21-12-2001 10:26									#1
	End of an Era Inflate your Upload Space

I know, I know, the Usurper story isn't finished yet. But I just had to start on this!

***

U.N. Headquarters

Commissioner Pravin Lal stared blankly at his computer monitor. The fifteen-inch screen was full of text, but he barely took in any of it. He knew more or less what it was. More bad news, more sad stories. The details could not be predicted, though. What would it be - another Hive army, more drone riots, a volcanic eruption?

Pravin's dream was falling down all around him.

Mission Year 2321 opened explosively. The renegade Cult of Planet poisoned Gaian crops and their infiltrators demolished sections of Gaian cities. Though he had supported their aspirations for independence (and weathered intense criticism for doing so) for the better part of three hundred years, the spectacular terrorism had shocked even Lal. At any rate, Lady Deirdre declared a state of emergency and invited Pirate forces into her territory to quell the disturbance. This, of course, was expressly forbidden by the Temple of Sol Accords which granted autonomy to the Cultist lands, and soon the Peacekeeper security missions at Dawn of Planet and other cities found themselves cowering from Pirate artillery.

Then the Security Council voted to, in Lal's mind, escalate the conflict by targeting Pirate supply lines and bombing their bases. This drew the Free Drones into the conflict. Chairman Yang of the Hive then stepped in to counter his arch-nemesis Domai. Meanwhile, the Morganic army invaded the southern parts of Gaian territory to establish a "security zone". A new world war had begun, and the threat of nuclear apocalypse loomed large for, incredibly, the second time in human history.

Lal stood and walked to the window. U.N. Headquarters was calm today. The minarets of the city that the Commissioner had once hoped to make the capital of the re-unified mission drifted high in the clear air, reflecting the glory of Planet's two suns. Yet smoke rose on the horizon, tangible testimony to debilitating social unrest.

He sighed as he thought of the old axiom: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Religion and ideology were tearing Planet to shreds. But Lal would not admit defeat, not until he drew his last breath. He still believed in the mission of the United Nations, and that one day the human race would unite.

But would it be in the way he had envisioned it? Lal moved to the large relief map of the Green Continent in the center of the room. He studied it bleakly. The western third of Peacekeeper territory was overrun by Hive armor. Gaian forces had re-occupied Dawn of Planet, and conservative reports put the size of the combined Pirate-Drone forces in Gaian territory, menacing Lal's back, at 80,000. The U.N. Security Missions on the Cult's coast were trapped with their backs to the Eastern Sea.

Why is it, he thought, that oppression and fear always field stronger armies than compassion and love? The Peacekeeping society was predicated on tolerance. Before the war began, Lal's people had been happy, and the U.N. economy second only to that of Morgan Industries. Now it was blowing away on the wind. If the war, Lal mused, did not end in Hive occupation, it would end in the dissolution of the United Nations from the inside and a new dark age.

***

Morgan Industries

"Request retinal identification."

The voice of the Morgan Metagenics security system was mechanical, but yet strangely human. Dr. Sharon Benayoun complied, leaning over a retinal scanner.

"Identity confirmed. Good morning, Doctor Benayoun," the polysentience said cheerfully.

"Good morning," said Dr. Benayoun, as the door slid open. She stepped through and moved purposefully into the area beyond. Ignoring the sign that said Restricted Area in huge red letters, Benayoun moved through a cold metal corridor and then into a sunny skyway, its walls and roof made of the finest glass-polymer.

Another retinal scan got her into the most secret laboratory in Morgan Industries. She paused and looked at the convoluted mess of tubes in front of her. Coursing through the equipment was the most dangerous chemical in human history. Its very atoms had been engineered to guarantee its extraordinary properties, at enormous cost.

Benayoun and her colleagues had gained the CEO's personal approval for the project, after pitching him a speech about it being the most important evolutionary advance since the assimilation of mitochondria.

The compound, designated X-33B, bolstered the human body's powers of regeneration, re-generating cells as needed, an order of magnitude faster than was natural.

A fifty-millilitre dose of it guaranteed clinical immortality.

***

U.N. Planetary Trust

Planetary Trust was in its heyday a bustling city on the east coast of the U.N. Its port hosted merchants from the Cybernetic Consciousness and University across the sea, and in the summer its beaches were packed with tourists hailing from Green Mountain, the Morgan South Pole Settlement, and everywhere in between.

But the Planetary Trust was a city under siege. Six months of violence had left it a gutted shell of its former glory. The population had fallen to more than half its original level; the security forces had all but withdrawn. Those who remained were only the strong, the stoic, and the foolhardy.

At a fire-blackened table in what had once been a popular tourist restaurant sat an ordinary-looking man, dressed in a Peacekeeper worksuit and a white beret. He was solidly built and tough-looking, and gazed at the floor, waiting.

The sound of a man clearing his throat made him look up. Another man had entered the building, this one tall and thin, his eyes darting back and forth furtively. The man in the beret rose. "Welcome," he said.

The newcomer only nodded in response. "Do you have what I came for?"

"Of course." The beret man smiled. "Relax. Have a seat."

Picking up a mostly-intact chair, the tall man sat. "This had better be good. The Provost needs something more solid than what you've given us so far."

"Have we ever failed to deliver?" Slowly the man with the beret reached into the pocket of his slacks and took out a box containing several nanodisks. He placed it on the table and slid it towards the newcomer.

"What is it?" The tall man eyed the disk suspiciously.

The man with the beret laughed. "What is it? That, my friend, is only the full contents of the government mainframe."

"How did you get this?"

"Ever hear of the Nethack Terminus?"

The tall man frowned. "You understand, do you not, that it is going to be extremely hard for us to continue supporting you if the Angels are part of this coalition?"

"Relax." The man in the beret waved his hands. "That was strictly un-kosher, as in not involving the government. You'd be surprised how easy it is to use the Terminus if you only have some fake Datatech commercial documents."

"Perfect." The tall man rose, picking up the box as he did. "Your weapons will arrive here in three weeks from today. Meet me here again then. I trust this is acceptable?"

"Hey, we've waited three centuries for this. What's another three weeks?"

They exchanged nods, and the tall foreigner left. The beret man sat down again, drumming his fingers on the table and thinking of the future.