Future History part 3

sorry to leave it so long, real life got in the way.

Part 3

Several hundred years pass, in which a number of minor races are encountered, usually on their own planets or own star system, but a few which have ventured further afield in space. 

And then the big shock, when a Exclacol ship encounters…. Humans.

Real, genuine, actual humans.

The Egasuur Empire is old, and decadent, and advanced in some things, but sufficiently insular as to be opposed to anything new or experimental. 

The next two hundred or so years sees intermittent warfare until a Republic hospital ship is captured by the Egasuuri, who parade their captives in their public plazas, and then begin dying in droves of a mysterious fungal plague which does not affect the Earthmen.  Nor, of course, any other race with them, but it was the ‘primitive and inferior geneseed’ who excited the interest of the Egasuuri.

As it happens, some of the scientists, notably chief surgeon Andrew Palling and senior surgeon, Fweblebl Twelbw [Duwab], managed to run some DNA tests on the fauna and flora of the Egasuur homeworld, and confirmed that, in the words of Ms Twelbw, Humans from earth share more DNA in common with their pond weed than the Egasuuri do with their most advanced animals.

The Egasuuri swallow their pride and ask for help from their prisoners, and declare that if this is a biowarfare weapon they have no choice but to surrender.

Dr. Palling calls for aid, and doctors from the Republic rush to discover what is wrong before the Egasuuri lose most of their population, since it has been taken by naval troops and sight seers to other planets too.  It turns out to be athlete’s foot which is causing the hideous fungal disease, as the Egasuuri have no fungi.  Athlete’s foot had never been eliminated as had the common cold and influenza had been; it was never something anyone got around to. 

The Emperor and all his immediate heirs and successors having succumbed to ‘athlete’s everywhere’, as the human doctors privately called the expression of the parasite, the Egasuur placed themselves under the dominion of the Republic, being too shocked to do anything else.  As the Empress and her loud and raucous daughters had insisted on poking at the prisoners and generally tormenting them in any way they could, when displayed like pets in the throne room, it was generally held by the Earth humans to be Karma.

Treaties are duly signed and the Egasuuri become one with the Republic, giving a place for those who are more adventurous than the norm.  It may be said that Earth humans, viewing extreme insularity with some scorn, refer to those who want to carry on as far as possible in the same way as ‘Sackvilles’ and to the adventurous ones as ‘Bagginses’.  [The terms remain long after the original literature has been forgotten,  corrupted over time to Sickvels and Bagens]

It transpires that a couple of thousand years ago, the Egasuuri had something of a civil war,  and most of those who were forward looking left for pastures new, Coreward of the Empire.  They took with them the still little understood skill of what Earthmen recognised from science-fiction as psionics.  The conservative Egasuuri wanted to suppress this skill, close the new institutes investigating it, and kill anyone with the ability to use any aspect of it as ‘abnormal’. The Empire doesn’t have a very good human rights record for those born with disabilities, either.  As those who were investigating, and trying to increase their own talents did not want to be killed, they felt they had no choice but to leave, and instead of letting them, the Imperial government issued an edict that they were to present themselves for internment.  This did not go down well, but the exodus was by no means bloodless.  The Talented managed to get away by utilising those people in whose presence computers stop working, normally a handicap in a technological society, but a military asset at the time. 

The Egasuur call the renegades the Zarhazh, the warlocks.

They called themselves the Drozhim, the talented.

The Earth Humans promptly went back to the same book and dubbed them the Sarumans. 

With the signing of treaties with the Egasuur, the Duwab bureaucrats insisted that as both had their own dating system this became obsolete, and that a new dating system was required, based on the circadian rhythms of the average of the peoples in the Republic and on the average year of a planet in the habitable zone.  The new day was 25 hours long, and the year was 350 days.  Local time continued to be observed as well on various planets, as it always had.  Earth was required to lose a local day or so each year, and two every four years, which became interyear holidays. In future years, those leaving Earth for careers in space were to feel cheated by a lack of interyear holiday…

The Duwab had been happy to abandon the Hawraa system when they joined the Republic since the human circadian rhythms were closer to their own, and now were delighted to rationalise things. Being the superb administrators they are, the changeover went smoothly, and year one of the Republic of Minds was declared.

At some point in the future the Drozhim are encountered, and they refuse to be absorbed or to make treaties whilst the Egasuur are honoured members.  They just want to be left alone, but have a bad habit of trying to get in their retaliation first, convinced that all outsiders either want to kill them, or use their psionic skills for their own purposes.  There are a number of border incidents and clashes. The Drozhim remain uneasy neighbours with unknown talents, which might, or might not be more advanced than a little bit of empathy and dowsing.  Suffice it to say that whatever could not be determined was readily guessed at, and lurid fiction involving Drozhim warlocks became popular, from mind-reading spies, to bodice rippers involving Drozhim pashas whose mental powers held their female victims in thrall.  Thus, as always, the lowest common denominator prevails in human literature, and Babie Wagonland became a well known name in ‘romance’ barely short of soft porn.

This is the point at which Mr. Becher enters history, towards the Drozhim borders, Republic year 1066.

Future history part 2

Part 2

From the last years of the 23^rd century, the Solar Republic first flourished, then became increasingly decadent until power was seized by Emperor Vasili Upchenko, in 2320, who disbanded ISPaG and instituted his own secret police instead.

2320-2380 The Vasilid Emperors

Vasili 2320-2342  able and unscrupulous

Grigori 2342-2344  his son, a buffoon

Vasilica 2344-2370 Grigori’s sister, probably assassinated her brother, able and ruthless

Dmitri 2370-2380  Vasilica’s son, unable to sire children and left the empire to his chief minister, Jie Lee

2370 The unified partical theory proven [Sponsored by Emperess Vasilica, who lived just long enough to see the announcement.]  This permits the manipulation of quarks, and the quark-drive is postulated, in which ships may be converted to emulate quarks, to jump out of, and back into normal space.  Theories are postulated that several energy levels, ie jump distances, might be possible.

2380 -2410

The Lee Emperors

Jie Lee 2380-2409 a clever man, who threw the imperial resources into developing quark drive, leading to a working model by the end of his reign. 

Ming Lee, 2409 - 2410 his son, a megalomaniac who doesn’t care about anything but pleasure and turning the resources of the empire to that end. 

2400 the misjumping quark ship from an alien nation arrives near Mars gives the final answers to cracking the problem, though the alien ship is three times more powerful than the human ship prototypes, which have managed to reach Barnard’s star and back but have had the odd problem on return hitherto.

The aliens, all dead, are superficially leonine in appearance, and are dubbed the Leonids.  Their star maps enable scientists to postulate where they come from, though the language is too alien to read.

2410 Ming Lee is assassinated by a courtier,  Courtney Liang, who promptly declares a republic.  Liang is elected as president and is then arrested and tried for murder.  Nobody wants a Liang dynasty, and re-elections are held, won by Ngaire Potter, an unknown New Zealander, who wins on the grounds that nobody has heard of her so she is inoffensive.  Potter moves to Mars and endorses the growth of exploration to relieve overcrowded earth, where the forcible cessation of wars has resulted in a high population.

The big corporations have a lot of say in the running of things, which Potter tries to curtail, but when shown that manufactured evidence could get her impeached for crimes she has not committed, she bitterly capitulates and settles down to do what good she can.

The big 5 corps at this point are:

Hondasaki

Maccola

SDE [the name behind the acronym has been forgotten]

Duvallier Ag

Energy Solutions.

2410-2460 with the boost of the alien ship, the Republic grows to cover several star systems.  No amount of experimentation will, however, permit the passage of messages from one place to another using quark technology; only the quark ships, which take an average of 150 hours to travel, regardless of the distance[within the maximum distance the drive permitted.  Quark-2 is twice the distance of Quark 1, but takes as long to cover, and any quark drive can jump smaller distances than their maximum but it still takes 150 hours].  Speed of communication is the same as the speed of travel, as in the days of sailing ships. 

Other technologies are pursued; genetic engineering is used to uplift big cats to full sentience, and trained as ambassadors, in the hopes of making the Leonid aliens more comfortable; and wolf/husky crosses are uplifted and trained as warriors in case embassies fail.  A scouting service is set up, officially the Pioneers, but more often known as Exclacol, being the arm to explore, classify and colonise.

Having prepared to meet aliens, the first live aliens met are the ‘wrong’ ones.   The Exclacol ship responsible, the ‘Laura Ingalls’ met up with a race quickly dubbed the ‘Gecks’ since intership communication showed faces that loosely resembled Earth geckos, at least to people who had never set foot on Earth.  These aliens called them selves the Duwab, and had a translator program that allowed some basic communication by showing pictures and asking for words for them.  Hasty communication became necessary, since this group of Duwab were fugitives, fleeing the Leonids, whose slave-race the Duwab were.  David Ionescu, the captain of the Laura Ingalls invited them aboard his ship, when it became apparent that the so-called ‘Gecks’ more nearly resembled the extinct caelophysis than  geckos, but by then the crew were too used to calling them Gecks, and the name stuck. 

The Duwab acted as bureaucrats for the Leonids, whose name for themselves was Hawraa.  The half dozen Duwab begged asylum, which was granted, as the Hawraa ship burst out of quarkspace and opened fire without any attempt to assess the situation or open negotiations.  It was held later in a court of enquiry that Captain Ionescu had no choice but to fight back with all means at his disposal.

The means at his disposal turned out to be the smaller ship the Duwab had brought, which was damaged in any case, as they had been hit by Hawraa weaponry at the previous quark exit, and were lucky not to have misquarked. 

Captain Ionescu, who was a very fine computer hacker, managed to persuade the Duwabs’ ship remotely to ram the Hawraa pursuit craft.  The Hawraa had much superior weaponry, but the human crew had better computing skills. Nevertheless, the Hawraa ship limped away, and war became inevitable.  System defences were strengthened, including redesigning the instruments for lighting gas giants.  One of the Duwab volunteered to take a ship back  as the Hawraa could not tell one Duwab from another, and spread word to his fellows that they had an ally.  Having their bureacracy against the Hawraa was the real reason the Solar forces overcame them.

2541 after 80 odd years of desultory fighting, peace is declared, as the Hawraa are forced to sue for peace.  Part of the conditions of surrender is that the Duwab should be freed to pursue their own lives.  Their home world was overrun by Hawraa, and even though the treaty handed it back to them, it was inside Hawraa territory.  The Duwab were happy to relocate to various parts of what the Hawraa called the Human Empire, offering their services as bureaucrats.  They refused to stand for office, however, since they did not understand leadership.  As a species they are intensely co-operative with those working for the good of the Nest, but do not require direction to give their best efforts.

As a direct result of the Duwab gaining independence, the uplifted canines used as troops, usually known as Lupes,   also petitioned for independence on the grounds that if not granted it, they were a slave race and humans no better than Hawraa.  This was unanswerable, and they were given their own colony and help to expand.  They call themselves the Rauf.

The uplifted felines did not see why they should have to have a colony world and run their own affairs when life in the Solar Sphere was comfortable and civilised, so long as they might have full equal rights with humans.  Individuals have no problems with taking office, and some have done so.  They had been known as the Feles, and kept the name as there was no point changing it. They bristle and spit if called to their face what some people think of them as, the Kittehs.

It was the Duwab named Lebweffun who suggested that with a number of different races, and an increasing number of systems,  it made sense to change the name of the Solar Republic to the Republic of Minds, the closest she could get to a name covering those of sentience that did not offend too many people.

The Hawraa still call it the Human Empire.

A few SF pictures

Please be aware that all my pictures are copyright.  Use for non-profit making ventures, please credit me, and note the copyright.  Anyone wanting book covers, please contact me, I am for hire. 

I made all the buildings in Bryce and a couple are adapted from parts of a space station

And like the one above the planet is within Roche's limit.  I know.  But it looks more dramatic.

fun with nebulae

credit to Stacker for the shuttle

It needs dragons or something.

Science Future Timeline part 1

This is still potentially fluid, and isn't intended to read as a story or history, it's a rough timeline with main events.  We haven't added every technological advance.

Science Future timeline

Part 1

Mid 21^st century China arises in power; the phony Eurowar over the fate of the European Union leads to several nations seceding from the Union.  China establishes several space stations, and manages to get a colony on the moon. They mine Helium-3 for fusion power.

2040 the NewSSR arises as Russia tramples the former  independent ex-soviet states under foot, annexing them. 

2042 Britain elects hardline NeoImperialist government

2044 Siberia declare independence as Siberia Free State, and train missiles on Zurich to bring pressure to bear on Moscow from men with soft voices and hard currency.

2044 Britain agrees to work with Europe in space, and other scientific projects, and for practical reasons reluctantly agrees to a pact with the NewSSR, forming SovESA.  America signs treaties with Canada, the ABC nations and Mexico for space exploitation treaties, and forms the AMpact.

2045 Japanese scientists succeed in creating cyber bees by using nanotechnology and bee DNA in house flies after bees have been virtually wiped out world wide, and tests are carried out in north Africa.

2046 the cyberbees are a disaster when they become psychotic and start killing people with what has become a very enhanced sting. 

2047 American attempt at a Mars landing, using nuclear rockets.   It was meant to impress the other AMpact countries.  It fails

2048 SovESA, largely through the efforts of Russia, send a rescue mission using ion drive, and rescue the American mission.

2048-2060 a lack of confidence in the government in America leads to a partial breakup of the Union and the Southern states form a religious dictatorship called God’s Nation, opposed to tinkering with ‘God’s Heaven’.  The devastating 8,2 Richter Scale earthquake in what used to be San Francisco in 2051 added to both the breakup, and the belief of the religious right that it was God’s Wrath.   The remains of America in the North brokers a treaty with Canada to combine as CanAm.  Putting the Can first was part of the agreement Canada hung on to.

2052 French and British scientists announce a European success in the cloning of the few remaining bees and those held in cold storage which had died,, and the ability to repopulate the world with 5 different species. They hope to reintroduce more over time. Due to the exigencies of damaged DNA,  the honey bee flatly refuses to pollinate anything except lavender, on which the experimental subjects were raised.  The other species are less picky, fortunately.  New DNA is worked on to hope to make honey bees ready to accept other plants, especially New Zealand Manuka, for its medical properties.

2050s the colonisation of Mars, largely by SovESA run projects.  The beginnings of the new language EngSov; most Europeans already knew English but the NewSSR tended to be rather ubiquitous.   The language uses a lot of contractions and linguistic short cuts to make it easier to convey information fast, a necessary thing in a hostile environment.

2065 the general Middle Eastern War.  CaAm has too many of its own problems with border incursions from God’s Nation to intervene. Someone throws a nuke, and much of the Middle East ends up as radioactive glass, including Pakistan, which may have been covertly nuked by India.  If it was India, this backfires, due to radiation drifting, and the country is forced to ask for foreign aid.  Britain sends a team of advisors, and if India is not quite a British protectorate, it comes close. 

2067 in a show of co-operation, and to help India’s economy, the first British/Indian space habitat is launched.

2070 the unified field theory is declared, formulated by a team of scientists from Harvard with other nationals involved.  Doctors Lyn Harcourt and David Balls [CanAm], Stig Nordstrom [Sweden] and Raj Wali [India] are the scientists involved. This leads to the Nordstrom-Wali drive, generally known as anti-grav transport, which is, however, expensive and too cumbersome for most practical purposes.  Being in America, however, the technology is immediately put to use to make gravball stadia,  making a novelty game played exclusively by space dwellers into a big business game.  Sponsorship by such giants as Maccola, who have the lion’s share of fast food and soft drinks, is inevitable.  Gravball forms the ‘and circuses’ part of bread and circuses.

2130 The inauguration of ISPaG, the International Space Patrol Group, to police the many space stations in the solar system.  Even China signs up to this, and opens new domes on the Moon to colonisation.  It is rumoured that those colonists whose faces don’t fit, end up taking a brief walk outside without a suit, but no substantiation of such rumours can be found.

This is the period in which the Mike Gregg stories are set, shortly after the founding of ISPaG.

2160-2165 Russo-Chinese war

The Japanese came in on the side of the Russians, and set off several controlled Tsunamis to overwhelm the Chinese, apparently as a live test of this new technology.  Disruption was caused as far as India, now running its own affairs again, and there is almost world war.

British Prime Minister, Atlee Tebbit, one of the British Ruling Class, declares that as Britons dislike everyone equally, he will negotiate a settlement. [NATO long since fell into disuse].  Some accusations are made that the British are too closely associated with SovESA, but though Britain is currently nominally involved, and pays into the space program,  Britain is in other ways not associated with Europe, and has returned to the old concept of free trade.  Indeed, some say that they are a nation of free traders more of the ilk of Francis Drake and John Hawkins and the Royal Navy are no better than pirates.  Britain is shocked by such allegations and carries on in the same way.

This is the last point in which Britain has any political muscle at all, with a powerful wet navy, but no serious space program beyond an unwilling interest in SovESA.

Peace is achieved, partly because Japan is appeased for their earthquake control technology, which frightens the living shit out of everyone else.

2166 CanAm spy William Wilkin Williamson steals the Japanese earthquake data, and while Japan is negotiating with Russia over what parts of China and Korea they will own, Tokyo is devastated by an earthquake, and CanAm president Russell P. Hobbes dictates his own terms, and concludes a treaty with China. 

2166-2180 this is the beginning of the rise of CanAm, renamed Canamerica, which uses the data from Japan to make controlled earthquakes/eruptions on a small scale on the Pacific rim both relieving pressure from Mount Rainier, and bringing up mineral wealth from the mantle, using a weapon of war as a means to wealth. This is largely under the auspices of Seattle Dragon Enterprises [SDE], of whom W.W. Williamson is CEO, having stolen the Japanese data for his own purposes but donating enough of it to the government to stop Japanese imperialism before it begins.

2181 SDE [Seattle Dragon Enterprises] establishes a presence on Mars with wholly owned subsidiary Mons Minerals, to use the earthquake technology to exploit Olympus Mons controllably.

2200Canamerican companies have been looking into terraforming, and postulate a program to set light to Jupiter for greater heat on Mars, turning it into a brown dwarf.  Technology is still theoretical at this point.

2250 Jupiter is sparked by the joint efforts of several scientists on Mars, who won the race to making the technology work, as Mars feels increasingly isolated from Earth and its internecine warfare.  With terraforming beginning, including the throwing of some icy asteroids onto the surface to create standing water, and Mars beginning to bloom, Mars feels confident it can go its own way.

2254 Marspact declares itself independent; the loose confederacy of asteroid miners are a signatory to it, and Earth must buy some minerals at least from Marspact, even though the SDE mantle-mining equipment has relieved some of the pressures on mineral-raped Earth.

2255-2261 Canamerica reabsorbs the former God’s Nation, now a collection of primitive tribes, and outlaws public expression of religion.  Canamerica goes on to absorb Meso- and South America. 

Russia absorbs into their co-prosperity sphere such of the middle east as remains [the –stans, Iran, northern Iraq and the surviving parts of Pakistan and North Africa] and eastern europe. SovESA breaks up as Europe protests the militant and blatant expansionism, and Europe in desperation makes treaties with China and Siberia, who already have treaties. Britain, not wanting to be absorbed, returns to Europe on the condition that the Commonwealth as a whole is included.  Europe is not about to turn down the participation of Australia, New Zealand and India.   China is afraid of Canamerica too. There are now three main powers,  the Euro-Sino-Australasia zones, rather separate and vulnerable, the Russian juggernaut, and the Canamerican extents.

As the terraforming of Mars continues, Europe, Russian and Canamerica decide to send boatloads of political prisoners to Mars as they can now just be dumped there and left to fend for themselves.  Mars does not like this.

The prisoners who have been turned loose and can’t so readily be returned, as the ships bringing them do not use scheduled space ports, are rounded up, and made to swear loyalty to Mars alone; and if they do not, they are made into slave labour.  NOT an edifying period of civilisation for anyone involved.

2264 Mars sends an ultimatum to Earth to stop sending their misfits to Mars.  Canamerica has some idea of what Mars might be capable of doing as an ‘or else’ and apologises, and asks if Mars will be open for settlers for those who do not like the regime.  Terms are agreed, which include ‘no religion imported’ as Mars is officially atheist.

Russia takes no notice of the ultimatum other than to tell Mars that by rights they are a Russian colony, and on the 25^th October, with carefully chosen irony, Moscow ceases to exist, destroyed by one of the devices used to light Jupiter.

Russia, and the rest of the world, got the point almost immediately.

2266 Mars dictates terms to Earth.  Nations are outlawed, and the Solar Government is formed with representatives from all the major renamed regions, and the headquarters of government is at Mons City, Mars.  Mars slaves are freed, and offered the chance of citizenship or to return to Earth. 

Of those who choose to return, they are taken to South Africa which is neutral with some European affiliation and left to decide where to go from there.   Nobody said that returning to Earth meant they were going to return home.

starting to terraform Mars

Welcome to the future

Welcome to a future history that encompasses the relatively near future, in which I, Sarah, write about a cop based on Mars and the mysteries he solves; and the far future in which the Republic of Minds encompasses many star systems and other species than humans.  I shall post the entire future history when it is complete, and selected stories as well as artwork.