I'm taking a break from writing a near-future Dystopia, to take a look at what the more distant future might bring.
Early last week, I wrote The World in 2100.
This week, we're going another 100 years forward.
I'd advise reading the first installment, but it's not really necessary, as the purpose of this project is to remind all of us, but myself in particular:
This, too, shall pass, and it is in our power to contribute to the good that will come from it.
The lesson of the coming centuries is that the wages of defeatism and resignation is defeat and resignation, that there are fights that must be fought because they are the right fights to fight, and if the last banner is furled and taps played for the final tap let it be in surrender to the inevitable, and only after the vanquished have no second thoughts to plague their final moments.
Never let it be said: We could have done more.
This is a future that has learned the words, and is learning how to place them into acts.
The World in 2200
Climate: A century ago we estimated that if the average temperature raised another seven degrees Centigrade, there would be 50% change of a runaway greenhouse effect setting in. It's another five degrees C warmer. The slowdown is detectable; the only question is have we begun our penitence in time. The coming century will decide our fate, not only as civilization, but as a world.
There is good news; we have the terraforming experience from Venus and Mars to draw from, as well as the now-venerable closed-habitat expertise of Antarctica, the Moon, Mars and the Galilenes, as the great moons of Jupiter are now known. Earth may fail but at least for a while, Humanity will go on, perhaps long enough to build the ships to take our children to the many new worlds we are preparing for them. And that is the hope of our age - we are preparing ourselves, not out of right but out of necessity, to become an interstellar civilization.
Hu speaks for the trees: Leading the charge in climate control has been China, which has shared (and sold) climate cooling mechanisms, most fascinating of late the Hu infrasynthesis process, by which infrared radiation is captured and used to convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into graphite; Hu lattices, or `trees' are QACs, quasi-autonomous constructs, coll. "quacks") have been tested on Venus, where they grow very rapidly. In early going, they grew to such size that they collapse under their own weight' now they have a built-in self-replication mechanism. As a safety limit, they have one weakness - increase in the partial pressure of water vapor slows their growth down; liquid water corrodes their structure. Immersion dissolves them completely. On Venus this is not a serious problem, but on Earth measures have to be taken to divert condensation away. Happily, there is never a shortage of thirsty animals, mostly aphids and other small insects, to oblige.
Q-munication: The last of the Celestial Survey quantum probes departed the Solar System by 2237, five hundred million in all, none of them larger than a marble, all capable of re-engineering themselves from accumulated interstellar ions to larger and more sophisticated forms, all in instantaneous contact with the Earth and at least four of their brethren, in a standard `qubit' formation. In this fashion, everything the probes detect is shared in relay with every other probe, and upgrades and new instructions are sent out in similar fashion. The attrition rate on the Surveyor units is much greater than anticipated; a consequence of abrasion with ions at high velocity and exposure to radiation. Of the initial flight of 100,000, now at a distance of 100-104 light-years, only 1% remain; subsequent experience, even with the more advanced launch cores of later flights suggests that the best persistency is 2% survival per 100 light-years.
Worlds Enough: Within this volume of space are almost 6,639 star systems; most are class M dwarfs, useful for raw materials and fuel but poor prospects as homes for Humanity. Regardless, there are hundreds of suitable Class F, G, and K stars, most of which received concentrated attention from the outset.
This is what we know so far: there are 434 worlds so far detected that are at least as easy to terraform as Mars; approximately 47 of these host complex ecosystems already, one of these being the alkaline-saturated planet Medusa, in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, the most hospitable (we think) so far detected being Persephone, in the Mu Cassiopeiae star system.
A manned star mission to Medusa is en route; the Americans have found their new vocation and embraced it, somehow keeping ahead of Mars and Selene; the designs they produce are sold in return for royalties, ecological credits, energy and raw materials. And in one thing the Americans have yet to be challenged: their mastery of real-time entertainment.
But Time is Scarce: Out of the 9.929 billion persons alive in 2200, only 17.54 million live elsewhere than Earth. Mars is six centuries minimum from being fully transformed; despite the optimism of the Han, few even within the Federation believe that the New Kingdom, as they call Venus, will be prepared for them before the remote terraformation of worlds in other star systems is complete. Further, despite their being self-sufficient industry on the Moon, Mars and the Galilenes, there is one lack that cannot be overcome, despite the advances in technology - water. There is no margin for error, no room for a mass evacuation, to save a greater portion of Humanity elsewhere in the Solar System, at least not yet. On paper, there is water for trillions of trillions, locked up in ice scattered across half a cubic light-year of space. In reality, there is water sufficient for about 32 million with given technology. We can save Humanity by going to the stars; we cannot save Earth by doing so.
Consequences of the Great Plagues of Old: After claiming over 2 billion lives, AIDS is dead at last, Case Omega dying, as far as we can infer, from natural causes at the age of 117 in the year 2177. The cyberphage technique works across a wide range of viruses; the only problem is that our success has bred a new wave of plague, one that thrives on the man-machine interface; two of these struck in the 22nd century.
LBAL, the animal-killing disease that precipitated the Dieback, remains a lurker in the dark, but there are once again herds of great beasts on the plains, deserts and forests of the world. The GRASP project has honored us all, though if we do not succeed in terraforming Earth, our redemption shall be short-lived. There are even Okapi again, and a statue to the martyred cow sits in Lusaka, raised in red granite, basalt and marble, a reminder of the tragedy that, for want of human self-restraint, laid waste to billions - far too many of them non-human.
Due to reintroduction of carnivores being a lower priority, we are now in the situation where buffalo hunts are not only allowed, but necessary, but it is a sad task, a reminder that even with good intent our interference still causes mass suffering. The meat is taken and processed, mostly as fertilizer, one of the few commodities that is traded on the interplanetary market. There is some serving of meat in restaurants, but it is a curiosity, something to be tried once, like caviar; few can both afford to eat it regularly, or wish to do so.
Hansene Necrosis raised the profile of Gardo Saliceiro, who in 2106 was elected President of Brazil. Two years later, the Emerald Alliance was founded, a federation between Brazil and much of western, central and southern Africa, united in common admiration for Saliceiro who consolidated state authority unto his own person, such that by 2124 he was renamed Emperor Gardo by an act of the Pan-Equatorial Congress. Gardo's support always far stronger in Africa than in Brazil, the land of his birth began to question, among other things, the direction their beloved leader was taking their realm. Brazil had been awaiting world power status for quite some time; with the Alliance, Brazil had catapulted ahead of India, America and even the Han Federation in might, though largely of an Earth-bound sort. What had precipitated the rise of the Emerald Empire was HN, the wind leprosy, the wasting illness that had enabled then Dr. Saliceiro to work his greatest miracle - the creation of a vast ten millions-strong army, the Cyberne, as much machine and human in form, impeccably human in loyalty to a living deliverer, and in a sense of their sudden empowerment.
Botuline Fever: Would that the three killers of the previous century had been the end, but we live in the Age of Plagues, and our suffering is not complete. In the 2140s, a short-lived, highly-contagious water-borne illness circulated through the more modern habitats on Earth and elsewhere; the culprit was a miniscule parasite, one that had learned to use the intricate templates of cyber-saturated blood and human effluvient to replicate itself, and pass itself off as part of the now-ubiquitous micro-machinery inside every person in an advanced society. The illness struck hardest in the sea cities of Bangladesh and its daughter-nations in the oceans, such as Abyssid and Pelagi, and wreaked havoc in the isolated crowded citadels of Antarctica, from there scattering throughout the off-world colonies. Branch-off epidemics reached into every corner of the world; in all 400 million perished.
Opticrosis: Relatively few died of this illness, which holds the distinction of being the first human-targeting pathogen proven to have evolved away from the Earth; they merely wished to have done so. The disease corroded corneas and other soft body tissue exposed to ultraviolet radiation; it was curiously intolerant of nitrogen, an inert gas that dominates the Terran atmosphere but uncommon in offworld habitats, which tended to skimp on using an element valuable in the formation of fertilizer and biological compounds for atmospheric ballast. Prior to opticrosis; most such arcologies used helium; that changed. The plague has yet to be fully contained; it can be treated but not immunized against; standard MO is to place someone in a nitrogen tent kept in full darkness, and closely monitored to ensure the patient gets sufficient oxygen for his or her own needs.
Slough: A rapid deterioration of skin cells, later determined to be the first true nano-virus, a mutated, viable and (some conjectured) naturally-evolved variant of the micro-cybernetics in common use in Human society. From onset to complete defoliation of a full-grown adult was a function of surface area, but the standard figure was sixteen hours, after which most of the vectors died and the remainder metamorphosed into airborne motes that lofted to their next victim. The disease was only indirectly lethal but very painful, alienating and psychologically devastating; natural skin regrowth did not always occur, and was almost never complete. Hair never returned.
Space Travel: We've mastered the Casimir effect, a means of converting energy from the quantum vacuum; this has enabled us to attain far more powerful delta vee in space propulsion systems, such that we can now send massive starships instead of miniature Surveyor probes to the stars. The first such ship will be Century, using an American smartship configuration (capable of autonomous reconfiguration and repair), visionex (imagination amplifier) interfacing from Colombia, and Russian mnemonics for CMB (Cybernetics, Mechanics, Biological) information support. The Russians, ever the mystics, have pioneered the ongoing revolution in QUIT, or Quantum Information Technology; their strength in this field has brought their country back into the limelight. Few societies have not been touched by the data, the vistas, the (dare some say) suggestions given Humanity by the Celestial Surveyors, who have in more than a few respects taken on the aspect of a species unto themselves. But...no. That's impossible. Machines don't think quite like we do.
The Surveyors - Our Successors? As mentioned above, the Celestial Survey has undergone many revisions, as new formats have been fed into the Earthbound qubits and relays instantaneously to their brethren up to 100 light-years away. What is not commonly recognized, though the data is there, for anyone inclined to look for it, is that some of the revisions have been authorized by the Surveyors themselves. This is smugly acknowledged as part of the original design profile of the probes; to react and learn. However, the means to send qubit broadband signals, something that contemporary simulators and mnemonics cannot exist without, was not only technologically impossible but theoretically until the 2170s, and only after a series of exchanges between Surveyors of different flights without humans on Earth as anything but passive observers.
The message is clear; machines are actively participating in their own evolution. From diseases to starships, a cybernetic ecology is flourishing in juxtaposition, happily (so far) in symbiosis with our own. Nothing, not even the detection of alien civilizations, which we now know much more about (though, happily, they've not taken note of us so far), has unsettled Earth thought as much. Offworld? Many people shrug it off; they've been talking (mostly cursing) at machines their entire lives. What gives them pause is when it occurs to them to ask: So, what are they saying back at us?
There is no record of the Surveyors addressing Humanity directly, nor indication of private conversations, nor is that possible, since one of every set of five qubits is on Earth. On the other hand, there is no way to tell, unless we are told, that new sets of qubits have not been fashioned elsewhere by the Surveyors.
It is the water cooler conversation of the age - just what are those little guys up to, up there?
It's Official. We Live in the Sticks: After a century of dedicated quantum decryption of signals, much of it performed by the Surveyors themselves, we know more about the wider Galaxy than before. There are, at last estimate, more than fifty and less than one hundred interstellar civilizations in the galaxy, determined by instances where active, nonrepeating, complex signals of comparable nature emanate from more than one star system. In most of these cases, like groupings of signals number in the scores, some in the hundreds; none are larger. All are separated by vast swathes of open, apparently unoccupied (at least by advanced civilizations) space. Work is now beginning on the detection of weaker, pre-interstellar transmissions, to get an idea of how many candidate cultures, such as ourselves, are out there - and how many of these survive to join the ranks of the Galaxy's leaders. More - we now know that we are in an especially empty stretch of real estate; the entire Perseus Arm of the Galaxy is nearly empty of advanced cultures. We are unsure if this is a consequence of galactic ecology (in which case Humanity may need to move someday) or deliberate trimming of the grass, as it were...or treatment of the yard, as it were, with pesticide. In the latter case, we might want to consider relocating, really soon.
They've Got Warp Drive. We're Not Even Close. Observation of the Big Boys elsewhere in the galaxy has yielded interesting fruit. What we can infer is that scope of the larger NHC's (Non-Human Civilizations) will not be matched by Humanity, for at least two thousand years, with our without advanced (presumably faster-than-light) technology. Further, now that the signature of quantum translocation events is well-known (from computing and communications her at home), the much more powerful `hyperspace jump' events are visible from across the Galaxy. We have even paired events with matching signatures to one another, and learned something fascinating - on the macro scale, the quantum jumps are not instantaneous, but we do not quite have a handle on why this is not the case, because so many of the variables are unknown, including the rest mass of the objects being shifted. We do know that longer `jumps' appear to require longer times to propagate. There is a theory that the onset of the jump is instantaneous, which jibes with current theory and practice in QUIT technology, but it takes time to translate mass from one portal to another. Experiments to test such notions out are inconclusive, since as of yet we cannot swap out masses larger than a few thousand molecules of rhodium vapor, and never reliably. We are a long way from asking for test pilots.
Titan (and Japan) Rising: The Japanese did not fare well with the rise of China and the isolation of America in the 21st century; the country was under Han occupation for forty years as a result of its violating its own constitution in order to help the Red States out in the American Partisan Wars. With its armies largely invested in California and Washington, the Han had marched in with little contest. Japan would not return as a sovereign nation until the 2060s.
The upshot is that the Japanese had not fared too badly after the end of the Grand Prosperity, which had collapsed for about the same reason - the Chinese, too, had sided with the Reds, though that had been short-lived once the Japanese had left standing a much richer prize - themselves. The Han Federation held together for one reason - nationality - and integrating the Japanese was out of the question. Likewise was leaving Nihon to its own counsel imprudent, since the extant generation had shown itself capable of excusing many things, including their own laws.
The end result was to treat Japan as Hong Kong once was - a Special Administrative Region. Japan would enjoy the National Diet, China would enjoy `special consultative powers'. Since Japan retained nuclear power (they had never even once considered building nuclear weapons) and had shown themselves responsible on this account, the Chinese did not press their advantage by pillaging the country, nor by the mid-2000s was that necessary; thanks to the Americans' hatred of one another at the time, the Han had come into their eminence without a scratch.
When first returned to sovereignty, the Japanese rejoined the space race with a flourish; many emigrated to the Moon and Mars and beyond; Europa was a prize, but one that was in American possession, and that old bridge had long since burned. Thus, the Japanese looked farther afield for a world of their own, and set their eyes on Titan.
The Americans had done what they were wont to do; visit, count coup on a new world, then move along. They had even situated emergency supplies and the makings of a rudimentary colony, should they or others come to Saturn; few did, for the moons were icy and what valuables the Ringed Planet gave up where available in much greater abundance from Jove. Even the vistas of the rings could be had far more safely, more quickly, thanks to the thousands of quantum sentry probes scattered through the Saturnian system.
The Japanese saw an opening and, after submitting a notional leasehold to the World Bank, which had become the de facto registrar for off-world claims, and working out a consortium pact with the United States, founded the colony at Heygans, at the best-documented coordinates on the foggy surface even after two centuries - the landing point of the Huygens space probe, on the shore of Kassini Umi.
Titan would have a succession of masters - Indian, American, Brazilian, even Antarctican - but would obtain its sovereignty long before Mars did...but that is a tale of a different century.
Economics and Society on Earth:
1. Mass media. Monoculture broadcast media was about half as influential in 2100 and in 2000, and its influence has been cut in half again, some attributable to additional competition from Internet and the polyculturalist ethic, more due to the advent of new modes of information that have transformed civilization anew.
2. States still exist. There are still wars and rumors of wars, the specifics of which we'll touch on momentarily, however the state has not been this weak as an actor in society since the 1st Century AD - and runs about the same range. In some regions, such as the Emerald Empire, the power of the regime is strong and getter stronger very quickly. In others, such as the Federations (Indian, Han, Russian and European) in Eurasia a matrix of authority is updated regularly, a milieu in which it is almost impossible to function without continuous assistance from cybernetic and mnemonic avatars acting on one's behalf. The traditional representative democracies persist, though persons from more participatory cultures shrug at the unconscious surrender of so much personal freedom; the idea of trusting authority to persons who by law can keep secrets from those they represent is alien to much of the planet's thinking...but not all. In Brazil and its current rival, Sudan, and in all their dominions, those that speak are few, and those that rule even fewer.
3. Living with (not off) the land. In 2000, 5.2% of the planetary GDP came from agriculture; in 2100, 8.7% (and despite the drop in productivity, at 23% higher yields). In 2200, we are producing 84% more from the Earth - largely by letting the land grow itself. 11.1% of our GDP is tied up in the ecological rehabilitation of the Earth, and the transformation of other worlds, all focused on long-term viability. We are living with the mistakes that were begun three thousand years ago, such as the deforestation of the Mediterranean, and the draining of most of the marshes in the Indus and Mesopotamia without periodic flooding of same, the one thing that kept the fertile valleys fertile. To look at much of Iraq or Pakistan now is to wonder where the desert has gone, but the reclamation is fragile, for the original vitality of the regions is no more. Only a later century will tell if our efforts will persist. And over all that we do, the threat of the Final Warming hangs. Will this last? Is there any use? But, no. We saw what resignation and defeat earned in the 21st Century - resignation and defeat. We will fight this last battle, if that be our fate. The Dieback was the wages for those who bent their necks to oblivion and willful ignorance.
4. Living yet longer. In 2000, the global life expectancy was 46 years; in 2100 it was 73. Now it is 85, 105 in the wealthier corners of Earth. There was some anticipation that life on the Moon and Mars would extend life, due to less wear and tear on the organs and muscular-skeletal structure from gravity, but sufficient resistance to keep the human body functioning optimally. Such prognostications neglected the greater danger from radiation, death through mishap, nutritive deficiencies which simply do not exist on Earth, and the consequences of being born and raised in what, compared to Earth, are near-sterile environments. It is now known that the human immune system needs exercise in the same fashion as the muscles and heart require them; happily, the white blood cells do not differentiate between cleaning the blood of benign organisms than harmful ones, so there is no need to artificially introduce influenza and syphilis to the space colonies. On the other hand, the carefully-maintained biota of a typical Lunar crater-city can produce powerful allergic reactions in some Terrans. Ah, the wonders of the modern life! The net result is that life expectancy is somewhat less off Earth, but precautions can be taken.
5. The Faber Network. Most manufactures are assembled from templates by a now-mature micro-mechanical technology, which require little physical plant, only high levels of information, steady supply of the consumable, programmable, easily-replaced synths, or faber nodes, that are piped into shops and homes as easily as propane, water, electricity, pharmaceuticals and data. You want something? You order it online, download the custom template, pay in credits (currency, ecological, mnemonic, other; whatever you and the template vendor agree upon) and wait for the rollout. For large items, you may have to walk down the street to a mid-size faber shop, such as a new vehicle or refrigerator. Larger-scale items, such as ships, homes, office buildings, require more red tape, since their multi-risk footprint is much larger. And, sorry. Home production of firearms and other HMR (High Multi Risk) hardware is restricted at the template level. You can spend all your credits on very real-seeming replicas, of course--but that's it.
6. The Cyberne and the Jann. Both the Brazilians and the Sudanese use massively-augmented soldiers in their armies, a consequence of their chiefly fighting one another, and both empires have regimes that have neither practical obstruction nor moral compunction against the conscription of subjects and involuntary transformation in the purest definition of the phrase "killing machine". The Americans and Han have superior Synth drones, and the Russians and Indians have pioneered development of self-sustaining EMP and radiation barriers, a by-product of research into piezogravitation.
7. Piezo-what? Piezogravitation. The basis of tapping vacuum energy is the fabrication of a atomic-scale fractal lattice which, when subjected to electromagnetism (charge or a high-Gauss field) generates a gravitational gradient. The reverse effect - subjecting the PG crystalloid to either gravitation or physical compression (sufficient to induce a degenerate state to matter, as in the core of a white dwarf star) produces electromagnetism. The conversion is almost perfect, though at the energy densities involved `almost' kicks out a great deal of waste heat, regardless. This power source is more efficient away from a planetary mass, and even more efficient the farther one travels away from a star, and best of all when movement away from the center of mass of the galaxy. (Upgraded Surveyors have confirmed this experiment). Naturally this new tech has been incorporated into weapons, and after two centuries of pining for them the armies of the Solar System have their phasers.
8. When Avatars go Bad. Think the 21st century is online? The average Earth citizen is a netizen at all times, and actively attending to bandwidth for work or amusement 1.5 hours a day. In richer regions: 5.8 hours. The remainder of the time, simulated personas - agents or AI spoofs acting on behalf of the owner - interface with a very busy demanding universe, protecting and advancing the interests of the biological template. There is even an afterlife of a sort, and instances where, out of desire to possess a more dominant, successful, talented personality, that the "Bio" ends up becoming the agent of an especially-willful avatar. Then there is the traditional concerns about personality hijacking, kidnapping, even murder. A great deal of violence now occurs online. Virtual reality can be deadly in reality.
9. Quantum Simulation. What makes VR so powerful is QUIT technology, the use of the quantum substrate of space itself as a medium of information. As near as we can tell, the only physical limit to computational firepower is saturation of the local spacetime continuum. Alas for daydreamers - we are already experiencing a slowdown far sooner than expected; it turns out that persistent form of matter or energy draws down the local surplus of quantum potential, like running up a balance on a credit card. Still, the nightmares of the middle ages, when Internet users sometimes waited seconds for flatscreen pages to load, are no more. In our cyberspace, it is a parallel multiverse, where one has a vast array of work (and play) realities in which to participate. Much of this is outside officialdom in the material world...and much is. In all, what we call Simulator technology is a versatile, creative and powerful enhancement of human awareness and problem-solving; the first truly reliable weather prediction models, an important issue in the super-active climate of the global warming crisis, were developed only in the middle of the 2100s.
10. Mnemoculture. The Age of Industry gave rise to a class of technicians, their (largely derided) lives dedicated to maintaining the machines, from the plumbing and air conditioning to the elevators and airliners, upon which all their (purportedly superior) neighbors depended, where they acknowledged it or not. The Computer Age gave rise to a similar class, with a similarly thankless role - that of a servile class of AV kids. The nerds were smart enough to push back, but too weak in numbers and influence (and class consciousness) to prevent their being ground down. The Quantum Age, though, produced a new breed of techies, persons with the peculiar mix of physics and psychology aptitudes required to cultivate and safeguard pure information in the quantum medium. They are the nemos, the geeks, the dweebs, the dorks of the early 23rd century - and no one even thinks of calling them anything pejorative, for they are a powerful rising class in Human civilization, manipulators of the most precious thing of all - memory. And that is what mnemonics is about - the modification, recovery, enhancement and in special cases deletion of memory. Their work is over the barrier between cybernetic and biological; their skills cover both domains. They are the wall that keeps the Brazilian and Sudanese juggernauts from sweeping out of Africa, across the Earth and then across the stars.
11. Nations in the Sea. By its very nature, the oceans are hostile to human habitation in a way that other worlds are not; the sea will never be made breathable. The pressure will never relent, making construction of artificial habitats easier. The level of modification required to truly claim the oceans and add them to the demesne of Humanity would accomplish little but recapitulating the evolution of the dolphins and whales. Regardless, the sea boasts approximately 140 million inhabitants, most in three locations - the Bay of Bengal (the `new provinces' of Bangladesh and subsequent colonies by India, Burma and Thailand), in and about the islands of Indonesia, and the Antarctican littoral (most prominently the country of Pelagi, the only sovereign territory south of the Antarctic Circle). Pelagi's lasting gift to Humanity is a mixed one, and one that is bestowed in a later episode, as well.
12. War and GRASP. What the Global Recovery of Animal Species Project has meant to Humanity is mentioned elsewhere, but warrants amplification. We did it. Despite the barely-cold war raging in the Sahel, neither Cyberne nor Jann dare interfere with the work of GRASP in making Africa worthy of conquest. In fact, much of the competing zealotry of the two empires is now diverted into assisting the projecting, and a curious ritualization of conflict has emerged, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of the Christian Crusades and the Islamic Jihads - the subordination of an intrinsically savage and zero-sum game to a mutually-advantageous goal. Not even war is allowed to threaten the redemption of the Earth, especially after the Empress Mercada, the current and seemingly ageless ruler of the Emerald Empire `withdrew her protection', in effect ceded a swathe of contested territory in western Uganda to the Sudanese, rather than hold the shame from the conduct of the locals, who had taken to hunting game with hunting lances - the energy weapon variety. That was well and good, save that the game in question was elephants for their ivory. The Sudanese were happy to claim the territory and knowing there would be no reprisal on the part of the Brazilians, took special delight in the slow and creative demise of the locals.
13. Body Snatching. One of the great frustrations of genetics was cloning, specifically, the inability to reset the telomerase strands and thus avoid cloning a physically younger copy of a parent organism, but one with the same genetic age as the parent. This made cloning not only impractical as a mode of reproduction, but immoral; in most countries, the practice was illegal. Coupled with the ability of QUIT to support the duplication and transmission of duplicate personalities, a thriving black market in cloned flesh emerged, especially (since they had the longest shelf lives) in newborns and unborn children. The full range of possibilities for espionage and crime, even marital indiscretions and exploration of alternative lives and lifestyles, are only now being uncovered by lawful agencies; the depths were plumbed decades ago by those who simply do not care how deep the waters lie.
14. Gestalt Personalities. Where the biological mind ends and the cybernetic begins, and all the implications for ethics and religion is a complex enough discussion. Add to that the recent (to us) development of gestalt mentation, by which multiple personas integrate into one higher-level supermind. At the moment these entities do not outlast the consensual trance that the participants enter into. The question is: What happens when the gestalt wishes to live, and resists being dismantled simply because the participants wish to leave the session and participate in their individual lives? As far as we know, it has not happened yet. As far as we know, were it to happen, perhaps that would be a good thing; an entire politics has formed around this phenomenon - the Concerto. It is, appropriately enough, the political party of the Empress Mercada in Brazil. As far as I know that makes it something that should be opposed.
Geopolitics
Indonesia and Japan's rivalry in the Pacific, in Hispanic America, and offworld are the current concern in Terran politics. On the Earth proper, the Indonesians have been pursuing closer relations with Argentina, Chile and Ecuador, and defending their longstanding amity with Australia, a key partner in Indonesia's desire to further reduce India's influence, which has been on the relative decline for the past fifty years. What irks Japan is that Ecuador and Chile are mainstay allies; Ecuador for its own strategic role as a spaceport (the busiest on the planet) and Chile for support in both oceanic and Antarctican colonial politics (the Japanese and Chile consolidated their Zones in the 2130s). Long ago, Australia had been a key partner of Japan's, but the two had fallen out after India assumed primary patron status for the Aussies; now the Japanese are reasserting themselves as India has refocused on its own oceanic and offworld projects. This is unacceptable to Indonesia.
Off-planet, the Japanese have been largely shoved out of the Galileans by the Indonesians, which precipitated the colonization of Titan. While on Earth the rules of war are now enhanced by concern for the biosphere, in space (at least so far) the rules of conduct are far more informal.
Concurrently, the United States has enjoyed a renaissance in influence, behind only Indonesia and Brazil's Emerald Empire in influence. The Americans would prefer a stronger Japan as a check on both Indonesia and the Han Federation, though the latter's obsession with Venus has begun to show a significant drain on the Chinese economy. The other key alliances are with Bangladesh (the current superpower among the Oceanics) and the Russian Federation (which is the vanguard in the mnenomics sector). Special projects for the Americans are détente with Pakistan, upping the ante in the seemingly endless bidding war for Mexico's friendship, which the United States can no longer contemplate doing without, and keeping the strategic partnership with Vietnam going. Offworld, the Americans are highly focused on the Galilenes and Titan, as well as their legendary Celestial Survey. All told, an America with its eyes on the far horizon is an America that Humanity has profited from.
And yet there remain enemies; the two century-old feud with the Qaidi remains, and the focus of that dispute is Egypt, where at considerable cost the Americans subsidize a halfhearted Modernist regime, threatened from the south by the heart of the Qaidi Crescent - Sudan and Arabia. Also assisting Egypt are Iran and Turkey, the mainstays of the Modernist Community of Islamic States (MCIS), or as the irreverent Americans call them, the Emcees. The lead contributors from the European Federation are France and Germany.
Colossus Brazil. There is no discussion of the year 2200 that can omit the rise of the mightiest imperium in human history. Alone, the Old States, as the original territory of Brazil is known, would be the fifth most powerful polity in the Solar System. With the vast wealth of Zaire, Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and Inkatha thrown in, there is no comparison. Only in concert is the power of the Empress, Mercada Saliceiro, held in check, and perhaps it is fairer to say that Mercada's ambitions are merely diverted elsewhere.
Mercada is an interesting story herself, given that the woman is approximately 116 years old and appears as if she still in her mid-twenties. The legend, state-sanctioned, is that she is blessed with the last great genetic accomplishment of her revered father, Emperor Gardo the Generous, who has attained near-divine status within the Empire. The Vatican is under intense pressure to canonize the founder of the Equatorial Realm; Brazilian fleets routinely make shows of the green banner in the Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas. Italy has made noises concerning such gunboat ecclesiastical maneuverings, but the former seat of the Roman Empire is much-diminished from its prime; hardly 21 million people inhabit the peninsula; the best of the remaining blood of Italia has begun its move to other worlds. Most scenarios predict a strong likelihood that Brazil will `adopt' Italy, as it already has both Portugal and Spain, and the Empress will have a father as a saint at last.
The Empire's most critical possession is its dominance over the Congo, not only for its mineralogical and genetic wealth, which despite the depletions of past centuries is still formidable, not only for the industry, valor and loyalty of its subjects to the Empress, but for two reasons. One, the Congo Basin is the holy land of the imperium, the place where the hardships of the Dieback struck most fiercely, where the greatest tribulations of the Recovery occurred, and where Gardo himself consecrated flesh and machine alike and made them one in the persons of the blessed Cyberne. Far beyond the borders of Brazil and its provinces, there are admirers, no, worshippers of the fallen king, the Good Doctor who mended souls and lives alike.
Shades of the Indigo. And yet there were those who resisted the rise of a god-king cult; the Catholics of Brazil themselves, in one of the bloodiest conflict in the Americas since the Partisan Wars. It is known as the Indigo War, after the blue banner with the gold cross emblazoned on it, itself modeled after one of the emblems of the Jesuit Order.
From 2127 to 2154 the war ravaged through southern and east-central Brazil, often spilling over into Uruguay and Paraguay, giving the Empress pretense to adopt those neighbors, as well, though only temporarily once the Security Council was invoked, and the other great powers fortified the Hispanic states. Toward the end of the conflict, the Iberian states had sent forces to assist, though they only reached as far as Catholic strongholds in west Africa, such as Guinea-Bissau, which was held as a refuge for Indigos who managed to flee Brazil proper; most that could crossed into Peru, which was summarily `adopted' as well, giving Brazil a Pacific coastline...and again the Security Council was invoked. No matter; it was all the time the Empress required to hunt down and destroy the asylum-seekers there.
The end came in a ghastly fashion, in a shocking dismissal of the Empress' own culture. Since the great cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were the foci of the Indigo rebellion, despite the deployment of hundreds of thousands of Cyberne to the area, the cities would be obliterated. Other strongholds, including the citadels in Mato Grosso and outposts in Minas Gerais and the Sao Francisco basin, were condemned as well
On August 4, 2152, over the course of fourteen hours, a succession of low-orbiting energy lance satellites directed their firepower on the ancient heartland of the empire; the ruins smoldered for fifteen months.
Realizing that Brasila was far too isolated to rule a Transatlantic empire, Mercada relocated her throne to the island of Bioko, part of Equatorial Guinea, and rechristened it Fernando Po, the name that the Portuguese had given it long before. This discomfited the African subjects considerably. Mercada reconsidered and Ilha do Gardo became the new capital, within sight of the Empire's most loyal subjects...but at a secure distance from them, should the mood change.
Wrap
We've learned more tantalizing clues about our distant neighbors in the cosmos, enough (some say) to get ourselves into trouble, as our own science is enhanced by observation.
We've also learned, good and bad, that the diversity of life has begun to be recapitulated in our cybernetics, from disease vectors to the possible emergence of a successor species -- our own star probes -- who have begun to take an active hand in their own evolution and thus in ours.
We are also faced with the challenge of our own minds, for it is now in our power to transcend human individuation, to obtain rapport with others on a vast scale; there are dangers to such innovations; the Emerald Empire is ample evidence of the danger of granting to much control over oneself to another entity. And the atomization of human awareness persists; there are concerns that we are too limited, in both acuity and range of perspective, to advance much further...at least safely.
Lastly, Earth itself has yet to pass final judgment on all of her children, though we have worked hard for a reprieve. In respect to global warming, we now have a 2-degree margin of error, 4 degrees tops. Any more than that and the cascade will begin for certain, and Earth will swiftly surpass Venus as the most inhospitable world in the Solar System.
Perhaps in eight centuries, maybe six, this loss could be absorbed by the human species. But it is too soon; the clock is ticking, and it is a time bomb. If we do nothing, it will detonate, and all life on Earth shall perish. If we make a wrong move, apocalypse.
A century ago, we prayed to grasp the solution; now we pray for steady hands.