Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[Trenacker]

Artist's rendering of a Unity Submersible.

To enlarge the human perspective, to build on knowledge for future generations, to identify dangers, and to chart the course to a better world: If these are the goals of the explorer, then everyone—voyager, scientist and citizen, parent and child—is engaged in humanity’s momentous expedition. - The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus, Datalinks

Its Aquatic Operations Section provided the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri with sailors, equipment, and leadership to begin the exploration of Chiron's deep seas.

Unity carried dozens of accomplished naturalists, including botanist Deirdre Skye; land management specialist J.T. Marsh; decorated military submariner Raoul André St. Germaine; Kleisel Mercator, a veteran of the German Antarctic Expedition; and alpinist Vinchenson Parke.

Marsh in particularly believed that the uniquely inhospitable ecology would play an indispensable role in toughening the first colonists mentally for the unknown challenges of governance ahead. Forward Contact Teams seemed like daredevils to their base-bound bretheren, living "outside the wire" of sensor networks and flame traps that provided the best known insurance against infestation by fungus and mindworms.

At sea, the New State took up a similar role, daring the abyssal depths. Faction firsts included tapping Planet's hydrothermal vents and organizing sustainable kelp farms. Their indispensable tool: the Unity Submersible. These were small, short-ranged exploration and work craft designed to operate from surface-going motherships, from which they could replenish and receive repairs.

The submersibles were an analogue to the Unity Rover. Both used electric motors primarily. The submersibles were designed around a magnetohydrodynamic drive. It was hoped that the technology would prove more durable than classical propeller assemblies. Microjets positioned at the edges of the dart-shaped craft gave it excellent maneuverability. The minimum crew of three was protected by a thick titanium hull, which meant an impressively deep crush depth. Many New State sailors owed their lives to this innovation, which kept them alive until rescue. Using virtual reality simulation, an engineer could extend telemanipulators to perform gross work or fine.

The basic submersibles were mostly unarmed. For military operations, an external torpedo mount sometimes took the place of the usual waldoes. The New State did not secure the small batch of torpedoes present in the Unity Armory, and they were presumed lost with the ship. Early attempts to machine crude replacements ended in catastrophe. A stopgap solution called for changing the nature of submersible warfare altogether. Rather than fix their targets and fire from stand-off distance, New State submersibles raced ahead of them to deploy spools of electrically-charged filament wire. A submersible that made contact with these charged filaments went dead in the water. The "entangler" could continue to deliver periodic pulses until repair activity ceased for lack of air, or because the victim had sunk below crush depth. Later improvements to this system involved vibrating the wire at frequencies that turned it into a vehicle-scale garrote, a target's own inertia effecting the inevitably fatal cut.

[MysticWind]

Name: Annikki Luttinen
Rank: Lieutenant (junior grade)
Position: Subroutine Specialist
County of Origin: Unified Norden Realm
DOB: 06-19-2038

Service Record:

Annikki “Aki” Luttinen born 2038, Hallingdal, Norway, to shopkeeper parents of Kven ancestry. Early aptitude in mathematics resulted in placing first in the Kalle Contest at age nine. Studied at Oslo University, earned Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Programming, Masters in Computer Science, Ph.D. Computer Science and Computer Age Philosophy. Pursued academia instead of private industry despite the commercial infotech boom during the new pan-Nordic monarchy's Springtime Court era. Became expert of C* and C** programming languages; doctoral dissertation "Simula and Stimulation" won 2059 Stroustrup-Torvalds Award, Artificial Intelligence category.

Drafted upon graduation for national service. Served in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone aboard the RNS Prince Amleth as cyber counter-intrusion specialist. Tour mostly peaceful, as the Riket Norden Sjøforsvaret's primary business in the area was humanitarian in nature, dispatching aid to refugees from the Six Minute War and shuttling those deemed worthy of resettlement to the Unified Realm's colonies within the EZ - New Kalmar, Gjeddeland, Colonia Halonen. Advanced swiftly and assigned additional role as UAV chief, responsible for maintaining avionics software and combat behavioral routines of the flagship’s drones. Received commendation from superiors for improving automated battle capabilities nearly thrice-fold, undefeated in both simulated and live-fire exercises.

Prince Amleth bridge crew - Ensign Luttinen right of center

Twenty-three month tour of peace punctuated by conflict in Europe. In retaliation for UNR-supported attempted separatist uprising in Komi ASSR, the Soviet Navy’s Scarlet Sun Indian Ocean Fleet blockaded RNS activities. Merchant marine similarly harassed, Norden holdings threatened. Crisis peaked at New Kola when Scarlet Sun fleet prevented Norden floatilla from resupplying minor colony. Local viceroy, a resettled Kashmiri refugee, repeatedly pleaded for RNS intervention. After Soviet marines landed and re-christened the settlement to Murmansk, the captain of the Prince Amleth ordered Luttinen to launch the ship’s complement of drones against the Soviet flagship carrier, Kremlin, and for the gunners to shell all surrounding vessels.

Luttinen refused, citing the statistical likelihood of the situation leading to mutual destruction of both fleets, and lack of authorization from Kalmar. Utilized reason and executive control of the drones to convince bridge crew to deescalate; the captain was confined to quarters and both fleets disengaged. (Soviets abandoned the artificial island shortly thereafter.) Crisis resolved when the Unified Realm ceded several EZ colonies and made assurances to not rejoin NATO in exchange for formalization of the Karelian border. Luttinen completed tour without formal reprimand, but reputation irrevocably changed.

Joined Zakharov Research Institute shortly after national service, during the Great Northern Détente, turning down offer from Togra Labs. Worked on game theory simulations for higher peace studies. Rejected offers to work on well-funded teams engaged in research with military applications. Achieved master’s degree in cognitive science during stint, subsequently starting and directing major research project BlueBook: an effort to digitally recreate the human mind, using long ponder learning techniques and Dean sequences. Encountered opposition from institute head regarding validity of epistemological model. Project ultimately shut down when allocation rescinded. In spite of theoretical differences, handpicked for ZRI’s Unity expedition computer engineering team by the provost himself.

Details are unclear, but evidence exists Luttinen initiated an unauthorized experiment in pre-sentient algorithms prior to shipwide hibernation, using dormant bandwidth from Unity computing core. Experiment designed to run for the entire duration of the decades-long voyage. As during and after Planetfall the crew’s teams of data librarians and data scientists were widely dispersed, if not outright incapacitated, only scant logs and stories attest to the nature of the algorithmic experiment. While many allege that it was the continuation of BlueBook, others suggest that the experiment was made at the orders of Prokhor Zakharov or yet another party. Unfortunately, upon awakening, Data Services discovered that far from lasting four decades plus, the experiment had terminated scant three months post-mission launch, along with a lengthy autostack dump. Captain Garland could only reprimand Luttinen, as the outbreak of shipwide instability prevented further investigation.

A sudden bout of rheumatic fever, perhaps triggered by decades of immune system atrophy during Wespe-Quinn-Vagner hibernation, spared Luttinen the trauma of Planetfall. As one of the Chief of Engineering’s foremost computer scientists, she was placed under protective quarantine and safely evacuated alongside awakened crew members. Thus she escaped the fate of the still-sleeping whose cryotubes were placed aboard Cargo Pods launched automatically.

Luttinen reappeared at University Base. Stoic personality deepened into flat affect. Emerged as a leading member of University society. Agitated for rapid development of Information Networks, accelerated organization of factional processes upon pure logical lines. Rumored to be engaged in undisclosed cybernetic augmentation and covert A.I. research beyond the purview of University Open Access datalinks. Fell out with Zakharov for second time. Following sanctions of "cultivating Bayesian cult of personality" and "advocating Lysenkoism", left the University with dozens of supporters, some supplies, untold data cores.

Post-fever Luttinen was often rumored of having undergone surgical implantation of computing devices connected to BlueBook

Some indefinite time later, Luttinen reemerged from the wilderness with her followers at the gates of the Children of the Atom. Now calling herself “Aki Zeta-5”, she petitioned Dr. Anhaldt to permit the admittance of the Consciousness, so that they may share the algorithm they have discovered.

Psych Profile: Emotionally Detached

Subject has historically shown aloof, dispassionate, calculating traits. Obsession with mathematical and computer science technical problems since childhood, lack of interest in social activities in conventions. New Kola Crisis during national service in the IOEZ significant to present-day ideological worldview. Fellow servicemen reported subject betrayed rare outbursts of emotion following the conclusion of the naval standoff. Subject expressed fierce frustration, contempt at both Norden and Soviet leadership for pursuing needless conflict of little strategic value.

Post-Planetfall, emotional awareness has gone to near-nil along multiple axes, indicating extreme dampening, possibly anhedonia. Strong emphasis in logic and reason while sacrificing emotion and intuition. Conducts all behavior with high efficiency and pure practicality. Inconsistent treatment of others observed, likely rooted in rapidly calibrating behaviors in response to realtime updates, without regard to emotion. Loyalty dubious. Perfect score of 1.0 on Atherholt Trauma Function Test suggests potential psychopathy. Caution recommended.

Notes:

The idea that Aki is a Norwegian Kven is from this online post reviewing the SMAC GURPS tabletop RPG sourcebook. That post also makes some great distinctions between the ideology of the University and the Cybernetic Consciousness. I always thought the Cyborgs are the most underwritten faction, glad someone tried to fill in the gaps.

[Trenacker]

An android shows aberrant behavior at Gaia's High Garden.

We must stop seeking insights from mere tools. No machine, being a purely derivative construction of Man, can exceed his understanding. Though it may be faster in the realm of calculations and precision, a robot is merely a complicated set of switches and contains within itself nothing of genuine mystery to us. - Chasing the Divine [1]

Each of the human settlements had a distinctive relationship to artificial intelligence. All used machines, including robots, but only some used androids.

The University of Planet led in the early use of android servitors, which it unleashed upon practically every task. The ubiquity of these helpmates gave rise to periodic debates about the nature of sentience and their personhood within the faction, but familiarity bred contempt, and prevailing opinion held that the child could never exceed the parent in merit. The University of Planet took the opposite approach, quickly reserving rights and privileges to robots of a certain computational capacity or possessing programming of a certain nature.

The very complexity of thinking machines attracted speculation about whether other complex systems, including the human brain, were but facsimiles built with different materials. Such thinking was deeply unsettling to the Conclave given its official belief that humans were a special creation of the ineffable Divine. Sister Miriam Godwinson warned her flock not to succumb to fascination with artificial intelligence. God, she said, could not be found in what humans themselves could make. The kirtarchs never forbade the creation or use of machines themselves, but Believers learned to treat androids with special fear, as if their dispassionate mien might be somehow contagious.

The Human Tribe had an almost equally uncomfortable attitude toward technology. Jean-Baptiste Keller had been a Luddite on grounds that technology exacerbated "celebration of the self," so that, indulged too often, it produced a supremely selfish individual, alive only to their own urges and unfit for the society of others. Yet the simultaneous emphasis of Tribal thought on the serendipity of geographic closeness produced a countervailing invitation to begin examining androids from the perspective of the Kellerites' own historical experience so that certain Supremacists within the faction came gradually to the conclusion that denying the equality of sufficiently advanced, self-aware machines was inconsistent with Tribal virtues.

Factions that celebrated the human body as something especially praiseworthy, including the Stepdaughters, Hunters, Spartans, and Ascendancy, associated the casual use of androids with chronic civilizational indolence. It was one thing to employ a robot for special applications beyond natural human ability, but anything else smacked of opportunity lost to improve oneself through exertion. Director Tamineh Pahlavi and her geneticists were particularly concerned about the possibilities for divergent evolution: what if the very ubiquity of labor-saving devices in a society could produce weaklings down through the generations?

Some were indifferent to the use of androids for either labor or companionship. Shaper thinkers were largely silent about the number and role of androids in their midst.

Morgan worked to make the inclusion of labor-saving robots a near-certainty within every household. Faction marketers sold androids as the all-purpose solution--for disability, emotional maladjustment, or even just boredom. The real reason for the Monopoly's position was that robots were more energy-efficient than people: the faction saved energy when people stopped insisting upon doing for themselves.

[1] Thanks to my friend Devin for his editorial contributions!

[Trenacker]

It is not disagreement we punish, but dissent. You disagree? Fine. But hold your tongue after the decision has been made, lest you provoke doubt in lesser men. Nothing better serves a sailor than confidence, and nothing so dooms him but the creeping thought that his course is already wrong. - The Discipline of Obedience

New State multi-mission submarine Trudeau retrieves divers collecting Planetpearls in the disputed Serran Rectangle.

The combination of open torpedo tubes, forward and ventral, with active running lights suggest that the boat is deploying a volley of survey probes.

Some of the most interesting features of the Châteaurenault class, of which this boat was the first, were the large protruding storage bays and four boom-deployed electrostatic conductors that dominated the lower half of the hull form. The Trudeau and her sisters carried no strategic armament, and while they could be puissant warriors in their own defense, their purpose was, in fact, resource-gathering.

A Châteaurenault would locate the trunk lines of an opposing factions' submersible energy grid and tap it directly, drawing off as much as 420,000 MWh at a single contact. [1] This was as much energy as could be generated in a month by a large nuclear power station.

When such ventures were interrupted, the long-barreled laser mount located to the rear of the conductors simply cut the adversary's lines as the would-be thief made to flee.

On its longest deployment, Trudeau led Morganite Corporate Security mini-subs on a four-day chase back to friendly waters, sinking at least six of the pursuers before making good the escape. Living to fight another day was not enough, however; the Morganite response inflicted damage so great that the Trudeau lost its stolen cargo. As a result, the New State was forced to abandon its forward base at Motte and Bailey.

Two-person Morganite submarine pursuit form. Because Corporate Security relied heavily on fixed defenses, these were very lightly armed, using low-power marking lasers projected from the twin directors mounted aft of the prow to guide microtorpedos. The inadequacy of their weapons and variance with doctrine rarely prevented pursuits: pilots were more than willing to risk themselves for the enormous bounties Morgan paid out for destroying intruders.

[1] Inspired by the Frank Herbert short story with the same premise, The Dragon in the Sea (1956).

[Trenacker]

Spartan Myrmidons race to take up positions during the final Gaian assault on Sparta Command.

I don't have an objection to peace. To the resolution of hunger, thirst, sickness, or suffering. But the delegitimation of all war is not these things. The United Nations insisted that every disagreement could be negotiated, every conflict zone embargoed. They disliked the pestilence of war. But some issues cannot be submerged. Whatever happened to morality? To principle? Who was it that said, the United States could not endure permanently, half free and half slave? 'It will become all one thing, or all the other.' How did this happen? To achieve lasting peace, fight a war. - The Council of War

As one might expect, the combat veterans among Chiron's faction leaders usually took a sanguine view of armed conflict.

For some, it was a question of morality. Pete Landers, who himself had come to Kellerism only as an accidental byproduct of indiscriminate persecution, mobilized his Human Tribe to neutralize once and future enemies. Mercy, he warned, was the first chapter in a long book titled Grief. [1] Marsh of the Hunters used violence to enforce the freedoms of movement that he believed were essential to exercising one's full humanity. Santiago posited that a society unable to identify any red lines over which to fight and die was committing the political and cultural suicide that preceded physical extermination.

A squad of Tribal militia prepare a meal somewhere in the Protoforest. Dust masks protect their lungs from the carcinogenic smokes of nearby wildfires. They will dine on native subrid.

The power to hurt -- the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain and grief -- is a kind of bargaining power, not easy to use but used often. - Arms and Influence, Datalinks

Another set of factions pursued war as a kind of commercial venture. For Oscar van de Graaf, war conveniently reduced the number of hungry mouths at any table. Both the Houses of Morgan and Struan used violence to compel negotiating partners to do as they wished, though a determined resistance could usually fend off fighters motivated only by a promise of pay. Yang, Pahlavi, and Cobb didn't scruple to provide even that much context to their plundering expeditions.

Crusading factions fought wars in pursuit of specific ideological objectives. Landers, Godwinson, and Lal from time to time alleged that their military operations were in fact humanitarian interventions on behalf of those too weak to defend themselves. For Lady Deirdre Skye, this meant Planet itself.

A Morganite auxiliary shoulders an Impact-era man-portable air-defense system during a demonstration to prospective buyers at Morgan Metagenics. Morgan Defense Products did a tidy business upgrading older weapons to the "Smart" standard through the use of active guidance systems and integration with whole-of-battlefield command-and-control suites. The eye-controlled, augmented reality computer technology fitted to the helmet allows the artilleryman to "paint" targets in multiple different modalities and redirect the projectile in-flight.

[1] I got this terrific little maxim from Thrawn Ascnendancy: Greater Good (2021) by Timothy Zahn.

[Trenacker]

It was then we fired our broadsides into her ribs of steel / yet no break in her armor made; no damage did she feel. - Traditional, Datalinks

Fast-moving Combat Trikes gave the Unity crew armed reconnaissance capability with better survivability and higher top speed than Rovers, and were similarly rugged, but lacked much of the other utility, including cargo capacity and suitability for towing.

The Trikes' paired 20mm autocannons could shred xenofungal tubers as easily as sheet metal stockades. The Gaians used a brace of Trikes to assault the New Two Thousand's whaling station at Fort Enterprise. A stray round pierced the containment of the colony's Landing Pod, poisoning the area for more than a century before Shaper liquidators completed reclamation work.

Without satellite or radio interconnection to coordinate their movements, the Trikes were considerably less effective combatants than on the battlefields of Old Earth.

[Trenacker]

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. - Jurassic Park, Datalinks

Of the numerous factions struggling for primacy on Chiron, three made arguments specifically about ecology.

In their first days at Gaia's Landing, the Stepdaughters had carried with them Earth's botanical and zoological legacy. Their domed bases boasted an almost encyclopedic collection of living artifacts. In council, Deirdre and her sisters spent hours debating how best to foster the menagerie for which they had spilled so much blood in Hydroponics Bay 11Γ. Like other survivors, Gaians, if more than ordinarily curious about their surroundings, were nevertheless unflagging in the expansion of their sensor grids and promptly eradicated encroaching blooms, as prescribed by the Forward Contact Teams. Only in time did Lady Skye come to doubt the efficacy of "fighting with the land," as she called it. Small-scale greenhouse agriculture was expensive. To supply familiar fruits, vegetables, and insect proteins, an artificial ecosystem had first to be established, then hermetically sealed. Skye aspired to produce hybrid foodstuffs--still suitable for human consumption, but considerably less labor-intensive--if for no other reason than efficiency. This temptation, which the Gaians were first to heed, led them naturally to make insightful observations about the correlation between adaptive living and reduced planetary immunological response.

The Shapers, sometimes derided as a high-technology mortuary cult, approached their new homeworld without humility. In his Planet: A History, Burns reduced the divergence between Gaians and Shapers to a question of guilt. Lady Deirdre Skye posited that men had ruined Old Earth. Her philosophy focused on avoidance of repetition, but she and her people identified as disfavored victims of that original sin, whereas Coordinator Shoichiro Nagao assumed personal responsibility for those same ecological nightmares. Deirdre approached Chiron as a living entity with its own agency that, unless respected, would fail, dooming the colonists altogether. Nagao treated Planet as a petri dish containing growth medium--an environment he would remake to specification. Gaians built their bases into the side of fungal stalks because they could not fabricate building material more suitable to heat dispersion and moisture retention. Shapers injected the planetary crust with fracturing fluids and pumped out CO₂. The resulting stimulation of fungal and worm activity was of course unwelcome, but nothing Shaper Liquidators were not trained to handle.

The Hunter Creedo put it that a man was no man who could resist the call of the wild. Hunters "lived rough," taking pride in their ability to survive mindworm attack or desperate hunger by learning "the moods of the land"--the urgency of different wormsight, subrid migratory patterns, and which plants contained nutrient value for humans. Despite a pronounced tendency to see themselves as honorable adversaries of Planet rather than its adopted progeny, the Hunters of Chiron, conservationists at heart, eventually found more to love in Deirdre Skye's attitude of accommodation than Shoichiro Nagao's project of total revisionism. Hunter scouts lent their services willingly to Gaian Rangers seeking Shaper 'Formers and Rigs.

Miriam Godwinson's Conclave was the closest thing to a natural ally of the Shaper movement. If the Gaians were guests and the Hunters trespassers with no intention of expecting Chiron to bend to their will, Believers were rightful inheritors happy to take transfer of title. Even more than the Centauri Monopoly, the Conclave described Planet as a bounty for disposal. Yet while Morgan stridently denied that questions of morality were pertinent to the survivors' interaction with the new world, Miriam argued that taking from, or even remaking, Chiron were divinely-sanctioned forms of worship. Miriam based her position on the Conclave Bible, reasoning that the first positive invitationfrom God to Adam was that he should name "every beast of the field and every bird of the air." [1] To this end, the Conclave produced a prodigious line of naturalists, though their work was purely descriptive, rather than affectionate, in its intent.

[1] See this excerpt from Brin's book, Earth. I am indebted to MysticWind for this recommendation.

[MysticWind]

Even after decades of robotic weaponry proliferation, the United Nations continued to shy away from adopting the technology for its own security forces. Partly this was motivated by its focus on sublethal weaponry and commando forces specializing in their use. Another was the inherent political difficulties and ethical dilemmas - absent AGI, no software system was free of flaw. Even a drone firing tear gas rounds could accidentally concuss civilians. In the face of such a tragedy was the programmer at fault? The mechanical engineer who designed the firing apparatus? With platforms powered by adaptive learning and long ponder, should the software breeder be held liable? With remote operated drones, would the pilot be put on trial, or the multiple layers of military officers, civilian commanders, and, often, law enforcement officials who signed off on the approval in an act of shared responsibility? Which system is to blame? The war machine or the war machine?

The 21st-century saw unparalleled use of a new form of militarized drone: humanoid weapons platforms. The public was entranced by these clanking mechanical combatants, carrying out their orders with true machine perfection. As these clockwork machina marched forth, burning villages without moral compunction or fear, atrocities mounted. In response, the U.N. flailed about uselessly with nonbinding resolutions even as each permanent member of its Security Council freely used armed robotic servitors in wars and police actions.

However, during one of the last cycles of the construction of the UNS Unity, dubbed the “Open for Business" season for when multinational businesses temporarily became the driving force behind the project, the amoral gigacorporate boards in charge decided there should be opposition to cost-effective solutions. Even as the U.N. with its Byzantine bureaucracy and innumerable NGOs squabbled in the wake of the American departure, the boards elected ARC founder Oscar van de Graaf as their CEO of CEOs, the Director-in-Chief of the corporate junta that was the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board. van de Graaf’s opening remark was, “Screw it, just get it done.” While Unity was Open for Business, that remark became law.

The case for incorporating militarized machines was simple. It was a scientific fact that Chiron hosted alien life, some of quite considerable size and of unknown temperament. Better to bring along soldiers not limited by petty concerns as breathing to defend frail human colonists. Robotic platforms also had plenty of general-use applications. Tireless and complaintless, they were considered a boon for working in vacuum and other hostile environments. And so, in addition to General Atomics Corporation and American Machines, two more vendors were signed up to provision the mission with robots.

Johannesburg-based robotics company Tetra Vaal notoriously served as chief supplier of law enforcement automatons throughout Africa. The D-9 Volker, its premier bipedal drone model empowered authoritarian police departments and imperialistic governments alike. Boasting pinpoint sharpshooting skills, superhuman strength and agility, and data feeds integrated into any law enforcement digital intelligence system, they supplemented regimes that wanted to keep tight order at minimal expense of their own human resources. Programmed with a wide variety of civilian interaction modes from the Benevolent to the Hostile, the Volkers were a common sight in the dense urban environments of the colonial empires, chasing perpetrators- whether criminal or dissident- through shantytowns with predator speed. For less than-megalopolis sized communities, having one Volker was often sufficient to boost the local police department’s crimefighting abilities. Indeed, many organized criminal organizations turned to sophisticated guerrilla cyber-warfare in their fight against the koperkêrels (Afrikaans for “copper police”), using homegrown ICE code and improvised EMP devices alike.

The militarized FC-3 Vaas variant, boasting more protective armor, greater higher firepower, and thousands of warfare routines in its onboard computer, was also a popular- and very expensive- offering from Tetra Vaal. The bipedal weapons platforms proved to be force multipliers in the many anti-rebellion colonial wars that swept the continent throughout the twenty-first century, most notably in the Azanian Uprising.

Tetra Vaal’s robots were networked and linked to homebase operators exposed to the full imagery that the mobile platforms could capture. While they did possess sophisticated tactical intelligence for use in policing or military situations, no authorized unit were given a personality of their own. In terms of Weapons Automation levels as determined by the Society of American Military Engineers, they were at level 6, considered quite high, but lacked any sort of simulated anthropomorphization common in personable artificial intelligence (P.A.I). For over a century, the public imagination was titillated by the possibility of truly self-thinking machines, and the Turing imitations that mimicked human behavior. Recognizing this popular fear of rogue robots gone amok, Tetra Vaal installed a digitally ergonomic portable interface layer running a militarily-hardened fork of TograOS on their Vaal platforms, allowing operators the ability to slave units to PDAs or TrueVu specs and assume direct control.

While robotic labor was normalized in American society, perpetual fears of mechanical revolution lingered. Pictured is the disproportionate police response to SUN·E, an American Machines household service robot suspected of homicide in 2040s Chicago. The machine was later acquitted.

The addition of Tetra Vaal machines faced a different ethical challenge. Its prominent use by the South African apartheid government (not to mention by former Rhodesia, Portuguese African colonial administrations, the Belgians, and the Pied Noir regime of Oranais) continued to be roundly condemned by the United Nations. More importantly, Morgan Industries founder and CEO Nwabudike Morgan, a key stakeholder of the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board, presented sharp personal objections to Tetra Vaal’s inclusion. In a surprise break of his previous withdrawal from public life, Morgan appeared before the press to denounce TV and all of its works. In an uncharacteristic turn from his normally jovial persona known to the world community, Morgan thundered against “profiteers of oppression enabling small-minded bigots.” He spoke passionately at length about his own experiences struggling against the open prejudice he faced when visiting South Africa as a youth, of being watched over by machines of merciless hate in the streets of Cape Town, of seeing Black and Coloured people marched away by Volkers to containment communities behind barbed wire. Morgan concluded that bringing such machines would “forever stain the stars with human hatred.”



Tetra Vaal CEO Joshua Abdon Haldeman fiercely countered the accusations. Declaring that the company held no allegiance to any particular government or ethnicity but to the entire public at large, he swore up and down that “not a single line of prejudice” had been written into his machines. His words failed to convince the masses of public admirers around the world who sympathized- and sided- with Morgan. Facing a public relations storm unlike any it had seen before, the company opened itself for examination, permitting auditors from the ISB to examine the source code. The U.N. dispatched fact-finders and data librarians to dive deep into the corpus, and even sent code breeders to examine the self-evolving neural networks itself. Months later, the Boraine Report determined that the Tetra Vaal codebase did not classify human visual data sets according to race, or even specific ethnicity. Rather, the machines had gone even further; with all of the mobile surveillance video footage collected by patrolling Volkers, as well as data provided by the national South African Police Service, the company had essentially mapped out the probable identity of any individual its police units came across. Tens of millions throughout the country- and hundreds of millions more throughout Africa- were subject to intrusive observation by the company and its governmental clients.

Despite the bombshell, Haldeman treated the report as an exoneration. And indeed, many casual observers in the public were content by the fact that Tetra Vaal was indiscriminate in its persecution of the law. Even so, in the face of legal threats from Morgan to launch a series of class-action suits on behalf of every citizen living under Volker-enforced territories, the ISB had to act to prevent the Unity project from cracking even further. Thus, they arbitrated a deal: the Tetra Vaal machines provided for the expedition would have all individual-ID capabilities stripped from their codebanks. Furthermore, despite being awarded its lucrative contract to supply mere hundreds of Volkers in exchange for brand visibility at a global level, leading to untold future market expansion opportunities, Tetra Vaal would be consigned to be a junior non-voting member of the ISB. Finally, to assuage Nwabudike Morgan from further personal opposition, Morgan Industries had its contract expanded to provide even more resources and personnel to the Unity project, at a level that nearly rivaled Director-in-Chief van de Graaf’s own ARC contingent.

All were satisfied by this. Tetra Vaal and Haldeman were glad to be rid of the entire imbroglio. The U.N. felt it had dealt a modest blow against both invasive software and violent hardware, even if it was mostly ceremonial. The ISB was glad that the project could get moving again, though DIC van de Graaf warily eyed the scope of the Morgan expansion. Morgan Industries and its SafeHaven parent company proclaimed that this was “one more step towards peace in our space.” And returning to his post-public life seclusion, Morgan smiled as he prepared for offworld travel.

“A skilled negotiator is not above the use of unhappy emotion, strong language, or moral outrage. Business negotiations can tell stories as personal as any parable, and a true businessman crafts narratives as adeptly as the most overwrought thespian. When your opposite number feels your anguish, he begins to see you as a brother. Even the most savage lion becomes an injured housecat worth soothing when it shows you the thorn in its paw.”  - Empathy, the Weapons Manual

Aside from the signature weaponized Volkers, Tetra Vaal also supplied its unarmed TPS-829 Hoyt automated office drones for routine clerical work deemed too mundane and unworthy of human effort. While reasonably popular among the gigacorporate managerial classes, most white-collar workers have historically found their lack of social graces and flat affect to be particularly unremarkable. As such, most workplaces typically treat Hoyt units as autonomous office appliances, little more intelligent than staplers or coffee synthesizers.



Houston-based Rambler-Crane Systems was renowned for its multiple series of “roller” robots. Borne upon ruggedized continuous track systems, Rambler-Crane models like the iconic B-9 Robby could bypass difficult terrain from battlefield craters to autumn mud and achieve speeds rivaling that of sports cars. Equipped with dual tripartite pincers armed with Tesla electroshock projectors with settings from crowd dispersal to scorched earth, they were towering, fearsome sights upon United States Space Force space stations, rolling through hallways as constant guardians. Equipped with a second pair of instrumentation claws used for fine manipulation, they were also commonly used for nonviolent applications such as repair work aboard the orbital installations. When equipped with jets, they could even perform tasks in zero-G. Though they became a mainstay against hypothetical insurrectionists in space, their most famous military role was at the Battle of Boston Harbor, when a single company of National Guard was able to hold off against nearly a battalion-sized Holnist assault force thanks to firing support from little more than two dozen rollers (“the Glorious Thirty”). With such an impressive pedigree against internationally-vilified rebels and insurgents, Rambler-Crane’s admission into the ranks of Unity vendors was uncontroversial and unanimous.

A Rambler-Crane roller accompanies UNS Unity evacuees during Planetfall crisis. Mission Chief Roboticist Sylvia Gauss pictured left, back row

Rambler-Crane rollers had even more rudimentary intelligence than Tetra Vaal’s policing units, capable of identifying immediate threats and tracking those pre-programmed by operators, but nothing akin to the more extensive battle tactics available in the military-grade drone platforms used in counterinsurgency during the Hypersurvivalist Wars. Thus, any fear of robotic revolution remained in the province of fantasy. Instead, the rollers were equipped with a fully-immersive, intuitive holographic user interface that even a child could use.



As an aside, the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board also considered the use of the Working Joe labor synthetics of Sigg Europa AG. Built by the Helvetian industrial combine to be multirole machines equally capable of loading stockrooms, repairing equipment, supporting customer helpdesks, or wait-staffing, the Working Joe was heralded as the missing link between dumb operator-dependent faceless robots and the more sophisticated androids with human-mimetic features. Sigg explained that by endowing the Working Joe with just enough local intelligence but ultimately slaved to central intelligence servers, override capability rested in the hands of their owners. And by designing the Working Joe’s visual appearance to be obviously nonhuman, its creators claimed that both regular employees and customers would be psychologically at ease with synthetics they knew to be so.

Unfortunately for Sigg, the ISB ultimately discarded the idea, ruling that Working Joes still appeared too humanlike while simultaneously too alien, triggering an uncanny valley effect detrimental to colonist morale. This mirrors the state of Working Joe adoption in the solar system at the time of mission launch: the model was largely used not in population centers, but remote installations such as the lonely helium-3 mining platforms around the Jovian gas giants.

The lack of armed robotic servitors during Planetfall was another lost opportunity among cascading fiascos. From the onset, Captain Garland declined to activate any automated defenses capable of lethal effect, and specifically forbade the use of robots. While this was decried by General d'Almeida and other senior officers as yet another counterproductive example of the captain’s unyielding utopian idealism, there was method to Garland’s decision: he had surmised that the appearance of murderous war drones would be horrific for mission optics, inspiring further mutiny. Indeed, if the Kellerites had encountered Tetra Vaal Volkers mercilessly assaulting their positions and coldly slapping organic restraints onto their comrades, it was probable that they would have taken arms against the Unity crew directly. Such was their total revulsion towards the excesses of modern technology. However, this reluctance against mobilization proved to be a grave miscalculation. As electrical fires broke out in battle-damaged compartments, indiscriminate use of knockout gas flooded corridors, shelves of heavy crates and barrels tipped over and fell upon people, and the ship’s loss in structural stability exposed entire areas to vacuum, the Unity staff was confronted with the absence of powerful tools. While some servitors were turned online towards the tail end of the crisis, by then it was too little, too late.

One notable exception was the Defense of the Primary Aft Machine Shop. At about the midpoint of Planetfall, a Spartan raiding team led by former SEAL Team 3 operative Walton Purefoy was tasked with capturing crucial machine parts and 3D printers. A southern convert to the colonel’s militant cause, Purefoy and his team of predominantly non-Holnist veterans of the Second American Civil War deftly infiltrated the large workshop under the very noses of U.N. Security Forces, overpowered the guards, and dug into their position. Defended from counterassault by heavy blast doors and a level of professionalism unmatched by most Holnist units, the raiding team took the hapless Unity mechanical engineers hostage and ordered them to pillage their own stores, to be gifted to the Spartan cause. Of the nearly sixty engineers and scientists present in the machine shop, only about a dozen were able to seal themselves into a secure sub-garage containing vehicles and heavy equipment. As they frantically attempted to summon external aid, Purefoy’s Spartans soon came knocking upon the bulkhead, using the engineering crew’s own mechanical drills to attack the barrier.

Chief Roboticist Sylvia Gauss took command of the scattered escapees. Dialing into the machine shop’s local datalinks, the Helvetian automaton specialist countermanded the captain’s orders, powering on the three Rambler-Crane units housed in the sub-garage. After several tense minutes of hasty bootstrap procedures initiated decades after the units’ last power cycle, even while Spartan-hijacked drills hummed outside, the rollers’ lights flickered on. Gauss then overrode existing restrictions and assumed direct control, unleashing the full CKD protocol capabilities of the Rambler-Crane rollers. Though greatly outnumbered, the three R-C units wheeled smoothly forth as the bulkhead door opened with a hiss and click, obliterating the invaders with electroshock pulses blasted from their firing pincers. The Spartans, caught completely unawares, could not react fast enough against their machine enemies. Eschewing sublethal defaults, Gauss amped up the voltage, and the brigands- both trained paramilitants and opportunistic defectors caught up in the action- were thrown across the room with manmade ball lightning. Purefoy himself was grievously injured in the counterattack, scalded by a glancing electrical blast. Ordering a retreat, he and the few survivors limped back to the main Spartan host. Meanwhile, Gauss and her engineers successfully vacated the machine shop with all the supplies they and the rollers could carry, later linking up with AEL Director Johann Anhaldt.

Centauri Monopolist Acquirer-class units, tactical custom D-9 Volkers refurbished for targeted strike operations in conjunction with Probe Teams, prepare target for extraction at Dreams of Green during the Asbolus Reclamation Minor Vendetta of M.Y. 23

The mission compartment of robots finally came of use in the decades following Planetfall. Prior to an industrialized state of development, robotic servitors were a highly-desired resource for Cargo Pods retrieval operations. Entire conflicts had been fought over scavenged General Atomics worker servitors, American Machines’ MULEs, Tetra Vaal law enforcement units, and Rambler-Crane rollers. If able to be activated, these machines would contribute immeasurably to the factions that claimed them, doing the work of many humans, ensuring order would reign in their respective social experiments, or defending entire bases against mindworm assaults (at least until the boils began to adapt). Even when access was keyed to the biometrics of a long-gone crew officer or corporate executive, and there was no way to switch on the dormant units, they were still an invaluable source of electronic components for repurposing. As time went on and more mission-provisioned robots were discovered, factions began modifying them for their own specific purposes.


Notes:

While I included two preexisting fictional companies - Tetra Vaal from Neill Blomkamp’s titular short film, Tempbot short film, and Chappie (which I have not seen); and Rambler-Crane from the 1998 Lost in Space remake, I decided not to include the ‘actual’ Seegson from Alien: Isolation, as that felt like insufficiently obscure enough to be an Easter Egg.

The convoluted formula for the name of the company who actually made the uncanny valley androids: Seegson is supposed to be founded by one Josiah Sieg, but for some reason in the game there’s an area named Josiah Sigg Executive Apartments, and like much of the Alien universe, Sigg and Son is a Joseph Conrad reference. In real life, Sigg Switzerland AG is a real company that makes  designer bottles. (Here, Europa might refer to them expanding to the whole of the continent, or their operations on Jovian moons.) But yes, these androids are built by a bottle company.

Also in the game, the synths are considered inferior to Weyland-Yutani androids because they don’t look human enough, while here they are a little too human and off-putting. Working Joes just can’t catch a break.

“Volker” is derived from the old Germanic words for “people, tribe” and “army, warrior”, and “Hoyt” is either the Old Norse word for “descended of the mind or spirit” or a Middle English name meaning “long stick.” Put them together and you get a nod to Far Cry 3.

The original Joshua Haldeman was the research director of Canada’s branch of the Technocracy movement from 1936 to 1941. He later moved to South Africa. He is the grandfather to Elon Musk. Long story.

Abdon was the Biblical judge of Israel who succeeded Elon. His name means “servile” or “service”, which perhaps fits this passage about robots.

Alex Boraine was one of the main architects of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

CKD of course stands for Crush, Kill, Destroy.

The Battle of Boston Harbor was an American police action in this continuity, not anything UN(N) related.

[Trenacker]

A Morgan Industries Corporate Security paramilitary guards property of the Peruvian Amazon Company near Iquitos, c. 2070. His personal combat exo-frame mounts a particle impactor.

The particle impactor was a short-range undirected-energy weapon system that stutter-fired electron bolts of scalable power up to speeds of 2,500 feet per second, at a rate of 1,100 bolts per second. Operators employed it as a squad-level weapon to supplement the base of fire provided by standard-issue battle rifles. Each system consisted of three parts: a hand-held projector, a power pack, and the wired conductors between them.

Particle impactors were effective for both anti-personnel and anti-materiel applications. The weapon's low accuracy (a man-sized object in a 100-meter cone of fire stood only a 54% chance of being struck) was offset by pronounced area effects. The quantity of electromagnetic radiation produced by the plasma accretion was so great, even near-misses could inflict debilitating nerve damage on organic targets and scramble the electronic systems of target vehicles and structures. At higher power settings, the electron output could could melt the glacis plate of a T-49 main battle tank in less than seven seconds. Moreover, the continuous volume of fire could not be foiled by traditional active defense systems and was easily sufficient to overcome most passive protection.

Awesome striking power was no guarantee of operator enthusiasm or battlefield longevity. Particle impactor systems consumed energy in prodigious quantities. Late-model, frame-portable power packs were depleted after less than twenty seconds of sustained fire. Operators persistently demonstrated hesitation in their use of the impactors for fear of running out of ammunition, even when furnished with a separate self-defense weapon. The power packs themselves were easily driven to sympathetic explosions and the discharge was extremely loud; squad-mates were unwilling to stay close. Perhaps worst of all, the particle impactor had a long ramp time from the moment the operator pulled the trigger until rounds shot downrange. Poor timing frequently resulted in both misspent rounds and friendly fire incidents.

Morgan Industries purchased 700 Mark VII plasma impactor-equipped exo-frames and treaded mission carriers from the Mechanical Battlesuit Corporation of Islip, New York. These served with the company's in-house security forces in both the African Canal Zone and the Lesser Amazon. The frightful noise and sight of particle impactors caused several routs among the Portuguese expeditionary forces.

Journalists embedded with the Portuguese Army in Brazil capture the terrible aftermath of ambush by an Impact Squad.

Sources: My vision for particle impactors is drawn from a combination of the original game manual, this Popular Mechanics article, and the Phased Plasma Gun (PPG) created by J. Michael Straczynski for Babylon 5.

[Trenacker]

At the Grand Circle Bar in Morgan Trade Center, a hungry colonist or visitor could buy a meal for just ¤2. Primary terminals at each place setting allowed the indigent to surf job boards for digital tasks that could be completed for pay in 30 minutes or less. Most offers were for survey responses to help tailor corporate communications or trolling the latest targets of Morgan's ire using the diner's personal account.

Without water, there is no life. Without metal, there is no form. Without energy, there is no action. From the crudest outpost to the largest arcology,  whether producer or consumer, these are the critical raw materials in the solar system. - Introduction to the FY2061 Annual Report, King Priam Mining

United Nations Commissioner Pravin Lal, a keen amateur sociologist, described the Morganite colonization project as "a frantic series of motivational follies, each more incredible and spiritually degrading than the last." From her pulpit at New Jerusalem, Sister Miriam Godwinson never referred to the leader of the Centauri Monopoly by his given name. Instead, she called him only "Mammon."

At Planetfall, Nwabudike Morgan did not follow the common practice of distributing rations and survival equipment equally among his followers. Morgan's Safe Haven mercenaries and Corporate Security restricted access to the common areas and communal resources still aboard the Landing Pods. The CEO distributed supplies and privileges over promissory notes. Wealthier faction members practiced this same arrangement whenever they were able, building pyramidal debt structures that gradually hardened into political allegiance.

In the University of Planet, a successful researcher might be immortalized by lending her name to a new scholastic gymnasium. New State authorities rewarded accomplishment with promotion or elevation between castes. A citizen of the Centauri Monopoly was motivated by a bounty of energy credits.

The Morganites also monetized social punishment. Exile awaited convicted criminals among the Peacekeepers and the Hunters of Chiron. Santiago's courts martial meted out capital punishment--swift execution by firing squad--for a wide range of violent crimes. The price for killing a fellow colonist in the Dynamic Enterprise varied according to the health of the overall faction economy. One who could not pay was sold into peonage where, if his creditor chose to murder him, his life was worth even less than the penalty that had made him a slave.

[Trenacker]

Supply Pods congregate in response to recall beacons transmitted from atop Sunny Mesa, the site of Fort Enterprise.

For these, the disposition of Unity’s inheritance is but an interesting piece of chancery. Men who are utterly indifferent to the legacy of the recently-deceased, except that some specific portion of it should come into their own hands. - A Dirge for Terra

This Land. In two words, his most esteemed biographer, the Dame C.V. Wedgwood, branded former American Reclamation Corporation CEO and future Unity Factor Oscar van de Graaf for all time.

He was one of the Second Civil War's quickest studies. Shareholding had done nothing to indemnify his interests from despoliation. Hypersurvivalism had a thousand faces, not all of which were amenable to bribery or negotiation. To stem his losses, van de Graaf realized that he, like they, needed to alter facts on the ground in the places of real decision. If a U.S. Senator, Army general, or even the United States Supreme Court, called him pirate or profiteer, van de Graaf's retort was enough to make any Holnist proud: "Come and take it." By that same philosophy, and following the same roadmap, corporations subsumed without objection a multitude of the prerogatives once reserved to kings and legislatures. The American Reclamation Corporation built cities, provided healthcare, collected taxes, educated children, policed disputes, disposed of property, and pensioned retirees.

Among the New Two Thousand, who self-consciously called themselves Pilgrims in honor of their ahistorical understanding of the Mayflower Compact, there were three types of colonists. Full Stakeholders had helped van de Graaf to assemble the $232 billion cash stake demanded by U.N. General-Secretary Apsara Mongkut. Of the original 1,900, just 80 managed to make Planetfall with their leader. Four came later, renegades who made their way from other factions. Partial Stakeholders owed labor under the terms of contracts previously undertaken with van de Graaf himself, who had financed the cost of their passage. The Unstaked were a collection of misfits: those unwilling to contract, and anyone held as a prisoner.

To incentivize labor at Fort Enterprise and Terra Nova, van de Graaf first laid out both sites, then assigned each colonist parcels of land according to a formula that evaluated past, present, and future values of service to the colony. All parcels had a required minimum value represented in characteristics such as nutrient, mineral, and energy yield. "Wastelands" were kept as common property or developed with infrastructure to meet the threshold for fair parcelage. Parcels were sacrosanct. The colony could use a parcel only with its owner's permission, and then only if a fee was conveyed. To create scarcity, van de Graaf set strict geographic boundaries beyond which Base Operations and the faction militia would not render service or assistance of any kind. The faction's eponymous governing council, which seated only Full Stakeholders, retained final authority over whether and how settlements expanded. Those seeking to add to their parcels in this manner required a three-quarters majority vote. Every ten local years, the original parcelages were reassessed and adjustments made to projected value based on new evidence such as meteorological records and fungal activity.

The New Two Thousand's enduring advantage lay in the extent of van de Graaf's prior planning and diligence in retrieving his own people during the Unity Crisis. He came to the surface with a workforce that combined high skill, occupational diversity, and a common language of mutual expectation.

A Pilgrim tractor tends fields at Nova Terra. The parcel's owner has planted a belt of Terran trees to help stabilize the soil, which is thin so close to the Great Dunes.

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Affinities
An invention of diarist and U.N. Peacekeeping Forces leader Pravin Lal and appearing in his Planet: A Social History, affinities are an analytical shorthand for understanding the way in which a faction's ideology both oriented and constrained its cultural and scientific development.

Purity
Humanity will forever be defined by our experience in the cradle of "Old" Earth. If Chiron is to be the last refuge of our species, then we should fill it with things that are familiar, both the physical and metaphysical. Planet should be remade in Earth’s image. Likewise, humans can reach their maximum potential only if they preserve the traditions, artifacts, and, yes, the biological distinctiveness, inherited from their ancestors.

Purists look forward to eliminating the “pestilential” xenofungus and replacing the local ecology. Shapers call this process "rebuilding." At larger scales, Purist factions hope to stimulate the planetary greenhouse effect through a massive infusion of atmospheric hydrocarbons. Purist societies suffer less from the social dislocation of pollution and terraformation, which is an accepted cost of their grand project.

In the cultural domain, Purists prefer doctrine and ideology that presume a fixed and corruptible human nature, in need of close and constant tending.

Purist factions include the Lord’s Conclave (Godwinson), the Human Tribe (Landers), the Shapers of Chiron (Nagao), the Watchers (Singh), and the Human Ascendancy (Pahlavi).

Supremacy
Both Man and Planet alike bear changing in the honorable search for objective perfection. The simple goal of our species is to perpetuate itself—by any means necessary. Stronger is better. Faster is better. In this race against a pitiless universe, and indeed a hostile planet, we would hamstring ourselves to overlook any advantage. Supremacists embrace the possibility of social and ecological experimentation, which will serve as the forcing function to produce new insights about how now we must live.

Supremacists seek out the practical and efficacious. They are neither above the introduction of invasive species nor below giving way to Planet when adaptation would be less work than resistance. Humanity is what Supremacists make of it. Machines are tools. Their use and sophistication can do nothing to invert the relationship between master and servant.

Change is appealing to Supremacists. Since growth is the chief yardstick of success, the familiar is contemptible to them. "Humanity" is a concept that can be redefined at whim.

Supremacist factions include the Human Labyrinth (Yang), the Centauri Monopoly (Morgan), the University of Planet (Zakharov), the Spartan Federation (Santiago), the Dreamers of Chiron (Cobb/Cohen), the Tomorrow Initiative (Metrion), the Children of the Atom (Anhaldt), and the New Two Thousand (Van de Graaf).

Harmony
Humanity, the intruder, must alert its rhythms to suit those of Chiron, or else perish in its obstinacy. The wisest understand that one does not merely make a home so much as one is made by it. The trappings of Old Earth are useful only inasmuch as they can be relied upon to temporarily bridge the gap between mere survival and full-fledged integration into the existing biosphere of Chiron, which, if it is to be preserved in functional condition, should be as little perturbed as possible.

Harmony, which takes its cues from living things which are classically vulnerable to tampering and thrive within carefully-controlled parameters of diet and temperature, says little about the utility of artificial intelligence. Persons inclined to Harmony usually wish to experience Planet directly. Creating mechanical servitors to do so in their place is rarely at top of mind.

Factions that promote Harmony usually practice lifestyles that require avoidance of traumas on the land. They are also, on the whole, fairly sympathetic to the nonconformist. For a Harmonist, the defining feature of a system is that it is complex and interactive, rather than that it is predictable, or even successful. Folkways are inherently legitimate as an expression of self, which can be as important as allegiance to an illusory "public-interest" objectivity.

Harmonious factions include Gaia’s Stepdaughters (Skye), the Peacekeeping Forces (Lal), the New State (St. Germaine), and the Hunters of Chiron (Marsh).

Source Notes: Affinities are a new mechanic introduced in Beyond Earth, SMAC's spiritual successor.

[Trenacker]

Twenty years after the first settler arrived, the Dreamer camp at Xanadu still had few permanent structures. The base's Landing Pod was destroyed, and its lone cooling tower famously wrecked, during a Drone uprising.

By conventional standards, the Dreamers of Chiron were an anomaly: run by the princeling of one of Earth’s foremost merchant dynasties, who prior to mission launch had been instrumental in helping his father’s company achieve record profits, and his genius collaborator, a trained medical doctor brilliant enough to have come within spitting distance of a Nobel Prize in physiology, but so thoroughly mismanaged that its citizen-subjects suffered from chronic malnutrition.

There were several reasons this should have been impossible. Early slave-raiding earned them a wide berth from immediate neighbors, but combined with the faction leadership’s apparent lack of territorial ambition or hegemonistic ideology, possession of Unity’s plundered medical resources, Cobb's notoriety in the field of espionage, and the labor potential of the convicts from its detention blocks, made the Dreamers sought-after trading partners. Both the University of Planet and the Lord’s Conclaves gave the coordinates of more than a dozen precious Unity Pods to bring Cobb’s mobile surgical hospitals rolling into their territories. Colonel Corazón Santiago preferred Dreamer chain gangs to Spartan helots for completing the vulnerable outworks at Xerxion, where one in four workers was killed under bombardment from Tribal Long Toms. When they desired access to the University’s red networks, the Human Ascendancy found that Dreamer probe teams were willing to deal when the Tomorrow Institute and the Children of the Atom were not.

But Roshan Cobb and Aleigha Cohen were rarely conscious. Green Team, Morgan’s in-house intelligence service, pegged incidental energy loss at White Rabbit’s Refuge well north of 7,000¤ per cycle. Pilgrim Regulators knew they could simply pay Sabre Corporation guards to stand down ahead of a punitive raid, a transaction easily completed via their officers’ permanent accounts on Morganite networks. Dreamer work parties required close supervision. Chancery dockets at Morgantown reveal that the CEO was entirely ready to take advantage of the prisoners’ tendency to abscond with themselves. The boiling pot, one said, was always preferable to the fire itself.

Not all the factions of Chiron were tolerant of the Dreamers even when they weren't immediate victimized by Struan's toughs. As ardent believers in self-determination, the Peacekeeping Forces, Human Tribe, and Lord's Conclave all declared permanent vendetta on Cobb and Cohen once they were able to corroborate the worst of their rumored abuses.

And so the Dreamer colonies limped along as a sideshow to more successful ventures. Cohen eventually partnered closely with both the Human Labyrinth and the Tomorrow Initiative to process the neural records of the hibernating Unity crew, which their psychiatrists and datajacks mined for the insights that led to the package of principles dubbed “Social Psych.” When he was not lost in addiction, Cobb struggled to recall and articulate the truths he had supposedly formulated while asleep. He was captured at his terminal in M.Y. 52 by Ascendancy Legionnaires and brought before Tamineh Pahlavi, who placed Chiron’s worst torturer in a Punishment Sphere.

[Trenacker]

Water management domes in the vicinity of Colonia Tertius, a base belonging to the Children of the Atom.

Man is a happy vandal, but reluctant in his labors. He destroys with abandon, then abandons what he has destroyed. His achievements are more the product of desperation and whimsy than design. With the treasures of one place, he profanes another. - Part I: The Shaping of the Earth

As Nwabudike Morgan correctly predicted, to be a survivor was to seek and practice trade. Even Hivemen, however few of them, were wont to offer what was surplus and seek what was scarce, from time to time.

What the Hunters of Chiron could not make for themselves, they bartered in return for services rendered precisely in the manner intended by U.N. mission planners. Assignments might entail heavy-duty and high-danger salvage, big game management, controlled burns, conventional logging, borehole drilling, watershed management, suppression of mindworm boils, or fungus removal. Other factions tolerated the Hunters underfoot because they possessed not only the equipment, but also the expertise and wherewithal to perform these essential, albeit complicated and fundamentally dangerous, necessities of settlement.

The Dreamers of Chiron trafficked in a different set of offerings, palatable only to a few. On the least-objectionable end of the spectrum, one could buy medical care a mere four generations below the high Terran standard. At the opposite end? Somnacin, slaves, and spies. Somnacin was the mind-altering compound used to induce shared, lucid dreaming. From M.Y. 81 to M.Y. 290, mind-machine interface used the Cohen Method, which required placing the datajacked subject in the Dreaming prior to booting. Dreamers also sold captures of brainwave activity to the wakeners of other factions for use in polymorphic software and pre-sentient algorithms.

The recorded brain activity of persons engaged in Dreaming could be mined and the component thoughts reconstructed to provide a high-fidelity facsimile of the sleeper's experiences. In M.Y. 4, it was discovered inadvertently during a minor mindworm attack on White Rabbit's Refuge that the proximity of even a small boil allowed multiple sleepers in the same physical location to share the same dream.

Dreaming Chambers were latter-day opium dens, sheltering persons under the influence of the psycho-pharmacological cocktails required to induce the Dreaming. Individuals were completely helpless in this state, which was similar to heavy sedation. Somnacin addicts could not be awakened except through medical intervention.

The Shapers of Chiron were available to perform terraforming on condition that they be allowed to introduce Terran organisms and eliminate complex xenobiology. Morganites, who preferred to see something of home on the other side of the plastic, paid gladly for Shaper intervention to recreate the proverbial green hills of home.

A Tomorrow Institute Librarian.

At the Planetary Datacore, all were welcome to sift the contents of the Unity Datacore without restriction, provided they consented that their session be recorded by the Tomorrow Institute's Data Custodians. Controller Sathieu Metrion repackaged and sold the user insights gleaned in this manner as a kind of intelligence product.

[Trenacker]

Name: Jeremy Tanner "J.T." Marsh
Rank: Administrator II
Position: Division Head, Field Operations, Forward Landing Teams
County of Origin: British East Africa
DOB: 03-31-2023
Height: 188 cm
Weight: 113 kg
Affinity: Harmony
Focus: Explore, Expand

Service Record:
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to unwed mother. Soon placed in care of maternal uncle, the Viscount de Mohrenschildt, a sisal planter in the Central Highlands of British East Africa. No relationship with father, a lieutenant in the Royal Signals killed on deployment in Cyprus.

Graduated RMA Sandhurst. Posted to 23 Special Air Service Regiment. Awarded Victoria Cross, 2044, for rescue of two squad mates when FV430 was fire-bombed in Derry during Second Troubles. Following recuperation, reposted to Mombasa. Participated in Action at Meru, liberating 20 British government personnel and 37 other hostages from insurgent prison camp. Escape involved a supremely arduous overland trek of 120km.

Wife and daughter killed in U.K. motorway accident, 2009. Resigned Army commission and relocated to South Africa. First operated safari company catering to the ultra-wealthy. Game warden and lands supervisor at Kruger National Park through 2054, including during catastrophic fire seasons of 2051-53. Served intermittently with South African Defense Force in 2/44 Parachute Battalion. Deployed periodically to South West Africa.

Consulted for various private military and humanitarian organizations on subjects including intelligence-gathering, logistics, wilderness fieldcraft, and austere medicine. Retained as practitioner-in-residence by Avalanche Corporation. Confirmed engagements with Gezah Valley Authority [Carmel], Verne Stellar Navigation Co., and Yugoslav State Security Service (UDBA) coeval with the Slovenian Crisis. Suspected by MI5 of brokering arms to Biafran rebels during Saharan Burst Wars.

In 2052, joined Seven Summits Expeditions, leading three climbs on Mt. Aconcagua. Pioneer in the management and sport hunting of resurrected megafauna, including predators from Mesozoic and Pleistocene periods. Briefly advised International Genetic Technologies, Inc. (InGEN) of Palo Alto, CA on theme park venture in Costa Rica. Receive severance of indeterminate amount after workplace injury.

Invited to submit credentials to U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri on the recommendation of Colonel Derek Hacker, British Special Intelligence Service. Responsibilities included reconnaissance, external security, and natural resource management. Received extensive training in space-borne damage control and zero-gravity and confined space rescue preparatory to becoming training supervisor with U.N. Olympus Mons mission intake facility.

Note: Subject arranged for hundreds of surplus M72 Light Anti-tank Weapons (LAW) to be taken into Unity armory ahead of mission launch.

Psych Profile: Hunter
Olympic-level athlete. Accomplished tracker and expert marksman.

High-range emotional stability, interpersonal dominance, introversion, social boldness, and self-reliance. Low-range rule-consciousness, sensitivity, and abstractedness. Regards lack of physical conditioning or personal independence as evidence of selfishness inconsistent with the social contract. Nevertheless, exhibits compulsion to assume responsibility for those less able. Strong preference for democratic traditions over hierarchical command structures.

Unprecedented .98 score on Atherholt Trauma Function Test.  Emotional "projector." Readily inspires others to follow his personal example. Heightened interest in, and tolerance for, risky behaviors.

Consistent critic of labor-saving and augmented-reality technologies as well as synthetic narcotics due to their “emasculating” effects. Fears that mankind will use his technical aptitude to create a world in which his body and mind will be steadily eroded.

Miscellaneous
Forward Landing Teams departed Unity three weeks ahead of scheduled landing. Their mission: to secure the ideal location for a colony and make ready basic infrastructure. Pioneers sank automated mines, clear-cut forest to may way for planting, and set the first water traps on Chiron. To perform their mission, these personnel were equipped with rugged, all-terrain vehicles capable of operating independently over extreme range and in all weather conditions.

Whereas the Spartans perceive the human story as one of tribe set against tribe, the Hunters treat the natural world as their great adversary. Survival and success alike depend on achieving mastery over one’s environment, which first requires mastery of one's own body. On Earth, man was the apex predator, but on Chiron, he is a prey item. Accordingly, Hunters are nomads, living in tents pitched against their Scout Rovers or a Mobile Command Vehicle. This bubble gum-and-bailing wire existence naturally lends itself to pure democracy: the Hunter is a doughty sort, trusting in few, living hard, and offering his or her opinions readily. That said, they are never above a trick or two if the moment is ripe.

Marsh’s was the only faction to form independently of the Unity crisis: his Forward Landing Team departed the ship weeks ahead of its fateful collision. This gives the faction exceptionally high homogeneity, as all members are essentially practitioners of a narrow set of common professions, usually miners, pioneers, and roughnecks.

Charterist recruit reaches out for assistance during a full-scale emergency exercise at the Lunar Cradle.

A Hunter surveyor prepares to refill her personal moisture retention system somewhere in the Monsoon Jungle.

Mining Rigs of the Forward Contact Team push toward the metal-rich Uaelium Basin.

Sources and Author's Notes:

This faction is inspired by the call to adventure and exploration of traditional masculinity. They are a meditation on the question of what makes a “real” man, and one answer to the question, “By whom was the West really won?” Is there anything inherently desirable about the idea that the strong owe something to the weak? Ought we draw distinctions between man and woman? The faction also explores anixeties about the impact of technology on man's ability to do and think for himself. As we provide ourselves with every convenience, do we lose some animal aspect of ourselves that is actually integral to being human?

The character of J.T. Marsh combines aspects of Louis L'Amour's itinerant, fortune-seeking cowboy (whose rough-and-ready values, while no longer suitable for "civilized" society, are the only means by which to tame a lawless and pitiless frontier) and Wilbur Smith's great white hunter, who measures greatness only according to the yardstick of physical courage and cannot abide the "domestication" of settled life in village or town.

Marsh's backstory contains "Easter Egg" references to Jurassic Park, Walt Disney's apocryphal 7 Summits Expeditions, and even the 1980s British comedy Yes, Minister. The picture of Marsh is that of the game warden Robert Muldoon in Jurassic Park, played by Bob Peck. The picture of the astronaut hanging in space is from The Expanse, now on Amazon Prime. The picture of the jungle explorer is from the Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell short, Prospect. The final picture, by Kory Lynn Hubbell, is of a Liang-Dortmund Mining Rig from the Halo series.