The System Split

Posted by: Francis Wu, Firewall Filter

Inner vs. Outer

Here’s your next batch of reading to catch up on your lack: collected reports on the polities and economic systems of the new transhumanity. Accounts are selected for their utility in introducing new agents to the modern political world. Authors’ biases are their own.

It’s a big galaxy out there, sentinels, and you may be tasked to visit any corner of it. Before dispatch, you will be briefed on your local situation as it’s known. It falls on you to understand where that falls in the big picture. For those of you not already versed in the ‘verse, consider this your crash course.

Prior to the Fall, most of the brave explorers who cut ties with gravity did not wander far from home. Almost everyone lived in Earth orbit or on Luna, with major colonies on Mars. There were a few notable locations further out — military facilities around Jupiter, brave Scandinavians staking a claim on Titan, a few ambitious hypercorp suits floating in Venus’s clouds, anarchists and Argonauts on various asteroids and moons. But aside from mining colonies and research stations, there wasn’t much draw in wandering far afield. When the Fall came, the majority of refugees found themselves on Mars and Luna, caught up in the power structures (or their remnants) that were already established there, with the rest diffusing throughout the solar system.

As new political bodies coalesced, a line was drawn between the two halves of the Solar System. The inner system includes Sol, Mercury, Venus, Earth/Luna, and Mars, and all of the smaller bodies within their orbits — essentially everything out to the edge of the Main Belt. This is the domain of the hypercorps and their market economies. The outer system includes everything else, from the Main Belt to the Oort Cloud, an expanse of autonomist holdings and political and economic experimentation.

Hundreds of exceptions exist on both sides, of course — you still find hypercorps in the outer rim and autonomist outposts in the inner system, but they are generally small and isolated. Jupiter, while cartographically in the outer system, is culturally its own enclave, hostile to the rest of the Solar System. Understand that when talking about the outer system as a grouping, most people exclude the Jovian Republic. With that rough line understood, we can dive a little deeper.

The Inner System

Celestial bodies and habitats close to the ecliptic and less than 1.8 AU from the sun are considered inner system. This area is population dense; about 2/3rds of transhumanity lives here. Habitats are relatively close, with physical travel requiring weeks at most and the light-speed lag of comms and egocasting measured in minutes.

The region is dominated by the Planetary Consortium (PC), a hypercorp treaty-cum-government. Their focus is on moderating intercorporate affairs and growing market shares (i.e., the population and their wealth-making potential). A safe populace is a shopping populace, so the PC maintains most of the cultural and social supports old-Earthers are used to. Transhuman rights are secondary, especially when they’re expensive or disruptive to PC interests. Their habitats have a lot of independence when it comes to local laws and government, as long as they adhere to Consortium bylaws. Most provide a nod towards democracy, holding votes over minor, local concerns and providing for community representatives to liaise between citizens and corporate managers.

Two other, smaller, political entities have influence in the inner system. The Lunar-Lagrange Alliance (LLA) governs most habitats on Luna and in the Earth-Luna system under a conservative (but transhumanist) rule. They hold the most similarity and allegiance to old Earth identities and remain overcrowded with Fall refugees. The Morningstar Constellation (MC) is a loose confederacy of habitats and aerostats on and around Venus that only recently (in AF 6) declared independence from the Consortium over issues related to Venusian terraforming and sovereignty. Morningstar habitats have slightly more technoprogressive policies than the Consortium and are friendlier locales for mercurials, infolife, and infugees, but are otherwise culturally similar.

With the majority of the transhuman population within the inner system, there are thousands of smaller habitats. Retaining independence is difficult, and most of those habitats are mortgaged into a larger federation, as the PC, LLA, and MC compete for ideological market shares.

The Outer System

I would wager the majority of you were rolling your ocular organs at that last section and are ready to hear how excellent your region of the system is. Firewall attracts more members from the outer system, where people are more used to taking matters into their own hands, but don’t imagine outer system life is easy.

Most of the outer system is made up of small habitats of five thousand people or fewer. Many of them are more than a million kilometers from their nearest neighbor. This makes for a very different political environment. Even Titan, which has a respectable population and several large cities and orbital habitats, carries the character of its frontier roots.

With no central power to tell them what to do, people have organized in all different manners, mostly with little or no government. Decisions are made via mesh-enabled direct democracy or community consensus. The ability to manufacture most things locally with nanofabrication has diminished trade; many habitats function as gift economies. Reputation plays a major role in these cultures, with an individual’s standing in the community determining their ability to secure additional favors. This isn’t to imply all habitats are like this; each is organized by its own rules. The outer system also has authoritarian regimes, primitivist camps, and even cultures built around birth and marriage ties, but all of them prioritize the well-being of the community. In the deep black, if the habitat fails, everyone fails with it.

With no limitations on nanofabrication and access to open source designs, even a modest source of feedstock shared equally among citizens can provide a higher quality of life than that afforded by the average freelancer in the Consortium. Of course, a habitat with nothing has nothing to share. Such places are common throughout the system, especially among the aging and isolated brinker colonists of the outer rim.

In the outer system there are four major political factions. The Saturnine moon of Titan is home to the Titanian Commonwealth, a technosocialist direct democracy. Locus in the Jovian Trojans is one of the oldest and best-established collectivist anarchist habitats. Nomadic swarms of scum ships boast the most wild and individualistic expressions transhumanity has to offer. Extropia, in the Main Belt, is home to market anarchists of various stripes, serving in some ways as a gateway between the inner and outer systems.

The disparate factions and habitats here cannot stand individually against domineering Consortium interests, nor the powerful Jovian military. Most of them have put aside their political disagreements and formed a loose union, the Autonomist Alliance. This alliance serves as a protection pact, a forum for coordinating group initiatives, and an open-source network for rapid innovation and dissemination. Modeled after the anarchist systems of its strongest member states, it does not tax or compel its members and has few dedicated resources of its own. Twenty years ago, such a complex tangle of handshakes, reputation bumps, and cacophonous arguments would have quickly collapsed. Formed of necessity, with new tools and philosophies of governance, the Alliance has survived and helped its members thrive.

Jovian Republic

Firewall does attract Jovians to our ranks, and they are suprisingly fearless given their mortality. The Jovian Republic, frequently called the Junta in reference to the Security Council in charge, is the offspring of the massive military complex built by major North and South American nations prior to the Fall. While the rest of transhumanity was in chaos, these fleets seized control of the entire Jovian system and instituted an interim, and soon permanent, government. The republic has a Senate and nominal constitutional framework, with citizenship and voting linked to military service, but the Junta remains the ultimate authority. They retain a traditional market economy.

What makes the Republic notable is their rejection of almost all advanced technology, noting it was the primary cause of the Fall. This isn’t the polite sort of rejection, like when your friend offers you a face tattoo. They define the term “bioconservative,” rejecting or restricting AIs, uplifts, nanotech, backups, and resleeving. Advanced technology anywhere threatens humanity everywhere (no “transhumanity” for the Jovians). Considering how often we are tasked with breaking into a black lab to isolate a new nanoweapon someone has cooked up, their fears are not completely groundless. But their preferred negotiation method is the bat, followed by conciliatory agreements of more bat. As such, Jovian society is considered rigid, and their relationship status with other polities is divorced and unfriendly.

State of the System

The current situation is best classified as a cold war. Inner-system capitalists consider the autonomists a liability, and their media propaganda outlets work overtime to paint the outer system as a corrupt, lawless, dog-eat-dog frontier. The outer system considers the hypercorp regimes to be oppressive and antiquated — and they worry about an invasion. Meanwhile, the Jovians hate everyone and sit on the biggest fleet in the system. Every habitat believes they are fighting for their very existence. That said, there has been little outright aggression since the Battle of Locus shortly after the Fall. The preferred weapons of choice are black ops, memetic warfare, and destabilizing economic tricks.

At the same time, most of transhumanity can’t help but mingle with their neighbors. Hypercorps sell morphs and fashion on Titan, Jovian missionaries set up churches in Elysium, autonomist scientists attend conventions on Io, and ten-thousand tiny habitats keep on spinning.