guiding principles for the organization of mutual aid within and between communities "for persons who do not wish to descend into barbarism.” Recognizing his audiences’ fear of strangers amidst the general collapse of law and order, Keller additionally urged his listeners to “fall back first on your relatives, friends, and neighbors – the people who know you best, can vouch for you, and upon whom you have always depended.” Keller was explicit that these communities must not be circumscribed by "false dichotomies" of race, political affiliation, national origin, cultural practice, or sexual or gender identity. "Family is family," he thundered, "and you will never be remade whole if you leave behind even the least of them."
 
Yet unsurprisingly, communities that conformed to the code of behaviors promoted by Keller’s Charter were often able to manage the suspension of public services better than those where residents were disunited. Prototypical Kellerite communities maintained food kitchens, aid stations, and workshops where resources could be pooled, needs evaluated, and priorities set and acted upon most efficiently. They also mounted “vigilance patrols” to keep the peace.

Inevitably, the success of the Kellerites meant that they were subject to attack by opportunists, some of whom depicted the Kellerites as disloyal and incestuous cultists to justify their crimes. After Davenport, Kellerites were natural targets in an environment thick with predators. Secessionist governments and their Holnist supporters targeted the Kellerites for their pro-vaccine stance and often-outspoken allegiance to the United States Government. Excuses were easy to find. As armed camps, Kellerite townships could not be countenanced at the rear of a secessionist army. For followers of the Evangelical Fire, Kellerism was simple heresy to be extirpated with the sword. Combatants of all stripes knew Kellerite communities would be well-stocked with all the essentials of war. Kellerites were also beset by both ordinary citizens (who usually resented having been left “outside the fold” of prosperous Charter communities) and corporate security forces tasked to “reclaim salvage” from the war zone.

Kellerites enjoyed an advantage the Holnists never had for long: unity of purpose.

Kellerites' alienation from surrounding populations eventually brought them into direct conflict with the relieving federal forces. The group’s outlaw status was cemented during the Holnist breakout from the Federal blockade of Des Moines, when Kellerite militiamen operating in the same vicinity slaughtered hundreds of civilian refugees in retaliation for past lynchings of Kellerite foraging parties. The United States Government never forgave the Kellerites, whom it thereafter treated as enemy combatants.

Holnist fighters depart a ruined Tribal enclave. Even when victorious, the Holnists always departed many fewer in number than when they'd come.

Kellerism persisted for years after the war despite its adherents being forced into hiding, and pirate radio stations repeated Kellerite signals from holdfasts in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain chains, gradually attracting new adherents in the urban crimescapes of the Pacific coast.

Sources:

U.K. Kellerites picture found on Pinterest board of Broken Eden LARP.

Picture of farming is "Epilogue to Wall-E" by Brother None.

Third picture is apparently from a computer game, "Fall of Civilization."

[MysticWind]

Vehicle Chassis: Highship

In Earth's last century, a clear blue sky was the unending nightmare for children living in forgotten lands. Locusts of empire mercilessly assaulted countless villages while hunting for men hidden far, far away. Aerial drones and air strikes murdered innocent families, communities, peoples in plain malice. Today we take back the skies in their name. - the christening of the Mẫu Liễu Hạnh

Great-grandchildren of the Hopper scout craft in the early eras of Planet, Highships became a major aerial weapons platform as the civilizations of the Unity diaspora achieved ever-better industrial capabilities. These flying fortresses were first prototyped during the “Post-Survival Age” by desperate factions retrofitting Landing Pods and even Supply Pods with chemical rockets as deluxe-sized Hoppers for use as aerial artillery strongpoints. As old as these relics of the initial expedition were, they were surprisingly well-defended against early ‘copter armaments. This was thanks to the mission planners’ insistence of fool-proofing the very celestial Conestoga wagons that were to deliver humanity and its supplies to the stars, and a widespread hunch that they would need to be protected even against violence, which was theoretically unforeseeable. (As a result, the disseminated Unity pods were incredibly hardy, able to withstand atmospheric entry and landing in every biome known to Chiron, some resting quietly in the wild for mission decades to even centuries.)

The dubious reliability of retooling Supply Pods to serve as Satellite Pods was exemplified when hapless Tribal pod people inadvertently landed off-course in the Nessus Canyon during an attack on Xerxion, their ancient instrumentation mistaking the region's distinctive rock formations as base structures

While these proto-Highships - dubbed by some Planetary military historians as the “Satellite Pod” - had a mixed battlefield record at best, they cemented the evolution of Hoppers into bigger aircraft for use in larger-scale operations. Even as the Observer upper echelon groaned at the “Great Supply Closet Massacre in the Sky”, when scores of Chiron Guard Roswell weaponized Unity Pods were effortlessly destroyed by University ECM countermeasures during the assault on the Interstellar Communications Array, Deputy Minister Han Jae-Moon was already calculating the fuel requirements for building a newer, ruggedized, ziz of an airship that would eclipse all of these overglorified armored Hoppers. The Memory of Earth Planetary Defense Force’s aerospace designers immediately went to work drafting the Mother of All Pods - an exponentially scaled up Satellite Pod that would be as well-fortified as a base, as well-armed as SafeHaven battle armor, and as nimble as University hovercraft. Unfortunately for the aspirations of the St. Reaganites, later events kept the PDF schematics away from production until the next age. However, those plans for HIGHJUMP II were picked up by a Lai Tek dataprobe operative, who forwarded them with urgent priority to the Monitor-Protector herself.

The leader of the Phoenix Nation inspected the castle in the sky proposal with great interest. For mission years, her cause had been relegated to little more than an Outpost-class sub-faction. Not all Unity breakaways necessarily had the numbers nor the resources to construct elaborate societies, much less command vast armies in the field. To some degree, this suited Trung Thi Hoang just fine- it recalled her postwar reconstruction days in the Central Highlands, aiding and learning from the matrilineal and matrilocal tribal cultures in the demilitarized zone between the northern Vietnamese Soviet Republic and the southern French Indochinese Union. But on Planet, she and her people had greater ambitions to free the downtrodden of any faction, and that required tooling up. So far, the Phoenix were mainly renowned as air combat aces who, despite their status as fungal bush pilots, had turned many a battle for the vendettas of others as flying tigress “guest fighters.” They gladly accepted energy, minerals, or nutrients as rebels of many causes, but they had yet to make their mark as a power in their own right. Monitor-Protector Trung wanted more, and saw that this next-generation vessel would be the first great step towards human liberation.

New State officers greet the Mẫu Liễu Hạnh at Jonathan Livingston Seabase during Phoenix Nation diplomatic tour

It took Schreiber Project engineering resources, Dai Seung manufacturing prowess, North Star Allegiant nautical experts, and a generous line of credit- contingent upon the Phoenix agreeing to assist in future “market solvency operations”- extended by the enigmatic board of the Global Energy Exchange, but at the end, Trung Thi Hoang had her mothership. The PNV Mẫu Liễu Hạnh was the largest aerial object seen on Planet since the Unity itself, and its brethren that followed would not be eclipsed until the advent of gravships.

This first of the simply-named Highships was powered by a Quasitron-brand nuclear particle accelerator-driven thorium reactor built by the Children of the Atom. The Liễu Hạnh required nearly a hundred thousand tons of liquid methane dispersed at kilograms per second as both supplementary propellant and working fluid for the turbines of its airbreather jet engine. Typical of the primitive atomic drives that preceded the realization of helical engines, Highship ramjets were based on the same concepts as those of the early-Cold War United States Air Force’s Supersonic Low Altitude Missile proposal.

Thanks to Planet’s million-year untouched state, methane was in vast abundance. Natural gas remained in good supply after mission centuries of widespread extraction of terrestrial deposits due to New State advancements in deepwater Pressure Domes and aquatic Former mining. Planet’s industrial powers were able to claim even more seabed clathrate deposits, even at the risk of geographically-altering disasters resulting from rapid clathrate eruptions, such as this MorganSea incident

Despite the immense engineering resources involved, Highships operated along the same general flight principles as Hoppers. As VTOL aircraft, they flew in arcs at speeds dwarfed by actual supersonic fighters. Operating in low-altitudes capped by the lack of sufficient reaction mass in the higher atmosphere, they operated as battleships of the air. The Liễu Hạnh, in its vast 189 meter length, was intended to act as a flying cruiser, the core of the Phoenix Nation’s air force, capable of shepherding, shielding, and repairing Trung’s squadrons as well as devastating enemy ground forces and bases with equal efficacy. Its introduction in the South Squall Vendetta kicked off an aero arms race as factions breathlessly poured over datalink footage of the Phoenix flagship with its massive autocannons shredding apart Pilgrim Rover formations. Nicknamed “Thunderbird”, the conflict showcased the arrival of the Nation to the Planetary scene, as well as the dawning of a new chapter in aerial combat. The climactic duel between the Liễu Hạnh and the Sumatran Whip became the most downlinked watchvid for over a fortnight. Despite the battle’s ultimately draw, the Emporium began their own Highship crash program shortly after, likely based on the very same plans stolen from the Observers.

Highships possessed hulls strewn with gun batteries, missile launchers, point-defense systems, anti-heat seeker lasers, bombing bays, sensor arrays. Some, such as the Spartan Lelantos, bore an entire landing strip for carrying jet fighters. But these vessels were also glass cannons. The cost of indulging in the cheap abundance of methane resulted in more than intermittent mindworm boil swarms for the harvesters. Upon the penetration of their fuel tanks, Highships would become giant falling bombs, with enormous blast radiuses. As such, from the beginning, they were shielded by immense amounts of armor around their tanks. While this did not prevent later battles from resulting in massive fireballs and ecological destruction, causing Lady Deidre Skye of the Gaians to pronounce the vehicles “an atrocity against the Planet”, they did allow for higher rates of survivability for crews of destroyed Highships, as well as cargo. Thus, downed vessels were an attractive target for SMACER scavengers, slavers from enterprising factions, or ecosystem revenge squads from Green-minded organizations.

Footage of the Liễu Hạnh destroying an enemy craft as captured from the bridge of the PNV Rosa Luxemburg

Because of the inherent vast cost in building and maintaining giant flying vessels, Highships were never in great numbers. The Phoenix Nation had one of the more sizeable highfleets, following up their flagship with the much smaller attack frigate Rosa Luxemburg and the interceptor corvette Charlotte Corday. Both were a third of the size of the Mẫu Liễu Hạnh, with crews a fifth to even a tenth of the mothership’s six hundred and sixty strong complement. They were far less armored, but much more nimble, able to sustain close-range aerial combat with improved thrusters that made for maneuvering around enemy fire, dodging and weaving and even diving below larger adversaries as they pelted them with 100mm rapid-fire artillery guns. The New Two Thousand riposted against the Nation in subsequent clashes with its impressive Lindbergh, which downed the PNV Zohra Drif over the Monsoon Jungle. But in time, militaries viewed Highships not simply as symbols of prestige or psychological terror, but expensive resources that should be captured if necessary. Jump-pack marine detachments deployed from ‘copters, airships, and stealth transport planes were used for boarding actions in attempts to infiltrate and take control of Highships. The loss of the University’s Aerograd to a xenon-gas toting Dreamer jump-pack probe team struck a great blow against the Academician’s morale. The subsequent renaming of their sole Highship to the saucy Dream a Little Bigger was salt in the wound.

Ultimately, the age of the Highships elapsed as Synthetic Fossil Fuels and other advancements permitted true aerial combat independent of flammable methane or radioactive thorium. After nearly a mission century of being constrained to low altitudes, humanity flew ever-higher thanks to their descendents. The first sub-orbital Highship, the Memory of Earth’s X-2000 Dyna-saurus, was built after Planetary society achieved Rudimentary Spaceflight. These advances, the substitution of the massive metal methane vessels with conventional lighter-than-air airships, and the waning of the Phoenix Nation’s aerial supremacy, all drove the passing of this romantic and explosive period in Chiron’s atmosphere.

Notes:

This concept was inspired by this review of dieselpunk airship combat strategy game HighFleet: Deus in Nobis.

Yes, the name for the early pre-Highship ‘pods is indeed a bad music pun.

The art of the Satellite Pod is from Yukinobu Hoshino’s sci-fi classic 2001 Nights, specifically "Night 10: Medusa's Throne."

Speculation on the technical workings of HighFleet borrowed from this thread.

Helical engines are a proposal by NASA engineer David Burns for a particle accelerator-propelled interstellar vessel.

Underwater mining of methane clathrate deposits, and its consequences, comes from the Benthic depressurisation tech in climate change simulation game Fate of the World.

[Trenacker]

Life in the First Decade

There was too much to defend, and from too many, with too little and too few. - Peregrenations of Planet

They built their fair share of prototype designs with a batch size of one, but Spartan doctrine called for the use of interchangeable parts to achieve better efficiencies in training, repair, and tactical command. It was much easier to model performance when a leader had fewer variables for which to account.

The koutí had many features to recommend it. Heavy-duty shocks conferred excellent off-road performance. By sealing and stowing the armored louvers, occupants in the cab could trade between visibility or cooling or force protection. An onboard fire suppression system and bolt-on super light appliqué might mean the difference between survival and annihilation. The vehicle used a nuclear power source; see the turbine and fuel cask centered between the rear wheels. In service, the vehicle could take a fighting top in at the cab and rooftop hatches.

Standardization is the surest sign of material progress. Survival is too disorganized to maintain any lasting relationship with efficiency. - A Political Economy of Planet

Morganite pleasure palaces, found in every modern city, were a counterintelligence officer's worst nightmare. Private reports to Captain Garland from the Office of U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri Security Chief Rachael Winzenried warned that as many as one in ten crew members were taking pay from an unsanctioned patron. That number doubled for command staff.

Faction leaders ignored the appetites of the human soul at their own peril. There hadn't been space aboard Unity for much physical art, but the colonists produced their own in abundance. Tribals and Hivemen made art as an expression of their individualism. Morganites made art for decorative purposes. Believers likened the artist's work to prayer. Dreamers made art in spite of themselves. Prisoners of the Watch were forced to make art as therapy, which Commissioner Pravin Lal felt rather missed the point. Adolescents in the Ascendancy were judged according to their artistic output as children: the more accomplished the artist, the greater the expectation of future accomplishment.

Sources:

Buggies by Darius Kalinauskas.

Casino city picture is an artist's conception of the pleasure city Neon for the video game "Starfield."

Second picture is from Syd Mead. Apparently a piece of concept art for the a Jetson's movie.

[Trenacker]

Promise-keepers, seen here assisting Pilgrim militia to clear a corridor as they invade the uppermost level of a Hive Habmaze, took a simple vow: to accept no charity and perform no honest work. Mercenaries were natives to the battlefield, and preferable in a set-piece battle, but they had a sense of self-preservation that placed an upper limit on their utility in dire moments. Also, few mercenaries would consent to take Somnacin. Promise-keepers generally made excellent dream-walkers.

The easy test to tell Promise-keeper from SMACER was to offer them credits. If you were killed, you'd met a SMACER. Promise-keepers generally gathered in small huddles in the hundreds of abandoned bases that marked failed expansions or soured vendettas. Those prepared to risk their necks could negotiate a price for anything prohibited. They were cheap assassins, saboteurs, subversives, and Probe operators. So far as could be determined by curious outsiders, Promise-keepers were motivated, like the Data Angels, "by the jazz." A Promise-keeper's ability to serve the buyer and live was a direct reflection on their ability to adhere to the strict codes of the Vory.

"Don't kill, don't eat." - Saying among the Promise-keepers, Datalinks

This was not to say that a certain degree of absurdity could not result from the Promise-keepers' rigid interpretation of their own ethos. A popular distraction with Morganite teenagers was to pay Promise-keepers to denounce the Civil Ordinances in New State garrisons. Nwabudike Morgan once got the better of a Peacekeeper rival by hiring Vory to lure the man into a drunken spree that resulted in his dismissal from his faction's diplomatic corps. University students sometimes hired Vory to distract proctors during tests. More hired them as bodyguards to fend off the vicious bullying of prefects.

Sources:

First picture features Adriyan Rae as Elida in Vagrant Queen.

Second picture is "secret base" by Jeremy Cook.

Third picture origin unknown. Found on imgur.

[Trenacker]

The pressure seals for each of Unity's six fusion engines were manufactured in Knoxville, TN by the venerable Fulton-Sylphon Corporation. Each engine cone was taller than the Statue of Liberty, and the seals were correspondingly large. Federal troops of the 4th Cavalry Brigade, trainees in tow, came down from Fort Knox, KY to escort this precious cargo south. They made it out of the city just days before Governor Tim Spearman brow-beat the state legislature into ratifying articles of secession. Tennessee Army National Guard forces dogged the caravan practically the full way to Atlanta before spoiling attacks from Virginia resulted in their urgent recall for home defense.

Chiron's oceans provided both nutrient abundance and deep insight into its cyclical ecosystem. At bases like Ballard's Reef, one of a very few coastal enclaves built by the University of Planet, researchers endured constant low-grade typhoon conditions for the benefit of their fellow survivors. Corso's False Sea Jellies provided protein and texture to enliven meals. Products derived from Sea Jelly genetics included luminescents, medical paralytics, and longevity treatments.

A student of the University might study the full length of a Chiron day--just under 18 hours straight. The reigning pedagogy called for a combination of professorial lecture, guided discussion in mixed-attainment reading circles, and independent study. Unity had carried no books; instead, the total sum of human knowledge had been digitized. Librarians pulled segments of this material onto shareable data tapes using a detailed programming language and following the specific requests made by students themselves. A competent Librarian was the struggling student's salvation, paring away extraneous information before it ever reached the listener.

The U.N. acquired the Aries III space platform on 12 May 2017. The Grumman Corporation was announced as the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri's first prime contractor a day later. Unity did not launch until 12 April 2071. There were many reasons for the expedition's long gestation, none more serious than the damage to supporting national space programs caused by interstate war. In 2051, Soviet airborne forces famously wrecked the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. When NATO failed to react--it was the very height of the Hypersurvivalist Crisis--the already-unpopular conservative government of French President Marcel d'Avrail collapsed, and France veered back into the third-way politics that undermined Western unity to Moscow's advantage.

The tank was a complicated presence on battlefields of the twenty-first century. Advances in the portability, accuracy, and firepower of individual anti-armor weapons systems, combined with the effectiveness of drone reconnaissance, humbled more one great army--and those were cases in which the vehicles themselves were well-crewed and -maintained. Defenses, which incorporated signal suppression as well as active engagement of incoming warheads, were effective only one-quarter of the time.

On Chiron, the tank enjoyed a brief renaissance. The Spartans and the Tribe both experimented with tanks both wheeled and tracked. The anti-tank rockets packed by J.T. Marsh might as well have been firecrackers. Even when under-armed, tanks helped accompanying infantry to press their advance with confidence. Drones remained a theoretical problem, but there were fewer of them, and, because of the general lack of heavy weapons, spotting rarely resulted in a kill.

Sources:

Fulton-Sylphon image is from Sci-Fi base pack on the Unity Asset Store by Manufactura K4.

Ballard's Reef image is the work of Simon Stålenhag, found here.

Third image by Nokhoog on Sci-Fi Factory.

Fourth image by Electronic Arts.

Artist responsible for tank picture is unknown.

[Trenacker]

The seed packets and re-hydrated ration packs stored in Unity's Landing Pods were badly irradiated by the ship's venting reactors. Early crops failed at rates approaching 93%. Most colonists of the First Generation suffered from moderate to severe malnutrition. Birth rates were very low, and infant morality very high. Biologists scrambled to extract edible macronutrients from native organisms.

Once Planetside, all factions found yawning gaps in available competencies and equipment. To make matters worse, the expedition's original supplies were mostly archaic hand-me-downs sourced from more than 150 donor nations and tens of thousands of private organizations. As a matter of personal survival, every colonist needed to become individually expert in the care, maintenance, and improvement of their own gear. This Spartan has improvised oxygen support from a medical ventilator, a length of rubber hose, and an agricultural respirator.

Portable minicomputers such as the Reviiser were the suitcase atomics of their era. They could be set up to run tapes automatically once the terminal was plugged into a Datalinks. No computer literacy required. The New State banned them, while fee structures effectively restricted their ownership to the C level in Morganite enclaves.

Sources:

Top image is apparently from survival game Icarus.

Second image is from the film Prospect.

[Trenacker]

Since replacements were hard to come by, everything was used until it broke. The face ports and filtration plant for this Gaian Ranger's rebreather have broken. Air hoses have been rerouted behind and she wears an independent filter over her breast. A lens in the face mask has cracked, and both are fogged, but the high-efficiency seal for which this Anklin Mark IV mask was known, obviously tempted its wearer to make due. Her laser carbine shows evidence of severe barrel corrosion and will soon seize, perhaps with catastrophic result.

A Shaper Liquidator fuels his flamethrower, the accepted way to deal with an errant fungal bloom. When they drew such unhappy work, drones were pumped with neurosuppressants that put them in a zomboid state not unlike the nerve staple--in fact, the pharmaceutical basis of the inoculation and the punishment were identical, differing primarily in the amount of drug administered. This was necessary, of course, to deaden the mind against Centauri retaliation.

Trade between isolated factions was sometimes the only way to stave off starvation, disease, or environmental disaster. When one or both were at war, civilian traffic, like this high-clearance hauler carrying nutrient slurry, would be equipped with flashing beacons to indicate their noncombatant status. Some factions heeded the markings; others zeroed in on a defenseless capture.

Sources:

Top image found on the Pinterest account of Marco Ferreira.

Flame trooper is the work of Daniel Comerci.

Vehicle is credited to CaptFlushGarden by the Pinterest account of Jerome Lebrun.

[Trenacker]

When Chairman Sheng-ji Yang pronounced his readiness to take a share of the riches trapped beneath the Hyas Teeth, Archelaus Laskaris summoned steel monsters and pierced the mountains he could not climb. With omnidirectional drilling rigs, Hive miners siphoned ore the way a Gaian might funnel water.

The Silver Arch, a tungsten mine "operated" by the Dreamers of Chiron from M.Y. 2-14 at Pahlavi's sufferance. It collapsed in that final year due to avoidable structural failure, killing more than three hundred people, mostly members of chain gangs sourced from the Morganites. The remains of the diggings became a scrappers' paradise and were fought over for years by the University, the Ascendancy, and the Children of the Atom.

The polyglot Unity expedition was to use English as its official mission language, but project difficulties led to uptake of at least 100,000 colonists and crew unable to speak it. Color became their common touchstone. Four of nine branches are shown here. White for environmental control--responders who were to restore breathable atmosphere in compromised and gassed compartments. Red for conventional firefighters. Green for radiological firefighters. Blue for those trained in confined space rescue. The expedient of color-coding mission assignments was kept up by every faction.

Physical hardships linked to hibernation, post-hibernation recovery, and Chiron's higher gravity created barriers to the inclusion of those with physical challenges. The U.N. issued them provisional exclusions and promised uptake in the event that they received successful cybernetic prosthesis. This Trinity Corporation collapse responder searches for casualties in a compartment choked with tear gas during the final hours of the exodus from Unity.

Sources:
First picture is "Siberia 2035" by Wend Taylor.

Second picture is "Mine Facility (2022)" by Ed Lee Art.

Third picture is by Jeison Silva. It is hosted on ZBrushCentral.

Fourth picture is "Fire Gear" by Lucas Pradaud.

[Trenacker]

Give a body room to breathe and freedom to act, and nine times out of ten they will curl up into a fetal ball. - Under My Wings, All Things Prosper: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation, Vol. 2

Not every landing pod was a behemoth. So-called smallcraft like this purpose-built AVRO conveyed uniquely precious cargo--here, the ʼĒl, a "hard library" intended to be connected directly to a computer core. Rare and precious, hard libraries were physical databanks containing information too sensitive to be entrusted to data tapes. Dreamers captured this one and found that it contained an index of crew member service records. Cobb's Probe Teams used the insights derived from their study of that material to identify high-priority targets for influence operations. Mission success rates doubled.

The self-contained systems of Unity landing pods were the source of key infrastructure for all early colonies: water, communications, signals, recycling, hospital services, and more. Rather than building anew, it was often thought preferable to add "barnacle" complexes onto the pods' hulls, piggybacking to systems already known to work. One of the most important advantages conferred by the pods was height. Base operations commonly relocated to the flying bridge at top ("forward," when the pod was in spaceborne service) for a better view of the surrounding area.

The Watcher base seen here is girdled by concentric defenses that excel at keeping drones in as much as they do at keeping Minutemen and Myrmidons out. In the foreground, a mobile piledriver has deployed to excavate the foundations for a defensive bunker.

Destructive terraforming was relatively easy. Terran vegetation thrived with the correct combination of oxygenated water and deep-injection organics. Chiron's natural defenses faltered here. Humans, perhaps because of their sentience, triggered intense fungal action, but environmental contamination attracted almost no detectable reactivity. In bases like Second Chance, Shapers enjoyed soft grass and the sweet taste of familiar fruit.

Sources:

First picture is from the Sci-Fi/Amazon Prime series The Expanse.

Second picture is the base from Disney's Lightyear.

Third picture is an artist's rendering for the Disney movie Tomorrowland.

[Trenacker]

Doctrine: Centauri Survival

Mere survival compels us to provide each survivor with a completely novel form of remedial education. We must relearn mobility, nutrition, recreation, and problem-solving under material constraints never theorized by Mission Command. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

In bubbletents and other converted classrooms across the face of Planet, the First Generation began to learn the lessons that it would pass down as sacrosanct to its children. These were the bequest of the Growth doctrine Centauri Survival.

Before a colonist could be rated for work outside the airlocks, they memorized the new gravitational constant of 12.85 m/s², learned to diagnose the memory impairments and mood disorders caused by nitrogen narcosis, heard the artificially-reproduced hum of the mindworms, and demonstrated the Five Standard Techniques for oxygenating water, including the "high pour" and "area expansion" methods. The standard toolkit adopted by every faction for its personnel included two carbon-steel blades, one of 7" and another of just 3.2"; edible water--spherical pellets encased in a durable combination of calcium shloride and brown algae extract that formed a durable sheath; a windlass tourniquet; hemostatic gauze; a rapid injector with epinephrine, adrenaline, and anti-coagulant ampules; a canister of Togra Labs ExpansionFoam®; and four slugs of sealing putty to spread across suit punctures and tears.

Faction leaders differed in their judgements about how this critical information could best be communicated for retention. J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Teams performed live survival demonstrations for timid audiences of University engineers. Peacekeepers spent hours running microfiche on which data librarians illustrated the trimming of beards and mustaches, the donning and doffing of masks, the rapid exchange of air filters. In Sparta Command, three-trooper "sticks" and five-trooper "chalks" shared the lowest scores earned by their members during each training evolution. Unsatisfactory courses could be repeated ad infinitum. Hive Security seered wisdom into drones with the psi-whip.

Sources:
A screenshot from the computer game Icarus.

On edible water, see Earth911's article on the Ooho.

Togra Labs and StickyFoam originally created by Strategos' Risk.

[MysticWind]

As the Dreamers of Chiron continued to be beset by economic doldrums and a sociopolitical structure built on exploitative labor that simply refused to function, the Factor and the Transgressor sought external partnerships out of desperation. What followed was a series of advances that modestly staunched the faction’s bleeding financials, and gradually yielded blessings and curses alike for Planetary society.

Discover Tech: MindMazes

Daedalus's grand edifice was a cage for Jung’s beastly little shadow- that primal id not fit for polite company, tucked away in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, suited only for testing egos bold and foolhardy. Now we conjure labyrinths up for Spartan sport games, Gaian holidays, University bacchanals. Minos is laughing up at us from hell. - A Dream I Dreamed

Morgan Industries was no stranger to the oneirology research teams of Struan’s Pacific Trading Company, having consulted with Cobb’s probes on all manner of unconscious intelligence and subconscious security. But after the calamitous Morgan Distribution drone revolts, a months-long affair that wrecked the newly-built Baxton Holorama Playhouse, the CEO sought a more comprehensive solution to the perennial problem of company morale. Recent Planetary Council resolutions, a rare diplomatic triumph from Lal, had reaffirmed the primacy of the U.N. Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, forestalling free market factions from frivolously infringing upon the fibrous axons of their citizens’ nervous systems. Carrots would have to be grown in lieu of spiked maces. Unwilling to become a pariah, Morgan approached a pair and paid for their secrets. Thus the two corporate powers began Project Encarta, a joint venture to transcend the boundaries of entertainment technology.

Late Earth corporations captured audiovisual sleep imagery simulations with mixed success. Struan was the leading provider, but RCA-Kodak, Sony, and Cheiron Tuner AB followed closely

Oneiric storage technology long predates the Alpha Centauri mission. Attempts to map the human brain’s unconscious activity persisted and failed for decades until Cobb took his father’s empire’s vast resources to the task. Efforts in deep mapping tried and succeeded, thanks to the ethically pragmatic free hand he dealt Dr. Aleigha Cohen and her invasive research teams. These questionable procedures were of course denounced by every free and scrupulous government, then their results were demanded to be sent to hawk-faced regulators of the same, then traded by deep-pocketed investors of other firms. But Struan maintained its preeminence in the field, pioneering the computer-assisted generation of potential images and sounds based on the active parts of the dreaming brain. While this yielded some perfunctory simulated footage of what the dreamer was experiencing, the field would not be fully developed until mankind arrived on Planet.

Early dream media created hazy, occasionally intricate, vistas that evoked deep post-wakening emotions but retained few details due to low info resolution

Early experimental hypnomedia were created, with sleepers subjected to hours of looped neuroelectrical stimulation corresponding to activity observed when conscious persons viewed a particular film or listened to a specific song. The goal was to insert recorded content into the dreamer’s unconscious- moving images, music, or even advertisements. Square-Ghibli went all of the way into a genre of “sleep games” that were to be played- upon waking, audiences reported hearing snatches of orchestral music but glimpsing nothing more than fields of menus of meaningless text and numbers. As with early oneiric storage, hypnomedia from this era amounted to little more than half-remembered stills and jumbled fragments of strange dreams. This art would not be revived until Encarta.

Morgan Neurological Cartographers were richly equipped with lavish insertion gear, claiming that suspending sleepers in weightless conditions allowed for deeper sleep and heightened experiences. Their Dreamer counterparts simply replied that stronger doses would achieve the same for half the price

Over the mission decades, the Dreamers of Chiron steadily increased their abilities, now able to more fully render the dreams in nearly all 23 senses of human perception. Breakthroughs towards understanding the Secrets of the Human Brain as well as Elemental Neurology allowed scientists deeper understanding of the very building blocks that made up human thought, not to mention later beat the path to Proto-Psionics. As the Dreamers were able to not only store and replay dreams, their abilities towards subconscious infiltration and exfiltration of dreamers made their faction a Probe powerhouse, despite their basketcase society. The partnership with the Morganites aimed to commercialize their discoveries and rehabilitate their public image.

The results for the latter were middling, but the former were spellbinding. Holographic cinema and virtual reality experiences still entailed costly, often bulky, electronic projectors and peripherals for experiencing the standard two-sense experiences. M/MI was still far from realized. So when Morgan DreamWorks beat dream-probes into slumber parties, entertainment would no longer be the same. For decades, the best of the Dreamers’ architects were busy concocting vivid mind palaces for the purposes of trapping subjects in elaborate scenarios where they could be made to divulge their secrets. Now, these unconscious labyrinths were turned into amusement parks that semi-lucid dreamers could explore at their leisure.

Sample generated open world MindMaze dreamscapes for sleep excursions. Many colonists asked simply for the power to walk freely upon Planet’s surface

Sleepers could now vicariously experience all manners of impossible pursuits. Unlike clunky electronic devices, MindMazes provided adventures that were pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. Those in dreams walked among dinosaurs, visited ancient palaces, fought wars in alien worlds, played cowboys and indians, whiterafted in lost rivers on Earth. They also attended parties with pharaohs and CEOs, saw performances by long-gone bards, fraternized with legendary beauties. Social experiences posed an exponentially further difficulty for designers to implement. In fact, most simply replicated stock flickers of animatronic personages in their MindMazes, assuming undiscerning sleepers would be unable to pierce the simulation.

Dreamer sense-sculptor Lilith Vermillion became renowned for her avant-garde abstract MindMaze scenarios, including Autodoc Arrhythmia and Via Damnatio

Repurposing canny thought-extractors and devious deep unconscious indoctrinators as recreation creators was an audacious plan, but the project was a hit from the initial financial quarter. Factions who had been opposed to the very existence of the Dreamers of Chiron for mission decades were suddenly demanding access to their products via ever-obliging Morganite resellers.

Even as Peacekeeper humanitarian watchdogs lamented that MindMazes were simply the civilian-sanitized version of the very labyrinths used to interrogate, torture, and even brainwash captives, their people asked for sweet dreams far away from the travails of day to day grim survival. Dreamers, many former probe staff and the like, grinned mischievously and dug deep into their expertise among the somnolent, crafted dazzling alien landscapes that required no breathing equipment, hid no nightmare mindworms, and audiences ate it up. While the leadership of many factions suspected inserted mental backdoors, covert neurolinguistic programming, and post-hypnotic trigger words, their citizens bought and traded dreams with or without state sanction.

Morgan marketeers’ official tagline for the first MindMaze, a fantasy quest set in a vast medieval castle replete with dragons and damsels in distress, was “The world is your oyster, choose a path.” But eventually, the slogan for the entire medium became “For the Memory of a Lifetime.”

While Struan’s architects insisted that their experiences were completely safe, Morgan Consumer Well-Being psych auditors discovered that select individuals were capable of slipping deep into MindMazes, being so immersed that their bodies would resist being awakened. Post-wakeup symptoms ranged from migraines to ego death. Known as “seeing the minotaur”, MindMaze Overstimulation Occurrences were deemed well within company psychosocial wellness standards by the board

But ultimately, each MindMaze required heavy amounts of engineering. Each dreamer would react uniquely to even the most popularly widespread labyrinth. The potential to trigger deeply personal and unpredictable reactions could prove detrimental to the psyches of the sleepers. Extensive testing and capturing potential edge cases added to the already considerable development time for the dream excursions. After the third generation of the recreational technology, it was becoming clear that MindMazes, while enthralling, were unable to scale well to mass audiences, becoming prohibitively expensive as designers had to account for all pitfalls, or risk catatonic consumers.

Sabre security leadership also grew increasingly irritated that assets were being pulled off of military matters to work on consumer products, though Cobb held the line for some time, insisting that improve the Dreamers’ economic offerings were of factional importance. Detractors suggested that he was merely looking to the Morganites to supply him with new varieties of violent delights to satiate his fixes, and trading away company secrets to do so.

The original MindMaze fantasy knowledge adventure received no less than a dozen remakes, remasters, and reimaginings throughout the thirty-odd mission years of the hypnomedium

Meanwhile, as gyroscopic sensors in consumer electronics improved, along with better miniaturized screen displays capable of nearly 4,000 pixels of horizontal display resolution, VR headsets saw great advances. As high field of vision and low latency became possible, traditional waking virtual experiences gradually rose in popularity again. Coupled with cost overruns of some ambitious failed titles from Morgan DreamWorks, and revelations on the potential long-term neurological downsides of persistent use, the MindMaze recreational medium fell out of favor to all but the most ardent Dreamer addicts. In its wake it left one of the most memorable forms of hypnomedia, still fondly remembered on limitless datalinks chat groups to this day.

Casting

Lilith Vermillion is portrayed by Grimes from the "Delete Forever" music video.

[Trenacker]

The Morganites fear what may not be purchased, for a trader cannot comprehend a thing that is priceless. - The Collected Sermons

In Alpha Centauri 2, it is possible to find or produce goods, which are bundles of equipment, usually tools and consumable supplies, useful for colonization, warfare, commerce, or research.

The Arctic Emergency Response Vehicle negotiated nitrate toadstools as faultlessly as it had snowbanks and was blessedly simple to repair. But crews that had sung their praises during lunar training soon had a firm change of heart. Neither the French Antarctic Survey nor United Nations mechanics bothered tearing out the heavy insulation, and their original operating parameters hadn't meant waste heat was a problem. Nobody realized the vehicles ran hot until they arrived on a world where the average planetary temperature ran 68°.

Emergency Supplies consist of shelf-stable rations, air tanks, rudimentary antibiotics, airtight shelters, and basic rescue gear. They are obtained by salvaging Unity wreckage or plundering enemy bases. Players can use them to make up nutrient shortfalls, convert outposts into friendly bases, and heal damaged infantry-class pieces. Emergency Supplies appear on the map as a loaded Scout Rover with stats of 1-1-3. Emergency Supplies are the most common spoils of early exploration and warfare. Factions prominent for their place on the bleeding edge of destruction--Gaia's Stepdaughters, the Human Tribe, and the Hunters of Chiron--all begin with Emergency Supplies.

The basic medicines stocked aboard Unity Landing Pods served well for acute emergencies, but most societies soon turned their eyes toward preventative and long-term care suitable for those with chronic conditions. The "auto-doctors" aboard Landing Pods were notorious for correctly diagnosing maladies that available treatments couldn't resolve.

Medical Supplies consist of complex pharmaceuticals and specialized diagnostic and surgical tools normally found in well-appointed settings, including surgical robots. Medical Supplies are occasionally awarded for successful salvage missions but can also be produced a hospital facility following discovery of Biostatics. Medical Supplies appear on the map as a Mobile Surgery with stats 0-0-2. The Surgery can be moved to a neutral or allied base for trade or conversion to a Dreaming Den. When garrisoned in a friendly base, the same unit will provide a morale buff for as long as it is present. Combined with a Probe Team, a Mobile Surgery can be used to implement a Nerve Staple policy at any friendly base. Both the Peacekeeping Forces and the Dreamers of Chiron begin with 1 Medical Supplies each--an expression of their very different philosophies regarding drugs and their benefits.

The discriminating merchant willing to risk his neck in a Tribal settlement could come away rich indeed. Lack of interested buyers spurred the Kellerites to sell cheap and buy dear. Those who returned from such ventures often recounted that the so-called cultists were congenial, if paranoid, and showed none of the propensity for anti-social and deviant behavior for which the sect was infamous.

Trade Goods are manufactured objects or consumables with explicitly commercial or recreational purposes. Examples of trade goods include hand tools, construction materials, computer terminals, entertainment software, cooking spices, and reading material. Trade Goods are built after discovers of the UNITY Workshops tech and appear on the map as a Crawler with stats 0-0-2. The Crawler can be moved to a neutral or allied base for sale. At a friendly base, the Crawler can be converted to production. The Dynamic Enterprise (Morgan Industries) begin with 2 Trade Goods, reflecting Morgan's careful preparations.

Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried declined to take conventional high-explosive or fragmentation grenades into the ship's armory. Instead, she obtained large quantities of stun, aerosol, smoke, and gas grenades for internal security missions, few of which found their way into the hands of the ship's defenders before Planetfall. Marsh took a small supply of incendiaries for big game management. In the bitterest of ironies, it seemed everyone but the U.N. Security Forces loyalists used grenades during the mutiny. Santiago, Keller, Cobb, Morgan--even van de Graaf--made arranges to get them aboard.

War Stores are weapons and ammunition in various grades. Hand weapons are frequently salvageable from Unity wreckage. Otherwise, War Stores are produced from arsenal facilities and their higher-tech descendants. War Stores can be used to upgrade existing military units, add a 50% defensive bonus to non-military units on base defense, or for trade purposes. War Stores appear on the tap as a Crawler with stats 0-0-2. The warlike societies begin with War Stores--Spartans with 3, and the Tribe, Hunters, and New Two Thousand with 1.

The interior of this inter-modal transport container has been converted into a materials laboratory. Cuttings of the polyp-like corcyra fruit, a parasitic growth that manifested on juvenile fungus, are being weighed prior to chemical analysis. As a food, corcyra triggered rapid and inevitably fatal proliferation of prions in humans, but objects smeared with the fruit's gritty residue were noticeably less interesting to Chironian wildlife. The Gaians named the fruit after a naiad that had once obsessed Poseidon and used it to move unmolested in the fungus.

Research Pods are self-contained datalinks libraries or modular science stations fully equipped to study the new world. Research Pods appear on the map as Network Nodes. Taken to a friendly base, they can be connected to a Network Node for a free Tech advance of the present tier. Taken to a neutral or allied base, they may be sold. The Human Ascendancy, Children of the Atom, and, of course, the University of Planet all begin with Research Pods representing their preferred "take" from Unity.

Sources:
First image, by Luca Pascal, is from the FZD School of Design gallery.

Second image is from The Expanse.

Third picture is from Bioware's Anthem.

Fourth picture is "Sci-fi Armory Workbench" by Gary Do on ArtStation.

Final image is "Intergalactic Research Pod" by Denis Osmanbegovich.

[Trenacker]

"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!” - A Christmas Carol, Datalinks

After entering through an exterior panel, a Unity Cargo Corps responder searches an electrical closet for sheltering survivors soon after the start of the Crisis.​

In the airless medium of space, the most minor error quickly compounded toward catastrophe. Spacers were a breed apart, Renaissance persons who combined the physical prowess of Olympians with encyclopedic knowledge honed through years of apprenticeship. Zero-gravity stevedore Lourenço Velisto was already fending off inquiries from United Nations mission selection chiefs when the offices of former American Reclamation Corporation CEO Oscar van de Graaf came calling with a better offer.

The standard professional journey of a spacer, be they pilot, navigator, miner, or stevedore, began in the water, where they learned to move and breathe by mechanical means. Mastery of neutral buoyancy physio-motive principles and emergency self-recovery techniques was only half the battle. Prohibitively high costs of entry limited space-going to true and quasi-governmental entities unwilling to chance their investments with sub-par recruits. Future astronauts had also to pass repeat psychological work-ups and complete physical engineering coursework at the post-graduate level. At the far end of the seven-year training pipeline, fewer than two in ten of the original intake were still in service. Three had died or become irreparable casualties.

Velisto and other members of Unity's Cargo Corps had a crucial part to play in the vision for colonization. Orbital platforms including weather and communications satellites, automated factories, and space telescopes, along with extra cargo desired by factors but marked "discretionary" by U.N. planners, was bolted to the generation ship's outer hull, where it would all be detached and prepped for re-entry by the Corps according to an orderly plan assembled by their loadmasters. To clear the miles-long stacks of cargo, even with the help of pod-mounted cargo booms, might take years depending on the success of planetside settlement. The Cargo Corps would have only a narrow window of a few days to send down the highest-priority containers before they, too, proceeded to the surface. The potential for a permanent human presence in Chiron's orbit rested on quickly restoring orbital launch capability. Van de Graaf made a close study of the Chiron Probe landing records, including sensitive portions accessed using ARC clearances he retained as a board member emeritus. Although Unity carried booster rockets that could turn Hoppers into trans-orbital shuttles, the future governor didn't like what he saw.

In addition to their primary role, the Cargo Corps members were Unity's high-risk rescue specialists. Along with other spacewalk-capable crew, they worked the disasters of collision and mutiny from the outside in, patching tears in the hull, securing cargo, cutting loose debris, and, most importantly, saving the lives of those who became trapped. It was not uncommon for crew to find themselves stranded by fire, debris, or enemy contact, at which point their training taught that they should wait for rescue, donning emergency breathing hoods if the ambient oxygen supplies dropped too low.

It was precisely their importance that made van de Graaf's interest in the Cargo Corps unusual. There was no incentive for his stakeholders to engage talent that the mainline mission would already provide to meet the collective needs of all colonists. By inserting his own picked hands into the Cargo Corps, van de Graaf could only be making ready to subvert the chain of command, a conclusion reached by the U.N. Intelligence Cell too late to matter. In return for billet and bounty that made her a full stakeholder in the American empressario's proprietary colony, Velisto pledged to move van de Graaf's cargoes out of order, giving preference to machinery and supplies, including unregistered weapons, that the Pilgrims wanted immediately.

Buying Velisto's complicity took some doing: she already had a guaranteed cryobed without the hassle of political obligation. Van de Graaf bought her loyalty with golden parachutes for those she left behind. Civil war had scoured Australia no less badly than Canada, Mexico, and the United States. She had been the breadwinner for disabled parents and a younger sister without bright educational prospects. (Young Lourenço had been afforded her own opportunities by a government program for gifted youth.) Half the considerable bonus paid by van de Graaf provided lifetime home care and school tuition to make her loved ones considerably more comfortable in her absence.

Lourenço Velisto's final fate was emblematic of those who fit only awkwardly into a brute survival scenario. Earlier heroics availed her nothing on the ground. She could not practice, let alone keep sharp, the skills that had earned her a place on Chiron. Van de Graaf honored her stake, and she kept a modest homestead converted from an empty cargo box, subsiding on the dividends paid out from the colony's revenue base and taking two husbands. Still, her contribution was limited. The Pilgrims needed neither an astronaut nor a deep ocean diver. What they did want were firefighters. Velisto became a senior officer in Terra Nova Emergency Operations, a position she found not to her liking. Stakeholders put enormous pressure on the service to give preference to their interests over those of drones, while Velisto's subordinates insisted upon the proudly egalitarian attitudes familiar to their new profession. Most calls were for torn bubbletents or "machine crushes," hardly the fast-moving crises by which she had been forged.

Sources:
Image by Vadim Sadovski on 4KWallpapers.com.

The Pilgrim headquarters of Terra Nova is named after the eponymous settlement in the eponymous Fox television show of just one season (2011).

[Trenacker]

Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different? - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

War was a commonplace of the twenty-first century. Nations dueled with their neighbors over resources, with their ideological rivals over influence, and, more and more, with themselves over the future of political and social affairs. Targeting a younger age cohort, the U.N. reduced the number of years of service eligibility behind each applicant, but a war-torn world produced warriors more often than not. The United Nations tried, and failed, to deny this legacy in their recruitment scheme for the Mission to Alpha Centauri.

When it first set out to select colonists and crew for the great expedition, Mission Command seized on the principle that there should be fewer veterans than mere statistics would yield from a representative sample of the global population. This thinking was received favorably by the Security Council. All involved reasoned that strong feelings of national allegiance might fuel mutiny. Donor nations suspected of wanting to lard the passenger manifest with their own partisans knew others might be doing the same in response. Too, common sense dictated that the aggressive mindset inculcated through military training everywhere could be an unstable--if not a completely unnecessary--element to introduce to living environments that would put colonists in extremely close quarters under predictably high stress. Best to raise guardrails. Records of life in the lunar training camps didn't support continuing pessimism on this last count, but as in so many other settings, unjustified bias proved easy to enforce.

Implementing a policy of exclusion was morally questionable. Secondments from member states' armed forces already protected and trained mission staff. Rumor had it that the prize for this blood sacrifice would be guaranteed passage to the new paradise. Instead, Mission Command found reasons to systematically shunt veterans and uniformed personnel into roles that would allow them to contribute to the mission without leading inevitably to eligibility for inclusion among the crew. As instructors, controllers, and evaluators, "the martial set," as Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried described them, went "tall," not "long" on the knowledge, skills, and abilities demanded of "full stakes."

But, of course, soldier and explorer had historically been synonymous. Fighters were the ultimate survivors. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had been a joint civil-military venture led by the commissioned officers. Two centuries later, space programs were still more or less wholly-owned subsidiaries of uniformed services that drew their astronauts from Air Forces. As a practical matter, there were a large number of skill sets, such as pertained to deep-sea exploration, that could be accessed only through service in a military or paramilitary organization, national or corporate. Certain mitigations were therefore put into practice.

If there was no alternative a veteran, the U.N. wanted those least transformed by the martial experience. Psych screenings for current and former service members ran twice the standard length, increasing program washout rates by seven percent. The increased incidence of inter-state war had led to explosive growth in national military spending, but many countries had nonetheless relaxed their draft schemes to recognize civil contribution as a form of national service running parallel to shorter stints in their armed forces. The U.N. demonstrated a consistent preference for those who had not been to war, followed by those long out of uniform. Unity's captain and chief engineer fit the former description; its executive officer, the latter.

Certain complete exceptions did apply. U.N. Security Forces members had, on average, three years of service behind them, often in combat or domestic policing roles, a legacy that Morgan Emergency Services tried to suppress by retraining them according to a curriculum that stressed delayed confrontation. (In an act of massive cognitive dissonance, anyone who fought in the vicious battles for the Space Elevators--when the U.N. abandoned any pretense of reliance on less-lethal methods--was immediately deemed unfit for mission accession.)

Donors enthusiasm for the U.N.'s pacifism waxed and waned over time. When they able to drive bargains favorable to themselves, donor nations unenthusiastic about the Alpha Centauri project but seeking to bank favors with the U.N. foisted their military hardship cases on the mission. Thus the appointment of disgraced Contre-amiral Raoul André-St. Germaine. Some went further, practically emptying their punishment stockades. Assignment to Unity was sometimes the reward for a brilliant career; at others times, a sentence of exile.

There was disparity of access to military expertise among the survivors. The U.N. Marine Corps mostly rallied under its original commander, Canadian General Marcel Salan, and constituted an island unto itself. Any Marine survivors not serving Salan threw in either with Commissioner Pravin Lal, who claimed to have inherited the mantle of mission command from Garland via d'Almeida, or Commander Kleisel Mercator, who likewise established something resembling a military command from loyalist remnants. The New State, too, was practically a self-contained navy pledging personal allegiance to its French leader. Both the Human Tribe and Spartan Confederation were armed camps, and their members veterans almost to a one, though they had done their fighting by and large as auxiliaries and lacked even the whiff of a service-driven identity.

The wealth-driven factions had planned ahead. Morgan, Cobb, and van de Graaf had brought paid men. The former's, provided by one of his own companies, Morgan Safe-Haven, were well-regarded until Planetfall, then turned out to have little stomach for earning pay they couldn't spend. Struan's Sabre Company killers discovered similar misgivings. Van de Graaf's American Reclamation Corporation volunteers liked their arrangement better (they received land rather than pay), but the telling part of the calculation was probably that, unlike the Morganite or Struan's mercenaries, they hadn't expected to return to Earth soon after arrival.

Druze triggerman Kadal Jumblatt commanded the small detail of Morganite private military contractors responsible for the CEO. Power quality issues with his Soviet surplus cryobed led to an ischemic stroke during cryosleep, resulting in total loss of vision in his left eye and loss of fine motor skills in his (dominant) left arm and hand. Morgan had taken Syrian money to make something of allied militias, a plan that went to naught. Jumblatt's chief recommendation, he later said, was that "he survived the complete pig's breakfast we made of things, telling me there was something of the grit there I expected from all my subordinates." Thinking that Jumblatt would be a fine addition to his staff pour encourager les autres, Morgan placed him on a stipend and bundled him off to fight the Cartels in Mexico. Jumblatt convinced the company to buy him a platoon of four tanks and leveled the mansion of a local drug kingpin in Puerto Vallarta, setting the stage for repeat performances throughout Jalisco State. Jumblatt passed on the lucrative contracts for service in the United States, recognizing that Morganite clients couldn't hope to win. During the Unity Crisis, he showed the same sound judgement, hustling his boss forward and away from the Spartans, creating the circumstances that led to Morgan's installation on the bridge. Jumblatt stayed with his men, reuniting with Morgan planetside.

The Sabre Corporation had tested themselves against no less a formidable foe than the Soviet Union. The Pahlavi Dynasty owed its continued residence on the Peacock Throne to Struan's premier service. In 2052, top Struan's paramilitary officer Aluel Gatdet, a Darfuri veteran of the South Sudan People's Defense Forces, coordinated the Imperial Guard's crack defense of the Niavarav Complex against an assault by Soviet Alpha Group and Communist Party of Iran fighters hoping to repeat the successes of a century earlier in Afghanistan and a decade earlier in Iraq. Under Gatdet's personal leadership, the palace defenders held out long enough for Iranian Imperial Army units to arrive.  Gatdet was present with Cobb aboard Unity and helped him wrest control of the Corrections Bay from its stunned constables but did not turn up amongst the survivors huddled at White Rabbit's Refuge. Her subordinates were glad to be rid of such a bloodthirsty fighter, though they were reduced by her absence to sporadic banditry rather than the set-piece fights for which they had once been renowned.

Sources:
I don't know the provenance of the first picture. I found it on Tumblr. It appears to be related to the video game Star Citizen.

Second picture is from the Fragments of a Hologram Dystopia page. Couldn't find the artist's name.

[MysticWind]

Command Tech: Academic Hypnopædia

Quick to bed and slow to rise is what it takes to win the prize. your demise - MorganDreams SleepSage advertisement, vandalized

The concept of sleep learning dates to the early twentieth century. From the Psycho-Phone wax cylinder phonograph of Alois Benjamin Saliger to the Oprah’s Slumber Book Club data cassette series from Harpo Worldwide, merchants practiced amateur medicine by promising the benefits of unconscious learning. Late hour advids hawked the limitless advantages of putting the mind at rest to work- becoming polyglots literally overnight, burning belly fat while losing weight, unlocking mystic secrets of the third eye, quitting addictive vices and bad habits, transforming into a strong, confident woman. In their wake all that was left were groggy half-sleepers, overstimulated insomniacs, and emptied wallets.

On Planet, hypnopædia received renewed attention as Morganite product managers plumbed the depths of their partners’ research efforts for material that could be monetized and not sent before the atrocity tribunals at U.N. Court of Justice. As it happened, Cobb and Cohen had experimented with sleep training as a last-ditch effort to improve compliance among their enslaved toilers. In typical Dreamer fashion, this entailed subjecting defiant or idle workers to high doses of Somnacin followed by barrages of elaborate dreamscapes and terrifying nightmares. These surreal traumas were ultimately intended to convey what amounted to quite straightforward moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and Struan’s leadership. In practice, early sleep training were little more than overwrought passion plays that turned the slaves into mentally scarred husks haunted by demonic visions of their Factor and Doctor dancing in their heads, creating further production setbacks.

Braving potential public relation meltdowns and their own sanity as they poured over the archival footage, Dynamic Enterprise executives bade the Dreamers to dust off sleep-learning for far more salutary ends. Project Algernon built upon prior efforts by cycling a whole carousel of different sensory inputs and knowledge types, ranging from speeder maintenance vids to Planetary geography lectures to live lessons in Beanemetrical analysis of Chironian rules football. Sleeping subjects, largely recruited from the ranks of Dreamers, were also graced with physical movement dream routines teaching them yoga, dance, pilates, and in one batch administered by a promethean Morganite account manager, United Nations Special Operations Coalition hand-to-hand martial arts specifically for dispatching armed opponents. (While the young idealist was publicly sacked following the Xanadu slave riots, internally Morgan Industries fast-tracked her for business intelligence management among the probes.)

Martial arts for both sports competition and military applications were popular hypnopædiac curricula. Sleepers were unlikely to advance dan grades upon awakening, but studies did show improvements to form and retention of katas

The results were a mixed bag. Just as on Earth, sleep-teaching did not produce overnight geniuses with IQ levels overflowing. Hypnopædiac learners were unable to grasp new concepts wholly. But they did show marked speeds at acquiring knowledge during the day, almost as if the deep structures of the mind were primed by the sleep lessons. Hive Drones who had difficulty with arithmetic were able to understand Euclid’s Elements after first being exposed to nightly geometric sessions. Gaian Talents who had never lifted a finger in anger were able to near-instinctively snap to krav maga stances and counterstrike opponents when forced into the fighting ring. While actual information conveyed in the dreams was often lost in the limbo between dream and waking life, this capacity to rapidly train novices meant that Centauri hypnopædia was a winner.

The specifics as to how unconscious sleep-learning was still being sussed out during this stage. But two guiding principles were discovered: 1) along with quicker learning acquisition, the greatest boon that hypnopædia provided was in aiding memory retention, and 2) as with other forms of dreaming, the lessons that stimulated the strongest emotions made the greatest of impressions. At the time, it was discovered that physical sleep-education did not necessarily provide deep kinesthetic learning. Insteads, dreams of the sleeper floating in vivid dojos while fighting grizzled senseis as heroic electronic music blared left lasting emotive footprints that could be remembered for weeks after. So when asked to fight once more, the pupil who had dreamt were much more emotionally ready for combat, their body already unlocked and ready to learn the actual movements. This meant that for more physical learnings, the technology was of limited aid to brawny factions such as the Spartans or the Hunters, but it was helpful in more sedentary societies.

Juvenile info bubbles were but one of many ways the Provost sought to maximize his population’s precocity. Hypnopædia went further, allowing University youths to learn without sensory distractions for at least fifteen hours a day

Few factions embraced hypnopædia as totally as did the University of Planet. And yet, it was an experience not simply borne out of top-down mandate. By initial tepid interest, next dismissal, then enthusiastic embracing, and finally strict regulation by the governing authorities. By fear, then ambivalence, and finally widespread adoption even to the point of punishment for flouting proscriptions by the faction masses.

This society-wide journey started, of course, in a Morganite boardroom. From the early stages of Project Algernon, need-seeking employees envisioned a pipe dream of turning the University into an economic vassal by selling them unlimited uninterrupted learning. While some militaristic factions wanted super-soldiers, Zakharov wanted super-scientists- the Dynamic Enterprise-Dreamers of Chiron partnership would sell them those tools, and accept compensation in research data whenever the eggheads could not pay. Taking notes on how Dreamers fostered dependence on their lotus eaters, Morganite executives saw future innovative business models, and that the University would be a good trial run.

But the Academician was no fool to patent brain medicine. The Dreamers had sold nootropics to the University before, and that experience had bore no remarkable results. Somnacin derivatives were too unreliable to act as learning drugs, and had the bad side effect of psychosis. Even beyond them, there was no shortage of snake salesmen who had promised IQ boosting abilities for generations with gizmos claiming to stimulate the brain’s electrical waves or cybernetic interfaces that would eliminate right-brained irrationality in favor of the objective left-brain. So he asked politely for the research data while looking bored and uninterested as he was accosted by sunny grinning Morganite sales reps and their sinisterly smiling Dreamer counterparts. The consortium responded by promising clinical trials at Schrodinger’s Dome itself. Zakharov agreed to donate the minds of several expendables- failing undergraduates, single-degree drone laborers, first year TA’s, for science, and they were strapped in to learn quantum engineering and hypermathematics as they slept. The results were, as mentioned prior, salutary but far from revolutionary. Test subjects were able to pick up on new concepts afterwards with some speed, but they had to be taught it all again a second time, upon waking.

It proved Huxley’s banality- You can’t learn a science unless you know what it’s all about. And it reinforced Zakharov’s skepticism in finding quick fixes for education. When Richard Feynman visited Brazil in the third-quarter twentieth century, he discovered that the academic sciences were saturated with rote memorization without real application of knowledge. Physics students knew the meaning of Brewster’s Angle, and had no idea of how it related to light reflecting off of water. The definition of triboluminescence was taught, but not how its effects could be witnessed by simply crushing household sugar in a dark room. In the academician’s view, hypnopædia acted the same way. It was a simple memory aid that could not provide the context that a fully conscious, thinking mind needed to understand the natural world. Sleep-learning could convey knowledge, perhaps, but the hard work, the real work, must be undertaken by the conscious student. No philosopher’s stone could grant that.

University Enforcement recruits received the equivalent of other factions’ officer-level training. They were expected to hold at least one postgraduate degree, commonly in astrophysics or aeronautical engineering

Despite this dismissal, Zakharov humored pro-hypnopædia regents when they proposed adopting the tech in pilot programs for auxiliary personnel. At-risk students and future drone laborers or military troops they were seemingly destined to become were admitted to hypnopædiac training programs. This time, curricula emphasized practicalities, namely those remedial students were flunking in, and vocational training for the latter. As a bonus, the consortium threw in a package of sleep-learning materials in the University core subjects- astronomy, chemistry, electronics, geology, biology, mathematics, and the emperor of sciences, physics. On a lark, some administrators gave those lessons to their sleepers.

For a time, everyone was marginally happy. University auditors noted that the new batch of drones created efficiency improvements in the life systems, thanks to their improved training. Scout patrols had slightly increased survivability rates owing to faster recall of environmental dangers within Planet’s erratic terrain. The Morganites and Dreamers received a modest payoff, even if it was far from the fever dreams of the project’s expectations. And then a simple janitor at Monitoring Station passed the five-day entrance exams and was admitted to the main college at University Base.

The case caused a stir that reverberated across the entire faction. The former test subject had been given a bevy of core subject dreams during the experiment, then dumped unceremoniously back in his former role after he failed to meet expectations with his main course- central heating engineering. But somehow the sleep book learning had taken. Accusations of cheating were raised, then debunked. Then claims appeared that the hypnopædia regimen had unfairly drawn from exam material- taught the test. New variations of the tests were devised, and the drone passed them too. Indeed, Project Algernon seemed to have seriously worked at accelerating knowledge acquisition. The tech was a success.

Hypnopædia enabled Chiron Cartel and Global Energy Exchange fintechs to digest and regurgitate volumes of trading information without glancing at their Morgan Bloombergs. Ascendancy genesculptors could remember reams of genetic data after dreaming of dancing sequences the night before, allowing their wetwork to continue quicker without the aid of genecomps. Not since the Children of the Atom's powerful Mneumonic Techniques had such powerful memory techniques been discovered. Now, the hyper-assisted learning abilities would soon sweep the University for a spell, leaving unexpected consequences in its wake. This would drive the creation of a new form of hypnopædia - one aimed at building the soul, rather than the mind.

Notes:

The concept of hypnopaedia was popularized in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Hypnopaedia exists as a research technology for expediting Scientist training in Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. (Research tree)

The anecdote about the Brazilian science education system is from Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

The “core subjects” of the University are the research categories from Alien Legacy (see manual pg 34)