Part 41 (2/2)

THE TUBE.

For the greater part of the Reawakening, the tube has been the dominant form of Terran transportation. Its tracks are ubiquitous throughout the civilized world, al owing travel to almost any spot on Earth at a fair price. In many cities, local tube trains cover almost as much ground as the ancient asphalt roads once did. Longer express routes run underground in dedicated tunnels that al ow for faster speeds.

The tube's success is mostly the product of two technological advances: the development of so-cal ed unbreakable steel, which al ows for un.o.btrusive tracks that are extremely cheap to instal and maintain; and the ability to control inertia, thereby enabling rapid starts and stops.

For many years, TubeCo was the darling of the financial world. Its influence was so pervasive in government that the company was given a seat on the Prime Committee itself.

Since the advent of affordable multi technology, however, TubeCo's fortunes have been on the wane. Local tube routes stil have heavy riders.h.i.+p, but most fail to see the necessity of traveling long distances when they can multi instead.

Expansion to Luna and Mars has not lifted the company's fortunes either, due to poor offworld planning and the exorbitant cost of s.h.i.+pping. (The inept.i.tude of the Martian tube system has even given rise to the popular phrase ”as slow as a Martian train.”) The recent stripping of TubeCo's seat on the Prime Committee has lessened the company's prospects even further and led to chronic labor disputes.

Many predict an imminent col apse.

HOVERBIRDS.

Air travel has long been a staple of modern society, and the cla.s.s of vehicles known as hoverbirds provides this service. Private hoverbird fleets run through and between al the major cities on Earth, Luna, and Mars. Special y outfitted vehicles make runs up to the orbital colonies as wel .

Personal air travel has never real y caught on among the ma.s.ses. Given the fact that the tube is cheaper, safer, and almost as quick, hoverbirds have long had a reputation as a vehicle for the business cla.s.s. Private owners.h.i.+p of hoverbirds is considered an extravagance that few but the wealthy would need or afford.

Hoverbirds do have an important advantage over the tube, however, in that they're not constrained to traveling where the tracks are. The typical hoverbird both takes off and lands vertical y, al owing direct transport to al but the most crowded and confined locations. So businesses have relegated many of their s.h.i.+pping and transport needs to the hoverbird sector.

The Defense and Wel ness Council has also made a heavy investment in hoverbirds, for obvious reasons.

UNDERGROUND TRANSFER SYSTEM.

Faced with limited resources, the civil planners in the early years of the Reawakening struck on a pragmatic solution to their transportation issues.

They would use the ancient sewers and data cable pipes to move cargo from place to place. Early underground transfer systems were rudimentary, often dependent on wind power, water power, and even manual labor.

But as technology progressed, so did the global underground transfer system. Heavy infrastructure investments during the time of Par Padron (late 100s YOR) brought the underground transfer system to the entire globe, where it has become one of the central government's strongest success stories.

In modern times, underground transfer has become a nearly seamless method of shuttling goods from place to place. The system is general y only used for local cargo traffic, given that there are much faster methods for transporting goods over large distances.

ORBICO.

Interplanetary s.h.i.+pping has proven consistently resistant to economization, despite the best efforts of generations of entrepreneurs. As a result, the quasi-governmental agency OrbiCo has been given a virtual monopoly on transporting goods through s.p.a.ce. (Transport of personnel remains a viablethough not wildly profitable-business, and OrbiCo competes against a number of smal er rivals in that market.) The agency is heavily subsidized by the Prime Committee and has never come close to turning a profit since its inception in 315.

Given the importance of interplanetary s.h.i.+pping to the offworlders in Luna, Mars, and the orbital colonies, OrbiCo has often been accused of taking bribes-or at the very least, of being very dependent on the whims of its political sponsors.

OrbiCo freight s.h.i.+ps tend to be very utilitarian in nature. Bandwidth restrictions on interplanetary flights are such that networks like multi, the Jamm, and the Sigh are not accessible on OrbiCo s.h.i.+ps (except when in port).

THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION.

Marcus Surina famously declared that teleportation would provide an end to the ”tyranny of distance.” Various multi network engineers have made similar declarations. And yet, three and a half centuries into the Reawakening, people stil physical y travel from place to place in large numbers.

Current trends indicate that Surina's words may indeed prove to be prescient, however.

Declining riders.h.i.+p on the tube and the hoverbirds (and the stil -dismal adoption rate of teleportation) point to a society that may one day live out its entire existence in virtual settings.

Conservation advocates such as those in Creed Conscientious warn that such an att.i.tude can only lead to an eventual bandwidth crisis and universal disaster.

APPENDIX H.

ON DARTG U N S.

AND DISRUPTORS.

MODERN WARFARE.

The nature of warfare underwent a dramatic s.h.i.+ft in the early years of the Reawakening.

Improvements in OCHRE technology and bio/logic programming made it abundantly clear to battle tacticians that oldfas.h.i.+oned weapons were simply not up to the chal enge of modern combat.

The new medical knowledge and the rapid-healing capabilities of OCHREs (not to mention advances in body armor) made constructing a lethal projectile weapon a much more difficult task. In such a world, even advanced biological and chemical weaponry quickly became outmoded.

Nuclear weapons programs were never restarted after the tumult and chaos of the Autonomous Revolt, in which several smal er nuclear strikes were executed. The death of the nation-state ensured that there were no large, wel -funded organizations with the wherewithal and desire to construct atomic weapons. The advent of multi and the Data Sea made bombs increasingly irrelevant when enemies were scattered around the globe and rarely present in large numbers.

So combat tacticians of the Reawakening developed the dartgun.

DARTGUNS.

The standard weapon of modern times is the dartgun. Much like their ancestors from antiquity, dartguns shoot thin, needlelike projectiles at great distances. But whereas ancient darts were often tipped with poisons and neurotoxins, modern darts are loaded with microscopic OCHREs containing self-executing black code programs.

Weapons programmers have grown remarkably proficient at creating OCHREs that can spread through the body and immobilize or kil an adversary within fractions of a second. Much of this is accomplished with control ed radio and subaether transmissions from the infecting OCHREs that interact with other machines implanted in the body. The complexity of the OCHRE system ensures there wil always be loopholes for black code writers to exploit.

While it might seem like body armor could easily neutralize the threat of OCHRE-tipped darts, weapons engineers have become so proficient at creating armor-piercing darts as to render this strategy useless. Modern tacticians tend to focus on bio/logic defenses against invading code instead.

MULTI DISRUPTORS.

Multi disruptors (often simply cal ed ”disruptors”) were original y designed with one purpose in mind: to forceful y cut someone's multi connection.

Before such weapons came into existence, there was nothing stopping an army from sending a multied intel igence agent into the midst of an enemy force. Such fears were also drastical y slowing public adoption of the technology.

Common belief states that the Defense and Wel ness Council initiated disruptor research as a way to safeguard the multi system. Having such weapons available, so the reasoning went, made seditious elements less likely to attack the multi system itself.

It has become public knowledge, however, that the Council has transformed the multi disruptor from a purely defensive weapon into an offensive one.

Various drudge reports claim these advanced disruptors can actual y inject programming code into an enemy's bio/logic systems, in the same fas.h.i.+on as an OCHRE-tipped dart. The Council has been loath to publicize or even admit the existence of these weapons, however, fearing that such actions might lead to widespread panic and abandonment of the multi system.

THE NEW WARFARE ACT OF 221.

Probably the most significant piece of legislation to make its way through the government in the early 200s was the New Warfare Act of 221. This bil legalized nonlethal warfare and set the ground rules for nearly al conflicts that have fol owed since.

The bil essential y al ows citizens to deploy nonlethal force in a wide variety of circ.u.mstances. As a consequence, private security has become a huge business, with every organization from creeds to bureaucrats to L-PRACGs hiring its own private force.

Proponents of the New Warfare Act say this legislation has drastical y reduced the casualties of conflict and pushed opposing parties to discuss their grievances in a more civilized fas.h.i.+on. But detractors point to the thousands of private security forces with conflicting agendas who feel no compunction about shooting first and asking questions later.

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