Welcome to the Anchorage. I'm sure many of you are interested in why you've been invited here, and I wouldn't blame you. It's not often one receives an invitation to visit an unremarkable system on the far-flung fringe of the Beta Quadrant, told to expect the "opportunity of a generation," and to not immediately dismiss it as a timeshare scam, no doubt. [Muted laughter] We wouldn't do that to you, of course. ...That's next week. [Laughter]
Regardless: by "we," of course, I mean Draeva-Ishaik Heavy Industries. My name is Octaros Bamani, Chief Financial Officer and Project Liaison for SAMADA. [Hushed whispers] ...As most of you are well aware, for the past sixty years, Draeva-Ishaik has been a lead proprietor of novel terraforming and planetary geo-engineering technologies; what I plan to discuss with you fine gentlemen— [Few, muted laughs] And ladies! Pardon me, pardon me... What I plan to discuss with you fine ladies and gentlemen this morning is, in fact, the opportunity not of a lifetime, but of a generation. No, I swear to you, this is not some scam; this is, truly, the future not merely for this station, but for this system, and for terraforming operations across the Galaxy.
Before I continue, let me preface this: Draeva-Ishaik has been breaking barriers since her founding over sixty years ago. We pride ourselves not merely on our terraforming ventures, but on all of our endeavors - from the lowliest docking collar on the airlocks of this station, to the tiles beneath your feet, to the projectors buried in these very walls. [Hushed whispers as holographic projectors initialize] That said, terraforming truly is our bread-and-butter; what we hope to involve you all in, ladies and gentlemen, is everything else. ...To that end, I have been assured each of you have appropriately signed confidentiality agreements upon receipt of your invitations; therefor, without further adieu, let us begin.
Project SAMADA, initiated five years ago by Draeva-Ishaik and her subsidiaries, marks the single most important terraforming project in our history. Not because we are terraforming a planet, quite clearly, but because of what we intend to become of that planet, its system, and, most importantly, the speed at which we intend to accomplish it. For the past twelve years, we have endeavored to accelerate our terraforming and geo-engineering procedures to break the centennial cap that has nigh-forever hampered the industry from truly growing into her own. Today, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say that Draeva-Ishaik Heavy Industries has accomplished this feat - and not by mere technicality, but by twenty years. If you doubt me, please, stand, and look below. [Shuffling feet, chairs]
What you see here, now, both below and about, thanks to our projection system, is a city, yes. Potentially your city, in fact. It should be cresting right about now... [Several hushed gasps] This city sits below on the apparently desolate, desert world that we have come to call "Samada" internally. It is the first of her kind. A proverbial urban paradise on a beautiful, aquamarine sea - a sea that, five years ago, didn't exist. Yes, you heard correctly: the verdant parks, the luxurious high-rises, and - yes - even the sea itself, did not exist five years ago. Now? Now we have a fully terraformed metropolis on the surface of a world that, a decade ago, would have broiled you living.
[Muted question] Yes, I'm glad you asked this. "How?" you say? Draeva-Ishaik, through proprietary technologies, has cut the centennial cap by twenty years and, in the process, revolutionized terraforming entirely. In five years time, through the application of our system and manual assistance, we have created the largest sea currently on Samada, developed a metropolis, and raised the localized Messier Habitability Index of that metropolis to 7.9. Yes. Seven-point-nine. Ladies and gentlemen, you or I could walk the streets of this urban landscape without so much as an oxygen concentrator. And in forty years? In forty years, the global Messier Habitability Index of Samada will reach 5.1; in forty years time, most humans could inhabit virtually any parcel of land on the planet below without trouble or the need for expensive exo-atmospheric equipment or costly hazardous environ colonial modules. In sixty? A global "M-H-I" of 7.5. Seven-point-five. That, last I heard, is higher than Terra herself. [Raucous laughter]
This, my friends, is the future Draeva-Ishaik desires... We wish to see Samada flourish, and in as little as ten years, be host to numerous, burgeoning metropoli catering to the idyllic dreams of our - of your - clientele. We see a future without the hustle-and-bustle of over-clogged highways, urban hellscapes rife with crime and vagrancy, and of a verdant world ruined by industrial processes; no, we see a future where the select - the pristine and the prime - may live in luxury on a world catered to their very desires and whims. A world where crime is abolished, where poverty is non-existent, where luxury is, in fact, no longer a luxury. [Footsteps and chairs as seats are retaken] We see a future where, with your partnership, we can make a paradise, not of dreams and ideals, but of hard, material facts; a paradise wrought from a landscape of dust and a blaring pair of stars that, alone, would have prohibited such. On this world, on Samada, we see our dreams - my dreams, your dreams, the dreams of every investor, and their families, who sits here this day.
Alas, we cannot bring these dreams to fruition alone. We need you - your help, your brilliance, your contributions to turn this fantastical vision into a reality. We seek you, here and now, in partnership with Draeva-Ishaik Heavy Industries, to make of a paradisaical fiction, fact. We seek to create a history where the forefathers of creation are our own - Draeva-Ishaik, Kruger, Tydaal, Yhnom, and others - and are writ in the very fabric of this new Eden.
Ladies and gentlemen, we do not seek to make a heaven on Earth, or even a heaven-of-Earth. No, we seek Heaven herself, and with your help, we will have her.
— Octaros Bamani; Lost Archives, Investor Pitch, Transcription; Circa 19.7000 GSY
And then the shit hit the fan. Despite all of our blustering - or, perhaps, in spite of it - it failed; even if our blustering was justified, in the end, it ultimately didn't matter. We got countless partners - more names than I can even remember - and for the better part of seven years, everything was all right. Yes, I took the kickbacks; we all did. That's just how business was done then, and it's how it is done now, too. The myriad of indictments didn't change that - not one lick. Everyone does it; everyone did it; everyone continues to do it. Regardless, even that, too, didn't matter.
We got our first inclinations of trouble in 19.7500 GSY. That's when the strikes started. Sure, we'd had a couple; a few of the [terraforming spire] crews had unionized. By then, at least thirty percent of their workforce was automated, either by Kruger Armatures or Jehei Technologies - though Kruger ultimately did a better job. Jehei never could quite get the hang of that gig; their androids still give me fucking nightmares. Even so, we thought it was localized. Then when we took the first dip in '76, we knew there was something up. Our stocks fell by at least seven percent in every major index in the [Beta Quadrant] and by five, at least, in the others. Even then, we still thought it was just an issue with us; it wasn't a new problem. It happened before, and we'd always leveled back out in a quarter or two. This wasn't that. It took us until the end of 19.7600 to realize that, however.
By then, a few of us at the top saw the writing on the wall. The higher-level partners all had the same reaction: start dumping. Liquidate what we could, and leave the rest to float. A few of us even made a pretty penny off that run, but when my office started making predictions, and our partners' analogs started to do the same, we all started to sweat. It wasn't just us - either Draeva-Ishaik or even Project SAMADA. The whole fucking quadrant was circling the drain, and none of us could figure out why or where it would strike next.
Some said - some still say - it was inevitable. That we were living too high off the fat, yet running too lean, for the machine to keep chugging along. Bullshit. We'd run that system for decades; sure, we'd had a few hiccups, but nothing we couldn't correct for in the long run. A few said it was due to the pirates along the Fringe; Sigyrus was among them, but, well, Sigyrus went "bankrupt" a bit before the rest of us. To say they were "biased" would be a laughable understatement. The media said it was the kickbacks, the bribes, and the intra-politicking; maybe, but I sincerely doubt that was all that was at play. It certainly wasn't enough to bring the economy of a quadrant grinding to a halt, collapse a few nations in on themselves, and return reclaimed systems to the abyss. Yet, even this, too, doesn't matter.
In 19.7700 GSY, when the wheel stopped spinning, I was left holding the bag. Kruger, Tydaal, even Draeva pointed the finger at me, and that was it. Twenty-seven indictments on insider trading, felonious incentives, tax evasion, investment fraud, and a handful of charges of negligent homicide - albeit I managed to slip out from under those. That was the end for the big dog - and by that, I don't mean me. Draeva-Ishaik had tried to paint me the patsy, but that wasn't enough; the whole damn ship came down with me and countless others. Those higher-up on the food chain ordered assets to be left to rot; a few folks got pulled out - relatives, friends of those "in-the-know" - but Project SAMADA got abandoned - along with a dozen or more projects along the Betan Fringe. Who knows how many properties we dropped derelict across the Galaxy; I don't think even I can count that high.
If anything, that's the one thing I legitimately feel guilty over: what we did to those still on Samada. See, when it was ordered derelict, most of us presumed we were going to empty the planet, and just leave all the properties to rot. For years Samada had run with an under-staffed transport contingent, and we knew as much. It was how we managed to keep the place a secret, even from those who came for our necks in the end. I thought we'd pull them out, pay them off, and be done with it; then I realized there was nothing to pay them off with at all. The slush funds had been drained; I still, to this day, don't know by whom, but they were gone. So, what did we do? We pulled a few high-priority assets out, raised the elevator, turned [the Anchorage] offline, and left them all to scratch out an existence on their own - which is a less-than-adequate euphemism for "left them all to die."
Spare they didn't.
You couldn't survive in this business without making a few friends. Apparently, the Anchorage didn't just "go offline." No. Some stayed. Some kept it working. At least, in part. Apparently the thing has become an abomination of ships and stations, tacked together like a patchwork quilt of metal and desperation, but it's still there. So is the planet, albeit with failing terraforming spires; a few of the automated ones might still be working - the Kruger ones, anyway. Apparently the natives did scratch out an existence, albeit a terribly brutal one. I don't pity those who managed to live out there, not now, at least; they're a harder bunch than I could ever have been. Supposedly, though, everything is under "new management" - or a few. Not sure how that has worked out, and I try and not think about it too hard all too often. Those sort of thoughts are liable to lead a man to drink, and I do that enough as it is.
But even that doesn't matter now, either. At least not to me. I've had my fill. I kept my mouth shut, even though every bone in my body said to scream to the rooftops. We all did; we all kept quiet, that is. I'm sure there are still a few records about the place, somewhere in an archive that didn't get scrubbed or outright spaced. But for us? Not a word. I got the blame, and I kept my mouth shut. That kept my daughter in college, and me from the bread line. That wasn't enough, not by a long shot, but it at least was. The alternative - telling them, squealing? That would have been the end, not just for me, but for my family and every living soul I knew. That's why, in the end, out there somewhere, a memory keeps on chugging along, churning in the dark. It wasn't what we wanted - wasn't what I wanted - but it, too, at least is.
That'll have to be enough, because if it isn't, I don't know how I could justify still breathing.
— Octaros Bamani; Private Memoirs; Circa 20.0010 GSY