Corporate Cosmos [IC | Closed]

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Wed Nov 02, 2022 8:21 am

The year: 2120 Anno Domini. The old world: so much ash.

The new world: dystopia. The new powers: corporations.

Welcome to that new world, CEO. Or, if you like, Oligarch, Tyrant, First Speaker... it really isn't important what you like to call yourself. I am Mekis One, the leader of the Blue Sky Conglomerate. We have important news, news which you need to hear. It is official: Earth is dying. Sure, sure, she has always been dying, ever since the bombs fell and the Gilded Age came to an end. But your shareholders aren't going to be around for much longer if you don't do something about it. Your citizens are going to be rioting in the streets as they gasp for their their last breaths, making sure they burn down your palace around your pointed ears before all of humanity follows the example of our paleontological ancestors. So that is why I am here: to give you a prototype Jumpdrive. The stars beckon.

Yeah, I know. What void-addled monkey cares about space any more? We gave up on that almost two centuries ago, back when it turned out mining the asteroids was too expensive, and as the public eye saw only rock and dust beyond our atmosphere. But the Jumpdrive changes that calculus. Dump a nuclear reactor's output into a spacecraft for a day, and you can be in the asteroid belt sucking up precious metals by the cargo hold that evening. Spend a morning over a solar cluster cluster, and by teatime you can be in orbit over Mars dumping poor peons into the sparse atmosphere to try and eke out a living beyond our overcrowded exhausted ball of blue. Overcrowding? Opportunity! Vaporize enough heavy water to float a battleship, and you'll find yourself in the outermost sheathe of Jupiter looking for rare gases to run the next generation of fusion experiments.

And your corporate rivals will be doing likewise. We may have made this innovation first, but Blue Sky are no fools. We knew you all would find out, eventually, and the potential of this invention is worth a war. Worth a war that would doom the planet we have left. We aren't altruists, but we are large fans of our children growing up. So we are free-sourcing this invention, giving it to every entity big enough to make use of it on our humble ball of rock. I ask, as Chairman, that you refrain from killing the world despite our best efforts. That is all.

Silverlight Tower, Neu Pretoria, Sud Afrika
January, 2120

From up here in the glittering heights of Neu Pretoria you could almost ignore the darkness that spread to the horizon below. The daggers of steel and glass clove the sky in twain, at this hour before sunset flaring into prismatic hues of purple, ochre, indigo, violet, and crimson. The old man paced, stretching the tendons in legs which had been far too idle for the last few hours. A curse of his position, that some days he didn't even get the opportunity to make it to the roof for a walk over the noon hour. His office had been besieged of late with emissaries from as far away as the Namib, men and women concerned at the influx of refugees the government's new Land and Soil program had created.

It was a fact which all the demographic officials tried very carefully to ignore, or avoid talking about. The underclass ranted and raved about immigrants taking their jobs, but the truth was that most of them were effectively useless in the scheme of economies and mechanized industry. Their contributions infinitesimal, their commensurate drains on the resources of the state likewise had to be minimized. They were bodies that allowed the government to tax business entities for the privilege of possessing, little more. Especially the new immigrants from the Congo and Tanzanikya; they hadn't been raised in a technological society, so bringing them up to speed to be productive members of the Conglomerate would hardly happen overnight.

No, the clan-fathers and house-bosses weren't very happy about more eaters showing up in the dole lines. But there were other uses for bodies than economic outlooks. The boys over at Starbound were fundamentally certain that automation for extraterrestrial endeavors might not stand the test of economies of scale against sheer manpower. The Solar Dynasty had proven that pretty fulsomely back at the turn of the century, with their leaking spacesuits and mass casualties still placing more sleepers on extrasolar trajectories than the rest of the world combined. Any state had the option to throw time and money at a problem. The ability to smother a fire in bodies was just another tool in the arsenal of any good leader.

Heh. A good leader. The old man turned, staring out at the darkness below. Most of the lights that twinkled in the underbelly of Old Pretoria did so in carefully choreographed rows and blocks, the endless urb-sprawl of factories, warehouses, and habs denoting the consummate order that had been imposed in the wake of the devastations of the Rainbow Insurrection. But still here and there, in what should have been swathes of darkness of rail-yards, generation-zones, and underlays, you could pick out the odd chaotic conglomerates. The shantytowns that had haunted his nation for two hundred years still refused extermination, for a myriad of reasons. A good leader might had devoted more resources there.

But set against the inky void between the stars, the endless black pit of poverty was a far more formidable enemy.

Sud Afrika is Promoting Immigration to South Africa.

by **George Hill** » Wed Nov 02, 2022 12:47 pm

The Ecumen of the Open Heavens

Baturgh's, 3rd Cycle of zan-Gorekh, 3rd of January

"The heavens open, brethren, and at last our eyes may look upon the stars at las-"

A dozen voices spoke the words, or the sense of them. Three people sat at the window, faces powdered with plaster and lime-dust, who could understand only one of them. Two women drinking synkvas from old party-stamped shot glasses and playing cards listened absently to one speaker each. A few years ago only four or five would be needed to translate and perform speeches like this - to read the passage in Khenal! and quick-parse it into a few languages. Now Baturgh's filled with languages from across Eurasia. Neo-Magyar, Kazkh, old Chinese and new Hangul-Er. A few polyglots noted that the speaker of Mari gave the speech its best rendition, really stressing the stirring depths and ecstatic highs - classic party oratory, perhaps, or the voice of a rail announcer in a city of fifty languages and few turn signals.

"The smog of decades stands ready to be blown aside - we shake our coats, and rise to our feet once agai-"

The expression here made sense in the vernacular of the older Ecumen dialects, which themselves had been patois of Yiddish, Russian, Uyghur and a dozen others. They did not, however, translate into Kazkh. Or, more properly, the speaker did not have time to translate the idea into an equivalent idiom. One of the drinkers laughed, as the Kazkh-speaker made it sound as if a party speech was inciting public nudity, like it was 2072 come again, only with less fashionable youth. The synthplant hand who'd taken such pains to learn Kazkh was affronted, but had no time, as the one reading Khenal! didn't care to pause.

"With the restoration of the regular rail lines from Khotan, we are so much more than glad to say, there will be an end to the hungry years we have all passed through with such nobility, stre-"

It was a true vindication of the speech and its speaking chorus that some of those in Baturgh's actually believed the author had been hungry, with them. One of the people by the door poked the other in the ribs and made a joke. Outside, a boy was learning to juggle from a girl who'd thrown him in the mud not ten minutes prior. Above, an old Chrysanthemum tree began to bud, after many years bare. Far away, a man laughed, and wept, as the first train in a year left with a full caravan of grain behind it.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:15 pm

Anglo-Amalgamated Materials, Cape Hoek Campus, South Africa

Vapor hissed out of the air, clouds suddenly forming around the entryway. What had previously been a nicely air-conditioned but still slightly humid corridor rapidly sank into parched territory, the change in overpressure pulling the trace contaminants and the water itself out of the rapidly inhospitable environment. Inside of his mask the overseer breathed calmly and evenly, reminding himself of the process. There was no need for panic, even as condensation began to form on the inside of his visor from the heat of the sterilization procedure.

It was warm, not uncomfortably so, though intellectually he understood without the protection of his suit he would be rapidly receiving moderately severe burns. A price they paid for security, and the precision manufacturing that took place in the Cape Hoek center. The delicate bio-computational components that assembled Blue Sky's proprietary microprocessors needed to protected against any external competition for their feedstock, or entire batches of the black gold would be harvested incorrectly. That would be worth more than his job. Hell, he'd probably have to integrate, with a mark of ash like that on his record.

But again, the overseer studiously avoided thinking about what could go wrong. His blood pressure might have spiked a degree or three during that momentary contemplation, but quickly he dismissed the thought and turned to more productive introspection.

Svar-17 was slated for launch up in Namib inside of the month, and they were still waiting on the final aerostatics to finish their crystallization cycle. A cheery blue light pinged on at the far end of the hall, and waddling like an astronaut in his clean-suit the overseer passed through the decontamination ward into the main growprogrammnig chamber. Other anonymous individuals, notable only for their lack of his administrative stripes, barely glanced up as he passed by their assembly compartments. Gold-plated visual shields prevented even unauthorized optical contamination of the latticeworks, and so the names of the workers he read off of their RFID insets in his aug.

Nobody was out of place. The small automated retrieval tubes next to each compartment each had a thin green band next to them to his overlaid sight, which indicated that everything was on schedule for the production quotas. Nothing he needed to interfere with, or indeed, nothing he needed to do to justify his impressive salary. But that was exactly the type of day he appreciated in this business.

Soon the new prototype aerostatics would be on their way by armored convoy to the endless wastes of the Namib Glasslands, and they'd get some very valuable teleonics data out of the belters slated for launch on the 17th. From Mekis One on down, he wasn't going to be the one who broke the chain of profit.

Blue Sky is Prioritizing New Markets (Minor) in South Africa

by **Ralnis** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 6:02 am

The state is an evil thing. All people are taught to fear what could take away your freedom. But, my question to you is this. Why fear what keeps the beasts away? Why fear which promotes prosperity and growth?
- Former President Daniel Banks, The State and Gurdian

January 1st, 2120,
Sandevistan, Home Lake Region, Gliese

The city was the largest one on the planet. One that was built on the back of the sleeper ship of the same name. Steel buildings being a natural border against the jungle hellscape that was of their own design. Every day was a struggle, the people acceptable of their plight. Checkpoints with part-time militia and hunters that keep track of traffic between outlying towns and the local wildlife attacks that had been one of the main causes of death other than disease on the planet.

Yet people still breed like rabbits and raise their population to outpace the hostile world. To the people of Gliese, such things are seen with a need of survival. For the good of all humans that raising children was a duty to the state as they were the only means to growing their hold on the hostile world. But now it's a means to raise up enough children to keep away the Corporations of Earth. Still the mostly debated topic that has been on the minds of the Provisional Government ever since the message was released about Blue Sky and their jumpdrive technology.

This sort of thing had made the twenty long Taylor administration quite afraid. All while the Congress was looking at what could there be done about their cradle and the people dying on it. Three groups came with three different thoughts. To open their doors and save mankind, to close their doors and only take in what they want, or to join in a space race as a means of carving out a cosmic nation that could meet the Earthbound powers equally.

Taylor stayed out of the discussions that have erupted in the Congressional halls. He didn't know how many years they would have before a first contact mission would be established and the shock that humans survived outside of Earth was possible. His idea was to try and populate Gilese as much as possible, as fast as possible. If they can breed across the planet and learn how to colonize the planet naturally, then they could learn how to do the same policies across other worlds they find.

The collective always need more citizens and the fires of industry need more workers. Even if they were secondary to the needs of survival on the planet. The CAC, or Colonial Academic Community, has been the educational and research arm of the Provisional Government and one that has been safekeeping the technologies of Old Earth. Everything prior to the cataclysm that Current Earth has called the Great Mistake has been archived and used to improve upon the old principles.

One of them was that they have been mapping the epigenetics of the population over the past 70 years. This was turning the time that genetics of the human body was being studied and recorded to see what has changed in the code from the standard human. Of course, no deviation had happened with the genetic code outside of triggers that had been activated to adapt to the extreme environment and heavy gravity of the planet. For instance, all Gilesians past the first generation are shorter and stockier than the original Earth colonists. Even have been made marginally stronger to try and survive the harsh gravity of their new home.

It also is one of the main reasons why people die younger than the norm, even Earthbound colonists die faster due to their body working harder to keep going in the heavy gravity. As painful as it was to see their own elders expire, it was nothing but nature taking its effect. The community still needed to survive in this world. Which is why the CAC had been working on trying find new minds in the field of genetics to try something that they wanted to do on the population.

It was a concept that was still up in the air, but they came with a request to the Congress to fund more public education in order to cultivate more bright minds to the Community and help them press through the hurdles their science is giving them. When the President is sending the bill to pass, he asked the Congress for a tax raise to fund this education initiative after they have come up with a singular goal. A small part in a larger plan. To figure out how to increase human fertility.

It was a larger plan that was kept under secret, but one was still abstract and needed a fresh perspective to work it out. When the bill was passed and the news sent out through the media holovids, there was protest. The protests weren't a lot in comparison to sheer amount of unity that the planet's people have for their government. However, it was still enough to be cautious as the people, even with high approval, will see abuse of power.

by **Cybernetic Socialist Republics** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 9:41 am

France, The Imperial Residence, January, 2120

As 'Empress' Ivars woke up in her bed, she considered her circumstances. Yesterday had been the literaly crowning achivement of her political career. Years ago she botched an entrance exam for an advanced engineering course in switzerland, leaving her best career option being becoming one of the hordes of faceless bureaucrats whose job it was to turn around the desperate families, (or sometimes, just children) who arrivied at the burnt out husk of france and europe seeking out a better life,Which was still far better than the hell from whence they came. It was a horrible profession to be stuck in and the inhumanity of it all made her bitter.

France at the time was a wretched republic, held to the to the standards of a customs' union spanning most of europe that had little other function than efficently preventing movement across national and even local borders, especially from those who dared to cross the medditerean. The people's of europe, nevermind those who wished to join them, increasingly restrained by a new serfdom. Obviously, what was left of middle class professionals, a force most powerful in the capitals of the nations of europe, found this circumstance ever so offensive to their sensiblities, though often for reasons less concrete that that have the destitute poor, which admitedly, was increasingly expanding to include those were once middle class. It was these people that made up the movement she joined. She rose up realtively quickly in their ranks, her strategic thinking and willingness to be blunt helping her. Eventually, her party would find its self the largest in the french legislature and their demand to drastically decrease internal and external border controls unilaterally in france would cause political crisis across europe.

In a chaos of coups, insurections and counter coups, forces in the rest of europe would organize to bring the french government to heel, but their own internal strife would hamstring these efforts and the coontinent would decend into war and civil war. Out of this, Bixenta Ivars and her movement would seize executive control of France and sympathetic forces across would turn their loyalty to her over their national governments and from there efforts to restore order would begin. With no force able to counter the hegemony she'd eventually build in western europe and seeking to reorganize the stay in a new form, which could have some elements of regular democracy, instead of governing in a permanet state of exception, Ivars would echo the past and declare her intention to form a third french empire. Strictly speaking, the empire only existed in western europe, central europe and the medditrean were 'protectorates' of this empire, though they were defacto under her dictate.

Her position was at the head of this recently declared Empire, however was by no means secure. As things stood, her state could only hope to fund a month's worth of food aid in western europe. The protectorates of the empire would, at this rate, have to scrounge make do. There was no doubt in her mind that such circumstances would trash most of the political good will she'd built up to this point and put the Empire at serious risk. Already she knew that this food aid, were it to be deployed, would be distributed withiing the Empire's western most bounds, that being France and Iberia, the core of her realm. Unrest anywhere would be unacceptable, but unrest in the capital region would present an existential danger.

Yet, she wasn't yet committed to that course of action in the slightest. If possible, she'd want to completely avoid it, because constant food aid of this sort wasn't a sustainable solution to the Empres' problems. With the refugees trickling into the Empire's borders from the less than civilized world within the next month, she could expect a roughly 20% increase in the number of mouths to feed. Even trippling the food aid that could muster at the moment wouldn't be enough to avoid destitution for millions.

No, however unsavory it migh possibly be, they would need receive food produced by and dsitributed from one of the megacorporations of the world. It was enticing said corporations to operate within the nations orders, or at least sell goods and services, that the laws she had instituted being built around. They were, as she saw it, a healthy mix of protecting their investments, leaving them to operate with streamlined regulations and only demanding from them what was absolutely nessecary. In this case what was absolutely nessecary, was food. Within the next month, ideally, she'd be able to secure [5 Units of Food]. One option was by means of the laws on mercenary deployment in or near the Empire. Another was through purchase through international currency, the budget for that being at this point, [5 Capital] for this month. Yet another would be banking on basic charirty. A fourth more interesting option would be payment in the newly minted national digital currency. The Empress had long term plans for its usage and circulation,though she considered it unlikely to be accepted so soon after its creation. In any case, she likely to offer it up in response to any corporate charity if only to build its importance. The specifics of what The French Empire would do was highly dependent on the how the corporations of the world acted.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 10:37 am

Kisateya Township, South Africa
January, 2120

His lungs burned, protesting against the lack of air. Above murky shadows moved, and he sucked desperately at the pipe between his lips. Bits of dust and dirt came along with the air, and only by sheer force of will did he resist coughing as his throat protested the intrusion. His nose was thankfully blocked to the stink of the breath he siphoned down from the surface, else he would have no doubt been retching, as immune to the stink of the slums as he was.

Gradually the shadows dissipated, and moved on. Minutes stretched like an eternity as he suffered, until finally he couldn't take it any longer and released his grip on the bar his fingers were wrapped around desperately. No longer anchored to the bottom of the pool, he couldn't stop himself from drifting upward, and he broke the surface of the stagnant pond with a shuddering gasp.

The air that filled his oxygen-starved chest could never be described as clean, but it certainly was preferable to the mud mixed with stale wind that he had subsided upon during the sweep. Scuffed bootprints not far away from the sewage slough made his knees weak with relief. They had been very close this time. A cough improperly timed would have given him away, to be sure, and the wardens wouldn't have had any compunctions about dragging him away for processing slime and all.

Stealthily he crept to the corner of the street, peering up and down the corridor. Nobody was stirring yet, likely still all hiding from the raid, but he didn't see any of the telltale uniforms or gleaming metal from the enforcers. He needed to get home before anyone noticed that he had been over here during the roundup, and thought to start looking for his hiding place. Speaking of which...

An unlucky rainwater collector was his first target. The stink would give people too many ideas about how he had dodged the impressers, not to mention cloying up his den for a fortnight. A heavy stick cracked the bottom of the aging container, and a momentary stream of iron-tang water plunged over him, washing away the worst of the effluvium. Not like anyone else in the Singing Tree smelt like roses. Ix'wanu had never seen or smelled a rose, but that was just the slang everybody used. Better to smell like the back end of a sewer-pipe than be tossed into the labor-gangs for a year to pay off taxes unpaid.

Everybody in Kisateya knew the score. Creds were as rare as gold down here in the warrens, so most of the time the inspectors didn't even bother asking for transfers when tax season came. The poor paid in sweat, and blood, and received nothing in return. But that was just the way it was. If you could dodge the raids, you didn't even have to pay that much. The government pretended to provide benefits, and the citizenry pretended to provide taxes. So it was in the township, and many others like it.

Sud Afrika is engaging in Taxation (Major Action)

by **Ovstylap** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 2:47 pm

Isla Murphy- KF-EAB-O4-M-E154876
Dar-Es-Salaam Shantytown
January 2120

The blue neon lights flickered out for two seconds longer than usual, plunging the room into darkness for four seconds. With a hummmm, and then a buzz, the lights came on again. Murphy had kept her hands completely still, and adjusted the metal tool which was holding the man's gaping wound open. She opened another sachet of BNL-94, or as it was nicknamed in common parlance 'Benign Love Dust,' and poured it over the wound. For a moment, his eyes widened, and he shuddered, still clenching onto the leather strap one of the local orderlies had given him. Some things hadn't changed she thought, as his jaw relaxed, and the local orderly removed the grip. The orderly hadn't changed their gloves for the second time in a row, but Murphy knew that the hospital, if it could even be called that, it was more of an undersized clinic, had a shortage of almost everything useful. It had a lot of name badges mind you.

BNL-94 was essentially a miracle medical powder, produced only in Australia due to tight patenting laws, but contained a mixture of local and general anaesthetics, as well as an antiseptic compound. It simultaneously provided pain relief and cleansing, and due to a bioligical agent within, helped the local blood to clot. It was worth its weight... in... well... Murphy wasn't sure about that. Everything had a different value in much of East Africa according to who held it, and what was like an elixir of life in one man's hand might be worth just a dozen credits to a woman a mile down the road. Mind you, even a dozen credits might be...
The orderly pointed to the wound. It had stopped bleeding. She lowered her medical mask to show her big grin, her teeth yellowed and deformed by years of neglect. Isla tried not to show her distaste, and gestured for the orderly to raise her mask. She looked down at the man, who was gripping the hard plastic bed in expectation, and nodded to him.

Over the next couple of minutes, she would remove all of the contaminated flesh of his wounds- one of the rioters had cut him with a scrap-blade machete dipped in Corporate knew what, and the man had been terrified of dying of infection.

Several more patients later, Isla Murphy was relieved by another medically trained security operator, some new guy called Riley fresh from his training in Australia. "All yours now new guy." She grinned as she patted him on the shoulder. "Cheers Murph" he muttered to himself as he entered into his shift. The medical orderly stayed, she still had another couple of hours, but Isla had given her a water purification tablet for her excellent work that week and the woman was still buzzing two days later.

Isla walked through the clinic, which was one of only a handful of places semi-decent medical care could be given, if you could afford it (that was the real issue), in Dar-Es-Salaam. Dar-Es-Salaam was once the capital of a country called Tanzania. Now it was a city with a supporting hinterland- the city kept itself together, or rather whoever was alive long enough to call themselves the ruling elite held the city in an iron-fist, and then they exerted their power over as much territory as they could to extract its resources to enable survival. It was, to be honest, quite crap. But for whatever reason, KICKK, or primarily Kingfisher Security Company, was in East Africa. They held a couple of corporate havens, guarded with lethal force, one in Maputo, and one in Dar-Es-Salaam, with a transit port and local trading station in Madagascar. Those were the main connections with corporate headquarters back home in Australia.

Effectively, half of KSC's actual enforcers, as they nicknamed themselves, were in East Africa. Their operating costs were practically the same as the amount of capital they actually brought in from the forsaken place. The real money came in when Corporate HQ could get a bunch of goodies and resources out to East Africa, perhaps twice a year if they were fortunate, and then KICKK made a killing selling them in Profit-forsaken Africa, all made possibly by KSC keeping a foothold in the area.

Isla nodded to one of the four local subcontractors in the entrance lobby to the clinic, but he shook his head and gestured to one of the others. She wasn't surprised he was scared to leave the relative safehaven of the clinic. There were a couple of 'government' (or as Isla called it, George's Gang) goons outside with automatic rifles. Each round was probably worth three months of hard labor- that was a currency round these parts. Murphy wanted to have a word with him for a moment, but it wasn't worth her time. "Fine, you" she gestured at one of the other subcontractors. The man had a livid scar from an acid burn going up his left forearm, and he grinned with a couple of missing teeth. He was probably a bit of a lunatic. At least he wasn't rioting. He stood up, saying 'yessar' and she followed him out, past the government loons, and into a car. She understood the logic, it was about 5% of the price to use a subcontractor's electric car than a KFS armored four-manner.

The journey would have taken seven minutes to the KFS Compound Three, where her hab unit was. That was if it wasn't for the food riots. These were especially big ones. They were now entering their... she checked her watch... seventieth hour. A rock smacked off of the car. A second one. The driver looked back in the rear-view mirror and said 'so-kaysar' before winding down the window and giving the crowd of rioters the finger. She couldn't help but laugh. Hearing her own laugh, which was quite rare, she giggled more, and the driver, as he wound the window back up, looked back in the mirror and smiled again with the tooth-gap grin. He started laughing too. Laughter was rare in Dar-Es-Salaam, and they couldn't stop.
Seventeen minutes later, they were waved through the KFS Compound Three side-gate three, as the cameras spotted the friendly transmitter embedded under the bumper, and the gate-guard opened it. A gang of hopeful locals rushed after the car as the outer permiter fence gate opened first but were dispersed as the watchful gateguard set off an RHFSM- a Reusable High Frequency Sound Mine, and they scattered back.

The subcontractor jumped out of the car, and opened the door with a flourish and Isla stepped out. "Thank you. Your name?" "Yassar, Paul Sar."
Isla smiled at him. "I'm a Miss, or a Ma'am, not a 'Sar' Paul."
Paul raised an eyebrow. "Yes Missmarm." Isla couldn't help but smile. It was always curious seeing who the HR people hired as subcontractors for KFS, Compound Three had a real habit of hiring guys who didn't speak a lot of English, but then again, that was the case for most people in East Africa. "Good night Paul, and I prefer Miss, it makes me feel young."
Paul grinned, "Good night Miss. Sleep fight. Sleep tight I say."

Isla turned and headed off to her accomodation block, and happily turned in for the night. As long as George Msongle kept his funds of diamonds, gold scraps, ammunition, and alcohol coming, KFS would keep his 'government' from getting overwhelmed by the food riots. As long as the funds kept coming, Isla would keep medically treating his cronies. Another Kingfisher Security Company day in East Africa.

NO ACTIONS TAKEN AT THIS TIME
KICKK- 10 Capital, 2 Factories, 1 Lab, 2 Mercenaries.

by **The GAmeTopians** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 3:56 pm

Imai Ancestral Home, Hokkaido, Japan
January 2120

Rolling hills were burdened with a layer of white, ever so slowly built upon by the perpetual snowfall of the last few days. A century of climate change and nuclear fallout had not managed to affect the weather of Japan's far north overmuch, apart from some coastal recession - this estate was far enough inland at the time, though, that the old Imai home now had a pleasant view of the water below. Wrought iron fencing marked off the edges of the territory, Ornately crafted with the same immaculate detail as the buildings late lay beyond. The dirt path that led inward from the front gate gave way to a massive hall that felt out of time compared to the post-industrial world around it - if one was dropped right on its doorstep, they might think they had been transported to the twelfth century, rather than the twenty-second.

Deep within its candle-lit bowels, the Imai Family shrine awaited the lonely matriarch. Hundreds of portraits of dozens of generations. Thousands of candles for a millennium of history. Panels along the walls were carefully inscribed with the battles and events that shaped the family - victories and losses, deals and disasters.

"Forgive me, ancestors. My great-grandfather may have been the first to break with the family's decision regarding the sanctity of the human body, but I must admit that my father will not be the last. Today I step forward to lead all of our holdings, and make certain that all the world knows the name Imai. It is our destiny."

With that, a young woman trailing waves of black silk stood from her seiza, bowed to the large portrait in the center - the Great Patriarch, Masaharu Imai - and departed through the open doors of the shrine. Figures dressed in all black slid the doors shut behind her with the creak of ancient wood, and returned to their duties, maintaining the shrine for the Young Matriarch's next visit.

Haruka Imai had come to her ancestors seeking guidance in troubled times, and she had found it. The Great Patriarch's nanori was made of the kanji for "clear path" - her path forward was about as clear as it could be.

Though the ancestors could not approve of what went on in the labs back in Dallas, thousands of people relied on Imai for their livelihoods - and millions more would soon be using their products, if Haruka had her way.

Her employees needed a Director, and her family needed a Matriarch - she would see to it that they received both.

Imai Holdings is Prioritizing New Markets (Minor) in Dixie

by **The Empire of Tau** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 8:00 pm

Time has not been so kind to the United States in the past few decades. Both State and Federal government has all but collapsed into many dozens of city-states and hundreds of warlords. Washington, D.C, the former capital of the U.S, is nothing more than a wasteland after having been hit by forty-nuclear warheads six decades ago. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and all the east coast cities are no different. Of course, all these cities are also now underwater since the nuclear explosions utterly ripped apart the flood-protection infrastructure that kept mother nature at bay. Both Detroit and Chicago are the only two major urban centers left in New England - their survival chalked up to the prototype-strategic defense arrays that were built. Of course, these defenses have been since abandoned to the costly endeavors of maintaining them. The American Reclamation Corporation has found a home in both cities - the only places where ARC can conduct business in relative safety. Outside these urban centers are the various warlords that now inhabit the new landscape of the U.S; controlling different smaller urbanscapes. ARC stands as the sole power in New England that has the organization and resources to project power in any meaningful way. This has its benefits and downsides. The first downside is that every warlord has a keen eye for the corporation. This forces ARC to always keep a very tight security detail and force to ensure its holdings are safe and sound. But it does mean that ARC is not beholden to any government regulations. It can do what the hell it wants to a certain extent - far greater than under a government.

by **Cybernetic Socialist Republics** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 9:35 pm

France, Paris, January, 2120

Despite her best efforts, for whatever reason, no megacorporation had shown any intent to invest within France. From what could be deduced in international corporate news, they seemed more content with operating in the disorganized wreckage of the world than within any organized state. Perhaps thinking that providing a friendly investment environment, straight forward regulations, security for their investments, would be enough was naive. Maybe the corporate world would eventually stumble on being useful for her aims, but it was clear that it was dangerous to rely on their compentence. The French Empire would have to be governed in such a way that outside support wasn't nessecary. Perhaps in the short to medium term, that would mean abandoning the protectorates in central europe and the mediterrean, but the fact of the matter was that maintaining the empire as it was, was only sustainable in the context of investment that had been yet to show its self. Now would be a oo time to impose a major tax on the whole of the realm, as long as it remained in tact, while finding ways to innovate towards self sustainability.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 5:07 am

Vaalstat Outskirts, Oranje Freistat, South Africa
January, 2120

It was an incongruous sight, to say the least. The engineer shook her head, before turning away to check the pressure valves again. Three measurements every ten minutes for the first hour, just like the reg manual required, as tedious and dry as it was. Somebody somewhere in the depths of the bureaucracy coastside had come upon that wretched combination of timing and irregularity, and she wasn't a fan of their nonsensical decision.

Of course, it wasn't as if everything had to be too ship-shape. She was the only O5 assigned to the project, and the rest of the chartereds were out in the fields overseeing the harvester telemetry. In the past she had taken the shortcut of just writing down expected values, and confirming every second datapoint. They were never outside of tolerances anyway, so it wasn't as if they were inaccurate - for all the bigwigs back at AgriSource could tell at least. She had been working on the Mark IVs ever since they were prototyped in Brasilia, and they were as reliable as blastcrete, no deviances or delays as long as they were regularly serviced.

Still, you didn't want one to break on your watch. The building-sized industrial combines cost more than she would make in the course of her career, and sarden Harold in semiotics would be all too happy to toss the blame on her shoulders if a pneumatic failure cascaded into downtime and lost yields. Begrudgingly the agriculturalist flicked up the diagnostic screen, dutifully logging the displayed pressure and flow rate values to her datapad as the machine hummed underfoot.

Task done, her attention wandered once more to the labor gangs who were so many dolls on either side of the agriharvester. Where the dynamic routines of the titanic mechanisms sent blades moving along the fields of hardened maize in carefully choreographed patterns, the chaotic lines of the work crews made a sharply juxtaposed tapestry. Each line of stalks where the farmers worked with traditional scything blades was of different length, displaying individual industriousness and the variable nature of human efforts. It was little wonder that the people of this northern scrubland were struggling to feed themselves, even with hardy genecrops - the soil must be exhausted, and the sheer manpower investments were staggering.

Luckily Blue Sky was here to liberate them from the iron bonds of their bellies.

Blue Sky is conducting Agricultural Expansion (Minor Action) in South Africa as their Major Action

by **Ovstylap** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 6:35 am

Archie Robins, Chief Executive Officer
Perth, January 11, 2120

''Welcome to that new world, CEO.'
Archie Robins, Chief Executive Officer of Kangaroo Investment Conglomerate-Kingfisher and Koala, sat with his Deputy Elise Bennett, Chief Financial Officer Chase Spencer. They were listening to an audio announcement from Mekis One of Blue Sky Corporation. He was also joined by the CEOs of the various subsidiary branches- this was the first time they had all been in person for two and a half years. He liked to think of them as KICKK's Chief Executive Officers, whilst he was the Master Chief, as he jokingly allowed senior management to call him. His grandfather had been born almost a century ago, in 2024, and had played the hit video game HALO:9 released in 2037 which was a virtual reality open-world game set in a predicted future of Earth, in a collection of aliens waged a genocidal war against humanity. One of the main protagonists was an old super-soldier nicknamed Masterchief, who had trained the new group of Spartans.

Now, here he was, the Master Chief. The memories had been passed down from father to son of a distant past when a great many more people than today could afford to spend time in entertainment, rather than scraping to make ends meet. The visual recording from Blue Sky Corporation continued to play. Everyone had been sat in silence, listening to those incredibly poignant words, some listening for the fiftieth time already since the message had come through at the start of the month.

In the past few days, all of the CEOs, sometimes having disclosed the video with their Chief Financial Officers or other trusted persons, even romantic parties, had been drawing up various plans, proposals, and preferences, and had been submitting them to the most encrypted cloud software hosted by Dingo Digital Services, their own in-house creation. Now they were discussing things in person.

Mekis One's voice continued as they approached the end of the message.
"So we are free-sourcing this invention, giving it to every entity big enough to make use of it on our humble ball of rock. I ask, as Chairman, that you refrain from killing the world despite our best efforts. That is all.'

The audio message came to an end, and everyone swiveled their chairs to face Archie Robin. A parrot squawked from its cage towards the back of the room 'that is all, that is all.' A few smiles.

"Well first of all it's a pleasure to see all of you in person rather than listening to your voices or seeing your displays virtually. Thank you for agreeing to meet me in person, I think you can all see the wisdom in meeting in person where we will not be overheard,"-the parrot squawked again... "and there is no chance of our communications being hacked." Most of the others nodded, Henry Carter instinctively grunted in affirmation. The CEO of Kingfisher Security Company, he was the expert on all matters relating to the critical protection of KICKK's personnel, properties, and patents. Or at least he kept the experts in check and co-ordinated.

"I've looked at all of your proposals, the first of which came in on January 2nd at 0300. Since I distributed the message at 1800 on New Year's Day, I was quite impressed by the detail. Well done Edwards." Archie smiled at Charlotte Edwards, the CEO of Platypus Computing, and a couple of others smiled. "So, in the time it took for Hugo to make it upstairs when he arrived first this morning, Elise, Chase and I have reached an agreement on an outline strategy."
Hugo McEwan grinned, CEO of Koala Resource Extraction and made a remark about the lift being out of order "were you trying to save digi-pennies again chief?"
Archie grinned an even bigger smile "no I was trying to save on the electrical energy lifting your gravitational potential consumes."
Hugo laughed, and the other CEOs allowed themselves a polite chuckle. Hugo was undoubtedly the best at taking and giving a joke, though had had to basically cut that out with much of his higher corporate staff after his secretary complained to KICKK HR for cracking a joke about her new haircut and it had really got to her after finding out her brother had been killed overseas in the Congo extracting a diamond cargo when some warlord's militia had fired a shaped charge (itself probably worth part a substantial part of the shipment as Advanced Arms were so rare in, well Africa especially, but most of the world) at his vehicle. Hugo hadn't known about that but it had hit him hard as his own nephew had lost his legs operating for KFS to an IED in Oceania, and had found out from his deputy apologizing for his loss before he had even seen his own digital communications.

After a couple more jokes were exchanged, Archie Robins helped himself to a mug of ersatz coffee, prompting the others to do the same, and to have some conversation amongst themselves, before around three minutes later they were all settled.

"So then. The Jumpdrive. We may not be doomed by a potential Kessler Syndrome after all, and we may be able to get in contact with the sleeper ships again. The main actual benefit we can get though is Asteroid Mining. This could be absolutely phenomenal, I don't need to comment about the state of the world due to competition over resources. What this is going to lead to, as Carter wrote in the essay he sent us all on the 7th, is a whole new era of competition. The Powers of the world, and the other Major corporations, are going to massively compete to actually get their own space expansion going. We need to beat them to it. We need to get into space. We. KICKK. The overall megacorporation. We're going to space. Thoughts?"

An open conversation for a while, before Archie brought it to a close.
"So then, ultimately, to be getting into space we are going to need to make some major scientific advancements, and for that we are going to need to expand education and technical skills- I don't want our current science teams working for five years on getting us to space, I want ten times as many scientists getting us into space in six months." Spencer raised his eyebrows. "Partly hyperbole Chase." Spencer breathed a grinning sigh.
"To get those labs and teams, we need a whole bunch of capital. To get that, we need to get our consumer goods out to more of the world, we all know there's a demand out there, a huge and ever growing one. As well as private capital for consumer goods, we can get a whole bunch from the Powers for food. With that, we're going to get ourselves, organically, as KICKK and its subordinates, into space."

"This is all about investment prioritization, cutting losses, cutting waste, cutting inefficiency. This is about driving deals, driving markets, driving productivity. Spencer, outline us on India and Congo."

Chase Spencer, the Chief Financial Officer, took the nod and stood, and went over to his electronic white board. The CEOs had left their tablets with Fourth Floor Security- Carter was insistent on minimizing the digital footprint in case of corporate espionage.
He swiped it from KICKK corporate logo to his charts.

"As you all saw on our DDS cloud before today, these charts show our regional costs over the past five years amalgamated. Bare in mind a lot of our operating costs cause a loss each year until we get a shipment from Australia out, which in some regions takes three years, which drives in the profits.
Australia, our home, our headquarters, our central base. Profitable. Invested in. This is where we're going to space from pretty much.
Oceania- neighbouring market, we're doing well here, net profit 22.73%. Indochina- as well all know we lost our compound in Bangkok four years ago- we lost a lot of what we invested there. Ignoring that, with the reduced costs, from other trading there, we made a profit of 12%. Factor what we lost there, and we're looking at down 19.8%. It rocked our shareholders here in Australia too.
India- quite poor over the past few years, we've made a loss of 7.8% but our projections are that over the next couple of years our security costs will increase because of the influx of climate refugees, loss of market due to the floods and storms intensifying, and the current warlord crisis there, this could end up going up to even 20%, even 25% by 2123, unless we focus a consumer goods shipment there.
East Africa- still turning over each year with a pretty much equal 0.2% profit, then on the years of our shipment deliveries we surge up to 50-120% on those years based on the last two decades records.
Congo- hit or miss- some years we made big losses, sometimes we made large profits when we've been able to get resources out of there. The main concern is the volatility, the population constantly swells and the conflict can be very costly for Kingfisher even when Koala makes a lot of profit. Back to your 117."

Archie Robins laughed at the Masterchief reference- it was some nostalgic joke to an era none of the CEOs had been alive in.
"We've discussed these things. I think we need to recentralise our investments and our focuses. That means merging the Congo branch into the East Africa Branch, our actions in the Congo are going to be on a situational rather than a permanent basis. Indochina, I want a strike on the Bangkok warlords whilst we're pulling out of India and Indochina. I want the strike to occur in say April, May, or June, that should reaffirm Kingfisher Security's reputation. I want us out of India by July, Indochina by May. If we're keeping anything, it is the smallest foothold. East Africa, we keep it going, but I want our Mercs there to get hired rather than doing jobs which barely cover their running costs- Sud Afrika could be a possibility.

We pull back our investments and assets from those risky places, we focus on Australia. We get what resources we can out of Australia, Oceania, and East Africa. Now I see one potential room for exchange. Dixie and New England both have corporations on the rise their- Imai Holdings and the American Reclamation Corporation. They, and Blue Sky, are the only Corps we currently know have the Jumpdrive Patents. Now I don't want conflict with them but there could be exchange there as they begin their own investments. But where we can invest, and I thank Thea Porter for her team's monitoring of global markets over the past couple of years, is the regions of Europe. The North Sea Society, and of real interest to me in the Third French Empire, as they have called themselves. I doubt the latter can hold itself together, and agree with Carter and his theory on that, and there's no chance if they don't get food."

For the remaining hour or so, the CEOs making up KICKK hammered out plans, they hammered out details. Offers would soon be made to the powers of the world, but for now, a major investment would be made in searching for new resources within Australia. Around half of all of KICKK's current liquid assets and cash (though most of it was held in crypto), would be invested.

Around 30% would be spent on lobbying various fragments of the local powers, civil society, and Australasian Emergency Government into allowing KICKK to prospect for resources where they previously were not allowed to. Around 20% would be spent on surveying the prospects for deepening mines closed long ago as they became too unprofitable- since the resources were now rarer and more valuable, or were otherwise useful for something greater than the inherent value of the extracted resources- hopefully there were new veins. The remaining 50% would all go into prospecting and re-prospecting areas of Australia, especially previously prospected which had never been exploited for various reasons, such as environmental protection, social concerns, or cost issues.
This would be combined with encouraging through various means, including the use of indebted labour, as well as promises of future prosperity, the conducting of major waste and trash processing and recycling- operating in the various 'waste zones' in the Australian Outback.

KICKK is conducting Prospecting Endeavors in Australia as its first Minor Action

by **Ovstylap** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 2:21 pm

Archie Robins, Chief Executive Officer
Perth, January 23, 2120

"Intense surveying and prospecting for now has left us with the rather poor result of only finding one mineral deposit which is viable for exploitation at this time. It has a richness of grade-two, and is located inland of the southern coast, and was previously overlooked. Unfortunately, a fair amount of the capital we spent on our lobbying appears to have been in vain, so there may well be further discoveries to be made down that road, and likewise a number of places we wanted to prospect we were unable to a myriad of factors which you can find in more detail in PR22012120AUSSC."
Hugo finished reading the report overview to the Robins, Bennett, and Spencer, and sat down. Although they always received the briefings and communicated on the DDS cloud before an in-person meeting, Archie was always a fan of hearing an introduction to the situation so that everyone was once again refocused on the overall picture rather than still thinking about their own solutions and their disagreements with their colleagues, bringing them all together again.

Archie was leaning back in his chair, his upper lip on the right hand side twitching a couple of times in frustration. Elise looked at him and received a roll of his eyes. "It appears then that our prospecting endeavours were not as effective as we had hoped, which confirms to use that our priority does indeed need to be on raising capital. I believe that we need to beat the other corporations to investing in further agricultural provisions for the major powers. The East Africa Branch has confirmed that Blue Sky has invested in farms in South Africa, which means that we have either the Third French Empire, or the North Sea Society. We all know that the French demand is currently higher, and that they have a more favourable set of regulations, and so Archie and I are of the opinion that we invest, we deliver our specialists, our equipment, we invest our capital and set up a tier one hydroponics facility, combined with a major internally regulated atmospheric unit- to our 2114 model Aeroponics suite. A couple of farms to raise much needed food for the people. Now I have here an audio recording from a Kingfisher contractor we sent out there. He was originally from Maputo, one of the very hard to find these days white Mozambicans, and we sent him in a week back." She tapped an audio device on the table, and the man's message began to play.

"This is Victor Algim, Kilo Foxtrot, Echo Alpha Bravo, Oscar Three, India, Echo One Five Eight Nine Nine Seven, making a report on my assessment of Europe from on the ground. It is crazy out here. Everywhere I go, there is capital or goods rapidly changing hands as people desperately try and recover from the tax sweep that has just happened. Homes, or rather individual or family habitation units, are being reclaimed, people are begging for assistance, I've seen a column of at least two hundred people being taken away for some kind of labour. I spoke to one man who said that he's just had two years of savings taken from him. Another man said that his small business, which employs a dozen people recycling waste, is going to have to let go of seven of them. They've swept their own people for capital like mad, and I think they've made a whole lot of it. The people are hungry anyway, and the ones from the Mediterranean and Central Europe, and even Iberia, are all complaining that the ones in France proper got away with far more. It's the same sort of thing on some of the actual media, and definitely the underground media. People are hungry, and unhappy, but either lack the will to do much in the way of protest, or are even more terrified of the recently established order collapsing. I don't know how long it can be sustained for. I've uploaded further data to you through encrypted channels. Message Ends. Out."

For a few minutes, further discussions ensued, though they escalated into an argument between Bennett and Spencer. Hugo sat there twiddling his thumbs, no matter how the capital came in, he wanted it spent on further prospecting before it became truly worth it to hew the ground and establish new mines. Finally, Archie leant forward, and the argument stilled.

"Spencer, I understand your concern about the risks, but I think that this..."
"Bixenta Ivars, boss"
"Thank you Elise, yes this Bixenta Ivars and her newly established order will sufficiently appreciate the offer that we are making. Lets make the investment, and hope they honour the invoice. This could be our foot off the ground."

Within an hour, a message had been sent through Dingo Digital Service's Indian Ocean Portal to NewWebEuropaPortal, and straight through to the highest communcations levels the Third French Empire had- they could only hope they were using the same system in place in 2104, the last time KICKK had truly had any outreach in Europe.

To Bixenta Ivars and her senior advisors
From Archie Robins, CEO of KICKK

To the well-regarded Bixenta Ivars, I would like to reach out to you and your senior advisors on behalf of Kangaroo Investment Conglomerate-Kingfisher and Koala (KICKK). I am Archie Robins, Chief Executive Officer of the Conglomerate. Perhaps you may have heard of my company and its operations, if you haven't heard of myself. Regardless, may I firstly extend my respect for you and your movement, to my knowledge your power has the greatest amount of territory and population under its control. With regret, we have heard of the critical food supply issues currently facing your government as a result of its successful expansion of law and order.

We at KICKK would like to assist with haste and urgency, in order to prevent a deteriation of the order of Europe. Though this has an ethical element of assisting fellow humanity with the resources we have, I will not be intellectually dishonest with you upon this first contact between Europe and KICKK for the first time in nearly twenty years. If Europe descends into chaos, so does a major market, and a stable, ordered power is exactly who we want to trade with. As such, I have authorised for the immediate deployment of KICKK's agricultural specialists, and a significant amount of equipment to France itself.

Of course, this is a major investment, and comes at risk. We hope that you will receive our offer with kind regard and due respect for this risk that we have undertaken. With your permission, we will in future send a minor security detail to help safeguard our own investments, but this will not amount to a battalion, and will pose no threat to yourselves or any other corporations operating in your area of influence. We seek to establish what effectively is understood in the market and corporate language as two farms. This would be at a suitable logistical node within France to ensure its protection and effective onward transport. This will be a tier one hydroponics facility, combined with a major internally regulated atmospheric unit- linking to our 2114 model Aeroponics suite. This represents the pinnacle of our agricultural expertise.

We hope to have a first harvest, based on the use of the organic and artificial composts, reserve premium soil samples, grade one and two agricultural nutri-sludge, and part grown specimens, to even achieve a first harvest at the end of February or March, followed by more spaced out harvests throughout the year. In recognising the following, we would request a certain amount of capital, ideally to be transferred to Australia if your government can handle this administration, otherwise, we shall request the capital to be paid into our new holdings in France.

To cover the substantial cost of our personnel, expertise, sent materials, transfer of rare organic material, and own local food production facilities: 5 capital.
In recognition of the risk we have undertaken without a prior contract of payment: 1 capital
A bonus to cover the cost of us administrating the transfer of capital to Australia if you do transfer it yourself: 2 capital.

In addition, we would like to offer to adopt the DigiFranc, adding it onto the number of cryptocurrencies hosted by Platypus Computing, which should see its potential partial adoption around the Indian Ocean, increasing the amount of independent crypto-mining operations for the currency, and overtime strengthening its use: 2 capital.

We are particularly hoping to form a special corporate relationship with yourself, due to your significant markets and favourable corporate regulations. We are further willing to discuss the contracting of our mercenaries to you, either to provide domestic assistance, enforce your borders, or to act as additional protectors of your order.

Effectively, we ask for 8 capital, and will in exchange adopt the DigiFranc into our list of supported currencies, and establish two farms. If you are unwilling to transfer this yourself, we would ask for ten capital in France.

I would finally like to politely state that any additional capital you pay on top will cause us to view you hugely favourably as we look to further expand our operations with the advent of Jumpdrive technology, and rebalance our priorities. We hope that you might consider investing your surplus capital in us today, in order that we can supply your future needs and demands tomorrow.
If from you due to this initial deal we received 15 capital in total, we would absolutely consider your markets and contracts as a first priority, with 20 capital, we would be willing to automatically come to your aid with a mercenary battalion in the event of conflict. Anything further, and I have no doubt you will have hugely invested in the future of all humanity, and would benefit from our first successful asteroid mining programme.

Hoping for a peaceful, prosperous, and progressive relationship between your Government and our own Conglomerate,
This message is sent with due regard,
Archie Robins, Senior CEO of KICKK.

KICKK is conducting Agricultural Expansion in France, a second Minor Action, as its Major.

by **Diarcesia** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 4:00 pm

Input
Region - Montefaune
Population: 10
Battalions: 0

Process

CCOAF 19: Top 5 Young Stars to Watch

CCOAF^[1] 19 is nearly upon us, and with that comes the latest instalment of Vexed Sports' football franchise. This year's edition will feature more realism than ever before, with improved gameplay, new features and a whole lot more. There are also a number of young stars that are set to be on the rise this season, so we've picked out our top 5 young stars to watch in CCOAF 19!

1) Kanae Ito - Zipcaster
Kanae Ito is set to be one of the best wingers in the planet this year. She's had a fantastic couple of seasons at Shin Nagoya-Fujitsu Storks, where she was named Zipcastrian Young Player of the Year in 2116 & 2117. In her time at the club she has scored 23 goals in 52 appearances, with many believing that she will move on to a bigger club this year. At only 21 years old and having already been called up for Zipcaster's World Cup^[2] squad, it wouldn't be too much of a surprise if Ito ended up at either Montefaune Elite FC or Blackflies FC this season!

2) Ahmed Hassan - Blackflies
Blackflies FC have a lot to be excited about this season, with their new signings and their recently-completed stadium. One of the players that fans should be keeping an eye out for is Ahmed Hassan. The young attacking midfielder has a fantastic eye for goals and will be looking to prove himself this season in what will be his first appearance in a CCOAF game! He has been sought after by many football clubs on a number of occasions, so his membership in a top flight is an inevitability. Fans of Blackflies FC and those who main this club should definitely keep an eye out for this young star!

3) Jaimie van der Lely - The Royal Order
The Royal Order is one of the clubs that are set to have a lot to prove this season. They finished 5th last season with 32 points, but they're hoping to improve on that result with their plethora of talent this year. One of those talents is Jaimie Van der Lely, who is set to play as a left-back under new manager Alister Galbraith^[3]. He has already been capped four times in The Royal Order's Senior League team last year. Having already demonstrated his ability at such a young age and playing in what is usually a very difficult position, it wouldn't be too much of a surprise if he was one of The Royal Order's best players this season!

4) Yelena Sorokina - Pembroke FC
Pembroke FC is one of the teams that have been tipped to go far this season. They've got a lot of star players, they've got a great manager, they've got good chemistry and they have the support of their fans. One player that is set to shine under all that pressure is Yelena Sorokina. The young attacking midfielder has been dubbed as "the Pembrokian Galbraith" and she certainly has the potential to live up to that name! She's already been capped for Pembroke FC's Senior League team, scoring two goals in her first appearance! With her fantastic dribbling ability, fantastic vision and excellent passing ability, Sorokina will definitely be one to watch!

5) Brennan Gilmore - Blackflies FC
Brennan Gilmore is the final player on our list this year. He is another young attacking midfielder who has impressed many with his game IQ and incredible passing range. He already has over 50 appearances under his belt for Blackflies FC's Reserve & Academy teams and he has scored 34 goals in that time! He was also called up for Blackflies colony's World Cup squad last year, which is very impressive for a young player who has only been with the club for a short period of time. With him being in such a successful club, he will definitely have the opportunity to move on to a bigger role this season. Will a rivalry between him and Ahmed Hassan emerge? Only time will tell!

So there you have it, Vexed Sports' top 5 young stars to watch in CCOAF 19! Will any of them move to a bigger club this season? Will any of them make their debut for their countries' senior teams this year? Will any of them get injured? Who knows! But one thing is for sure, we'll be keeping an eye out for all these talented players throughout the season and we hope that you do too!

^[1] Central Committee for the Organization of Association Football
^[2] World Cup teams in Montefaune are mixed-gender
^[3] One of Montefaune's best football players ever. He was already retired from active play and was more focused on the team management nowadays

Minor Action: Promote Independent Localism - Montefaune

Output
Region - Montefaune
Population: 10
Battalions: 0
Hunger: -3
Capital per Month: -1
Taxation Income Change: -4 Capital
Public Order: 3

by **Diarcesia** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 7:15 pm

Input
Region - Montefaune
Population: 10
Battalions: 0
Hunger: -3
Capital per Month: -1
Taxation Income Change: -4 Capital
Public Order: 3

Process

The Planetary Union of Montefaune
January, 2120

Excellency,
We are very pleased to receive your message. We are also glad to know that the Astronomy Commission has taken the first steps in researching our way to reach rediscovered worlds beyond us. Based on the information we collected, there are entities from Old Earth with the technology and means to traverse star systems quicker than previously-known methods. Should the Planetary Union be ready to cooperate with said entities, we will support you for the good of humanity. In fact, we already have plans for how the government can work together in mining precious metals from asteroids, and it would be our pleasure if the other Commissions would join us in making those plans a reality.

We look forward to receiving further details regarding this "Jumpdrive" technology, and we hope that to relay these to you as soon as we can. It sounds as though it could be a very valuable resource not only for us but also for all other entities in this new era. Thank you again for your message and your willingness to learn more about this technology.

Sincerely,
The First Speaker of the Planetary Union of Montefaune

Major Action: Taxation - Montefaune

Output
Region - Montefaune
Population: 10
Battalions: 0
Capital: 11
Hunger per Month: -3
Capital per Month: -1
Taxation Income Change: -4 Capital
Public Order: 3
Public Opinion: -2

by **The GAmeTopians** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 9:35 pm

Sol System
January, 2120

The astronauts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries claimed that space smelled like all sorts of things. Steak, gunpowder, ozone - each person had their own opinion.

To Lillian, it smelled like money.

"Approaching 324 Bamberga. 3 klicks... 2 klicks... Docking clamps ready. Docking clamps go." Through one of the monitors she could see half a dozen Imai employees in black suits launch themselves off the port side of the ship, pulling thick cables behind them. Each one of them floated weightlessly until they contacted the asteroid, scattering clouds of loose clay dust as their boots softened their landing.

"Press clamps. Confirm alignment. Engage." Each of the cables pulled taught, forming a hexagonal tunnel between the IHS Kiriko and its latest harvesting site.

"Alright Away Team, return to airlock. Drilling Crew, ready up - cables are set."

Resources beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors just floated out here, ripe for the taking. Gifts from the gods, not yet fallen to Earth.

Oh, how good they smelled.

Imai Holdings is Harvesting Asteroids (Major) in Dixie

by **The Empire of Tau** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 10:34 pm

Earth has seen…better days. Simply said, the homeworld of Humanity is rapidly deteriorating. The global population may be reduced to a mere sum of a few two billion or so, but large-scale ecological and environmental collapse is rendering human habitation on Earth impossible. Likewise, food security has become a major concern for much of the global population. Arable land is much harder to come by these days. And with scarcity, opportunity comes. ARC, always needing to exploit new markets for profits for its future plans, has opted to expand its food industry. Of course, what to grow? There were plenty of crops out there for selection, but grains (wheat, barley, and corn) were the ones chosen. More specifically, corn was what ARC was most experienced with. Corn was king, and ARC intended to feed the masses with cheap corn-based products; corn flour, high fructose corn syrup, corn grits, and what have you. Mixed in would be a few seasons of wheat and barley, but corn will be the mainstay of ARC’s food processing and sale.

The other question now is where to grow it. There were, at current, only a few surviving national states left on this dying earth. Among them were Tejas - the only remaining legitimate American state left in the U.S. Both close and extremely Corpo-friendly, Tejas seemed to be a perfect first for ARC’s food farms. Plus, it would serve as a base for future food exports across the world when food surplus was available. Public relations would also likely be easier. What’s more American than the American Reclamation Corporation? A fully-American corporation, born and raised in the former states.

by **Ralnis** » Sat Nov 05, 2022 10:22 am

The rural community was always synonymous with poor and forgotten. In Earth, they were always those who weren't the most educated people, but were the pillars of human civilization. Here in Gliese, the rural community is always synonymous for the fringe and the frontier. Where people aren't the most educated in academic sense, but the most educated on survival.
Professor Gabe Pucket, The Exo-Frontier Scholar

Western Frontiers,
Sandesivstan Region, Gliese

Visiting the Western Frontiers was a past time for Presidents on the alien planet. Established during the decades of the Colonial Charter and the Intern period, it has been a means to push against the hostile environment. These men and women who settled the Frontiers were forced to adapt to the harshness of Gliese and become the hunters and rangers that the part-time militia needed. Since there was no need for a formal military structure and with law being separated by sparsely populated settlements. To everyone who lived there, education was a formality and not compulsory.

Even now, the idea of a scholar or an educated person was not entirely part of the norm that only came from some lack of funding. However, with the President's new initiative to try and cultivate the education of the humans of the Provisional Government, new things had to come. Each major settlement from New Missouri to Aqua Fria was getting a town hall by the President to hear the complaints of the people about the education of the Frontiers. It was an idea to experiment on the new reform policies that people could like in the Frontiers.

These experiments could help fund much larger funding campaigns in the capital that housed most of the population. For hunters and farmers, it was more of a focused on STEM and nature classes. Soft Sciences didn't have a place in the Frontiers as they were still running with the principles of surviving and conservation of the land they fought for. It was the same as it always been with the human civilizations like back on Earth. Rural communities were conservative while cities were liberal. The norm was usually switch in films or in some different places, but it was certainly the norm here.

After everything was done over the days and weeks, President Taylor went to congress. The plan he drafted was a simple one to overhaul and upgrade many of the public schools and state vocational colleges. Even have master hunters and veteran militiamen give free training and license tests to become hunters for their communities. This had a positive effect on the future generations of the people of Gliese.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Sat Nov 05, 2022 1:55 pm

World News Roundup - January 2120

Welcome back, loyal listeners! I am Muhmar Ben-Gazali, here today with your news roundup from the last four weeks; RealCorp News, bringing you everything fit to twit. We know our viewers don't always have time to deal with all the nonsense out there, so we're bringing you only the highlights.

Major flooding has been reported in the Southern Rockies, around the metropolis of High Aspen. Relief efforts are underway by various local entities, and justiciar Thomas Nevelin of the Knights of the Color has been quoted stating that efforts are underway to negotiate for food aid. The washouts in the agricultural vales of the Great Plains are anticipated to plunge millions into a hunger crisis as winter crop seedlings rot beneath the floodwaters.

Nova Industries, famous for their work in greenhouse farming in the Ural Basin, reports record profits. Advances in genecrop arboriculture have been their province for the last few decades, and shareholders sent NVID soaring nearly sixty points on the Leningrad exchange based on rumors of new cultivars being successfully tested through the polar frost cycles. Licensing and mass adoption of their innovations may bring stability to a region oftentimes regarded as a second son of Europe.

January 20th saw the continued spread of the Manuas Blaze, which has now consumed nearly eight hundred thousand acres of the forests of the Jungle State and is only three percent contained. Officials from Feldivar, Maran, and Para have squabbled about whose fire crews are being unduly drawn upon to deal with the crisis, and degradation of large swathes of indigenous land seems unavoidable if no political solution can be reached soon.

In human interest pieces, we have coming up later an interview with a member of the launch crew for the KICKK asteroid mining mission, who speaks out about the corporate meddling that led to the mission being delayed. Is space the future? Are these corporations chasing dreams instead of focusing on solving real problems? All this and more, coming up within the hour!

by **Diarcesia** » Sat Nov 05, 2022 4:39 pm

Input
Region - Montefaune
Population: 10
Battalions: 0
Capital: 11
Hunger per Month: -3
Capital per Month: -1
Taxation Income Change: -4 Capital
Public Order: 3
Public Opinion: -2

Process

The Planetary Union of Montefaune
February, 2120

Excellency,

Thank you for your prompt reply. We are working together with the other Commissions in our current phase of our project: consistently establish contact with Earth-bound states and hopefully discover more about how the Jumpdrive technology can be adapted to work with our other technology.

Should we attain expertise in its applications, the Astronomy Commission proposed to begin exploring the cosmos. This will be a massive undertaking, but the Economy Commission put forward a plan to make our planet be a hub for Jumpdrive production and maintenance. They shared their concerns that our current self-sufficient and closed system will not last long with the new astropolitical reality. We would like to request your opinion on the matter.

Again, thank you for your message and wishing us all the best in our endeavors.

Sincerely,
The First Speaker of the Planetary Union of Montefaune

Monthly Action - Major: Promote Immigration - Montefaune

Output
Region - Montefaune
Population: 10 + 1 (new month) + 2 (Promote Immigration) = 13
Battalions: 0
Capital: 11 - 1 (Independent Localism) = 10
Hunger: 0 + 10 (new month) - 3 (Independent Localism) = 7
Public Opinion: 1 + 5 (Extrasolar Power) - 2 (Promote Immigration) = 4

Effect: Extrasolar Power
;Public opinion per Month: +5

Effect: Independent Localism
;Hunger per Month: -3
;Capital per Month: -1
;Taxation Income Change: -4 Capital

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Sun Nov 06, 2022 5:19 pm

Agrihall Cerratus, Vaalstat, Oranje Freistat, South Africa
February, 2120

Another load of bales slapped to the floor, and Geirmund glanced over at the mass spectrometer. Water content was within tolerances, heavy metals a bit high but nothing that the inspectors would squeak over. The Quality Administration had been neutered back in the 70s, and one of the things that separated AgriSource from her competitors was a scrupulous adherence to higher standards than most suppliers. Quality which commanded price, to be sure, and it didn't hurt that the tariffs were pointed in exactly the right direction.

"Weller isn't going to love the lack of variety."

The large blonde-haired Swede merely shrugged his shoulders.

"State gov wants calories on the shelves yesterday, not in four months, and variety starts being a luxury. Once the algal mats are shredded and reconstituted most folks will just be happy to have something in their bellies, even if it isn't a potato or maize. Real crops take time. The best we can do for this month is in front of you."

Tonilia sighed. She didn't envy having to relay the explanation to the apparatchiks in Pretoria, but it was a valid explanation. Even Blue Sky couldn't work wonders. But the rumblings in the Landsraad about food prices would tamp down once distribution could start in earnest and less of the commonfolk had to go to bed hungry.

Three missed meals. The axiom. Well, best avoided, even if the harsh conditions of the last century had seen it proven far less true than the ancients had thought. These fetid slimy green bales, bundled off to the reprocessors in the length of a warehouse the size of a intercontinental jet, they were better than nothing. A damn sight better than nothing.

Blue Sky uses Minor Action [Harvesting Season] in place of their Major Action

by **The Empire of Tau** » Sun Nov 06, 2022 7:48 pm

Feeding the masses is not an easy task, especially on limited arable land. There are simply not enough cultivable acres to grow much variety of crops. Your customer might like a wide range of foodstuffs like meats, fruits, vegetables, and other edibles. A mere century ago, there were shelves of dozens of foodstuffs on the cheap with even more dozens of variations of a single food product. In the 2100s, such diversity is long-gone. Ecological collapse has rendered much of Dixie’s arable acres into barren landscapes. Prioritizing sustenance for the growing masses, ARC has opted to grow vast quantities of cheap grains. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, will contain bread with a side of bread. Monotonous? Yes, but there is not much choice in the matter. Food is food, and the people will eat bread. In this case, it is very-flat cornbread with no butter, sugar, eggs, or milk. ARC has also no plans to even consider raising animals. There is not enough arable land to grow the needed quantities of feedstock for a factory of cows or likewise. Coupled with the growing demand for food as the global population starts to regrow, ARC will be feeding the plebs with the oldest and humblest staple food there is - grains.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:54 am

Kazan-Kazait, Uralsk
February, 2120

The bitter cold was surprising, and the emissary pulled his coat a bit tighter, even though it was already well sealed against the elements. Just a human reaction, one he immediately chided himself over. Icy temperatures were temporary, and a display of weakness would be remembered. His hands relaxed, bare fingers unfurling despite the biting chill, and he consciously widened his stance unlike his colleagues who huddled against the wind.

It wasn't more than a few breaths before the large metal doors in front of the party creaked open on automated hinges, the security protocols deactivated from within, and yet he could already feel the numbness creeping into his digits. Thankfully the blast of near-tropical warmth from the institute swiftly began the languid work of restoring life to his extremities, their hosts beckoning the Blue Sky representatives inside.

His compatriot shook her long white-blonde hair, dislodging a few of the snowflakes from the flurrying storm which had been lodged there. He didn't bother with the affectation. Heat of this nature would see to the inclement precipitation inside of a minute, and the moisture in five. Control. Project control. They needed to see that he was aware of the inconvenience and was above it. Discipline in life and business brought success. His personal manifold was certain that was the tack to take with these negotiations.

A broadly smiling large bear of a man in an elegantly tailored silver suit stepped forward from the knot of Nova Industries representatives, and offered his hand. The emissary's optics matched his face in the time it took for the Russian (well, former Russian) to unfurl his fingers fully; Gregori Zyietzev, the head of the NorthStar subsidiary branch. Not as high as they had hoped to meet, but with influence where it needed to be. Good enough for a start.

"Welcome to the facility, gentlemen. I am Gregori, Gregori Zyietzev, project lead for this little operation. You are all most welcome."

The emissary let his compatriot smile her winning grin and trot out some platitudes about the bracing weather and the lovely flight. The truth was that it had been anything but - the transfer from Leningrad had been aboard a Nova Industries flier he was certain had been manufactured before the Second German Civil War, at the very newest, and the polar vortex descending from Murmilo boisterous to say the least. But it was good form to dismiss such inconveniences as wholly minimal in the face of the opportunity for innovation and business. A standpoint the swarthy South African Boer agreed with intellectually, however much he preferred not to practice it in personal life.

"Well, I will not delay you further. My colleagues-" and here the Russian rattled off half a dozen names which he didn't bother to commit to memory "- will be accompanying us on this tour. We have a skiff laid on for the presentation, as your executive expressed particular interest in observing the cultivars in a living setting. We'll be heading out to Field Seven, our most successful crop yet."

The emissary allowed a wintry smile to pass his face momentarily. Yes, seeing the exact success Nova had achieved with radiotropic evergreens was of great interest to Blue Sky. Their progress in geneprogramming was greater than anything south of the equator, and the buyout offer's terms would have to be very precisely contingent upon what Mekis One could extract from the program. But if they were doing as well as they said, this could be a very profitable acquisition indeed...

"Lead on, Gregori. We're all very excited to see your breakthroughs in the flesh. Or, in the bark, as it were."

Laughter echoed around the small polar chamber, mostly buried in ice and snow - forced on all sides, but necessary as social lubricant. Ah, business.

by **Ovstylap** » Mon Nov 07, 2022 10:20 am

G-Tech Corporation wrote:
(Image)

World News Roundup - January 2120

Welcome back, loyal listeners! I am Muhmar Ben-Gazali, here today with your news roundup from the last four weeks; RealCorp News, bringing you everything fit to twit. We know our viewers don't always have time to deal with all the nonsense out there, so we're bringing you only the highlights.

Major flooding has been reported in the Southern Rockies, around the metropolis of High Aspen. Relief efforts are underway by various local entities, and justiciar Thomas Nevelin of the Knights of the Color has been quoted stating that efforts are underway to negotiate for food aid. The washouts in the agricultural vales of the Great Plains are anticipated to plunge millions into a hunger crisis as winter crop seedlings rot beneath the floodwaters.

Nova Industries, famous for their work in greenhouse farming in the Ural Basin, reports record profits. Advances in genecrop arboriculture have been their province for the last few decades, and shareholders sent NVID soaring nearly sixty points on the Leningrad exchange based on rumors of new cultivars being successfully tested through the polar frost cycles. Licensing and mass adoption of their innovations may bring stability to a region oftentimes regarded as a second son of Europe.

January 20th saw the continued spread of the Manuas Blaze, which has now consumed nearly eight hundred thousand acres of the forests of the Jungle State and is only three percent contained. Officials from Feldivar, Maran, and Para have squabbled about whose fire crews are being unduly drawn upon to deal with the crisis, and degradation of large swathes of indigenous land seems unavoidable if no political solution can be reached soon.

In human interest pieces, we have coming up later an interview with a member of the launch crew for the KICKK asteroid mining mission, who speaks out about the corporate meddling that led to the mission being delayed. Is space the future? Are these corporations chasing dreams instead of focusing on solving real problems? All this and more, coming up within the hour!

Diary of Elise Bennett

Archie wasn't too happy at first when he heard that a member of the launch crew for our next asteroid mining mission was going to be offering an interview on alleged 'corporate meddling' which had delayed the mission being launched. Chase and I however managed to convince him that the interview should go ahead, and that we could get some good publicity. It took a little while to persuade him, but if we can encourage those who listen to the news to have a positive view of KICKK as it reorientates its investments, then those happy listeners can help shape policy, demand, or at least be customers, in the future!

I've just finished typing up my first draft, I shall review our statement, and then send it in!

To RealCorps News, and Muhmar Ben Gazali,

Good afternoon to you all at RealCorps News. I am Elise Bennett, Deputy CEO of Kangaroo Investment Conglomerate-Kingfisher and Koala, or KICKK as you will likely know it. I am sending this as an official statement on behalf of our Corporation regarding your upcoming human interest piece with an interview of one of our prestigious asteroid mining team members!

We at KICKK were both surprised and excited by the prospect of RealCorps News running an interview with one of our asteroid mining team members, since it hasn't been arranged through official channels. Though we are saddened to hear that our employee believes the launch delay to be due to 'corporate meddling,' it comes as part of a rational and ethical restructuring of our priorities.

We commend the initiative of our employee in reaching out to RealCorps News, and would also like your viewers to know that KICKK has a well-regarded complaints and suggestions process, as well as feedback system, where we encourage our employees and subcontractors to provide us with their thoughts, opinions, and insights into how the Corporation is running. We also encourage our Research and Development teams for instance, to run their own independent projects. At KICKK, we strongly believe that the solutions to the world's problems sometimes require free and unstructured thought, unconstrained by corporate or managerial framing of issues, hence why we provide an environment and training where breakthroughs by individual minds can be achieved, alongside corporate advances!

Going forward KICKK is going to be reaching for the stars, but we absolutely do not believe in abandoning the populations of the world to a premature fate. As such, we have indeed allowed a delayed start to our next asteroid mining expedition, but this has allowed us to shift and reorientate our priorities, and has enabled us to scale down operations in some areas, and up them in others. Most recently, KICKK has majorly invested in food infrastructure in France, and looks to expand its agricultural operations in general. When stomachs are full, minds are free to work. Furthermore, we are excited for our next asteroid mining mission, and the delays have allowed us to continue to make investments in advancing our materials technology, in the long term bringing the costs and risks in asteroid mining down.

Thank you for giving us the time to send in this statement, and we look forward to the interview coming out, and will be able to answer questions raised by your own interviewer and our as of yet unknown employee, and be able to factcheck what is said. Thank you again,

Elise Bennett, Deputy CEO of KICKK, on behalf of the Corporation at large.

by **Flarbinia** » Tue Nov 08, 2022 12:02 am

Belrin. What Was Once Germany
"How are things today, Antonio?" Jurgen Schreider III said to his butler as he got out of bed and looked out his penthouse window, the sunlight shining on Berlin as though a blanket of dread had been lifted. Once upon a time, Berlin had been a city of factories and beautiful buildings, a bustling metropolis, the capital of the dominant power in Europe. Now it was little more than a shell of its former self. The collapse of the Euro, the German Civil Wars, the Great Famine, the Warlords, the Great Drought, Berlin had been devastated by this series of unfortunate events. "I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that unemployment is down by forty-five-point three percent, the Caviar for the feast with Regional Manager Rolf Krueger has arrived, and rebuilding of the financial district has finally been completed." Antonio said to Jurgen as he helped him change into his business clothes. "Other than the people who are still unemployed, what's the bad news?" Jurgen asked his butler before heading into the room where he kept his exotic pets, many of which were members of species that had become endangered or extinct in the wild thanks to the Great Mistake. "Most of the city is still dilapidated and crumbling ruins inhabited by people who are either too stubborn to leave or have nowhere else to go. Not to mention that there are supply shortages and the Board Of Directors have refused to comment on rumors of stockpiling." Antonio said to Jurgen as they entered the room, an animal handler feeding a cage full of parakeets. "Tell PR to issue a statement reiterating commitment to maintaining the city's supply chains despite crop failures. We can't afford a panic at a time like this. As for those buildings, tell the crews to repair and rebuild what they can." Jurgen said to Antonio as they passed the pen with a Burmese Python, a member of the species that had once terrorized the Everglades, tied around a branch. "I will inform them at once." Antonio said to Jurgen as he and his employer entered the elevator, the butler pulling out his communicator and called the corporate headquarters to inform them of the decision. Normally, someone who could afford a Penthouse with a room large enough to house a menagerie of exotic animals wouldn't have to walk through that room to reach the elevator, but Jurgen's grandfather wanted his collection to be the first thing guests and potential investors would see, regardless of the inconvenience or the potential danger.

Corporate Cosmos [IC | Closed]

Corporate Cosmos [IC | Closed]

Kingfishers in Ex-Tanzanaia

Jurgen III Heads To The Kaiser Industry Headquarters

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