| The Future of Humanity |
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Some time in the late twenty first century, circa 2090, the human race took its first tentative steps off of their home world and began living in space. Their first off-world colonies were in orbital space stations that hung in orbit around the Earth and moon. Over the next three-hundred years they continued to branch out and expand across the solar system. New developments in propulsion technology made intra-system travel more like daily commutes, allowing people to travel between the Earth and moon in a matter of minutes, and out to more distant planets in a matter of hours.
As humanity expanded outward the economy that drove it also grew into a robust commerce between worlds where entire cities began to focus on single industries. The city of Hector on Mars became one of the primary sources for hydroponically grown food in the system and its sister city, Achilles, just as quickly dominated the manufacturing industry.
As commerce grew so to did the need to have a central hub or distribution outlet for goods. Since Earth was the most likely location, as well as being the most populace world in the Sol system and therefore in need of a majority of the goods in question, it was decided to build a massive space station in Earth’s local space to become the needed hub. It took nearly one-hundred years to complete the massive project, although it began fulfilling its intended role some ten years after construction began, increasing capacity as construction continued.
Once completed, the Earth-ring station became the seat of power in the solar system. The ring was administered by a conglomerate of mega-corporations that had jointly financed the project when the Earth governments had refused to do so. As commerce in the system began making this conglomerate astronomical amounts of money they hatched a scheme to wrest power away from the political bodies that still quibbled back and forth on the planet’s surface.
After nearly fifty years of planning and gathering resources, the conglomerate proceeded to buy up all of the debt that the nations of the Earth had accrued over centuries of financial mismanagement. They then gave the governments in question –namely the super-power nations, The United States, China, Japan, Russia, The United Kingdom, etc.— ninety days to repay their outstanding debts. When none of the governments repaid their debts, the conglomerate foreclosed on all of them and took possession of the majority of the countries. Shortly after, they began a political restructuring, carving up the globe and putting their own figure-heads in charge of the puppet show that world politics had become.
Slowly they then began to take financial control of the smaller countries, beginning with the third-world and then sweeping through Europe . While most countries began to experience unprecedented progress and unheard of monetary gains across all industries there were those elements that resented what had been done and fought for every scrap they could take.
Eventually the dissidents struck a major blow, to themselves as well as the conglomerate when they hacked into the strategic defense systems and initiated a global mass-destruction, in an attempt to destroy the seats of power that the conglomerate’s figureheads occupied. In the devastation, more than eighty percent of the Earth’s surface was rendered uninhabitable and billions of people were killed.
In true entrepreneurial style, the conglomerate used this event to illustrate the dangers of partisan political rule and convinced the remainder of the human race that a system of corporate government was in fact a better way to proceed. Shortly, the conglomerate had seated itself on top of a vast, complex corporate landscape that governed the human race as though it were one massive corporation.
The conglomerate quickly built a large fighting force of ships and soldiers in order to quickly quell any form of resistance or fledgling political parties that may have risen up against them.
Over the next five-hundred years the Human race prospered, although not everyone was happy about it. The benefits of corporate rule were many, especially in the areas of technology and medicine. The average life-span increased to nearly two-hundred years and space travel continually became cheaper and faster. Fewer wars –public wars at least—were fought and those that were, were ended almost before they began due to swift intervention from the conglomerate fighting force and their superior technology.
Today the conglomerate is presided over by five executive officers that use a simple majority vote system to determine policy. Beneath these executives is an elaborate network of subordinates that support their higher-ups dutifully in hopes of one day getting the big promotion into upper management. All businesses in some way report to someone within the structure of the conglomerate and all profits are absorbed into the non-stop machine that is the government of the human race.
Anyone who draws a pay check inevitably gets their money from the corporation, even if it is through back channels or black market connections. Health care is free to anyone that is a registered citizen of the corporation, as is housing and the essentials of life, food, entertainment, basic supplies and so on, all provided free of charge simply for being a citizen of the corporation. Most people are either unaware or choose to ignore the fact that the corporation reserves the right to eavesdrop on conversations, communications and exchanges throughout the Sol system in order to keep tabs on the workings of their empire.
There is a group of secret police that enforce company by-laws and bring to justice those that break said by-laws. Justice is usually swift and extreme, although hardly ever public.
The year as of the beginning of the story is approximately 3040 AD.