The Year 2245
The year is 2245. And humanity, by some miracle, has not yet blown itself into little bits just yet (though not for a lack of trying.) No, instead we have long since left our dying world in the mid-21st century. From there we spread ourselves out across the inner rim, then past the belt into Jovian space, and even there we did not stop. We pushed ourselves to the very edge of the TNR, verging on the Kuiper ring. We have made an empire to last the ages, forged it from blood, fire and sweat. The Imperium. The great hand stretching from the ice fields of Charon to the mysteries of Mercury.
But it is all a lie.
Power.
Wealth.
Influence.
We live like rats. We think ourselves gods despite that we are sequestered upon the unnatural smog of our own, specially designed creations. We are a race of deception. Not just to others. Rather to ourselves. We outlawed the slavery of human beings, so we altered the human genome just slightly as to find a loophole. We affirmed democracy, but it is a democracy of the few. We built up towers, yet most live at their bases.
We are, for all intents and purposes, sad little puppets on sad little strings. We all want to be real little boys and girls, and so we prance about, laughing, making merry, ignoring those binds. Ignoring them until they inevitably tug back. You see, the creation of life has long been seen as divine, though mankind deems itself worthy to be the judge and jury of existence. We created AIs, and then deleted them. We spliced homo sapien data, and then manipulated it for our needs. Our wants. Our desires.
This is not the future of stories. We are not the peace keepers of the galaxy, swinging about lightsabers or phazer beams. There is no biological life out there except for us. We. Are. Alone. And really, that is the saddest part of this whole tale. In Science fiction there are always the alien villains. The big bad guys who everyone rallies against and defeats through the power of teamwork and love and bloody friendship magic, ponies, rainbows and unicorns. Well guess what? There are none to be found. The movies lied to us; they said mankind was at its barest essence good.
That is wrong. Those big bad boogie men of space? We created them because we are them.
So welcome to your dream kids! That big, bold, brave new world!
Welcome to 2245 AD.
Welcome
2245 is a (pseudo-) realistic sci-fi setting set two centuries after the war that ended human life as we know it today. But that's not to say it ended humanity, far from it.
America, the UK, China, Russia, these are all dusty empires no different from the Spanish Conquistadors or the French Napoleonic State you learn about in civics class. And they are viewed just the same: as failures. They were lead by idiots, they were full of glutinous prats and all they did was leave a mess for their progeny to clean up. It is the damning position of nations which sat idly by and let their world plunge into chaos. Maybe at the time it looked like a good idea, but hindsight is 20/20.
This story isn't like most distopic novels you have undoubtedly read. It does not assert that mankind became caught up in its own power, or that we were mislead, or that somehow the past was better. It wasn't. Look around you. Do you think our world is perfect? As much as the Hunger Games and Divergent try and tell us that the present is some glorious Utopia, it's just not. Rather, if looking for inspiration, think about the Red Rising trilogy (novels which I took heavy influence from when building 2245.) The Atlantic is in a stage of decadence, just like the roman empire. Inevitably that lead to our decline and that of western society as a whole. And what came after that? The Imperium, which say what you will, is not evil. It isn't sending children mindlessly to their deaths for their entertainment, or trying to brainwash the population to their own nefarious ends, they just do what is necessary to ensure the unity of their governance.
And now, after two centuries of office, they two have fallen into the decline of civilization.
Bureaucratic mismanagement, corruption, personal interests. A second Jovian Conflict is close to rearing its ugly head and Beyonders from the TNR are growing ever more vicious. Corporations which line pockets from hydrogen extraction are beginning to wonder if they really need to abide by Imperium mercantile law. Unconfirmed Reports of a mutant strain of HKV-2 proliferate the Far-Rim. Labor uprisings break out across the Belt. The future of humanity is again in the silent peril of the early twenty first century. And all the while a similarly voiceless M4-Trade Hauler drifts through the black. The crew may not know it, yet one way or another they will decide the fate of humanity.
Be it for the better… or the worse.
Part of the Crew, Part of the Ship
Name: Lassie (yes, off that classic vid-tape, the Cap’s an eccentric fellow)
Designation: M1-Trade Hauler, Reg Code 9T6P6-009UIAY
Stats:
-Current Crew: 57 crewmen on staff, no casualties or major dismemberments in the past month (NEW RECORD!)
-Current Cargo Leger: 10 crates of Duro Sead, 40 Synth Fabricators, 20 Constructor-M AI, 2 Hydrogen Repurposers (can't wait to get rid of these bloody things), 10 tankards of purified H20 and 20(.5) heads of Cattle (one got stuck in the loading dock door the other day… results were not pleasant)
-Current Escort: Tenth FR-mixed Infantry Squad (what a load of Ion-charged dicks. All hail the Imperium, am I right?)
-Current Position: Leaving Triton (finally)
-Current Destination: Umbriel and Oberon
-Other notes:Streven, if I catch you messing with the Data logs again I’ll castrate you and stick your pink balls so far up the Cap’s ass even your over zealous tongue won't be able to find’em
-Zack Blucker signing off
(Oh please, you know you love me Zack *kisses*. ; ) -Streven)
-I am going to kill that kid.
The World Thus Far
Link to Google Doc, this may take a moment to load due to the ammount of pages, be patient
And Now...
So, with that all out of the way, what are your thoughts? Feel free to post bellow and thank you for your time.
