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FourtyTwo_ _ _ _ __The Golden World
Father Sky__ _ _ _ _
The Golden World and Father Sky are a combined realistic sci-fi/metaverse mystery-thriller, blending reality-bending elements evocative of Total Recall and The Matrix with corporate/political intrigue closer to Elysium and Ready Player One. Set a few hundred years in the future, they follow two separate but ultimately interlinked storylines.
In the story of The Golden World, humanity has survived the near-complete collapse of Earth's biosphere by expanding into space following the timely development of the ICE (Ionic Corkscrew Electromagnetic) drive. A couple of centuries on from those primitive interstellar arks and the rushed and fragmented records surrounding the exodus, subsequent innovation has allowed us to break the universal 'speed limit' of lightspeed and push well beyond. Humans now live in dozens of star systems, on dozens of planets, maintaining lines of communication through the spacetime-warping hypernet, which allows near-instantaneous communication over staggering distances. However, the fantastical surroundings of interstellar space have not quite lived up to their billing. There was barely any life to be found among the stars, and certainly none of it was sentient. There are no Jedi, no space pirates, and no aliens. People go to work and school. They purchase property. They start families. They do it all under the watchful eye of governments and corporations. The bold science-fiction future that we had once dared to imagine is surprisingly mundane and, as in the present, escapism flourishes. In particular, many people spend their free time in the 'Golden World': a vast simulation materially indistinguishable from reality in its physics and realism. Some even live and work there near-permanently, hooked up to 'immersion beds' that maintain their bodies in health where their minds roam elsewhere.
For some, the Golden World serves a role in facilitating telepresence and exchange over long distances without time-consuming space travel. It enjoys an integrated economy where corporate interests flourish, and environs where people can live free of disease, disability, hunger, and peril. For others, however, it is a place of wonder. For the right price or commitment, you can be who and what you want in the Golden World: a fireball-flinging wizard, cyberpunk vigilante, or mermaid songstress? Some company active on its servers is sure to have you covered. Indeed, the late twenty-third century is a period of thriving competition. With the expansion into the stars, new companies have formed and been given space to grow, while old ones have become titans, purchasing entire worlds (both real and simulated) as private property.
Against this backdrop, it was agreed, when the Golden World was first established, that it would indefinitely remain an officially neutral ground. Though private companies operate within its servers and individual services are often subcontracted out, overall operations are overseen by a body known as ICON (Interstellar Council Of Neutrals). This is an impartial UN-style non-profit organization of programmers, experts, and advisors carefully chosen to manage the Golden World's in-sim operations as well as its massive server complexes, located on the desolate backwater of Mars.
This great system has worked like clockwork, more or less, for centuries before something changes. One day, while trying to save some money by traveling to an in-person symposium as a non-chartered (under the table) passenger on a small freighter, graduate student Cam Vickers witnesses the unthinkable: the planet Humber (where it was supposed to have taken place) simply disappears as if it were not even there. When he asks the crew if they'd noticed as well, they look at him strangely. There is no planet named Humber. They're headed to Belgravia, of course, where his meeting thing is. Right?
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The storyline of Father Sky is set on a semi-terraformed Mars, which seems to exist as an island unto itself, entirely irrelevant to the rest of the universe but for the massive server complexes that dominate its surface. After the twenty-second century ecological collapse that nearly wiped out humanity, Earth is gradually being terraformed back into working order, but that is a centuries-long project, carried out almost exclusively by robots. The rest of the Sol System hasn't fared much better. Venus is home to a failed cloud colony that was thought to be abandoned until recently, when the descendants of humans who had not evacuated two hundred years earlier were discovered living in primitive conditions. Ceres, a frigid dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, is a place declared strictly off-limits for reasons unknown. Titan is little more than a supply depot and signal waypoint.
Mars itself was humanity's very first colony and was once key to the species' survival. The great server complexes that stretch across its arid plains and the hundreds of liquid metal convection engines buried its crust to generate an artificial magnetic field are testament tot hat. It was once our species' plan for survival, and then the backup plan. However, it is now very much a forgotten place, left behind by the great arks as interstellar expansion proceeded. With a population of only some four million, it remains substantially colonized mainly due to the stubbornness of its residents, who have lived there for centuries, and because moving the servers established there centuries ago would be massively costly and require agreement between hundreds of often-feuding government and corporate entities.
To the 'Redlanders' who stick it out on Mars, it often feels very much like they are a 'colony' in a different sense. ICON 'administers' the entire planet from an imposing gated complex and opportunities on-world are few. There is little hope of escape either for this captive population. Due to the importance of maintaining the Golden World's servers, arrivals to and departures from outside of the Sol System are strictly regulated and only allowed within the complex. Applications for travel are a long and arduous process and very few are the people who bother with them. Besides, few Martians have much interest in physically visiting the worlds beyond their world. There is ample work to be done just maintaining the servers, which employ over fifty percent of them, not to mention the planet's vital infrastructure and rather lean food supply. If they really get curious, Mars is home to the Golden World's servers, after all, so citizens can always just visit virtually. It is something of an irony and a mark of how much of an afterthought its people are, however, that Mars is only linked to the Golden World via land lines and ironically has among the slowest connections in settled space.
The truth is that Mars is dying from greed and neglect. The atmosphere is still too thin to breathe at higher altitudes, despite repeated promises to speed up the centuries-old terraforming process. The northern seas remain shallow and briny. Most alarmingly, the vast machines that generate its tenuous and artificial magnetic field are in danger of failing, and a handful already have. The hardy people living there know that priority will be given to rescuing the servers before them, and they resent it. When offworlders arrive, it is never for long and they always seem strangely out of sorts. They poke around, heavily escorted, give some orders, and ensure that the robots that oversee and directly maintain the server facilities are in working order. Then, they disappear through guarded spaceport doors and are gone.
Martians have been told that the servers offer such a great service to humanity that any damage to them would be tantamount to murder and punishable by death. Indeed, the facility's guardian droids are given special dispensation to break Asimov's three laws and use deadly force, as a handful of drunks, foolhardy teenagers, and would-be rebels have found out. While that combination of moral impetus and threat that has been enough to hold the proud Redlanders back in the past, discontent has now reached a fever pitch. A Mars-First organization known as the Green Hand has exploded in popularity across the local Marsnet, despite the government's attempts to stamp it out. Clandestine cells have sprung up everywhere, from the cities of the Mariner Valley to the farms of New Arabia, the Arcadian Highlands, and the remote, windswept shores of the Hellenic Sea. Declared a terrorist organization by ICON and with no legal means of instigating change, the Green Hand has struck at the servers themselves in a daring attack, detonating a bomb which temporarily cut power to nearly ten percent of the vast complex. The ICON-appointed government has vowed swift retribution upon these criminals and murderers.
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