Orkpiraten

First Look at the setting:

We’re loo­king at the year 2060. While nati­ons still exist on paper, most of civi­li­sa­tion is effec­tively gover­ned by laws and „recom­men­da­ti­ons“ of the WTO. The inte­rests of com­pa­nies and their share­hol­ders are more import­ant than those of so-called „sover­eign nations“.

Tech­no­logy has advan­ced quite far in the past 53 years: The mind-machine inter­face has been per­fec­tio­ned. Ever­yone is able to access the Google Grid ever­y­where, wit­hout the need of clunky inter­faces like a screen or a key­board: Infor­ma­tion is fed directly to the opti­cal and audio nerve sys­tem, user input is done via a thought-interface. All that is nee­ded for this is a small implant in the skull, con­nec­ted to a miniature-computer loca­ted in the abdo­men. These sys­tems don’t store data or have much com­pu­ting power, but excel in acces­sing the wifi Grid.

Cyber­jo­ckeys boost this by the use of much more exter­nal com­pu­ters, con­nec­ted with opti­cal cab­les to their body-systems.

In Europe, coast­land china, Japan and the USA the majo­rity eit­her work as data pro­ces­sors for various big cor­po­ra­ti­ons — they eva­luate, sort, tag and file data that can­not be pro­ces­sed by com­pu­ter pro­grams — or they are ser­vice per­son­nel of various kinds. A trai­ned elite works as pro­gramm­ers, or artificers.

The bulk of indus­trial pro­duc­tion is hand­led by robo­tic faci­li­ties, same with farming.

The good news: Cor­po­ra­ti­ons finally have dis­co­vered the need to cut down on pollu­tion, and to sus­tain the environ­ment. With the inven­tion of micro-reactors and the ura­nium com­pac­tor, a device that com­pacts the dan­ge­rous parts of radio­ac­tive waste into „safe“ con­tai­ners that can be shot into the sun, nuclear energy has become the prime energy source. The use of fos­sil fuels has become nearly nonexistant.

The cor­po­ra­ti­ons and regi­ons that were depen­dant on these res­sour­ces have under­gone a radi­cal change and now „sell“ reli­gion instead. This mar­ket is now nearly split in half by Chris­ti­anS­hell and BP Mus­li­mics two bit­ter enemies. Chris­ti­anS­hell is domi­na­ting Asia and sou­thern Ame­rica, while BP Mus­li­mics holds sway in Africa, North Ame­rica. The Middle East has become an ever grea­ter batt­le­ground than ever before, where both cor­po­ra­ti­ons fight for domi­na­tion. Curiously, Europe has been spa­red this fight, as Athe­ism has reached a all-time high there, and both cor­po­ra­ti­ons are only seen as small franchises.

The aver­age citi­zen is fed, has decent hou­sing, a 10hours/day job and can afford a vir­tual trip to Hawaii once a year. (The real Hawaii suf­fe­red an out­break of a still unknown bio­wea­pon that wiped out the whole popu­la­tion in 2020 and is now a no-go area for ever­yone, hea­vily guar­ded by WTO forces.)

People still have dreams of a bet­ter future. Thes dreams are nur­tu­red by a whole enter­tain­ment indus­try, in the form of trivid-shows that pro­mise people get­ting instantly rich or famous or even both by com­pe­ting in model/singing/wrestling/bazooka con­tests (Fights to the death are legal in most WTO-controlled areas, if all par­ti­ci­pants enter the con­tests wil­lin­gly and knowingly).

In rea­lity, the future is pretty bleak for most of the popu­la­tion, alt­hough most don’t rea­lize it.

more later…