cskendrick
I'm Gnu :)
- Joined
- May 7, 2006
- Messages
- 30
I owed you guys an installment, so you're getting two tonite 
2100s By the dawn of the 22nd century, significant hunger/malnutrition emerges in impoverished regions and segments in the United States. Poverty had been accumulating for much of the prior century, but now the country was home to over 500 million people; there was nowhere to hide the poor out of sight and out of mind, even if political will (and resources) were available to feed and house them all. Even talk of education and training opportunities was moot; there were no jobs to provide, no capital to support entrepreneurship, insufficient consumer markets to support same. Add that to a deterioriating landscape as well as climate, and exhausting and immense debt from the prior century's many overseas wars, and things were well and truly effed in the 2200s and 2210s.
Into this context: the Russians are a player in the android business, the Pelagic (oceanic) nations are a rising power in Terran affairs, and the energetic Aussies are moving in on Japan's dominance of mnemonics. The Han Federation has now achieved near-parity with the United States, a metastasis that will (to tip the cards) maintain for another century, though for all practical purposes the superpower struggle has been between the Euro-American constellation and that of the Sino-Indo-Russian alliance for most of the 21st century. Each is virtually a world unto itself, impossible to assail by the other, with nothing but profit from mutual trade and a mutual steering clear of one another's way. For the Han, Asia was planet enough for the century. For the more restive Americans, who felt they had had the entire Earth already, one world was not enough, so they invested their efforts in developing others, one after the other, then selling access and resupply to those who came later, many of them by no coincidence Han as well as other Asians.
For quite a bit of Humanity, though, the world remained as it was, or rather, as it was becoming: more crowded, with what resources remained crowded away from the majority who needed them. In these marginal areas, places such as South America and Africa and the Islamic world, war and uncertainty and wrath remained, with only one another to lash against, and as fast as nations could, they recused themselves from this misery and joined the ranks of the elect -- the chronology above describes just the lucky ones.
Still, there are worlds, and time, and hope, and though by 2100 over 62 million people reside in the New Societies, 7.5 million of them on worlds other than Earth, this represents a pittance compared to the 8,753 million who do not.
And while 5,926 million 'Old North' Terrans live in the redeemed countries, that still leaves a large number -- 2,827 million --- who are locked out, spectators only by hearsay of the wonders that I've described.
And among the so-called 'saved' societies are billions who are eyewitnesses to miracles and wonders, and yet experience none of it save vicariously. And as we began this section: many of these lost and starving souls live in America.
2100s By the dawn of the 22nd century, significant hunger/malnutrition emerges in impoverished regions and segments in the United States. Poverty had been accumulating for much of the prior century, but now the country was home to over 500 million people; there was nowhere to hide the poor out of sight and out of mind, even if political will (and resources) were available to feed and house them all. Even talk of education and training opportunities was moot; there were no jobs to provide, no capital to support entrepreneurship, insufficient consumer markets to support same. Add that to a deterioriating landscape as well as climate, and exhausting and immense debt from the prior century's many overseas wars, and things were well and truly effed in the 2200s and 2210s.
Into this context: the Russians are a player in the android business, the Pelagic (oceanic) nations are a rising power in Terran affairs, and the energetic Aussies are moving in on Japan's dominance of mnemonics. The Han Federation has now achieved near-parity with the United States, a metastasis that will (to tip the cards) maintain for another century, though for all practical purposes the superpower struggle has been between the Euro-American constellation and that of the Sino-Indo-Russian alliance for most of the 21st century. Each is virtually a world unto itself, impossible to assail by the other, with nothing but profit from mutual trade and a mutual steering clear of one another's way. For the Han, Asia was planet enough for the century. For the more restive Americans, who felt they had had the entire Earth already, one world was not enough, so they invested their efforts in developing others, one after the other, then selling access and resupply to those who came later, many of them by no coincidence Han as well as other Asians.
For quite a bit of Humanity, though, the world remained as it was, or rather, as it was becoming: more crowded, with what resources remained crowded away from the majority who needed them. In these marginal areas, places such as South America and Africa and the Islamic world, war and uncertainty and wrath remained, with only one another to lash against, and as fast as nations could, they recused themselves from this misery and joined the ranks of the elect -- the chronology above describes just the lucky ones.
Still, there are worlds, and time, and hope, and though by 2100 over 62 million people reside in the New Societies, 7.5 million of them on worlds other than Earth, this represents a pittance compared to the 8,753 million who do not.
And while 5,926 million 'Old North' Terrans live in the redeemed countries, that still leaves a large number -- 2,827 million --- who are locked out, spectators only by hearsay of the wonders that I've described.
And among the so-called 'saved' societies are billions who are eyewitnesses to miracles and wonders, and yet experience none of it save vicariously. And as we began this section: many of these lost and starving souls live in America.
