2091: The Lost Generation [IC]

by **Northern Socialist Council Republics** » Fri May 06, 2022 1:50 am

The Lost Generation
A Joint Production by Theyra, Kenobot, and Northern Socialist Council Republics

[Out-of-Character Thread]

Image Credits: Russian Emergencies Ministry Handout/EPA via the Guardian

<<the date is 06th September, 2091>>

ONE HUNDRED YEARS have passed since the downfall of revolutionary communism as a world ideology, and yet the 'end to history' promised by triumphant liberals at the end of the 20th Century is still nowhere in sight. Rather, civilisation seems stuck crawling through the murky depths, with a series of existential challenges the likes of which had never been seen before in human history slowly closing in on its neck like a hangman's noose. These are interesting times, and as the apocryphal saying goes to live in interesting times is a curse.

And yet, and yet. Human beings are not known for their tendency to die quietly and go off into that good night. It is in exactly these darkest hours, with the gravest of threats shaking the world to its very core, that the light of heroes shine the brightest. As states and individuals contemplate actions and ideas that would have been unthinkable a hundred, fifty, or even twenty years ago, as firebrands in every field of human endeavour seek to build a new world, on the ashes of the old if necessary, the doomed runaway train of human history may yet be diverted to a different course.

We struggle, for what else can we do?

by **Toishima** » Fri May 06, 2022 8:23 pm

"The revolution should adapt and accommodate the stellar growth and expansion of technology. Our revolution is not only in the social system, but also in the realm of scientific and technological development. Technology is the scaffolding and launch gantry of the rocket that is our revolution; without it we cannot propel ourselves and our way of life into the future, and without it we risk our revolution falling down a dark reactionary path."
- Zhan Liandong

Grasping the rung carefully, Li Qiuyue gently pulled herself forward, momentum and Newton's Third carrying her forward gracefully. Her trajectory was displayed clearly on her in-helmet heads-up display, giving her the confidence to grasp the last rung as she almost floated past it. With a well-practised motion, she unhooked the previous carabiner and attached it to the final rung. After pulling the two bleached-orange safety straps slightly to ensure they were secure, she decided to indulge herself and forget about safety protocol for a moment, a rare moment all to herself.

After a brief moment of instinctive hesitation, she closed her eyes and made her decision. Letting go of the final rung, she spread her arms wide, and let herself fall... fall... fall...

Onto a bed of stars.

Minyan-12 Satellite
Low Earth Orbit

The jerk of the safety lines stopped the taikonaut's two-metre-long flight, Newton's First coming into play as the car-sized satellite proved too massive for the petite Chinese lady's mass reaching the end of her lines to have a noticeable effect. Slowly, as she had a dozen times, Li opened her eyes as she took in a deep breath that echoed within her pressurised helmet. An endless field of stars stretched out before her in full clarity, an impossible sight back on solid ground due to the light- and dust-polluted atmosphere of Old Earth getting in the way.

A seemingly infinite cosmos stretched before her, speckled with beautiful individual jewels that sparkled vibrantly. She knew it was not infinite with her diploma in Theoretical Cosmology (even a child would know that), but the void might as well have been endless for the current state of humanity. Another breath of the metallic-tasting processed oxygen filled her lungs. Just like the Earth among the stars, out here in space, Li was truly all by herself...

Or not.

"Never gets old, does it?" the croak of her radio shook the taikonaut from her brief moment of solace, her superior's gravelly voice coming through. Li turned to look towards her left, spotting Lieutenant-Colonel Huang spying on her from 250 metres away on the end of the boom arm of their Xi'an HY-4 spaceplane, his blue-and-white space suit clearly visible in the sun's stark light.

The sleek aerospacecraft gleamed as it seemingly hung unmoving, the boom arm holding captive a satellite identical to the one Li was currently hanging from. A third satellite was secured inside of the shuttle's cargo bay, and another taikonaut looked up from where he was working on the satellite and waved at her, barely visible behind the mess of cabling that the man was working on. She waved back. That particular unit had sustained a strike by orbital debris, a problem that refused to go away despite years of cleanup operations by both national and private groups around the world. Mankind was after all most talented at leaving trash behind wherever they went.

Pulling herself back towards the satellite, Li grabbed hold of the rungs and pulled herself towards the diagnostic panel, gingerly unlocking and pulling open the cover deftly despite the bulky space suit gloves. As soon as she touched the button in its base, the diagnostics screen flared to life, giving her a cheerful greeting in Chinese text. Pulling a cable out of her suit, she jacked it into a purpose-made port protected under a rubber cap next to the screen, connecting her suit's computer with the satellite's systems. Long paragraphs of code scrolled past her face urgently before disappearing, leaving a crisp symbol in the middle of her vision and an audio greeting.

Li tapped at her wrist-mounted computer, running test diagnostics and attempting to jump-start the data link with the new replacement for this satellite's stricken sibling inside the shuttle, half its mechanical guts torn out by some orbiting screw that probably slipped out of some American idiot's hand years ago.

Since time immemorial, information has been power. And what better way to collect information than from the heavens? The People's Orbital Eye was a constellation of 29 observation and surveillance satellites, capable of providing China with an eye all over the world. But their most important function was surveillance of Greater China, her borders, and her partner Republics. The high-powered cameras on the satellites were so powerful that they could pierce through the polluted air and read the text on a person's smartphone.

This data was then sent via heavily encrypted packets across the entire constellation, terminating on the People's Liberation Army Space Force's Tianbao space station. There, the artificial intelligence construct Chang'e continuously laboured to filter all observed activity and report any anomalies to the security forces on the ground for a rapid reaction. The People's Orbital Eye was a cornerstone of national security, which was why it was imperative that it operate at peak performance at all times. This was why the PLASF had a maintenance crew on standby at all times to be launched every time even a single satellite malfunctioned or was damaged, unlike the less important satellite constellations like Beidou II, which sometimes needed to wait weeks for a repair team to be sent up by CNSA.

By far the biggest reason behind the expense of maintaining a quick-reaction team, though, was the fear that a damaged Orbital Eye satellite could have been hijacked by hostile states, seeking the treasure trove of surveillance data stored in the temporary memory banks of each Orbital Eye. These banks were automatically cleared once every 24 hours, but that was more than enough time for American or Japanese experts to extract the data. For this reason, a QCW-75 submachine gun in its holster-rack was uncomfortably wedged behind Li's butt, just below her manoeuvring unit.

With a soft, pulsating green glow, the diagnostics computer alerted Li that this satellite had successfully connected with the replacement unit. She nodded to herself in satisfaction, then turned towards the shuttle, displaying a triumphant thumbs-up.

"I have connection," Li announced on the team's network.

"Great, close it up and get back here," Lieutenant-Colonel Huang grunted back.

Li obliged, shutting off the diagnostics computer, removing her connection cable, and sliding the hatch back closed. Then she ran an internal diagnostic on the manoeuvring unit on her back, ensuring that it was functioning properly before she unhooked the safety lines that prevented her from careening off into space forever. All the readings were green. Bending over herself, she gripped the carabiners and unhooked them from the satellite, one at a time, before pushing herself off the satellite with her feet towards the shuttle's general direction.

Even after two dozen sorties, this was always her favourite part. With momentum carrying her through the microgravity, frictionless environment, the manoeuvring unit automatically adjusted her flight path with soft bursts of propellant. This was the closest that any human could get to truly flying. Much like before, Li found the serenity calming. It was as though she was alone among the stars, alone to take in their beauty, so difficult to behold back on Earth. Some time in the past it had been possible to see stars with the naked eye, even in the outskirts of her native Shenzhen. But those days were past.

Puffs from the thrusters acted to correct Li's path, in the process accidentally rotating her body around.

And she beheld the only thing out here that could compete with the starfield for beauty.

Humanity had already made its terrible impact on the Earth, but despite this their planet was still blue, and she was still a sight to behold. Even better, it was now night time on this side of the planet, the spiderweb lines of human civilisation stretching across the planet in beautiful patterns. Li immediately spotted the distinctive, ever-glowing lights of the Japanese Islands. Her gaze swept westwards, falling on the four bright spots that were Busan, Seoul, Pyongyang, and Dandong-Sinuiju.

Then there was the massive clump of lights that always caught the eye; Beijing, capital of the People's Republic. A city of twenty million that never slept, the heart of the New China, and the starting point for a whole corridor of lights that swept across the familiar imperfect curve of the Chinese coastline. New Shandong Metropolis... and there it was. The dim island of Formosa could scarcely compete with the brightest jewel this side of the planet to its direct north, which managed to outshine even Beijing. The nucleus of the Chinese economy glowed like a miniature sun, a sea of lights where over forty million people lived and worked...

The Greater Shanghai Metropolis.

"Our country's greatest strength is, and always will be, her people. The people of this nation are naturally industrious, curious, sturdy, and upright. Our revolution should harness the full strength of our people, guiding them to unleash their full potential for the development of the Motherland, for the propulsion of our revolution into the hopeful future."
- Zhan Liandong

Construction on the Great Shanghai Seawall began in 2046 due to fears of rising sea levels, beginning one of the largest construction projects in the history of China, with construction fully completed only in 2078. Though the sea levels have not yet reached the feared eventual heights, the Seawall was completed and is today a key symbol of the Shanghai Metropolis, alongside the new Puzhong District. Despite its importance and the sheer effort required in its construction, the Great Seawall is often overshadowed by other landmarks, as in the end the wall is simply a massive concrete structure that is inaccessible to tourists.
-Lonely Planet: Shanghai Metropolis, 2090 Edition

Rubbing his nose above the frame of his black-framed glasses, the man clicked his tongue once and quickly moved his freshly-greased finger back to the screen of his smartphone. With a few strategic swipes, he quickly ordered a little soldier to set up a machine gun, gunning down several Japanese soldiers that emerged from the impenetrable jungle. Suddenly, the sword-wielding warrior guarding his little soldier's left flank was cut down by five katana-wielding Japanese brutes, and the little soldier was next. Despite a valiant fight, his little comrade was killed by the Japanese invaders.

Su Guowei cursed his useless teammates under his breath, immediately and instinctively hitting the icon to get free in-game currency by watching a short Public Motivation video. He was almost glad that he had to watch a Public Motivation video instead of an ad this time. In almost a century of mobile gaming, advertising had scarcely changed. Video game ads were almost always the same false advertising, poor acting or voice acting, or that stupid puzzle game involving the knight and the movable obstacles. At least Public Motivation videos were always exciting, or at the very least entertaining.

Through his wireless eargrains, Su started to hear the sound of rushing waves and the squawking of seagulls up above. Tiny puffs of chemicals released by his phone tricked his mind into smelling the salty ocean. His grimy smartphone's screen displayed a corresponding video. If he had been wearing his VR headset, he would have been transported into the fully three-dimensional world of the video, but alas he was on the train heading home from work. He may be a self-proclaimed gaming addict, but at least he wasn't one of those public nuisances who lived almost their entire lives in VR.

Chongming Line, Shanghai Metro
Shanghai Metropolis
People's Republic of China

Standing pressed against a sweaty, obese man, Su tugged at his shirt collar as the waves continued to roll on his phone's screen. He often made it a little game to guess what the Motivation video was about before they spelled it out for him, and this time he guessed either Hainan Repatriation or something to do with Guam. Suddenly, a foghorn sounded, and patriotic marching music with an electric guitar backing started playing. The office worker almost smiled as he realised this was another military recruitment ad. The camera rapidly zoomed out from the waves, revealing the People's Liberation Army Navy's premier aircraft carrier, Guangdong. Two Shenyang J-65s roared off the flight deck by electromagnetic catapult, followed by dramatic smash-cuts to various crew members on the carrier doing their jobs.

"Are you a strong and independent man? Only strong men can survive in the Chinese Navy, defending our sovereign naval borders against enemy aggressors!"

At the mention of enemy aggressors, there were brief flashes of Japanese warships sporting the infamous rising sun flag, as well as some subliminal messaging that made Su instinctively feel agitated. He pushed against the obese man slightly, and the man grunted and shifted less than a centimetre, himself engrossed in some kind of Western period drama.

"You there, Su Guowei! Join me and I will make you strong!" A stern PLAN officer with bulging muscles in the PLAN's famous blue-and-grey digital camouflage uniform barked as he pointed directly at Su, the system recognising his biometric ID and social profiles to tailor the video's contents to address him personally.

"Enough with the video games! Do the real thing! Together, we can defend the waters of our Great People's Republic!"

There were a few more dramatic scenes of PLAN ships and jets firing their weapons to bombastic music, before fading into the logo for the PLAN and a final appeal to sign up. Then it faded into a brief ad for PLAN merchandise, a sponsored ad for a boating school, and then it ended. Su was satisfied with the generous deposit of 50 in-game tokens to his account, and locked up his phone, slipping it into his jacket's pocket. He cast his gaze out of the magrail car's window, the brightly-lit streets and skyscrapers of downtown Shanghai at night whipping past silently. Truly, this was one of those cities that never slept. A vibration on his wrist drew Su's attention to his Huawei smartwatch.

The office worker felt his heart skip a beat as the Hao Lu app informed him that he had earned another 25 Social Credits for watching the entire PLAN recruitment video, and praised him for supporting the PLAN. Su nodded slightly to himself happily. Every small Social Credit gain contributed to reaching this month's goal of returning to Level 15 on the Social Grading Metric. He had foolishly slipped to Level 14 three weeks prior after he got drunk and punched his colleague. According to the Social Law of the People's Republic of China, violence is punishable by an immediate reduction in Social Grade, and Su was punished accordingly, along with the 5,000-credit fine for being drunk and disorderly.

He had been working overtime every day since then to return to Level 15. It was only during this time that Su realised that he really missed eating with his coworkers at Haohaochi, but Haohaochi company policy was that only Level 15s and above could dine in. He had to settle for takeout graciously donated to him by his colleagues every day, with such donations also granting his colleagues minor points gains for generosity. Furthermore, by being one level beneath his colleagues, Su earned somewhat fewer Social Credits per hour than them, which was why it was taking so long to return to Level 15 even with overtime. Nonetheless, he had it all planned out, and would likely return to Level 15 by the end of the month.

Once he was back to Level 15, everything would be alright, Su thought to himself, running one finger over his right temple religiously. Su remembered the stark fear he felt when he woke up hungover that day, the crimson red warning that his Social Grade had dropped plastered on every screen and hologram within his tiny apartment. He had heard rumours of people who were even worse off, who had Social Grades of less than 10, but he had never seen such people before as these people were not even able to enter the Shanghai Metropolis unless on a Corrective Work Program.

"Touxing, Touxing," the cheery automated voice announced the next station throughout the cabin, "please stand clear of the doors."

Without a single sound, the magnetic-levitation train slowed down as it approached the station. The train doors slid open with another joyful announcement from the automated voice, the crisp, cool, and slightly scented air inside the train momentarily replaced with the acrid, humid urban air that took the opportunity to rush in. The obese man picked up his briefcase and shuffled out of the train, and Su leaned against the now-unoccupied grab-pole as the train doors slid closed once again. Again with barely a sound, the magrail began speeding up out of the station.

Staring out of the window, Su saw the gleaming skyscrapers of the new heart of Shanghai, the Puzhong, disappear around the bend as the train curved north-west towards Nantong. In that sub-city, Su owned a miniature apartment that had cost him several months' worth of Credits to move into, but it was worth it due to its proximity to the metro. When people first moved to a city, or moved out of their parents' homes at the age of 25, they were automatically assigned a government dwelling in the residential districts. Few stayed in these "cubicle apartments" for long, and for varying fees of credits they could move to other types of government housing, or they could also pay credits for private housing.

Some companies even had company housing for employees, which were generally better than government housing, and was usually free; Su's college dormmate in Wuhan lived in such a company house, and had invited their Class of '79 over once before. It was one of the biggest apartments Su had ever seen. In the government system, two-bedroom apartments were typically reserved for married couples expecting or with at least one child, and even then there was an astronomically long waiting list for these apartments. Su made a mental note to check on that dormmate in Wuhan. It had been a while since they had spoken.

Looking out on the tranquil waters of Beigang Bay, Su saw the vast, dark shape that stretched along the horizon, keeping the ocean's fury at arm's length. A marvel of modern engineering that easily surpassed the Three Gorges Dam and the Great Wall combined, the Great Shanghai Seawall was a 250-kilometre seawall that stretched from Yinyanzhen in the north to Ningbo in the South. The Seawall fully enclosed the mouth of the Yangzi River and Hangzhou Bay, creating the artificial Beigang Bay at the mouth of the Yangzi. Ships could still come and go through lock systems, and elaborate hydroelectric systems also worked to provide almost 30% of Greater Shanghai's power needs.

Su was proud that China had been able to build such a technological marvel. Of course, the feared total coastal devastation that the rise in global sea levels would cause never came, but the Seawall had been completed anyway, producing a massive calm-water bay that further promoted Greater Shanghai as a central node on the global supply chains. As Su looked out at the Great Seawall, he thought he saw the violent waves of the untamed ocean beyond, the moonlight reflecting off them dramatically.

And he was thankful that the Great Seawall was there to protect him from the outside world.

He was thankful that the powerful state that was able to build the Great Seawall was there to protect him.

"(They) will come from all corners of the world, seeking to share in our New Revolution. What else can we do but accommodate (these people), welcoming them to be a productive part of the New Revolution. We will not turn away hungry mouths if we can guide them to feed not just themselves, but their predecessors, their successors, and their gracious hosts as well."
- Zhan Liandong

Taking a long drag of a cigarette, the gaunt man in a typical worker's jumpsuit leaned against the railing of the Great Seawall, staring blankly out at the rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean beyond. Each rolling force of nature charged across the dark sea, slamming itself against the reinforced concrete protecting Shanghai from the elements. To the far right, the locks of the Northern Gate could be seen, a seemingly endless line of ships waiting to enter or exit the Beigang-Hangzou Bay. The locks were not typically used as intended, and ships simply passed through the portal with both gates opened. The sea levels had not risen far enough for the locks to be necessary, but perhaps one day the water level inside and outside of the Great Seawall would require those mechanisms to be used.

Glancing at his Xiaomi smartwatch, he noted the time and looked over his shoulder. They still had about an hour before the next drone patrol flew over this section of the Seawall. Flicking his spent cigarette over the side of the structure, he shook his head and turned around to look at the city before him. Unlike the rough seas outside, Beigang Bay was much calmer, allowing a shimmering reflection of the gleaming skyscrapers on the Puzhong to attempt to compete with the real thing. Formerly the islands of Chanxing and Hengsha, the rapid growth of Shanghai Metropolis had absorbed the former farming communities as it spread northwards. A shining, ultramodern cancer, just like the one definitely growing in his lungs.

Cao Honghui lit up another cigarette.

Section C82, Great Seawall of Shanghai
Shanghai Metropolis
People's Republic of China

A faint sound of something tapping against metal broke the middle-aged man out of his stupor, and he clamped the cigarette between his lips as he turned to look over the side of the Seawall. Ten metres down, the ocean ceaselessly beat against the reinforced concrete, though when the waves retreated a small maintenance platform left over from the construction phase was revealed. The rusty metal structure and the ladder that led up the seawall had long been forgotten, and were almost invisible here on the dark side, shaded by the wall itself from the nighttime sun that was Shanghai Metropolis.

Nonetheless, by the moonlight Cao was able to see discern the first dark shape arduously making its way up the rusted service ladder. He leaned to one side to let the newcomer pass as he heaved himself over the side of the Seawall. Cao raised both of his hands non-threateningly as the heavily emaciated, darker-skinned man bent over and caught his breath, glancing around disoriented. Suddenly, he stared towards the Puzhong, transfixed.

After a few seconds of silence, heavy grunts could be heard from the other side of the wall. Panting heavily, a second man crawled over the concrete edge, spitting uncouthly and doubling over. The short and stocky man wiped his hands on his cargo pants, leaving behind dark stains that were either rust or blood. Cao didn't know, nor did he really care.

"You're fucking late, again," Cao chided.

The shorter man waved one hand nonchalantly, releasing his backpack's straps and setting the misshapen bag on the ground roughly. As he did this, more dark shapes came over the wall, some wrapped in thermal blankets. Some male, some female, all largely rail-thin and emaciated. They gathered together for warmth, but all of them stole glances at the Puzhong as though it were some forbidden sight.

"Can they speak?" Cao asked his exhausted counterpart, then turned to the group, "can you speak Mandarin?"

"I can say China words," one of the younger men shakily replied. A woman tried to copy what he said, then glanced at the Puzhong. So close, and yet so far... The Shanghai native could not relate.

Cao shook his head and smacked the shorter man on the arm.

"Tranh, how many fucking times have I told you, at least give them a crash course on the boat or something," the Chinese man was quickly losing his patience.

"Do you realise..." the thick Vietnamese boatman lit up a cigarette, "these people crossed the ocean hiding in a pile of rotting fish? What, maybe I should have hired a tutor to climb in there as well?"

"Every non-speaker you bring in raises the chance of getting caught that much higher," Cao spat and roughly kicked a reinforced utility briefcase onto its side, then bent over and opened it up, "what, some citizen goes through an accident and suddenly can't speak Mandarin, but are now totally fluent in... Whatever the fuck they're fluent in?"

Tranh just laughed this off, to Cao's silent fury. Cao pulled out a machine that looked like a sleek plastic staple gun combined with a contactless thermometer, as well as a tablet computer and a stack of plastic cards. He attached a cable from the gun to the tablet, then beckoned the refugees to come to him with childish, exaggerated movements. They obediently came, shivering with cold or excitement he could not tell.

"I'm going to take your photo, then I will implant you with the Hao Lu chip and hand out an identity card. Do not lose this card. Try to have copies made as soon as you-" Cao stopped himself, realising none of them understood what he was saying. He glared pointedly at the human trafficker, who smirked and began translating for him.

The first in line was the young man who attempted to speak Mandarin earlier, which was probably for the best. Cao took his photograph with the tablet computer, then keyed in a few particulars on the screen. He scanned the QR code on one of the blank plastic cards, the digital ink quickly rearranging itself into an identity card bearing the man's photograph and other particulars; his caught-in-the-headlights expression was now attached to the name Qi Donghai. After warning the man and patting him on the back to reassure him, Cao rubbed the man's right temple with sterilising solution and then pressed the gun to his right temple. The man winced as though Cao was placing a real gun to his head. The Chinese man found this perversely funny and smirked to himself.

With the swift pull of the trigger, a microscopic jet of nanomachines was sent into the man's temple, where they would quickly form into the Hao Lu chip just under the skin of the right temple. In some government satellite or database somewhere, Qi Donghai's status suddenly shifted from "missing" to "alive", though his exact location was still not available. This was of little concern, since glitches and bugs happened all the time and there were probably thousands of people who the computers could not track at any given moment - even computers had their limits, after all.

After he was done, the man looked at him with an expression of gratitude, as though Cao had just gifted him a million credits. The man thanked him profusely in his broken Mandarin, then sighed deeply and returned to staring at the Puzhong in wonder. The next refugee came up to Cao, and he repeated the process. There was some kind of strange irony that here, in the cover of darkness and breaking at least fifteen laws of the Republic, Cao was basically doing the same thing as at his day job, updating people's chips at the City Office with a similar gun-shaped device. People tended to freak out more when a robot aimed a gun at their head, so it was determined that this was a job that needed to be done by humans. Cao didn't buy it, a fucking machine could do his job. He was just a human-shaped machine.

Take photograph, input data, scan card, pull trigger. Take photograph, input data, scan card, pull trigger...

"Haven't seen this many IDs in a while," Tranh remarked, rummaging through Cao's box out of curiosity and noting the massive stack of ID cards in one of the compartments. Cao didn't even skip a beat to reply, continuing to scan in each of the refugees.

"A bus fell off a cliff near Chongqing, 62 casualties," Cao nonchalantly explained, "Wu's boys got there and liquidated a few bodies before the system could register them dead."

"Fuckin' gold mine," Tranh whistled, dropping the cards back into box, probably having stolen something in the process too.

Take photograph, input data, scan card, pull trigger... And he was done. The last woman mumbled a garbled "thank you" and ducked to her friends, who were huddled together on the side of the Seawall, looking at the Puzhong. This was their first taste of the Chinese World, and just across the bay it looked like a heaven on Earth. Cao found himself wondering if they even had cities in whatever hole these people came from. Tranh causally leaned against the railing next to Cao, prompting him to glare at the trafficker.

"Well? Where's my stuff?" Cao asked expectantly.

Tranh laughed again, thoroughly enjoying tormenting of the uptight Chinese man. He bent down and pulled an insulated case from inside his backpack, gently picking it up and handing it to Cao, who snatched it away roughly. He set the box down on the ledge and cracked it open, cool condensing vapours curling out of the box in the humid seaside air.

Amidst chunks of dry ice were two clear bottles, marked with Japanese words that Cao could only partially read. He gingerly picked up one of the bottles and inspected it, staring at the nondescript clear liquid inside. Japanese rice wine. Cao himself didn't drink, but this would fetch a massive price on the black market. Satisfied, he put the bottle back inside, and turned his attention to a blue-tinged ziploc bag. Cracking it open, inside was a wad of crisp Renminbi notes, each bearing the serene likeness of Eternal Chairman Mao Zedong.

With the transition of the Chinese internal market away from money and towards Social Credit-based transactions in the pursuit of New Socialism, the Chinese national currency was ironically hard to find within China itself. Typically, only businessmen and Party members used RMB, and only within their own enclaves or overseas. And because social credits were not backed in anything, the black market also operated with RMB. Cao nodded and re-sealed the plastic bag after verifying that the amount paid for his services was correct.

Saving the best for last, Cao picked up the final item in the cooler box, a nondescript paper bag. With trembling hands, he lifted the bag and opened it slightly, catching sight of the dark-coloured contents. He released one exhilarated breath, brought his nose to the bag and inhaled the earthy aroma of coffee - real coffee beans. Following the ecological devastation of the equator, real coffee had become a luxury available to very few in China. Synthetic substitutes were common, but just like with white rice there was just something... different about the real thing. And once you had the real thing, it was very difficult to appreciate the ordinary synthetic products any more. This was why he always refused to get real white rice for his wife's birthday.

He shook the bag slightly to ensure that Tranh had not tried to scam him, and was satisfied to see that the bag contained a full 500 grams of the precious beans. He slammed the cooler shut. For a brief moment, he understood why these people chose to brave the elements to come to a country like China. Just like he wanted to drink real coffee, the refugees wanted to lead a real life, even if Cao would barely consider their coming life in the Gansu algae farms as "living". And just like he would likely be executed for his crimes here if caught, they were willing to risk their lives to have a life better than the one in whatever hole they crawled out of.

As the minor clerk started packing up his scanning equipment, the thought of the cup of coffee he would have the next morning occupied his thoughts, front and centre.

Real coffee!

"Every nation on this planet owes its people a debt. The purpose of a country is to feed, shelter, and provide for the people who call it home. Why should any country be prevented from carrying out this noble duty by any external party? The right to self-determination and independence is a right deserved by all countries, and is as much a reality as the right for the people to call a country their home."
- Zhan Liandong

Sipping from the typical paper cup, Liu Wei swirled the diluted coffee around his mouth once, as he always did, before gulping it down. This was a habit that the Minister of International Trade had picked up from his time in the Army, so many years ago. Fighting in Korea had been bitter, the hastiness with which China committed to the action meant supply lines were not always well-connected, and the North Koreans were surprisingly adept at guerrilla warfare. They savoured every drop of water they received; the People's Liberation Army did not take a single thing, not even a single drop of water, from the North Koreans. They had learned from the Russian debacle of 2022.

On the other side of the glass stretched the city of Beijing, the second-largest city in the People's Republic and the fourth-largest in the wider Democratic Federation. The orderly grid formed by the ancient Imperial city planning at the city centre was always a delight to look at, the red-tinged glow from the Forbidden City a firm reminder of the centuries of history that led to the modern China. And looking further than that, the vertical line of lights that was the Beijing Heavenly Spire soared straight upwards from the direction of Tianjin, as if someone had reached down from space, plucked up one of the roads that spiderwebbed across the land, and pulled it back up towards the dark sky.

Cloud Valley Garden, 50th Floor, Beijing Crystal Tower
Beijing Capital Metropolis
People's Republic of China

Liu took another sip of coffee, then attempted to turn his attention back to his immediate surroundings. While nowhere as grand as the Heavenly Spire, nor as iconic as the Aerospace Tower, the Beijing Crystal Tower was by far the most important of the three. Commonly referred to as the "New Zhongnanhai", the Crystal Tower was the new headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party and, more importantly, the seat of the President of the Democratic Federation. The New China was not a single state, but a fraternity of like-minded countries united under the Democratic Federation. In accordance with the tenets of self-determination and Zhan Liandong Thought, each member state was nominally free to run its own affairs, under the fair guidance of the Communist Party. It was a good system that the misguided Old China could never achieve.

Unity through disunity. Like yin and yang, duality is everywhere in the Chinese state.

The former President Zhan Liandong's words to him, back when he was merely a junior Party member fresh out of the Army, reverberated in the back of Liu's mind. He casually placed one hand on the railing behind him, leaning against it as he took in a deep breath. The scent of true nature filled his nostrils, of flowers, plants, and a tinge of animal dung. Through the glass bottom of the viewing platform, the leaf-covered forest floor could be seen, a small creek running through it as it headed for the pond in the middle of the garden. Coiled up directly beneath the platform, fast asleep, was a bizarre creature.

Clearly some form of lizard, the blue-tinged creature had an elongated body like a snake, and yet it had four legs. This was a Chinese Dragon, straight from the pages of centuries of Chinese mythology and finally into the real world through the wonders of genetic engineering. The scientific process was lost on Liu, but he knew that the creature combined the genetics of snakes and komodo dragons into one chimeric creature. The heads of the creatures were still recognizably komodo-based, albeit with the iconic two long whiskers at the ends of their snouts. Just like in mythology, these dragons were also able to spray jets of water, which Liu had never seen before. They subsisted on a diet of fish and were engineered to be docile; in fact, the Chinese Dragons could only survive in captivity, as they were incapable of breeding and had a slow and ungainly method of locomotion due to their sheer length.

Only the Shanghai Zoo, where they were created, and the Crystal Tower had these magnificent specimens. While talks between lower-level ministers were usually in the typical meeting rooms and offices, negotiations with foreign leaders was almost always done amidst the artificial forest of the Cloud Valley Garden, displaying the full technological capabilities of the New China in all aspects. The meticulously climate-controlled room was comfortably cool, like after a rainshower in a subtropical forest, and the abundance of nature within the building displayed the New China's dedication to repairing the devastated global ecology. And right outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, the splendid size of the Beijing Capital Metropolis was in full view, topped by the Heavenly Spire. On a clear day, the Aerospace Tower could be seen as well.

Though he saw these things every day, riding the elevator from the landing pad just above the Cloud Valley Garden levels down to his office on the 15th floor, the 60 year old government official still found it breathtaking every time he stopped to take it all in. His generation, which grew up in the immediate post-Xi era, essentially grew up alongside the New China. They had seen it develop from one of its lowest points to its modern heights. And though China had not yet finished climbing this mountain, they would not be the only ones climbing it. China would help their fellow nations climb it as well.

"Welcome, I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Capital Metropolis," a melodic voice spoke in English with a Hunan accent at the other end of the viewing platform. A Party official herded a group of foreigners into the viewing gallery, where a conference table was set up with chairs that were scientifically designed to be aesthetically pleasing to as many global cultures as possible. President Wang Yandan moved to one of the two seats at the head of the trapezoidal table as the foreigners filed in, Liu himself moving to his seat next to his Israeli counterpart

With her greying hair in a neat bob and dressed in the iconic green Zhongshan suit, albeit with a conservative skirt instead of pants, the most powerful woman in China barely looked the part. President Wang Yandan was a protege of Zhan Liandong himself, and had served her terms as the first female President of the People's Republic of China, and now she was the President of the Democratic Federation. Much like her person, the Changhsa native's rise to power was quiet and forceful, though there had not been much opposition to her ascent. Metrics showed that she was well-liked across the entire Democratic Federation, and she was popular within the Party as well.

And she was a human, unlike that smiling robot the Japanese had placed in charge of their country. Much like her predecessors, President Wang often went down to the ground to meet the people in person. She had in fact just finished a state visit to Uygurstan just hours before the Israeli delegation had landed in Beijing; Liu was somewhat envious that she still appeared full of serene energy at her age. He gulped down the last of the coffee and disposed the cup in a garbage drone that immediately swooped in from parts unknown, nodding and smiling to his Israeli colleague. Liu knew that his English was not the best; better to not try to make small talk and embarrass himself and the President.

Only once the foreigners had sat down did President Wang sit, and only after she sat did the other Chinese Party members sit. Everyone at the table had access to a tablet computer, as well as controls for the central holographic display that released a fine mist of nanomachines to produce three-dimensional images.

"Again, I would like to thank our honoured Israeli guests for visiting Beijing," President Wang opened, "Israel and China have long been good friends. In 1950, Israel was the first state to recognise the People's Republic of China as the legitimate Chinese government, as opposed to Jiang Jieshi's holdouts on Hainan. Since then, Israel has always been a valued economic and military partner to China, and we look forward to perpetuating our close relationship."

President Wang smiled and gave the hovering camera drone a moment to take a photograph.

"Nonetheless, both Israel and the people of the Chinese Democratic Federation now face shared threats. As technology has expanded further, certain groups of people in the world have begun to see it as a threat. These reactionaries seek to undo all the stellar progress that humanity has achieved over the last half-century. And in recent years, these groups have expanded in their threats to both Israel and the Democratic Federation."

The reference these groups was clearly a veiled reference to the Shia Union, the Islamist superstate that formed in the Middle East. Fervently against Israel and the integration of artificial intelligence into the Chinese government, the Union was building up its military forces and could become a credible threat. Albeit this was more of an immediate concern for Israel than China, but should Israel fall, China's strongest foothold in the Mediterranean would be lost. Liu knew that beneath her unassuming exterior, President Wang was a calculating political expert. Just like her mentor.

"Therefore, as President of the Democratic Federation, I formally invite Israel to form the Cross-Asian Defence Pact with the sovereign states of the Democratic Federation, such that we may stand together against the reactionaries for the continued stability, peace, and prosperity across the Asian continent. Through this Pact, the people of Israel and the people of China will work together to deter any foreign aggression against our sovereign states, and build a peaceful future together."

Momentarily holding up the treaty for the camera drone to see, President Wang handed it to her Israeli counterpart seated next to her with both hands but with no bow of her head, displaying her respect for him while showing that she viewed him at the very most as an equal partner. With the sheer speed in which tabloids and mass media moved, and the liberalised media in Greater China, these subtle intricacies were more important than ever. And Wang was a master of such intricacies, just like her mentor.

A soldier in PLA dress uniform stepped in from behind and curtly offered the Israeli leader a pen.

by **Union Princes** » Fri May 06, 2022 9:58 pm

"The soldier above all others pray for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." - Douglas MacArthur

Sebastian Carr felt shaky in his boots as he marched alongside his comrades in the National Guard. There was another protest in the Motor City, no doubt relics from the radical left-wing regimes that once ruled the Steel Belt. Rust Belt, Sebastian corrected himself, back when there was only corruption and anarchy in the Old US prior to collapse. The liberal agitators, possibly communists among their ranks as well, were all carrying placards and throwing empty beer bottles at the National Guard and the FBI. Like the traitorous gremlins that they are, these false patriots were screaming sedition, something about returning to the old days when everything was vulnerable and stupid.

Young Sebastian gripped his rifle tightly and wished he was alongside his brother, marching westward towards the Pacific. Being 18 years old and fresh from barracks training, he had always desired to be the first one to climb to the top of the Rockies. From the last time he heard from his older brother, Toby told him that he was gonna be among the three million US soldiers to mobilize at the border of the PSA, or was it six million? He couldn't remember. Sebastian has never seen a Marine in action before and Toby spoke of a rumor that his unit will be working alongside them, that is if the traitor states refused to recognize the rightful Federal Government. Life just seems unfair to the young recruit to this day.

The National Guard nonetheless marched forward to break up the protest. Given the suspicion that there may be guns among the dissenters, the Federalists had their bayonets out and attached at the end of their rifles. The sight of the blades surely intimidated the crowd but there were always a few dumb enough to test the diligence of the National Guard. Thankfully, the Federal police were present to assist in detaining the ones that got their thighs stabbed after throwing a bottle into the face of his brethren.

"Down with the Caesar! Give Peace a Chance!" The radical liberals cried out, much to Sebastian's contempt. "The Commander-in-Chief Gabriel Goldwater is Jewish, not Italian!" he roared, smashing the butt of his rifle against a female protestor that tried to tackle him. "DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY!"

Unlike these traitors, he is a real American. Sebastian is loyal, strong, and a good Christian boy who knows what he knows and what he doesn't know. He swore an oath to defend the government, the Constitution, the people, and the country from threats both foreign and domestic. Just as his father before him and his father's father before him. God is his witness and there was no fear in his heart. Though he had reservations about arresting his fellow countrymen, anyone who defies the Federal Government is protesting defies the United States itself. Anyone who defies the United States is the enemy of the American people. That was the truth and that will always be the truth. As his pastor has stated, the greatest strength can be found only in the truth.

by **Cala Blanca** » Fri May 06, 2022 10:25 pm

Baghdad, Shia Union

It was a new dawn, the year of 2091. So much had happened in the decades leading to this moment, so much joy and fear all culminating into a world that was totally unlike what had been before. Of course you had the ancient ages where men fought with swords and clubs, the age of the power and shot, the world wars and the rise and fall of the Cold War. The Cold War had been the birthplace of this new Union, though perhaps at the time they did not realize it. The Islamic revolution that had burned it's way all throughout the Persian nation, now consumed the famous city of Baghdad. Truthfully the Iranians had thought Israel bold enough to launch a first strike, but the strike never came, even as Iranian tanks rolled into Baghdad. Sure, they tried their usual shadow games, games that they were famously good at. Many a scientist and commander found themselves taking the long sleep from Shin Bet and Mossad agents operating in places like Mosul and crossing from Kuwait.

After years of sectarian violence the Shia majority became a reality, leaving a drain of refugees pouring into Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. This was a totally acceptable trade as it allowed Persian families to move in and con-mingle with the Shia Iraqi's. When the Shia Union was born and and the new banner was unveiled in Tehran and Baghdad everyone knew that this change was total and permanent. Even now, they were pushing for more integration with the completion of the Mosque of New Islamic Wisdom. It would be the largest Shia Mosque ever constructed and it utilized drones in this regard. It was immense, overlooking the Tigris river which had already overflown due to climate disruptions. Thus, the new Mosque would be situated on higher ground, providing a dominating view of the river. This is where Hasan worked, a construction worker and local of Baghdad and the son of an Arab father and Persian Mother. You see, the drone were not allowed to do all the work on the building, their job primarily was the support structures, human hands given life by Allah were to sculpt the beautiful perso-arabic designs upon the house of worship.

Hasan was a molder and enjoyed his work, carving and placing designs upon it's walls. It was a demanding job, the sheer scale taking hundreds and hundreds of working, not including the drones who were assisting. Every day as the sun went down and he went home to his family he washed his hands of the dust and enjoyed a good home cooked meal from his wife, participating in prayer and raising his sons and daughters. It was fulfilling. This was what the other nightmarish nations did not see or feel, they were cold and heartless like the machines they gave so much power to. The Israeli's and the Chinese in particular, two nations who had given away their rich traditions, cultures and faith and twisted them into a abomination. Life was not always perfect in the Union but every man and woman knew they had a role to play and that they lived not for themselves or simply some calculating machine but to a higher power that had gifted them the very breath leaving their body. The Union embraced technology as it should have been intended, to serve Allah's will not replace it. Tehran and Baghdad bathed in the neon lights as other nations did but these lights formed graceful tributes to god and his creations. Giant inscriptions of the Quran dazzled on gorgeous buildings bringing the Islamic revolution to a golden age. The woman head and hair covered by glowing silks, maintaining their modesty.

This was all Hasan needed, it's all he would ever need. But every day he watched the news cycles coming out of Tehran he knew that the godless techno-barbarians to the east and west were simply awaiting to tear everything they loved and believed in apart. But they would make a foolish mistake for they traded faith with firewalls...

by **Reorganized Portugal** » Fri May 06, 2022 11:00 pm

"O Hawaii, o sands of my birth
My native home
I rejoice in the blessings of heaven
O Hawaii, how I love you."

-"Hawaii Aloha", national anthem of the Republic of Hawaii

Honolulu, Hawaii

It was 2091. The 21st Century was nearly over, a century that had brought much change to Hawaii. When this century had started, in 2001, Hawaii was an integrated part of the United States of America, and now, the United States was nothing more than a fragmentation of weak and puny republics and dictatorships, Hawaii among them. The state was being influenced by other powers, in Asia and America, who saw Hawaii as the gateway to Pacific trade. The government of President Daniel Hafaoa wanted to prepare Hawaii for a war with any of these nations, even though it seemed so unlikely.

Arnold had first found himself in the uniform of the Hawaiian soldier in 2089. For most of his duty, he simply learned how to fire a gun and how to aim it, but that was about it. Until now. Hafaoa was calling in every soldier to go into intense training, "To defend our homeland, and to defend our islands!" Arnold did not see the purpose of this sudden increased discipline. Hawaii had at least 2000 miles of water in every direction! What kind of army could invade in any period of time without advanced warning?

Arnold put those thoughts aside as he wiped the intense sweat from his head. Even though it was September, the temperature was still almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit. He had gotten used to it, but he had frequently heard his grandparents complain about how it used to be cooler and more temperate when they had been young. He quickly got to work, piling sandbags on the Waimanalo Beach to make a sandbag wall. Apparently, if an army landed on the beaches, the sandbags would halt their advance, and they would need to be built quickly. He saw no point in this, but he didn't dare question his superiors.

For now, he worked, in the defense of his homeland, in the defense of his islands.

by **Danubian Peoples** » Sat May 07, 2022 12:22 am

John immersed himself in conversation with the others. He'd grown very close to each and every one of them over their many years, their discussions always so enlightening and spectacular. Such a close-knit circle, he reasoned. And he knew as a matter of fact the rest of them were thinking much the same. That is how close they were. Peering down with twin eyes, John looked at the form of his left hand, a five-fingered prosthetic clad in black nanofiber. Durable, responsive, far superior to the real deal he'd forsaken long ago. He then looked at his right. A beautiful organic color, restored, no, brought to a mythically ideal state by the magic of genetic engineering, rescued from entropic clutches. The duality between both he very much fancied. Two different appendages, steeped in two different sections of the future...

And then John raised a third hand, waving its twenty fingers in approval as another voiced their opinion.

Simulated Reality
Computing Hardware In San Francisco Metropolitan Region
Pacific States of America

John was currently plugged into a virtual reality. A large cable dug itself into the back of his head, using a surgically implanted port as a socket for its plug. His eyes were shut, though if the lids were raised, one would be greeted by deep blue cybernetics. As he sat down on the simulation chair, he wore an antiquated black suit and tie. 2091 had far newer fashions, but the styles of decades past still measured up in John's silicon eyes. He seemed almost inanimate, not even his chest betraying his continued life, his lungs long since worn out and replaced.

The simulated reality was immense, difficult to describe in corporeal terms. It was a world were the vastness of one's mind reached out into an expanse far greater than a mere body. One could mingle with the neurons of their peers directly, information pinging through the mixed mental soup like meteoroids between the stars. One could look like themselves, but with an extra appendage of alien geometry. Or as a mythical beast, a winged wyvern from legends European. Or both at the same time, or nothing at all. It is something best compared to a dream, and even that analogy is perhaps imperfect.

This mental soup in particular was that of the Pacific Ruling Body, a joining of 200 persons in one big conflagration. They all conversed in unison, two hundred voices chattering in a large cacophony. In the real world, it would have been a deafening, impossibly difficult noise that would've ground a legislature to a halt. Here however, the eldritch possibilities of ones and zeroes made the whole ordeal as smooth and as comfortable as a chat with an idealized friend. John continued to listen and speak attentively with his fellows in the Body. Their current topic of conversation, an ongoing livestream, straight from the other side of the Pacific.

Toishima wrote:Cloud Valley Garden, 50th Floor, Beijing Crystal Tower
Beijing Capital Metropolis
People's Republic of China

Liu took another sip of coffee, then attempted to turn his attention back to his immediate surroundings. While nowhere as grand as the Heavenly Spire, nor as iconic as the Aerospace Tower, the Beijing Crystal Tower was by far the most important of the three. Commonly referred to as the "New Zhongnanhai", the Crystal Tower was the new headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party and, more importantly, the seat of the President of the Democratic Federation. The New China was not a single state, but a fraternity of like-minded countries united under the Democratic Federation. In accordance with the tenets of self-determination and Zhan Liandong Thought, each member state was nominally free to run its own affairs, under the fair guidance of the Communist Party. It was a good system that the misguided Old China could never achieve.

Unity through disunity. Like yin and yang, duality is everywhere in the Chinese state.

The former President Zhan Liandong's words to him, back when he was merely a junior Party member fresh out of the Army, reverberated in the back of Liu's mind. He casually placed one hand on the railing behind him, leaning against it as he took in a deep breath. The scent of true nature filled his nostrils, of flowers, plants, and a tinge of animal dung. Through the glass bottom of the viewing platform, the leaf-covered forest floor could be seen, a small creek running through it as it headed for the pond in the middle of the garden. Coiled up directly beneath the platform, fast asleep, was a bizarre creature.

Clearly some form of lizard, the blue-tinged creature had an elongated body like a snake, and yet it had four legs. This was a Chinese Dragon, straight from the pages of centuries of Chinese mythology and finally into the real world through the wonders of genetic engineering. The scientific process was lost on Liu, but he knew that the creature combined the genetics of snakes and komodo dragons into one chimeric creature. The heads of the creatures were still recognizably komodo-based, albeit with the iconic two long whiskers at the ends of their snouts. Just like in mythology, these dragons were also able to spray jets of water, which Liu had never seen before. They subsisted on a diet of fish and were engineered to be docile; in fact, the Chinese Dragons could only survive in captivity, as they were incapable of breeding and had a slow and ungainly method of locomotion due to their sheer length.

Only the Shanghai Zoo, where they were created, and the Crystal Tower had these magnificent specimens. While talks between lower-level ministers were usually in the typical meeting rooms and offices, negotiations with foreign leaders was almost always done amidst the artificial forest of the Cloud Valley Garden, displaying the full technological capabilities of the New China in all aspects. The meticulously climate-controlled room was comfortably cool, like after a rainshower in a subtropical forest, and the abundance of nature within the building displayed the New China's dedication to repairing the devastated global ecology. And right outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, the splendid size of the Beijing Capital Metropolis was in full view, topped by the Heavenly Spire. On a clear day, the Aerospace Tower could be seen as well.

Though he saw these things every day, riding the elevator from the landing pad just above the Cloud Valley Garden levels down to his office on the 15th floor, the 60 year old government official still found it breathtaking every time he stopped to take it all in. His generation, which grew up in the immediate post-Xi era, essentially grew up alongside the New China. They had seen it develop from one of its lowest points to its modern heights. And though China had not yet finished climbing this mountain, they would not be the only ones climbing it. China would help their fellow nations climb it as well.

"Welcome, I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Capital Metropolis," a melodic voice spoke in English with a Hunan accent at the other end of the viewing platform. A Party official herded a group of foreigners into the viewing gallery, where a conference table was set up with chairs that were scientifically designed to be aesthetically pleasing to as many global cultures as possible. President Wang Yandan moved to one of the two seats at the head of the trapezoidal table as the foreigners filed in, Liu himself moving to his seat next to his Israeli counterpart

With her greying hair in a neat bob and dressed in the iconic green Zhongshan suit, albeit with a conservative skirt instead of pants, the most powerful woman in China barely looked the part. President Wang Yandan was a protege of Zhan Liandong himself, and had served her terms as the first female President of the People's Republic of China, and now she was the President of the Democratic Federation. Much like her person, the Changhsa native's rise to power was quiet and forceful, though there had not been much opposition to her ascent. Metrics showed that she was well-liked across the entire Democratic Federation, and she was popular within the Party as well.

And she was a human, unlike that smiling robot the Japanese had placed in charge of their country. Much like her predecessors, President Wang often went down to the ground to meet the people in person. She had in fact just finished a state visit to Uygurstan just hours before the Israeli delegation had landed in Beijing; Liu was somewhat envious that she still appeared full of serene energy at her age. He gulped down the last of the coffee and disposed the cup in a garbage drone that immediately swooped in from parts unknown, nodding and smiling to his Israeli colleague. Liu knew that his English was not the best; better to not try to make small talk and embarrass himself and the President.

Only once the foreigners had sat down did President Wang sit, and only after she sat did the other Chinese Party members sit. Everyone at the table had access to a tablet computer, as well as controls for the central holographic display that released a fine mist of nanomachines to produce three-dimensional images.

"Again, I would like to thank our honoured Israeli guests for visiting Beijing," President Wang opened, "Israel and China have long been good friends. In 1950, Israel was the first state to recognise the People's Republic of China as the legitimate Chinese government, as opposed to Jiang Jieshi's holdouts on Hainan. Since then, Israel has always been a valued economic and military partner to China, and we look forward to perpetuating our close relationship."

President Wang smiled and gave the hovering camera drone a moment to take a photograph.

"Nonetheless, both Israel and the people of the Chinese Democratic Federation now face shared threats. As technology has expanded further, certain groups of people in the world have begun to see it as a threat. These reactionaries seek to undo all the stellar progress that humanity has achieved over the last half-century. And in recent years, these groups have expanded in their threats to both Israel and the Democratic Federation."

The reference these groups was clearly a veiled reference to the Shia Union, the Islamist superstate that formed in the Middle East. Fervently against Israel and the integration of artificial intelligence into the Chinese government, the Union was building up its military forces and could become a credible threat. Albeit this was more of an immediate concern for Israel than China, but should Israel fall, China's strongest foothold in the Mediterranean would be lost. Liu knew that beneath her unassuming exterior, President Wang was a calculating political expert. Just like her mentor.

"Therefore, as President of the Democratic Federation, I formally invite Israel to form the Cross-Asian Defence Pact with the sovereign states of the Democratic Federation, such that we may stand together against the reactionaries for the continued stability, peace, and prosperity across the Asian continent. Through this Pact, the people of Israel and the people of China will work together to deter any foreign aggression against our sovereign states, and build a peaceful future together."

Momentarily holding up the treaty for the camera drone to see, President Wang handed it to her Israeli counterpart seated next to her with both hands but with no bow of her head, displaying her respect for him while showing that she viewed him at the very most as an equal partner. With the sheer speed in which tabloids and mass media moved, and the liberalised media in Greater China, these subtle intricacies were more important than ever. And Wang was a master of such intricacies, just like her mentor.

A soldier in PLA dress uniform stepped in from behind and curtly offered the Israeli leader a pen.

The PRB's talking occurred in conjunction with the watching, debating words as they fell from the mouths of Israeli and Chinese delegates. "Interesting," John said, the silent yet loud voice reverberating through the room. It was an interesting discussion, John was right about that, for he felt the others share the same sentiment.

"Predictions?" he beckoned. But not to the others, no. Instead, John directed his words towards a figure in the metaphysical corner. Theirs was an impossible shape, not exactly stateable in the language of print text or pen and paper. Nonetheless, John gave the figure the word. And it responded. Quickly.

"Analysis of current development concluded. Following potential conclusions to event drawn:
Israel signs deal with China, agrees to form Cross-Asian Defense Pact. Sino-Israeli tensions with Shia Union predicted to rise significantly. Potential for Sino-Israeli armed conflict with Shia Union predicted to rise significantly. Potential risk of harm to Pacific States of America predicted to rise non-insignificantly. Probability of event occurring high. Confidence in predictions high.

Israel rejects deal with China, maintains current relations. Israeli tensions with China predicted to rise insignificantly. Israeli tensions with China predicted to rise non-insignificantly. Israeli tensions with Shia Union predicted to decrease slightly. Potential for Israeli armed conflict with Shia Union predicted to remain constant. Potential risk of harm to Pacific States of America predicted to remain constant. Probability of event occurring low. Confidence in predictions medium.

Israel rejects deal with China, shifts away from current relations. Israeli tensions with China predicted to rise significantly. Israeli tensions with Shia Union predicted to remain constant. Potential for Israeli armed conflict with Shia union predicted to decrease significantly. Potential for Israeli armed conflict with China predicted to rise slightly. Potential risk of harm to Pacific States of America predicted to rise non-insignificantly. Probability of event occurring low. Confidence in predictions medium."

The AI concluded its virtual speech to John. At least 87 versions of that statement were sent to various members of the 200. John just heard what its algorithms predicted to be the best way to format the information to him. And evidently, they were correct. John nodded his virtual form in approval, though he motioned for more. "Elaborate on the predictions, especially the bits with the PSA," he asked of the machine intelligence.

"Pacific States of America risk assessment reason: Changes in relations with Israel and China and geopolitical landscape of Asia likely to indirectly affect Chinese relations with PSA. Chinese relations considered important for continued survival. Potential war in Asia may forestall current possibilities for alliance-building. Chinese resources committed to conflict will be unavailable for use for Pacific States. Without foreign backing, Federal position predicted to increase relative to Pacific States in event of war."

"My gratitude," John told the construct. "I presume this has been relayed to the others?" "Yes," said the AI flatly. "Then I suppose all we can do is wait and see. Stand by for continuing developments. We'll need to stay on guard for whatever comes out of this deal.."

It was good practice to let the bot in on these talks. While funding for the AI division may wax and wane, the continued presence of potential learning data is unlikely to dissipate. And it always made for an excellent aid in dealing with such current matters.

A horrible screech rang out, announcing the sudden halt of the vehicle. Tasha's ears picked up the noise immediately, relaying the horrid sound to her brain. The rest of them likewise heard the screech, and were in no wait to get out of the vehicle. As the doors swung open, they marched out into the earth. Their boots kicked up dust, knocked loose from earth which had no roots in place to keep it down. Mind going back to the noise from mere moments ago, she wondered jokingly if that's what it took to break organic eardrums. Her cybernetics were of course, far better suited for her line of work.

"Operation is a go. Begin searching settlement," said the voice on comms.

Camp Bodega
Western Interior
Pacific States of America

Camp Bodega was the name of the settlement. It was initially a military base founded here by insurrectionary-slash-loyalist-slash whatever elements of the US military. Frankly, it is uncertain, not a lot of well-kept literature was being made during those years. Whatever its origins, the base eventually grew into the basis for a small town out here in the wastes. Locals here depend plenty on the infrastructure set up by the military in the past, chief among them a well they had set up decades prior. Miraculously, it still functions in the today of 2091.

Tasha and her fellow soldiers watched as the locals looked on in fear and disdain. She gave them perplexed stares in response, her face gazing through a transparent face shield. They after all, were here to protect them. "Alright," she began. "We are here on reports of insurrectionary activity. If you'll excuse us, we will be conducting a thorough search of this settlement. If anyone would like to offer useful information, now is the time to do so."

Her voice beckoned to the locals. One of them quietly raised their hand, drawing Tasha close. They whispered something to her. Taking their advice, she and a flying drone went to investigate a particular location. The rest of the soldiers followed suit, maintaining their cohesion and close proximity with one another. The attacks had been rather clever as of late, picking off isolated units, of flesh and metal alike.

The location was a large warehouse on the outskirts of the settlement, formerly of military use but since refurbished for other purposes. According to what the local had said, it was a venue for rebel meetings, which had only been recently abandoned, and was likely still home to a treasure trove of information. They had kept the details quiet and kept their interaction discrete so as not to anger the other locals for ratting out the rebels. Peering through the warehouse's windows, Tasha found little evidence of a threat, the blue light of a drone's scanning laser corroborating her findings. Seeing no reason to doubt the intelligence gathered so far, Tasha and some of the other soldiers entered the building, accompanied by the drone.

And that's when the explosion struck.

A great fireball at once consumed the warehouse. The remaining soldiers outside were quickly blown away by the resulting force. The soldiers that had ventured inside were nowhere to be found, presumably vaporized, rendered immaterial by the blast. "Rigged! Warehouse rigged!" cried one of the surviving soldiers out, her voice breaking down to a glitchy drawl as she lay on the parched earth. Evidently her mechanical voice box had been damaged, as it spurted sparks from her neck. Enemies soon emerged, circling the soldiers like vultures from a distance. They readied their guns and aimed them at their incapacitated targets. "Damn you technocrat imperialists!" one beckoned triumphantly. Now all that was left, was to pull the trigger.

The swing of a knife quickly terminated their premature celebration. As the enemy's body hit the earth, Tasha emerged from a holographic cloak, a blade in her hand dripping red. Quickly moving her arm, she motioned the drone to come out of cloak, and strike. Its mechanics whirred to life as the machine deployed its weapons, training laser sights on its foes before dispatching them from afar. The sound of bullets being fired and cadavers falling to the earth quickly rang through the desert landscape.

Tasha's fellow soldiers rose from the earth, seemingly unharmed. Those that had disappeared with her into the warehouse had likewise reappeared, decloaking into visibility. "You put on a convincing show there," mentioned Tasha, complimenting one of the soldiers for their deceptive ability. "Thank you," she responded, mechanical voice box now clearly as pristine as ever. A few inhabitants of Camp Bodega had emerged onto the scene. They were horrified, faces holding expressions of terror. The soldiers seemed not to acknowledge them at all. That is, until they turned, and readied their weapons.

"Permission to liquidate settlement, designation Camp Bodega has been granted."

by **Europa Undivided** » Sat May 07, 2022 7:30 am

Rossiya – svyashchennaya nasha derzhava.
Rossiya – lyubimaya nasha strana.
Moguchaya volya, velikaya slava –
Tvoio dostoyanye na vse vremena!

Anthem of the late Russian Federation; co-opted by the Dominion

Mir Six Space Station
The Russian Dominion

Sasha shook his head. The plants were doing pretty well, all things considered, but they were not doing well enough. They often just gave meagre harvests, which was quite understandable in the low gravity conditions that they are subject to here in the space station’s hydroponics research wing, but it all just meant that he and the team have had very little progress. Sure, they did well in other areas, such as that drug for aleviating radiation sickness, but growing vegtables and fruits in a closed system, such as a space station, wasn’t as fruitful an endeavor as was hoped.

If they were to make a colony in the further reaches of the Solar System, then any settlement should be able to feed itself rather than relying on shipments from Earth. That was a dream for now, but it never hurt to think far ahead. After all, forward thinking is the thing that saved the Dominion from the chaos and stagnation that had victimized other successor states of Russia. They had done well for themselves, and many poor sods from Moscow and elsewhere had decided that the Dominion was a better place for them.

Either way, Sasha was relatively new here, and is simply the latest in a line of scientists that are trying to advance hydroponic farm technology. Most citizens didn’t seem the benefit in such a cause when food could simply be imported, as well as much of the government. It was a shame, really. Years ago, the Dominion always looked ahead, further into the future than everyone else around it. Now people just wanted everything to be done quickly, for things to be immediately provided, and the things of the present be prioritized above else. It would seem that the citizenry had taken their prosperity for granted…

“Oh, well,” the young scientist began typing on a datapad, which would then be uploaded into a central database. “It takes around 10 harvests for the supply to be exhausted and the yield felled… an improvement of exactly zero.”

Sasha took off his black framed glasses and put them on the table, rubbing his forehead in disappointment. He then leaned back on his seat, gazing back towards the Earth below him. The glimmering lights of the cities at night were the most mesmerizing sight of all; the duality between night and day, wherein cities are barely visible in the day, but they become great tracks of light at twilight. Dominion territory was noticeably bright, especially around St. Petersburg, Murmansk, and Arkhangelsk. The first one was especially bright, but perhaps the most fragile. Sasha’s cousin was an engineer that worked at maintaining the sea walls that prevent the Baltic Sea from devouring the sea, and she said that it was a price that they pay for the prosperity brought by the Northwest Passage trade route. Sure, three cities may get flooded to death, but at least they’re rich enough to make a wall to keep the water out.

He was just tired, anyway. Sasha leaned forward on his desk, dozing off while a cat curled up just right beside his sleepy head.

[hr][hr]

St. Petersburg, the Winter Palace
The Russian Dominion capital

For centuries long past, the Winter Palace had been the seat of power of the Tzars and Tzarinas of Russia, at least before they moved the capital back to Moscow. What had once been the house of royalty, however, was now the house of a democracy. The Palace now served as the personal residences of Chancellor Kiril Sutkov and his family, the latest in a line of democratically leaders since the separation of the Dominion from the rest of Russia.

For years, the Dominion had been courting other successor states, attempting to lure them into assimilating through promises of wealth and freedom. This had limited success, as they were all more or less self absorbed, each seeing themselves as the true successor to Russia. None expressed this as vehemently as Moscow itself, which wished for the other successors to join it instead. Of course, the dozens of petty republics that arose from the Federation’s collapse did not want to be subservient to Moscow yet again. And so Russia remains divided, as it had after the Kievan Rus shattered centuries ago.

Speaking of Kiev, Dominion citizens often came to Ukraine, as they had family and friends there, just as it had been the case for the people of both nations for many years. It was most regrettable, really, that the Dominion could not simply return the territory that the Federation had taken from Ukraine during that blunder of an invasion back in 2022, for it does not hold them to begin with. Nevertheless, Kiril Sutkov, the Chancellor, had plans to make a visit… and maybe make a speech or two.

by **Sao Nova Europa** » Sat May 07, 2022 10:34 am

FORMOSA NEWS

Formosa's most visited News-site

President addresses annual Formosa Economic Forum

President Albert Leemrijsen addressed the annual Formosa Economic Forum, which has traditionally been used by Formosan Presidents to announce new initiatives and expand on their domestic agenda. The President has announced a 'Three Arrows' policy to increase economic growth, foster innovation and promote public security. At the same time, he highlighted Formosa's uniqueness as a 'bastion of liberty and democracy in an era of autocracies'.

More specifically, the President stated that "the Formosan Republic is unique in a world where many countries have embraced ethno-nationalism or technocratic autocracy. It is a multiethnic, multicultural republic that defends individual rights and fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. Our strength lies in our deep commitment to human freedom and rejection of ephemeral security. For as Benjamin Franklin once said, 'they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.' Our republican system of government is what makes this small island a great country."

The President also elaborated on his 'Three Arrows' initiative. "Our administration aims to increase economic growth, foster innovation and promote public security. Each 'arrow' represents a concrete step towards achieving those tangible goals. Firstly, we shall invest more than $2.5bn towards our public universities to expand the number of high-skill graduates who can then be employed in the high-tech sectors of our economy. Many corporations, not just in Formosa, face problems in finding adequately trained staff. We aim to address those concerns by making Formosa a center of learning not just in Asia, but in the entire world."

"Secondly," the President continued, "we aim to hire an additional 6000 police officers and roll out 2500 more patrol drones to improve public security and combat crime. As presidential candidate, I repeatedly stressed that I would take a tougher stance against crime. Now, as President, I fulfil this campaign promise. No law abiding citizen will ever feel unsafe again. The 'third arrow' is slashing the corporate flat tax from the current 10% to 7%. This will make Formosa even more competitive in the global market and attract foreign conglomerates to our island. The resulting economic growth shall make up for the loss of revenue and raise standards of living."

The speech by President Albert Leemrijsen was well received. According to a Public Issue poll conducted after the speech, 65% of Formosans approved of the initiates, 31% disagreed and 4% were unsure.

Vice-President on National Assembly talks

Vice-President and Speaker of the National Assembly Suharto Hadian Salim spoke in an interview at Channel 7 News about his negotiations in the National Assembly. The Conservative Peoples' Party of President Leemrijsen does not have a majority in the National Assembly, so it will have to negotiate with other parties in order to ensure that the President's 'Three Arrows' agenda become a reality. The Vice-President stated that talks with the centrist Democratic Party are reaching a breakthrough.

"The Democrats are receptive to our agenda," the Vice-President said. "Especially with regards to investing into our higher education. While the negotiations are still underway, I can tell you that we are nearing a breakthrough that will allow us to pass the President's agenda through the Assembly." The Vice-President also called for the center-left Progressive Alliance to show 'responsibility'. "There have been no formal negotiations with the Progressives, but I would hope that they act as a responsible opposition that does not say no for no's shake. Our investment into public education is certainly a policy that center-leftists can agree with, so it would be really baffling in they decided to reject it out of spite."

Labour leader blasts President's initiatives

While the Democratic Party and the Progressive Alliance have not formally responded to the President's agenda, with the former negotiating with the Vice-President and the latter still formulating a response, the Chairman of the Labour Party Sun Zexi has blasted the administration's initiatives as 'neoliberal austerity' and 'repressive brutalism'. The Labour Party represents the hard left of Formosan politics and in recent years has been making gains at the expense of the center-left Progressive Alliance.

"We don't need more neoliberal austerity," Sun Zexi said. "We need policies that promote the welfare of the 99%, not of the 1%. Instead of slashing the already ludicrously low corporate tax, we should increase it to 35% and use the increased revenue to expand our diminishing welfare state. Instead of wasting money on the education of a tiny elite, we should invest into better primary schools. Instead of being a corporate paradise, we should regulate corporations so that destructive automation is stopped and ordinary folk can get back to work instead of having to rely on UBI charity. Instead of repressive brutalism and more cops, we need to deal with the socio-economic roots of crime; exploitation, desperation and social exclusion. The Labour Party will stand against the President's far right agenda."

Op-Ed: Progressives must choose common-sense over populism
by Pieter-Jan Nauw

With the Labour Party taking a strong stance against the President's initiatives and the Democratic Party seemingly willing to support the President's agenda, the spotlight falls on the Progressive Alliance. The Progressives have taken repeated beatings in both presidential and legislative elections, and are trying to regain the initiative. The party is split between a center-left, social democratic wing that - correctly in my opinion - believes that the way to get back to power is by reaching out to the moderate, median voter that wants social stability, economic growth and financial security, and a left-wing populist wing that believes that the Progressives should chase after the voters that have defected to the hard-left Labour Party by embracing a pugilistic, populistic leftist agenda.

I believe that the Progressives must choose common-sense over populism. For one, you cannot beat populists in their own field. Voters prefer the genuine thing, so if they have to choose between a center-left Progressive Alliance that spouts leftist slogans or an ideologically committed to the left Labour Party, most will choose the second. The Progressives embracing left-wing populism will only legitimize the discourse of the Labour Party and enable mainstream voters to float in that direction. This will be destructive not just for the Progressives, but also for our political system.

Secondly, most voters belong in the political center and reject political extremism. It is no wonder that a significant majority in the polls supports the President's agenda. And do mind that a large part of those responders do not vote for the Conservatives. Indeed, many Progressive voters support the President's initiatives. This is not surprising: investing into public education has been a longtime center-left policy, and the President is cleverly making an outreach towards centrist and even center-left voters while at the same time satisfying his own political base with tax cuts and a tough 'law and order' agenda. As such, Progressives would do well to chase after the median, moderate voter rather than trying to compete with the extremist Labour Party.

What should the Progressives do? In my opinion, they should vote in support of the increased funding for public education and critically also support the hiring of more police officers while at the same time rejecting the corporate tax cuts as both fiscally irresponsible and socially unjust. But they should also provide their own plan for the future, instead of simply reacting to what the President does. The Progressives need to present a coherent, tangible program that they will vow to implement if they win a majority in the National Assembly and the presidency in the next elections. Voters cannot be won simply by saying no to the government: they need to be persuaded that Progressives have a plan to make this country better.

by **Khasinkonia** » Sat May 07, 2022 3:56 pm

"Clear water: No front, no back"
- Fukuda Chiyo-ni

Suzu Salt Farms, Okunoto, Ishikawa Prefecture

The harsh ringing of an alarm clock disturbed an otherwise peaceful morning. Yamada Haruki flailed and reached for his phone. A few more minutes surely would not hurt. His alarm repeated five minutes later. His girlfriend grumbled as he reached to press the button again. Akiko hated his habit of pressing snooze, but having lived together for so long, they had come to understand that neither would fully abandon their own little preferences.

Making his way to the kitchen, Haruki rubbed his eyes as he turned on the lights. The sun would not rise for several hours yet. Pausing before a cabinet, he checked the forecast on his phone. The day would be sunny, it seemed. Nodding softly to himself, he reached for the coffee and put on a pot. As the coffee brewed, he opened another cabinet and pulled out three small plastic objects that resembled eggs. After pouring some oil into a pan, he twisted the cap at the top of the “eggs” and poured out a yolk and white together from each one. After pouring in a bit of soy sauce, he paused before turning on the heat of the stove. A dash of green onion powder, to complete the mixture.

In the midst of scrambling, he left his spot at the stove and popped several handfuls of rice into a bowl, and then put it in the microwave. After rinsing his hands, he returned to the stove.

The beep of the microwave continued on for several seconds as he finished cooking the eggs. Haruki dumped the eggs into the larger bowl, and then split off around half of the eggs and rice into a smaller bowl. He poured a mug of coffee, and added sugar and creamer. In the bedroom, he tread quietly, and placed the mug and the bowl with utensils on Akiko’s side of the bed. She would wake up soon enough, at least, soon enough that her breakfast and coffee would still be warm.

Haruki ate his breakfast in silence as he checked his Line. As he ate with one hand, he forwarded things he found funny to Akiko, and then to several friends, with the other.

Around thirty minutes later, he had gotten ready for the day, just as Akiko began to stir. He bid her goodbye for the morning, and walked from his house across the street to the door of what appeared to be a shed jammed into the mountainside. As he typed in the password and used his key to unlock the door, he sipped from his mug, recalling his younger days, when he would slide out of bed after a night of fun with friends, complete his checks, and then nestle himself back in Akiko’s warm embrace until several hours after the sun rose. These days, however, though his body was just as spry as it was those years ago, his mind had aged all the same. Now that he was awake, he knew he would not be able to fall back asleep.

Housed behind the shed was a large facility, one with many vats and a jungle of machinery, all working as if he was not here. Indeed, Haruki was the only person at this facility. Within the mountains of the idyllic countryside that he called home was a large factory—one that produced artificial meat for the entire peninsula. It stretched on for quite a distance—more than he could see with his own eyes, even now that the lights had turned on. As he stepped into a little machine on a set of rails, he rolled around the facility with his checklist. The machines were themselves prepared for inspection, just as they were prepared to complete all of the labour themselves. That left only one job for Haruki—supervision. It was a task that he shared with several of his neighbours. Each one of them examined a section. He was fortunate in that his grades in university had granted him the central patrol, which required the least travel via the little carts of the facility, meaning he got to wake up the latest.

Today’s agenda for his section focused on checking the quality of the completed meat cultures—a task that rarely was more trouble than checking some data and then metaphorically licking the spoon after it was deemed safe, which, practically speaking, meant that tonight was steak night. The cultures grown in his facility weren’t the highest grade of beef, but being the man performing the inspection meant that he got his pick of the batch before anyone else did. If he was a more discerning man, perhaps he would have checked each piece of meat to find the best one, but ultimately, he trusted the machines that did the automatic inspections, and so long as the meat tasted good, he wouldn’t be in any trouble if he just picked a few cuts that looked juicy enough and grabbed them.

With boxes checked and meat picked out, Haruki left the way he came in, being careful to lock the door behind him.

The meat went in the fridge—Akiko would handle the rest…

Like many people who lived full-time in the countryside, the price Haruki paid for his view was an obligation to create. In his case, Haruki had come to enjoy the art of salt farming in the Agehama method.

Many years ago, the buckets were lifted by hand, but today, all Haruki had to do was guide them along a network of overhead cables. As the original masters had aged, some compromises had to be made, but the practices still retained the human touch—a feature very important to the wealthy people who paid the Dai Keiretsu, and therefore everyone, quite handsomely for the privilege of a mild salt collected under the careful help of a man.

Once the water had been laid down, Haruki began the part that he genuinely enjoyed—the part of his work that had compelled him to settle down in the countryside—the art of spreading the salty soil around to dry. For him, it was relaxing, like his own version of the dry gardens—one that was ever-changing. Sometimes he would rake and listen to the waves crashing and keep his mind, others he would shout to his neighbour and have a conversation from a number of metres away. On occasion, he would speak with his mother on the phone, and she would ask him for pictures of his latest designs. Often, though he would imagine that he was making his own little continent. Little bumps, tiny depressions, grew into mountain ranges and great seas in his mind’s eye. Sometimes he pictured little men down there, living and dying in the seconds it took him to step over their impossibly small homes.

Today, though, he was imagining what pieces Akiko would return with. Akiko and their neighbour, Shinsuke, would normally do their art on the porch. Shinsuke was a fan of using charcoal, and making abstractions of nature, while Akiko’s medium of choice was ink. Often, she would incorporate poetry, though when she could not come up with something to go with the piece as she made it, she would share it with Haruki, and he would ponder it as he raked.

Akiko and Shinsuke had been very excited for several weeks now, as today was the first day that they would be able to use a submersible with 360 degree vision. The vehicle had formerly belonged to the University of Toyoma’s marine biology department, but, as needs had changed, the vehicle was put up for auction. Akiko and Shinsuke had pooled resources with a number of other artists in the area to own the machine, and now it was their turn to use it. Instead of painting on the porch, the two would be under the sea, giving a new region to their works. Haruki eagerly awaited the results of their work.

“You want to enjoy life, don't you? If you get your job done quickly and your job is fun, that's good isn't it? That's the purpose of life, partly. Your life is better.”
- Yukihiro Matsumoto

Manchiyamu-yo!, Umeda, Osaka City

“Tanaka-san, Tanaka-san—Buchou! I assure you, I’ll finish those lines of code when I get back to my computer…I understand…Would you mind if I called you back in perhaps an hour and a half? I had hoped to enjoy lunch with a friend of mine…”

Covering the input with their hand as they stood from the table, Sekihi stood from the table as they listened.

“I’m real sorry, Kae-kae; I just need to run to the bathroom for a moment.”

“Of course Kiki.”

“Surely the breach can’t be that bad—No, seriously, I guarantee you it can wait two hours…No, I know it can wait because Shō and I set up the Korean servers so it can only communicate with the Japanese servers via a custom set of keys—we have it set up so no data breaches there should affect our home servers. No it’s not a matter of security; we had an in-person meeting about this. Do you recall back in May? With the gentlemen from the Yokohama branch? Yes. Look, long story short, we made the Korean server easy to crack and filled it with mostly useless dummy user data. Every key that gets sent through to the Japanese servers gets encrypted and then a decoy is put back into the Korean system. Yes, the hackers in Pyongyang shouldn’t have figured it out by the time I get in there to patch the breaches. If you’re really concerned about it, uh, I think Shō can pick up where I left off just fine…okay…okay…Yes. Tell him I told him he can patch himself in on our employee server. He has my keys written down on his desk…I’ll text him and ask him to as well…Yes sir…of course…I can get on that when I get home instead…I’m at Manchiyamu-yo!…Sure…Yes…I can totally drop that off for you on the way home…okay…talk to you soon…”

With a sigh, Sekihi hung up. Mr. Tanaka was a habitually anxious man. That old programmer remembered the 2020s remarkably well, but these days, even with his life-extending treatments, he still sometimes seemed to have the memory of the old man that laid underneath his eternally middle-aged skin.

As Sekihi sat down at the table, they saw salads coming out.

“You still get the caesar, right Kiki?” Kaede asked, “I figured I’d get us started so you wouldn’t have to wait. You sound so busy!”

Sekihi nodded and then took a bite of the salad.

“Sometimes I wish the Second Korean War had finished blowing up Pyongyang. Kae-kae, the hackers there are next level. An entire fake server! Can you believe it! And we still have to fix it all because, hey, maybe they’ll find a thread somewhere. And this is for hotel software! I pity those poor bastards who work on social media—I could never.”

“Haha, I could never do programming. Teaching the little kids is much more my style. Programming sounds too stressful. Reminds me of when I was trying to teach junior high!”

“Oh, don’t remind me of those years,” Sekihi scoffed.

“Ah, you don’t have such fond memories of our school years? What about when Manami ate shit on the track field? When Takagi-sensei accidentally mustard-gassed himself while cleaning up when the lab cockroaches escaped? C’mon, we had some fun times, didn’t we?”

“Heh, I miss that look on Osamu’s face whenever Sato-sensei told him he was full of shit. He never learned, did he?”

“I hope he did before senior high…I wonder whatever happened to him?” Kaede mused.

They were interrupted by the waitress, and gave their orders.

“He probably thought the first three failures of the graduation exams were bad luck, if I had to guess. Don’t know that an auspicious day or the right crystal would change things, but I do think there might be something to that whole “fourth try is easy” myth.” Sekihi mused.

“You didn’t…did you?”

“Well, technically I did. But you remember, I had that concussion? After failing three of them, even though I did the preparatory work, I was ordered to stay home and take my fourth try a few months later, even though I still could go to graduation. They said there was no point in having me try a fourth time if the result would be guaranteed since I hadn’t yet healed…”

Kaede nodded knowingly, and then shook her head as if she was trying to eliminate a thought. The two shared a moment of silence. Kaede prodded her salad while Sekihi continued to eat. Sekihi decided to break the silence after finishing their salad.

“Hey, where did you go to get those tattoos?” Sekihi gestured at Kaede’s face.

Her cheeks each had a light pink heart tattooed on, that Sekihi had noticed glowed whenever she smiled.

“Let me text you the address. It was pretty cheap, actually, and they’re good quality.”

“Oh yeah, glowing tattoos seem so expensive. I’ve been wanting to get something done underneath my nails. Does the place do nail beds? I always like my nails painted, and I’ve been thinking I could get something done to match my keyboard.”

“Aha, super stylish!” Kaede commented as she pulled her phone out of her bag.

After a moment’s pause to type in the address, she continued, “You know, I had never thought of getting my nail bed tattooed. Can you do that?”

“I’ve seen it done. I know a few folks who do it because they wanna use every bit of their arms for sleeves. I think it was made to just be a permanent substitute for painting nails, though. I don’t know for sure though; I’d have to look—”

“That’s what it says here,” Kaede interjected, still looking at her phone, “Also yeah, they do nail bed stuff.”

“Ah, nice—”

Just as Sekihi was preparing to continue, the food arrived. They and Kaede thanked the waiter, and carried on talking, enjoying their meal as they did.

“We must approach statecraft like any other craft. Every aspect is equally important. Consider bonsai: one leaf placed just right may contribute to the composition just as much as the bend of the trunk or the pot it grows in. The texture of the canvas in painting too, may have as much influence on the final piece as the medium or what gets painted on that canvas. We are not just ministers, politicians, and scientists, but artists and actors too. Every actor in the grand theatre of the nation has their own part to play, and it’s important that each person appreciate how much potential their role holds, no matter how grand or how small it may seem.”
- Mochizuki Katsu

Joël Robuchon Restaurant, Minato, Tokyo City

Mr. Kimura glanced at his watch. He had sat in this private room for around ten minutes. He was a tall man with a stern, angular head and a tight upper lip, one that matched well with his short, neatly groomed black hair, and his large, square, tortoise-patterned glasses, which enlarged his eyes just enough that one could see the sharp glare his eyes often carried from across the room. He straightened his tie with one thin hand.

Though his position hadn’t changed in thirty years, he often reckoned his humble dedication to heading the Nonferrous Metals Division under the Manufacturing Industries Bureau of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry had to count for something. He recalled when he was a young man, when Mochizuki first was elected to be Prime Minister. As he looked down at his own fingernails, he mused to himself that perhaps, with the gene therapy, he would remain in this position through Prime Minister Koshiratakipi’s terms as well.

Perhaps one day he’d find it in himself to accept the perennial offer of ascension into the higher echelons of the Manufacturing Industries Bureau. A bitter sip of absinthe reminded him that there was a reason he always turned down the promotion. With the rise of robotics, the Nonferrous Metals Division was more important than ever. He was busy enough with his current work, and doubtlessly, the higher he ascended, the less he’d see of the practical side of things—his pride and joy. Years ago, he may have been considered a fool for turning down promotions, but he had something scarcely anyone else in the government could match—sheer momentum. If he kicked his feet up onto his desk tomorrow and gave the next pencil pusher to bother him a kancho, he’d still have his job for a while. Sometimes the thought brought him a bit of extra joy, but not as much as getting to put on a hard hat and tour a manufacturing facility.

Mr. Kimura’s introspective stare into his glass was soon enough interrupted by the opening of the door.

“I’m so sorry, Shinobu-san,” came the voice of Koshiratakipi Shikari, “I decided to walk over, neglecting to account for time of departure as I worked. I hope you’ll excuse my tardiness.”

“It’s no problem, really,” Mr. Kimura replied, not looking up from his glass, “Do you know if Minister Watanabe will still be joining us?”

“Last I heard, it seems not.”

“I take it Watanabe missed the 5pm train from Toyohara?”

PM Koshiratakipi nodded. As she prepared to sit down, Mr. Kimura looked up from his glass.

Koshiratakipi Shikari looked the part of the young blood that Mochizuki had sold her to the nation as. Though with modern technology, there really was no telling, she looked not a day over thirty by his estimation. She certainly defied a number of beauty standards that Mr. Kimura had understood as a young man, but in a way, also upheld them.

Certainly, she had the pale skin and head of black hair that had endured for many centuries. And yet, she was far from petite, as she could look many of her fellow world leaders in the eye. When he was young, perhaps she would have been considered heavyset, but he recalled that even when he was in his teens, there was a growing appreciation for women who couldn’t necessarily squeeze into the smallest pants. Surely even his mother would have admitted that the Prime Minister gracefully carried those few kilos past the old beauty standards. Even when he was younger, however, Mr. Kimura had tried to make a habit of avoiding judging someone, and it certainly seemed as if the Prime Minister was just inhabiting her own natural body—as natural as the body of a gaigaki could be, of course.

Something that came to his attention as he looked up from his drink, though, was something more important. Her signature smile slowly faded from her face as she sat across from him. Compared to the wide smile she put on for the public, her mouth seemed so small. Without her teeth in the smile, what really caught his attention was her lips. Cuprorivaite in colour by his estimation, they were a small reminder that she held her Ainu heritage in high esteem. Or, at least, he imagined she must have, otherwise why would someone tattoo their lips such a colour?

“Is everything well, Prime Minister?” he enquired.

“Yes, yes,” she nodded, flashing a small smile as she did, “You understand, smiling out in public all the time makes the mouth a bit sore.”

“I forget, you don’t have any of those photos edited!” Mr. Kimura chuckled, “Forgive me, but I must admit I’m glad not to be in your seat. That does sound like it might get to be troublesome.”

Shikari laughed.

“Would you believe me if I told you that the whole smiling gimmick came about by accident?”

Mr. Kimura looked at her incredulously.

“Seriously—remind me after we get our food and talk business; I find it very funny!”

Shinobu relaxed in his seat. They’d had plenty of meetings before, but this was the first time Shikari had been so friendly with him. He had heard from some of his colleagues that this was her way of indicating that she trusted someone.

“Yes, let’s get food sorted out,” Shinobu agreed, “Do you need a pen?”

Shikari shook her head, and pulled out a fountain pen from her skirt pocket. As they were filling out their orders, Shinobu commented, “I must admit, I admire your confidence in that pen.”

“What do you m—oh, yes, the white skirt. I always keep a spare set of clothes on call just in case. After all, I think that’s not so decadent for a Prime Minister to do.”

“Ah, that’s quite sensible,” Shinobu agreed. Shikari slid her order sheet across the table. Taking the cue, Shinobu picked up both pages when he was done, and stood. As he left the room, Shikari took a moment to sit back in her seat.

While he was gone, Shikari took advantage of the moment of privacy to crack her neck. Another appointment with a masseuse this week would be a pleasant treat to herself if she kept to her plans.

With her pen still out, she tapped it against the table. Shinobu had mentioned that he wanted to take a more active role in resource procurement for his department. At the time, he had said that he hoped it would foster closer ties with industry suppliers. That sounded good enough, but she had to insist that they meet and dine together all the same. His tenure was impressive, but she wanted to get a good sense for who he was under the surface. She knew Mr. Kimura—anyone could know Mr. Kimura—but to know the extent to which she could trust him to execute the new duties he wanted to take on, she had to know Shinobu too.

As Shinobu returned, she greeted him with a small nod of acknowledgement as she stowed her pen back in her pocket.

“So, Shinobu-san, you say you want to fly to Pyongyang tonight?”

by **Shohun** » Sat May 07, 2022 7:25 pm

Somewhere in Gaza
September 6, 2091

Rubbing his eyes as he stubbled out of bed, Abdel Dajani rushed through his morning routine so he could make it to the dock where he worked as a fish farmer. Just one of the declining number of jobs that wasn't taken over by automation or require a college degree, and he was lucky to have it. It was simple work, a dying art form some would say, but it was a job. Those who could afford it in central Israel would pay a good price for fresh fish - it tasted better than the synthetic stuff at least.

As he sipped some coffee at the kitchen counter, he flipped with the remote to the news broadcast so he could catch up while he prepared breakfast. It was the usual things. Scientist warning of rising sea levels, some riots between Palestinian-Israelis and Jewish Israelis at Temple Mount, and coverage of world politics. Newly appointed Prime Minister Jared Netanyahu, grandson of the famed Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, was on screen addressing reporters with the usual rhetoric. Abdel gave a small frown as he turned his attention to the news, munching on a piece of burnt toast.

"When Israel was under the leadership of my grandfather, Iran respected us. We were feared. That is because we took action when action was necessary and because we had created deterrence. So when the moment came, we were ready to act. But the leftist administration in power failed to do a single thing to stop the enemy. Now the very regime that vows our destruction remains in power - armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. But that is why the good people of Israel elected me into office. The buck stops with me. If the Shia Union or its terrorist proxies make even the slightest provocation, we will respond overwhelmingly -"

Abdel's focus was lost as he heard the rumble of IAF stealth bomber jets roaring across the sky, presumably heading out for one of Netanyahu's new patrols in the Arab Sea. "A display of Israeli might," as Netanyahu called it. Abdel turned off the broadcast. It seemed whenever the jets were over Gaza, they flew low just to remind the Palestinian residents of their place. Just like they did in the early 2000s or before then. There were Palestinian leaders in government, Palestinian soldiers, and Palestinians worked side by side with Israelis, but some things never changed.

The prospect of conflict didn't matter much to him. That was all too far away, and as the experts said, the likelihood of conflict was lower than the politicians hyped it up to be. There was too much going on at home to worry about. Abdel checked his smart watch for the time, grabbing his bag and coat as he hurried out the door. Off to work it was then.

Beijing Capital Metropolis
People's Republic of China

The Israeli delegation visiting Beijing, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu himself and joined by Foreign Minister Adiel Magen, was quite in awe when their plane first landed. In Netanyahu's eyes, it just confirmed the fact that China was the most powerful and rich nation in the world. China and Israel were both technologically advanced nations. But in many fields, China dominated technological progress. It was a rich and highly advanced nation, one with similar interests as Israel. Thus expanding the partnership was a key interest of the his new government, especially in absence of the United States, which once was Israel's greatest patron.

So as Netanyahu listened to President Wang's offer, he was in total agreement. As he nodded respectfully to the Chinese President and accepted the pen before signing the Defense Pact, Netanyahu addressed the Chinese President and Party members. "On behalf of the people of Israel, I am very grateful for your hospitality and your great nation's cooperation with Israel over the many decades. I am honored to be here today to sign this historical treaty that will bring our two nations closer together to confront the various threats posed against us. By working together, we may all be able to live in peace, without fear of external threats."

Netanyahu grinned as he handed the treaty back to President Wang, again with a respectful nod of his head. "And as the first step of our cooperation, I would like to invite Chinese Democratic Federation to hold joint drills between our armed forces in the Middle East region, so that we can speedily increase interoperability and collaboration."

Prime Minister's Office
Jerusalem
September 8, 2091

Richard Adelson, Minister of Finance, stepped into the Prime Minister's Office, where he had been summoned. He quietly watched as the young PM, who had recently come back from signing a deal in China two days before, was speaking to his military advisors via hologram.

"Tell me again why we are doing this?" said Netanyahu intently.

"Well sir, its meant as a show of force."

"We don't have any other targets? That's not what I meant when I said to conduct a show of force. We are going to shoot a shack with our sophisticated weaponry?"

"Sir, the Chief of Staff says it will still be a good reminder the Shia Union, and the local terrorists of our capabilities."

"Very well general. I don't see why a Shia ship couldn't happen to sink or something else, but I will accept the Chief of Staff's advice." Netanyahu looked up, noticing Adelson had walked in. "Adelson! Come in, come in. I was just getting off with the general." The Prime Minister turned the hologram off. "I wanted to speak to you about the investment planning."

Adelson nodded. "Yes sir, of course. The Gaza seawall is in decline, and local authorities in Gaza wanted funding to renovate."

"That is all well..." Netanyahu paused, studying the seawall plans on his tablet. "But the reason I wanted to talk to you was the concerning developments in Sinai. Islamic extremism still persists on a low level, so I was wondering if there was any way we could arrange for further investment into the Sinai. We don't want them to feel like second class citizens here in Israel. If I am to implement my grandfather's dream for Israel, I can't have the 5th column causing any trouble."

"I am sure it could be done sir. I will direct my ministry to look into initiatives to boost the local economy of the Sinai straight away." replied Adelson.

"Excellent." Netanyahu walked over to shake Adelson's hand. "I have an ambitious agenda in the coming days, and it is critical we stem up these domestic issues my predecessor left us."

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Mon May 09, 2022 2:29 pm

A Polar Dawn

Undertower Aleph Spinward, Novo Volgograd

There was no sound as the lift arrived at the Conclave Center, save for the padding of the soft boots of the administrator as he entered the nearly silent nexus of the blue water operations of the naval contingent of the Astral Forces. A thin murmur of conversation all but absorbed by the smartlucent materials of Center abated like the receding tide as the ageless face of the administrator passed smoky obsidian consoles one after another.

"Good morning Administrator. Sitrep Actual completed processing at 0315. Shall I initiate the morning briefing?"

Gunderson settled into his chair with the slightest creak of the reactive fabric as it molded to his posture, his throatmike unheard by his associates but the results obvious.

The dim light of the commander center receded further, rendering the subterranean facility nearly pitch black. After a bare breath lights winked into existence in the void, multipolar illumination bringing to life a display calibrated to the focal lengths of each of the twenty officers at Northshores Command; the shores of the Astral Continent solidified first, a heartbeat after Gunderson's unspoken instruction to the Secondmind adjutant. Then dozens, then hundreds of other lights came into being, each showing the same information to every officer for that brief first moment.

A frown passed Gunderson's scarred mien, and his gaze flicked up to Severian Ridge, where Cerratus Two was pinging a light amber. The change in the angle of his irises brought about an instant realignment of the swirling cloud of microbots the adjutant used for optical display; information blossomed adjacent to the wayward subsurface settlement, indicating that a morning seismic tremor remained unaddressed, and that an engineering contingent from St. Anderson Dockyards was en route. Projected time to arrival, seventeen minutes, thirty two seconds.

At another point in the room, concurrent with the Administrator's perusal of the minor shift in the oceanic plates, Undersecretary Lasimov raised a black gloved hand and gestured at the display. His muttered intonation was only audible to the liaison with the Second Active Squadron, and the man's own display of ten million macroscopic screens synced readily with the Undersecretary's wave.

"Abyssinian fishing fleet on trajectory to violate the treaty zone within the next quarter hour. Second has a surwar asset two hundred clicks southeast. Secretary Itori was very clear on the second fifth that further incursions would be treated as hostile degradation of the ecological envelope. Discretion: undeclared?"

Across the room the figure of the liaison stirred, glancing toward where the Administrator sat before his response came through the commlink.

"Standing orders dictate ambiguity. Surwar will approve minimal lethality, disablement charges."

A half of a second passed as the men sat in silence, the adjutant handling their dozen inaudible conversations. The order was passed through White Spar and the data-spinners triple checked the munitions loadouts of the Honored Gossamer, the patrol foil closest to the infringement window. It was clear the checks came back positive when the engagement manifold of the small skiff turned northwest, angling for the incoming fleet of rust-hulled prop-powered walking industrial contaminants.

A light green ping signaled the approval for the strike from the Administrator, whose deep brown eyes were as black as the oceanic trench in the dimness of the Conclave Center. They might be insulated from the world here, a half mile down into the Antarctic bedrock, but their actions would cause very real death and suffering. Only part of the price that the continued interlopers and desperate rats clawing at their cage would be made to pay whenever they forgot their part in the system.

by **Toishima** » Tue May 10, 2022 5:12 am

"We have excised the corrupt vultures that ran our beautiful Republic into the ground. We, the Choson People, are now free. Go forth, sons and daughters of Choson! Go forth and transform the world, free of the corrupt vultures that tied us down!"

- Park Kwang-Dong, First President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Leaning against a bright advertising column just outside of the monorail station, Ri Bong-Suk watched the lunchtime crowd stream past him in both directions, looking for that one person. The ad on the column for their latest Summit Electronics smartphone kept trying to get his attention due to his proximity to it, but he had long since started drowning out the constant stream of advertising people were exposed to these days. Dressed in his grey technician's jumpsuit, his ID card affixed neatly to his right bicep and the logo of his employer pasted in velcro on his left breast, Bong-Suk was invisible in the crowd. Dozens of other young men sporting the same trendy hairstyle were dressed in similar jumpsuits in various colours, blending in with the dozens of other office workers in nondescript officewear. Just another face in the seven million-strong population of the North Korean capital.

In his left hand, Bong-Suk clutched a bulging paper bag marked with the logo of MOS Burger. Like most of the working-class crowd habitually making their way to the dozens of food outlets in this neighbourhood, Bong-Suk could not afford the high-class fare of the Mangyongdae District where he worked in the Tosongrang International Hotel. For a hotel marketed as the apex of hospitality in the Greater Pyongyang area, it sure had some terrible employee canteens. Bong-Suk and his fellow computer technicians usually got takeaway food, the guys taking turns to go out to grab lunch. He volunteered to get food today, though, because he had another motive.

Singan South Station, Pyongyang Monorail Eastern Crescent Line
Hyongjesan District, Pyongyang
Democratic People's Republic of Korea

As Security Sub-System Supervisor, Bong-Suk and the three fellow "Subs" in his cell were essentially the lowest rung on the ladder of computer technicians that kept the hotel's cutting-edge computer systems running at peak efficiency. In reality, the Security System teams' daily jobs mainly consisted of watching a blank screen and pressing the "acknowledge" button if any messages showed up, so Bong-Suk and his comrades were in effect simply underlings for his System Supervisor to boss around. Underlings was the term he preferred, the weird girl who was his System Supervisor had a habit of calling the four of them her "minions".

The extremely expensive Japanese-designed mainframe system that they oversaw was fully secure and 99% automated, and was in charge of the entire security system in the hotel. These included the cameras, the motion sensors, the room security systems, the anti-aircraft turrets, and everything else. Hyper-advanced anti-intrusion software and firewalls prevented any hackers from ever successfully breaching the Tosongrang's security systems in its 8 years of operations; it was these impenetrable defences and a surprisingly low bid that allowed the Japanese to beat the Summit for the security system contract, even though Summit's parent company owned the hotel... And everything else.

The Japanese contractors also refused to train local technicians for whatever reason, and insisted on doing all work remotely from Japan. By that point, Tosongrang was already going over budget and the board of directors agreed, a fact that Bong-Suk didn't mind. That meant less work for their team, giving them copious amounts of free time making sure one of the safest computer systems in the world was... safe. With phones banned from the "Connection Free Zone", Bong-Suk and his bros usually spent their time binge-watching shows and movies, smuggled in on datashards that were technically banned but largely overlooked by management. Sometimes their weirdo supervisor would join them too, and she didn't care about the no-external-electronics rules either. She wasn't even a year older than them! What was she trying to imply by calling them "minions"!?

Lost in thought, Bong-Suk almost jumped out of his skin when the advertising column suddenly stopped shilling Summit phones and blared out the first few bars of KCTV's news program. Kang Su-Bin's beautiful face filled the screen, pretty as ever in her sharp grey business attire. Bong-Suk reckoned her face was probably the product of gene therapy. No way anyone could be naturally that beautiful, despite what she constantly claimed in interviews. The news anchor began reading her script in the iconic, bombastic manner that made North Korea's news anchors famous around the world. They may not be reading inane propaganda any more, but some behaviours of the Old Choson were simply maintained due to their cultural impact and popularity. The young man glanced around the crowd for his target once again, then leaned on one leg to see what Ms. Kang had to say.

"Yesterday evening, respected President of the Democratic Federation, Wang Yandan, brokered a landmark security pact with the State of Israel, our long-time strategic partners in the Middle-Eastern region," the image behind the newsanchor shifted to the recording from last night, showing President Wang in her serene beauty and the Israeli leader flashing a triumphant grin after he signed the document, "the honourable Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu signed this landmark treaty, which has formed the Cross-Asian Defence Pact between the united member states of the Democratic Federation and the State of Israel!"

As Kang Su-Bin spoke, Bong-Suk caught a slight whiff of a strange smell that rapidly disappeared. Perhaps someone had walked past him with a bad body spray. Bong-Suk found himself straightening his back and standing on both feet firmly, staring into the news anchor's deep brown eyes. She seemed to be looking directly into him, but it was not a harsh gaze like that of a schoolteacher over the video chat. He felt warm and comforted, and most importantly he felt excited. Excited about what, he was not sure, so his mind just told him that he was excited about the new alliance. In the back of his mind, a curiosity about Israel's past relations with North Korea and China unexpectedly formed.

"During the meeting, President Wang and Prime Minister Netanyahu jointly announced that the Democratic Federation would be sending troops to train with the Israeli Defence Forces once again in the upcoming Exercise Red Sands 2091," Kang Subin carried on, the screen behind her now showing dramatic footage of Chinese and Israeli troops in previous bilateral exercises, "in addition, our brave Korean People's Army will be proudly sending a contingent alongside our strong comrades in the Chinese People's Liberation Army as representatives of the Democratic Federation! Glory to the Korean People's Army! Glory to the Democratic Federation! Glory to-"

An arm snaked around Bong-Suk's, yanking him away from Kang Su-Bin and her enveloping gaze. The girl was a head shorter than him, with a cute round face so much softer and much more real than that newsreader's, her buck teeth held in place by pink braces. She was dressed in a green tshirt displaying the HaoHaoChi logo, the stupid little Manchu hat their employees had to wear covering her perfect shoulder-length green hair. Her nametag displayed her name: Park Min-Ji. His Min-Ji.

"Oiii! Aegi... Don't tell me you're falling for that newswoman..." Min-Ji pouted, pulling Bong-Suk close to her and staring into his eyes, immediately dispelling Bong-Suk's brief musings about Israel and being a patriot.

Giving an awkward laugh, Bong-Suk tried to push her off him and touched the trend-chasing shaved back of his head in an attempt to play it cool.

"Oh no, MinMin caught me! I can't believe Kang Su-Bin would be facing her first scandal so soon..." Bong-Suk raised his tone to a falsetto and dramatically clawed the air, then spun around and started to get down on his knees. Min-Ji quickly released him and gave him a weird look.

"Don't do weird stuff, what the hell," Min-Ji muttered self-consciously, glancing around to see if anyone was watching them. Not one person cared, too engrossed in their phones or laser-focused on getting to their destination.

"Hey, MinMin started it," Bong-Suk laughed, returning to a normal composure, "did you bring it?"

"Ri Bong-Suk, I haven't seen you since the weekend and the first thing you ask is if I brought it? What the hell!" The girl huffed, folding her arms and looking away, "I can't believe I spent my lunch break being a courier! And an unpaid one at that!"

Bong-Suk walked right into this one. He immediately backpedalled, sliding one arm behind his girlfriend's shoulders and pulling her close, close enough for him to smell the synthetic vegetable oil they used to fry the dumplings at the fast food place she worked at.

"No... MinMin is doing a great service here! The People's Workers of the 8th Security Sub-System Supervision Cell salute you! You are truly-" the technician mustered his best impression of President Park Mu-Jin, complete with adjusting an invisible pair of glasses mid-spiel.

"I can't believe it," Min-Ji suddenly blurted out incredulously, "aegi has become such a good actor overnight? Did he get private lessons from Kang Su-Bin?"

Unable to contain his laughter at this quip, Bong-Suk released Min-Ji and laughed with abandon, grabbing his knees to brace himself while simultaneously trying to protect the MOS Burger bag from touching the floor. Min-Ji's faux-cold front melted away rapidly, her modest giggles like music to his ears. As Bong-Suk finally recovered, Min-Ji extended her hand, a cheap Sinanju datashard gripped in her slender fingers. He took it from her, looking at it as though it were an artifact from another era. Waving his smartwatch over it, a long list of files was detected and appeared on the smartwatch's face.

"All four seasons of Ghost of Pyongyang and the shitty movie too," Min-Ji smugly proclaimed, "and the final season of Spring Flowers on Dokdo, though I don't know why the hell you boys are watching a show like that."

"That's not for us, that's for the supervillainess," Bong-Suk slipped the datashard into his jumpsuit pocket, "you have no idea how boring work is for all of us. Looks like I'll be able to survive another week of work... Another week away from-"

"Stop. No more Kang Su-Bin nonsense, please," she pressed her index finger on his lips, "the real person you should thank is my bestie Si-Jin at work, really. She's the one who knows how to pirate all these shows."

"Thank you bestie Si-Jin," Bong-Suk pressed his hands together and bowed towards a random direction, then turned and bowed towards Min-Ji, "thank you MinMin, the best free courier this side of Pyongyang."

He should have seen the punch coming, but perhaps the young man knew... He fully deserved it.

"Building Your Future"

- Choson Chongsang Corporation

For over half a century, North Korea had been dragged through the mud by Kim Jong-Il and his stunted spawn. They had literally become the laughingstock of the world and East Asia, even after they developed nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-Il and his corrupted progeny had robbed the Choson people of their rights, their pride, and their place in the world. With the nation on the brink of collapse, the lunatic-in-chief made a fateful decision on the 25th of June, 2050, exactly a hundred years after his grandfather had made the same decision. When the first Chollima tanks rolled into Seoul, cobbled together from Chinese and Russian cast-offs like so many things in the Old Choson, the Choson people were almost stripped of their independence.

Park Kwang-Dong's bold coup and the Chinese comrades' timely intervention saved the Choson state from the brink in 2050. The moment Park Kwang-Dong became the first President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, backed by the full might of the People's Liberation Army and the Choson people, North Korea experienced its resurrection.

But it was only on an overcast autumn day, on the 15th of October, 2061, did North Korea experience its reawakening.

25th Floor, "Kiringul Room" Conference Hall, Tosongrang International Hotel
Mangyongdae District, Pyongyang
Democratic People's Republic of Korea

A featureless grey wall dominated the rear of the room, marked only by a large, white corporate logo. This was a simple, stylised tree enclosed within a hexagon. A thick vertical line with ninety-degree corners terminated in a regular-sided hexagon, and two straight lines branched out on both sides of the central stem at a 45-degree angle, each terminating on a hexagon identical in size to the one on the central stem. Beneath the logo, no-nonsense sans-serif hangul proclaimed the name of the Choson Chongsang Corporation, repeated in Japanese Katakana and Kanji beneath, and then in block letters in English.

In October of 2061, the first North Korean-made smartphone hit the market. This was a potent symbol of the New Choson, the biggest sign that North Korea had embraced full economic, ideological, and scientific liberalisation and was ready to join global capitalism. The phones were created and produced by the then-unknown Sinuiju-based Summit Electronics, founded by college dropout Park Tae-Se. The smartphone itself was not remarkable; it was not the most advanced, nor was it the most innovative. It simply combined various Chinese, Japanese, and Pacific States examples into one package.

But it was dirt-cheap.

Thanks to the potent combination of risky investments, the Chinese "reconstruction subsidies" on resource imports into North Korea, and plain old marketing, Summit Electronics with its stylised Baekdusan logo suddenly became a worldwide phenomenon. In a market dominated for too long by the same few electronics megacorporations, the arrival of a smartphone from a totally unknown company that was somehow able to compete with market offerings at an unbeatable price was unprecedented. The novelty that it was made in North Korea, just over ten years ago still the laughingstock of East Asia, probably made some impact as well.

After the smartphone, Summit moved on to personal and corporate computers and programming. They took in talent from all over the world, gathering anyone too conservative for the Pacific States, too free-spirited for Japan, or too individualistic for China. Within a decade, they had grown from a team of five friends messing around in Park Tae-Se's bedroom to the largest single company in North Korea, the leader of the so-called "Miracle on the Yalu", spearheading a rapidly growing tech industry that supported and in some cases surpassed neighbouring China's. The Yalu River was informally referred to as the Silicon River in the South China Morning Post, a name which stuck. Nobody from the early part of the century would have guessed that North Korea of all places would become the next tech capital of East Asia.

Park Tae-Se's untimely death from lung cancer in 2073 left the company in the hands of his close friend and business partner, Jung Han-Mo. He had bigger ideas. In 2075, at the memorial service for Park, Jung announced to a crowd of over 200,000 attendees that he would be founding North Korea's first megacorporation in Park's memory, with the goal of truly rebuilding North Korea and bringing it to ever-greater heights previously inconceivable. The Choson Chongsang Corporation was born that day, designed from the ground-up as a highly diversified "omnicorp" able to compete with the long-standing Chinese oligopoly and the Japanese Dai Keiretsu. CCC's inner workings would have been familiar to the Japanese; it was a typical Keiretsu structure, with a central bank acting as the pillar on which all other subsidiaries leaned.

If North Korea's full transformation from repressed Juche state to unleashed free market economy had not yet been apparent to the world, CCC was here to force them to face it. By 2080, even Summit Electronics was no longer the largest subsidiary, eclipsed by large-scale manufacturing, resource-extraction, and shipping corporations that operated on a global scale.

The ambition of Jung Han-Mo finally came to light in the 2080 presidential election. The Korean Restoration Party's promises paled in comparison to the sheer capital that the CCC could bring to bear to solve national problems, such as the coastal flooding and the ongoing eyesore of the Pyongyang Combat Zones. Jung Han-Mo became the 5th President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but though he stepped down as CEO of CCC, he remained Chairman of the CCC Board. The outcome was clear: the Republic was now part of the corporation, just as much as the corporation was a part of the Republic.

This was why the person confidently seated at the head of the long, carbon-black, severely rectangular table was not some politician, but the CCC's Chief Officer of International Trade, Han Jae-Yong. The sharp-faced, small-eyed man wore a business suit in the ultramodern style, the expensive smart-material a deep matte black with subtle crimson lines that pulsated their way across the fabric. This was contrasted with a stark white shirt, and a black tie. A modest CCC corporate lapel pin echoed its gargantuan counterpart on the wall behind Han.

On his left breast was something perhaps unexpected for such an obviously corporate personality - two bars of military-style ribbons. These were medals awarded to him by the state, the North Korean government's proclivity for awarding medals one of the few holdovers from the Old Choson. Like many in the upper echelons of Choson society, regular gene therapy allowed the veteran boardroom warrior to hide his true age well; he looked no older than his mid thirties, but Han had already been a mid-level member of Office 39 before the Second Korean War. CCC hiring practices did not discriminate against former regime personnel.

Seated to his left was a younger lady in her mid-20s, a nondescript record-keeper with deep blue hair who wore a glowing infovisor that hid her eyes behind continually-scrolling lines of text. She mimed typing on an invisible keyboard, implants in her fingers giving her force feedback that made typing in this manner and natural as typing on an actual keyboard. Her presence was required as this entire room would be almost entirely blocked off from all external network connections to moment the coming meeting began, making it a "Black Hole" in hackerpunk terms. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of the coming meeting, and partly due to their guests' particular sensitivities, almost all equipment with the capability to record and transmit information was also verboten, leaving the record keeping to such low-tech methods.

Seated to the right of Han was a much stranger individual. This man's appearance was downright bizarre, and at a glance a more superstitious person may believe that they were looking at a ghost. He was clearly an elder Asian man wearing a business suit, though he constantly appeared to be slightly out of focus and slightly desaturated, his shape also occasionally morphing as he moved, as though sections of his body refused to stay connected to the whole. This was because he was composed of millions of nanomachines that shaped themselves into a three-dimensional replica, complete with colour, of the actual person 800 kilometres away in Beijing.

"...of which 14,000 tons of Neodymium will be available at the typical rate," Chinese Minister of International Trade Liu Wei finished, "and finally, do relay my regards to whoever it is they send this time. I would have been there in person, but as you know, we have been dealing with more pressing matters here in Beijing."

"This business with Israel, right. We're already planning to offer them discounts on our new Bonghwang-4 stealth drones," Han responded in Mandarin, metered and composed like a natural salesman, even though his slight Korean accent still shone through.

"Always on the hunt for profit," Liu's nanomachine apparition shimmered slightly as there was a spike of lag in the orbital-bounced tightbeam, "this is why I'm the politician and you're the salesman."

A red light lit up on Han's smartwatch, and he swiped his finger along its face nonchalantly.

"Minister Liu, always a pleasure. The Japanese have arrived at the landing pad, and it is time to close the palace gates," though Han's tone was courteous, the Korean corporate smiled at Liu icily.

"I will speak with you soon," Liu nodded curtly, then dissolved within seconds into what looked like a black cloud of sand. The cloud immediately coalesced into two streams and flowed back into slots on the edge of the table.

Han took the time to place two items on the table, which was otherwise empty but for a bottle of expensive Maotai and two glasses in the middle, complete with electronic ice cubes that used an endothermic process to cool drinks on-demand. First was a sheet of digital paper, a flexible nanomaterial that looked and felt like a piece of paper but could act as a screen, using digital ink technologies that had evolved from the eBook readers of the early 2000s. Pressing his thumb against the corner, words immediately spread across the paper. A second press changed the language of the text from Korean to Japanese. This he deliberately placed exactly ten centimetres to the right of the bottle of Maotai.

The second item was heavier and on the floor, so Han bent over the side of his seat, which was identical to the other chairs that lined the table in its angular shape and uniform black colour. Hefting a translucent display case onto the table, he briefly swept his gaze over the eight vials neatly hovering in place thanks to electromagnets, each vial emblazoned with the CCC's logo. The vials each held a pure sample of an element, each slightly different in its colouration and lustre.

Since the technological revolution, rare earth elements had skyrocketed in demand in all developed countries worldwide. China had once been the world's largest supplier, but soon faced fierce competition as other world powers sought to reduce their dependence on China, and as Africa and South America became increasingly exploited. Though their market share shrank relative to total world production, China was still the largest producer of rare earths in Asia. It was for this reason that Japan still relied on China for the bulk of their rare earth imports, and China was happy for the influx of money.

But in this there was a paradox. A key component of the New China's social engineering was the continued vilification of Japan for their past and present crimes against China, some real and some imagined. After the downfall of the United States and Russia, a credible threat had to be invented to keep the Chinese people poised against an external enemy, keeping their spirits high and energies directed outwards. How could Japan be considered an equal threat if it was plainly reliant on China for its technology, and how could China accept Japanese money?

In the early days of the New China, the Party and the Japanese leaders came up with ever-more convoluted schemes to keep these deals quiet, even though the Chinese-Japanese trade paradoxically became one of the strongest economic pillars of the New China (as Zhan Liandong would say, this was yet another duality of the New China). More than one scandal relating to these deals was only barely averted on both sides, a sure catastrophe if the Chinese masses, now conditioned to view Japan as the ultimate enemy, learned the truth. The solution came with the rise of the Silicon River, and later with Jung Han-Mo's ambitions.

CCC became the middleman on the Sino-Japanese rare earth trade, with this endeavour alone comprising the fourth-largest pillar of the corporation's dealings. The export of such a large amount of rare earths to North Korea and CCC made sense to the Chinese people, given their major role in electronics development, and CCC was an unbound multinational megacorporation that could freely deal with the Japanese. With CCC naturally receiving a cut of the profits, it was the ideal solution. Silencing the critics within the North Korean government had been as simple as allowing Jung Han-Mo to become President of North Korea.

Taking his gaze off the rare earths that quietly controlled so much of the world within electronics of all types, Han stood up from his seat and poured himself a glass of Maotai. The Chinese liquor had become a favourite among the North Korean upper class even during the Kim Jong period. Sitting back down to wait for the Japanese to arrive from the private landing pad, just two floors up, Han took a nonchalant sip; his station and the prosperity of his company and country meant such luxuries were typical fare for him.

Besides the large corporate logo behind him, the other screens in the room were configured to provide the most impressive impression on the coming Japanese, as calculated by a team of corporate psychologists and cultural experts. The wall on the left side of the room was a massive floor-to-ceiling painting of Mount Baekdu in its springtime splendour. One odd feature that this wall and the back one had was that their top corners were not shrouded in shadow, as they logically should have given that the stark lighting in the room shone downwards. Both walls were actually large matte screens, though the final wall, on the right side of the room, appeared to be different.

This was a floor-to-ceiling window, providing sweeping views of downtown Pyongyang. Immediately discernible was the familiar old Ryugyong Hotel, long-since repaired after the severe damage it sustained during the War and now the second-best hotel in Pyongyang. Long having given up its title as the tallest skyscraper in the city, to the right of the Ryugyong stood the new Pyongyang downtown, a hypermodern business district centred on Kim Il-Sung Square. The Grand People's Study House was now preserved as a museum to the Old Choson; the formerly imposing building was now flanked by the orange-and-black Guandao Manufacturing building and the glass-and-steel Mitsubishi regional headquarters. Dwarfing the Juche Tower across the Taedong was the CCC Headquarters itself, a sleek, angular black monolith that dominated the skyline. The Juche Tower was nothing but a toothpick against that massive slab, a potent symbol of the New Choson's usurpation of the old regime.

However, an observant viewer would have noticed a few discrepancies with the view and the direction of the building. If they had taken note of the way the hotel was built, the window on this wall should logically have looked towards the south, across the Taedong. Yet the view displayed was the north-east; the wall was actually a third floor-to-ceiling screen. This conference room did not in fact have any windows, and was fully enclosed to provide the utmost in privacy. A viewer more familiar with Pyongyang's skyline would also notice the appearance of two buildings that did not exist on any map, seamlessly integrated among the ever-growing forest of concrete.

These false buildings were edited into the image to hide the scars of Old Pyongyang that refused to go away. Even though the view was meticulously chosen, the less-affluent southern side of the Taedong still hosted five Quarantine Zones, areas of Pyongyang that were too damaged and too unruly for the immediate post-war government to handle. These areas were simply walled off and forgotten about, and the hope was that they would somehow go away eventually. However, these war-torn areas soon attracted the poor and the destitute, becoming large lawless slums infested by various criminals, gangs, and cults, walled in by five-metre concrete walls and armed guards. It was only after Jung Han-Mo became President did the CCC carry out a massive cleansing and reconstruction operation of Southern Pyongyang, whittling down the Quarantine Zone into five unconnected areas.

Five islands of chaos, in the middle of the new order.

Since 2084, the People's Armed Police has deployed Choson Aerospace CAB-84 airships to provide round-the-clock surveillance over Pyongyang, helping the Pyongyang Metropolitan Police immensely in preventing and deterring crime. Each airship is equipped with 56 KD-5 Jamjali drones, which provide additional surveillance as well as weapons that can incapacitate or even kill criminals and terrorists. The serene airships are typically deployed over southern Pyongyang, where the five remaining Quarantine Zones continue to harbour dangerous anti-social elements and criminal factions. The People's Armed Police look forward to the day when we no longer have to patrol our own shining capital city, when these last remnants of the Old Pyongyang are swept away at last.

- Information panel, Korean People's Armed Police Museum

After a buzzer sounded and the electronic locks released, the reinforced metal pedestrian gate next to a much larger vehicle-sized gate swung open. A long line of people shuffled out of the side gate, lorded over by a pair of troopers in the white-and-black body armour of the KPA's People's Armed Police standing on an elevated platform with their assault rifles at their hips. The one commonality among the crowd streaming out of the gate was that they were all dressed in lower-class workers' clothing, from technician jumpsuits to fast food workers' uniforms. Some were dressed in rags, having spent the day moving from place to place dodging the police as itinerant beggars in Pyongyang's various parks and monorail stations. One young woman in particular split from the crowd, taking a right turn down an unassuming alley, her pink and purple hair draped over her Haohaochi T-shirt. A nametag revealed her name as Choi Si-Jin.

The skyscrapers of Pyongyang were easily visible from here, glowing as they did as the sun dipped below the horizon. But the skyscrapers were in another world. Forming the border between this world and that one was an unbroken line of dark-grey concrete, white military markings and pits from bullet impacts the only decoration afforded to the utilitarian structure. Watchtowers were located every few hundred metres, shining their spotlights into the rubble, the snipers in some of them clearly visible in silhouette.

East Taedonggang Quarantine Zone
Taedonggang District, Pyongyang
Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Emerging in another street thanks to the shortcut, Si-Jin walked past the rusting wreck of a South Korean battle tank, all useful components long-since looted from its hulk. Four unsupervised children were attempting to climb it. Four decades ago and twenty years before she was born, brutal house-to-house fighting ensued as South Korean troops invaded Pyongyang just weeks after North Koreans had done the same to Seoul. Then the same thing repeated when the People's Liberation Army invaded Pyongyang from the north after routing the remnants of the Korean People's Army. The bombed-out building on the opposite side of the intersection and the rest of its thoroughly wrecked brethren filling this walled-off section of the city were living remnants of that time. Si-Jin took the next left.

When the Chinese began rebuilding Pyongyang, the city was placed under martial law and was divided into military sectors by those ugly concrete walls. At the time, and even now, Kim loyalists, gangs, and even South Korean special forces continuously harassed the Chinese efforts to rebuild the city. As capital flowed in and the country recovered by embracing the Chinese-pioneered system of free-market capitalism under socialist guidance, the city north of the Taedong rapidly recovered and evolved. In the south, only the riverbanks were lucky enough to face redevelopment. The southern military districts quickly became slums filled with refugees, and where there are slums there comes crime.

The expense of clearing out the slums proved to be too great for the North Korean government, especially after the attempted clearing out of the Central Sadong District resulted in mass riots and the deaths of fifteen police officers and soldiers. And so, the southern slums were left to rot, blocked out of view from the downtown capitalist caste and their foreign guests by the magnificent new developments on the banks of the Taedong and the still-standing concrete walls. The KPA stationed heavily-armed units to keep the people in; military-style checkpoints were stationed at every entrance and exit. In the decades since then, the walled-in slums came under the control of various gangs who occasionally warred with each other as well as against the ever-pervasive Kim Cults, but there was eventually a bizarre sense of stability in the anarchy of the Quarantine Zone.

And then CCC began their reconstruction plan. President Jung Han-Mo had tolerated the eyesore on his beautiful city for too long, and the slums had to go, nevermind the 2.3 million people packed inside. The entire demographic was broadly reclassified as itinerants and were to be resettled elsewhere, by force if necessary. The KPA smashed into the slums in campaign after campaign, eradicating the gangs and anyone who opposed them, and in their wake came the CCC's construction vehicles. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcefully evicted, forced out of the city in droves, where they either moved to other slums in neighbouring cities or died on the way. Through such aggressive campaigns, the entire Quarantine Zone had been whittled down to five disconnected Zones between 2085 and the present day, still filled with the destitute, those who belonged nowhere else, and those that had washed out like so much garbage from the pretty skyline glowing beyond the walls.

Despite the destruction and buildings in disrepair, the Quarantine Zone was still alive. The smell of deep-fried food filled the air as the girl came upon a bustling night market reminiscent of an era long past, with hawkers jollily calling out to potential customers and people haggling over prices for all variety of goods. Gaudy neon lighting and electronic music blasted the senses, oddly reminiscent of the constant sensory overload of advertising and propaganda that one had to experience outside of the walls. Standing on a box next to a shop selling jailbroken guns, a man in a black outfit ranted about the coming resurrection of Kim Jong-Un because of the reappearance of a particular star or some other crap. Passers-by occasionally pelted the cultist with garbage or yelled at him to shut up, contributing to the lively market scene.

Si-Jin bowed in respect to the old electronics seller as she entered his shop, stocked floor-to-ceiling with various appliances and goods stolen from the outside world's landfills and repaired to working order. Hard at work repairing a microwave oven, the grey-haired man nonetheless heartily greeted her as she walked past him, squeezing past a row of pole-like vertical air coolers and entering the backroom. Here was where the relatively new stuff was kept, those that were stolen directly from the outsiders whether through robberies, convoy heists, or whatever. Only those trusted customers, those willing to pay a high price, and the gangsters he paid protection money to could peruse these stocks.

She was not here to buy a washing machine, however, and she took the stairs to the second floor. The shopkeeper lived in a small apartment on the ground floor, leaving the entire second floor free and allowing the gangsters that owned the night market to rent it out. Si-Jin reached the second floor landing and knocked on the uncharacteristically thick metal door thrice before pressing her palm against an older-model palm scanner from before the War. The door opened with a click, and a wall of cool air hit Si-Jin as it rushed out into the humid landing.

"Oi, Joon-Ho! You trying to bankrupt us with the electricity bill?" Si-Jin yelled across the room as she pushed the door back closed.

"I already told you not to worry, the coolers are powered by my solar panels," an unshaven man in a hoodie with one leg propped up on his computer desk shouted back from the other end of the room.

The room that Si-Jin entered was a stark contrast to the night market outside, or even to the somewhat nostalgic electronic wares shop downstairs. At first glance one might think that they had entered an engineering floor in a megacorp's headquarters, with stark white light and electronics everywhere. The hardware was a combination of old and new, with modern computer monitors hooked up to ancient-looking early-2000s supercomputer rigs. Though the middle of the room was relatively empty, two virtual-reality pods were hooked up at the far end of the room, while server racks and other miscellaneous computer implements were crammed in every available space. A single potted plant was placed next to a door with "no entry" marked on it in Japanese.

"The solar panels that are supposed to be powering my server farm," Si-Jin swept her multicoloured hair back as she dumped her backpack on her own desk, next to the door.

"Damn, fight outside," an older woman grunted, lost in concentration staring at her computer, both hands operating joysticks. The image showed the Taedong riverbank whipping by at rapid speed as the drone she was operating moved towards the Tosongrang Hotel.

"I assume we're in?" Si-Jin asked, booting up her computer, which looked like a pane of glass attached to a trapezoidal base. As she turned it on, the smartfluid nanocrystals spread across the screen, forming into a parody of Summit Electronics' logo before spreading fulling across the screen and displaying her desktop on one side, and a blank background on the other.

"Damn right we're in," Joon-Ho replied, taking his foot off the desk and standing up painfully, his jury-rigged prosthetic left leg grating as he limped out from his desk, "and it's thanks to you."

"Thank my stupid colleague's stupid boyfriend," Si-Jin tapped on a noisy mechanical keyboard that looked to be from the 2020s, "I can't believe people are still this dumb. Plugging unsecured datashards into a secured system? What is this, the 2010s?"

"Thank the Gods for idiots, then. We've made history here. The first group to crack the Tosongrang. Those Japanese sure know how to build a secure system," Joon-Ho replied, grabbing an energy drink from a fridge in the corner.

In the endless war between security providers and hackers, sometimes resorting to such low-tech methods as social engineering could work wonders. Besides its ostentatious wealth and Quarantine Zones, Pyongyang was also known worldwide for its infamous underground hacker culture. Originally based out of the middle-class residential areas and formed from the ever-curious, jobless generation that grew up post-War and post-Summit, brutal crackdowns by the authorities had forced many groups such as this one to flee into hiding within the Quarantine Zones. Some groups hacked for ideological purposes, others for sheer fun, yet others for anarchistic ideals. And of course, some were after money.

"Nice, there's still no alerts," Si-Jin tied her hair back as she looked over the scrolling code on her screen, seemingly losing all sense of fatigue from a long day bringing dumplings from the auto-chef to patrons at the counter, "we're completely undetected. Have we told anyone yet?"

"Work first, brag later," the bespectacled drone pilot said seriously as her drone came to a hover over the hotel, probably invisible against the night sky, "some baka just landed on the landing pad. Probably a VIP from the way the staff are bowing to him."

"Say again, Jung-A? A VIP?" Joon-Ho asked, spinning around and limping back to his terminal.

"I don't know. Let's quickly grab the account codes and get the fuck out of here. I don't want my sweet baby dokkaebi to be shot down, please," Jung-A's tone shifted completely when talking about her drone.

"The worm's already got the files. Can I just send you the entire archive?" Joon-Ho took a sip of his energy drink as he typed with one hand.

"Yeah, sure, send me a 250 terabyte file. My dokkaebi only has five terabytes, baka, just get the ones belonging to recognisable names and beam them over quick," Jung-A replied exasperatedly.

As the other two carried out the work of stealing the codes to the hotel's payroll, Si-Jin entertained herself by accessing the internal security system's network of security cameras. Perversely, cameras were also installed inside of the rooms, though regular employees could not access these. She scrolled through the views of the ultrarich doing ultrarich things, quickly getting bored.

Then she switched to a camera outside some place called the Kiringul Room on the 25th Floor, just in time to see a group of people walking purposefully up to the door, most in hotel security uniforms. The door opened and some of the people entered the room. Frustratingly, she could not seem to connect to any cameras inside of the room, nor were there even any sensors within the room. In the modern hyperconnected age, "unplugged" was probably the highest level of protection there was, and even the most secure corporate vaults would not be protected in such a manner.

Si-Jin's interest was piqued.

"Well, that guy looks important," Si-Jin muttered to herself, leaving that particular camera open as the doors to the conference room closed behind the visitors.

by **Danubian Peoples** » Sat May 14, 2022 8:26 pm

The delegates came to an agreement, shaking hands and signing documents with all the formality of such a function. The cameras tracking the events of the meeting zoomed in on their faces and on the signed documents. Cheers came from both delegations. This development was very important, one that could create ramifications for years to come. Two sides united against a common enemy, in fields geopolitical and ideological.

Then the scene froze. Time stood still as a figure walked into the environment. A strange, impossible shape reached out from the figure's body. An appendage. It grabbed a seat, and pulled it close to the figure. The delegate who previously occupied it dematerialized, fading into nonexistence as their chair was pulled from underneath them. Then the figure sat on the chair, and moved it to its original position. It was a strange, amorphous being, difficult to pin down. Its appendage retreated into its body, and it sprawled out alien legs across the floor. It then changed shape, becoming more human. A face atop a black suit. Two legs instead of a hundred, clothed in fine textiles. Twin hands machine and man. And a third arm of alien geometry.

"So, this is where things are," said John.

Simulated Reality
Computing Hardware In San Francisco Metropolitan Region
Pacific States of America

The Pacific Ruling Body debated the current happening at length. This recent diplomatic development, the new agreement between Israel and China no doubt deserved consideration. The orderly gaggle of voices sounded out its opinions. John listened with intent, his ears stretching their hearing range across the virtual infinity. It took time, but eventually, a consensus was reached. Or perhaps no time at all. Or perhaps both. This was a simulated reality after all, beholden not to a steady passage, or even sensical passage of time.

When at last the discussion came to a close, John's ears snapped right back to the sides of his head. He and the others resounded their agreement, and, with the meeting's conclusion, began removing themselves from the situation. John felt with all of his senses the gradual disconnection of persons, their blips in the mental molasses blinking out, one after the after. Eventually, John too opted to leave. He merely motioned the thought to disconnect in his mind, and he too, vanished without a trace.

John awoke in his corporeal form, on the simulation chair. He felt the tug of the wire as it pulled away from the back of his head. Rising from the seat, he asked for the time. "What time is it," John beckoned to the room. A number of personnel where in the room with him, supervising the humming along of the simulation's corporeal hardware, and monitoring the conditions of those within. They did not answer his request. At once however, digits in the upper left of John's vision materialized, and displayed an impressively long list of numbers. He peered at the image cast by his mechanical eyes, and pouted. "Note," he began, "simulation time exceeded acceptable amount by 2 minutes." He let the technicians dwell on his remark, before he departed the room.

He peered over the earthen wall, and scanned the horizon for any abnormalities. At once, he focused his attention when he spotted the telltale flashes in the distance. Looking down, he peered at his notepad, and began writing down the signals he received. Furious strokes of pencil jotted down the patterns. He recorded the stop-and-go behaviors of the flashing light, the time intervals between each flash, and from which direction they were coming from. When at last they had concluded, he dashed back under the wall, into a world below ground. As he did so, a great door sealed shut, and hid his presence away from the world above.

Resistance Compound
Western Interior
Pacific States of America

Jack climbed down into the underground bowels of the compound, notepad in hand having just recorded the heliographs' latest outputs. It was an ingenious system of mirrors across the desert, beaming messages between rebel strongholds. Digital communications were high-maintenance, and prone to compromise at the hands of San Francisco. Strange mirrors in the desert were surprisingly enough, comparatively low-profile. Every few days they'd send some teams out into the desert to set them up at designated locations, and voila. Perhaps it was a quirk of the drone patrols' search patterns, or the visual machinery of the robots themselves, but whatever the reason, the system seemed confidential enough. Jack of course wondered if this was just a lie the Pacific States let them believe, perhaps the setup to some big trap. The thought disappeared as he focused his mental energy on climbing down the ramshackle ladder.

And indeed, that was a fortuitous decision, for his steady movement downwards was hastily interrupted by the careening fall of a step. It bumped against the walls and the rest of the ladder before clattering onto the floor down below. Jack winced as he heard the terrible crashing noise, and slowly resumed his descent, making sure to keep the loads on the steps low. Eventually, he reached the bottom. Dismounting from the ladder, he bowed down and picked up the fallen step. Jack scanned the piece of metal with his eyes, before stuffing it on his person, and moving on with his duties.

The compound was not particularly well-furbished. Though large, it was dingy, and often uncomfortable. The walls and flooring were carved out of rock, and were held up only by skeletal beams that miraculously do not break and bury all those within. Old bulbs lit the interior a dim yellow, while their wires dangled from the rocky ceiling. The compound itself was a lot older than most of its occupants. Records suggested it was originally excavated during the Second Civil War with explosives by an unknown party, for unknown reasons. The breakdown of American authority meant the munitions of the US military became widely disseminated amongst the various rebel groups. Any number of them could've decided to blow up some rocks to find precious minerals, or stow away arms, or lock up prisoners. Jack's group had moved in relatively recently, long after its original occupants had vacated the place.

Of course, Jack couldn't care less about this history. All he cared about, was that it was a hole large enough to house their operation, and that it was a hole San Francisco seemed unaware of. He stopped by a desk, behind which there was a figure in a dingy jumper. Faded lettering on said jumper spelled out the word, "ENGINEER." To them Jack handed the fallen off ladder step, removing it from his person and placing it squarely on the old desk. He continued on further into the compound. He passed by a number of sights. There was a woman tending to a gun of some kind, two men hauling an enormous box of supplies, and shaking and rattling noises as someone worked on maintaining the ventilators.

Jack eventually reached his destination. It was a makeshift table formed from old crates. A patchy and holey tarped decorated the very top, while smaller boxes served as chairs. A figure hunched over the table on one of the improvised seats. To them did Jack hand over his notepad and pencil. Both materials were antiquated compared to newer technologies, but they were reliable and not prone to breakage in the hostile environment aboveground. Their non-digital nature was another plus in the rebels' eyes, which would hopefully make it difficult for the technologicals of the Pacific States to interpret their data, assuming they ever acquired them.

Paul looked over the notepad, inspecting Jack's measurements. He then put the notepad down, and did some kind of calculation in his head. Jack awaited gingerly the received message. Paul only pouted however, as he turned to a nearby computer, housed in a hole bored into the stone wall. The clatter of antiquated keys signaled his work, as Paul added the new message to an ever-growing log of heliographic communications. Turning back to Jack, he sighed for a moment, placing his hands on the table's tarp, looping his fingers through some of the unpatched holes.

"Bodega's done," he said to Jack. "Most of 'em knew the place was a goner anyway, so they tried taking out some of the Friscans with 'em. Turned out that was ineffective. Some kind of holographic technology. They sent decoys into the trap while the real deal snuck off to elsewhere." Paul bowed his head down, moving it closer to the light of the old bulb that illuminated the table. It became clear that he was an old man, hair a clear shade of white, scars and wrinkles across his face, and a bionic appendage in place of his right arm. Jack by comparison was more youthful than ever. He took one of the crates, and sat down on it, joining his older peer on the table.

"What do we do now?" he beckoned to Paul. There was a feeling of disorientation in his voice, of listlessness and lack of direction. "Every message seems to be this nowadays. I feel like we can't go on." his face held an expression of despair.

"I suppose, I suppose," began the aging Paul. "there's always the easterners." There was an almost comedic hint in Paul's words, mixed with the desperation of a cornered insurgent and the gravelly tones of age.

"Come again?" responded Jack, perplexed. Him being responsible for recording the heliographs' signals, and Paul being the man to decode them into understandable words, the two had interacted on several occasions in the past, often over the contents of whatever Paul just deciphered. These conversations had Jack learn a lot about the elder Paul, which is why this was a most unexpected development. "Did I hear that right?"

Paul paused for a moment, before replying. "Yes, you heard me. I'm suggesting we make the trek out east and try to contact the Washingtonians. We're, we're out of options." His voice sounded dejected, and the expression on his face was one of despair. "I've told you plenty about my journey to this place. My flight from out east, away from those blasted tyrants. And every time I fled westwards, that mockery of old America always followed me. How else, did I lose this arm?" His tone changed to one of frustration, of anger. The spirited sound of his mechanical arm smashing against the makeshift table concludes his statement.

Jack flinches as the mechanical arm strikes the table. Slowly, his head inches back forwards as Paul regains composure. "But we're out of options," Paul speaks. "There's no getting out of this mess, not without going to them. For all the faults of the federals, of which there are as many as there are scars on my body, the devils from out west I find to be just as, if not more horrid." Heavy breaths come from Paul, warm air gliding across the table surface. "It is, frustrating, and not in a way you'd understand."

"Because I've never seen old America," replies the younger Jack. "We've talked many times before. You've often talked to me about the power, the majesty of the past that I missed out on. How it makes today that much worse for you than it does a man like me. And today is hell for a man like me."

The two continue to talk for some time. Well into the night, or day? The movement of the sun and the stars is difficult to track in the timeless, dayless environment underground. However long the time elapsed was, eventually, Jack decides to leave. "I'm taking this up with the superiors," he says. "All I can really hope for is that they find some other option." And with that, Jack departs. Rising from the makeshift table, he heads off to elsewhere in the compound, his footfalls against the earthen floor sounding out for some time, before they too, leave Paul's hearing range. All Paul can do now is wait, and hope he isn't right.