Up to 2025: China embarks on a manned space program, putting several yuhangyuan ('space navigators') into orbit and on the moon. The first human clone is born. The United States commits to a Mars mission.

2026: Sales of new wearable computers (using a visor or glasses display and belt computer) exceed those of desktop or notebook systems. The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) space infrared interferometer begin scanning stars within 50 light years.

2027: North and South Korea set date for reunification.

2028: TPF discovers an Earth-like planet orbiting the G5 yellow dwarf star 61 Virginis, 27.8 light years away. It is named 'Virginia.' Later, more advanced sensors locate other habitable worlds around farther stars.

2029: U.S. space development firm Columbia Aerospace begins operating a reliable laser-launch service for commercial microsatellites.

2030: Russia joins manned Mars program. Antibiotic-resistant pneumonia pandemic kills 7 million worldwide. Revised Outer Space Treaty is drafted, making it easier for corporations or states to lay claim to extraterrestrial resources.

2031: South African conglomerate Ithemba Biotechnologies distributes a cheap broad-spectrum AIDS vaccine in Africa. China and Taiwan negotiate date for peaceful reunification. China announces its own Mars program.

2032: The brown dwarf Xiang-63 is discovered. Parallax measurement reveals it is quite close to Sol, less than a light-year away.

2033: The Long March IV rocket lofts China's first space lab module into orbit. European Union increases fusion power budget. Biotech Euphrates is founded, with a then-radical commitment to human gengineering.

2034: The commercial Aristaeus mission lands several thousand tiny robots on Mars, for both science and teletourism. A separatist party forms in western Canada, believing their destiny lies with Asia-Pacific.

2035: Most cars use hybrid gas-electric or fuel cell engines. The genetic testing of unborn children and use of genetic engineering to 'gene-fix' monogenetic hereditary defects is common in affluent nations. China lands robots on Mars and Phobos. United States and Russia establish a service station facility at the Earth-Luna L4 point.

2036: Columbia Aerospace opens an equatorial launch facility in Quito, Ecuador; by 2120, it will be Earth's busiest spaceport. Transgenic glow-in-the-dark pets become a fad in Japan.

2037: European and Japanese space agencies use robot 'cybershells' to build a distributed-array observatory at Tsiolkovsky crater on Luna's farside. Provision is made for a small manned base. Mainland China and Taiwan are reunited.

2038: Tissue engineers grow functional human hearts for transplant. Every organ in the body (except the brain) is now replaceable. In reaction to peaceful Chinese and Korean reunifications, the United States begins reducing its military presence in Asia.

2039: The U.S.-Russian Horus I manned Mars mission is launched. Sergey Zarubayev becomes dictator of Kazakstan. Thanks to advanced medical technology, he will retain his death-grip on life and power for the rest of the century.

2040: China's Chaosheng manned Mars mission is launched, even as the U.S.-Russian Horus I mission ends in tragedy.

2041: Chaosheng spacecraft arrives, and Wen-Xuan Liang is the first human to set foot on Mars.

2042: Columbia Aerospace and Nanodynamics begin construction of orbital industrial park. Belgium is the first of several European nations to dissociate into smaller self-governing regions within the European Union.

2043: Multiple follow-up expeditions begin arriving on Mars. First baby born in Earth orbit.

2044: Industrial combines Vosper-Babbage and Tenzan Heavy Industries finance a series of manned and unmanned missions to near-Earth asteroids.

2045: Argentine oil drilling near Antarctica sparks new conflict with United Kingdom. Japan and Korea sign mutual-defense treaty.

2046: Referendum in British Columbia and Alberta favors separation from Canada. Euro-Japanese 'Lunar consortium' begins construction of an ice-mining base, Shackleton Station, on the Lunar south pole.

2047: Vosper-Babbage and Tenzan Heavy Industries begin installing mass drivers to move near-Earth asteroids into the L4 and L5 points.

2048: The first baby is born on Mars. Biotech Euphrates markets gene-enhanced dogs. First operational fusion reactor goes online. British Columbia and Alberta separate from Canada, and will go on to form the Union of Alberta and British Columbia (“ABC”).

2049: United Nations collapses due to lack of funds and support from major powers. Australian academic Kyle Porters sets out the tenets of 'information socialism.' He argues for a society in which patents and intellectual properties are free, but inventors and creators are subsidized by the state. The centennial of the People's Republic of China is celebrated on Earth and Mars.

2050: India builds orbital factory. The first low-sapient AI is created, with near-human intelligence. The South African Coalition (a loose economic alliance for sub-Saharan development) is formed. It gradually evolves into a strong regional power over the next six decades.

2051: Australia joins Korea-Japan mutual-defense treaty, creating the Pacific Rim Alliance. The Chinese space development corporation Xiao Chu is founded. In Canada, socio-economic stresses from the 'loss of the west' led Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces to gradually dissociate themselves from central Canada and negotiate membership in the European Union.

2052: The first asteroids arrive at the L4 point. They provide raw materials for habitat construction and space factories. First baby born on Luna. Russia establishes a colony on Mars.

2053: Tenzan Heavy Industry's manned plasma sail spacecraft Phoenix makes its maiden flight to the asteroid Ceres, inaugurating the 'second age of sail.' Its crew establish an outpost on Ceres, but the company abandons it a year later as uneconomical. Zarubayev regime begins a program aimed at eradicating the majority of Kazak culture, language, and religion.

2054: A commercial D-He-3 reactor goes online in Japan. The Ares Conspiracy begins illicit terraforming of Mars. First quantum supercomputers are developed. A major application is the rapid solution of highly complex protein folding problems, a key to advanced biotechnology.

2055: Commercial fusion reactors go online in France, Germany, Korea, and Poland. Ares Conspiracy terraforming program in full swing on Mars. Biotech Euphrates and other firms begin offering human genetic upgrades on a custom basis; these are expensive, and often not fully successful.

2056: The Ares Conspiracy is discovered. Faced with arrest or worse, its members and sympathizers steal a NASA deep space vessel docked at Phobos, and flee to the asteroid belt. The city of Montreal secedes from Quebec and becomes a free city.

2057: Ares Conspiracy exiles settle on the asteroid Ceres, occupying the abandoned Tenzan Heavy Industries mining base, which they rename Silas Duncan Station. Nanodynamics manufactures military microbot swarms for the U.S. Army. VeldtKorp, a division of Ithemba Biotechnologies, pioneers tissue-engineered 'biomod organs' to provide transplantees with enhanced performance.

2058: Anglo-American expedition reaches Mercury; Elizabeth Daintith is the first human to set foot on it. Ares Conspiracy exiles on Ceres are joined by additional Martian sympathizers, swelling their population.

2059: Corporations Biotech Euphrates, Xiao Chu, and newcomer Colonial Genetics begin bio-engineering plants and animals for a 'new Mars.' System Technologies AG takes the lead mining He-3 from the Lunar regolith to support the growing number of D-He-3 fusion plants on Earth.

2060: Regular shipments of Lunar He-3 begin reaching Earth. European Union places outpost on Mercury, to explore mining and solar power generation. First 'universal' 3D printer appears.

2061: Religious leader Ali al-Rashid enters into an alliance with the Saudi monarchy, laying the ground for the Islamic Caliphate. First baby born in the asteroid belt (on Ceres). Reliable medical nanomachines are introduced.

2062: Nanodynamics markets the first virtual interface computer brain implants. Genemod insect farmers and bioweapons are developed by Ithemba Biotechnologies and VeldtKorp as low-cost alternatives to microbot swarms.

2063: Violence erupts on Mars between pro- and anti-terraforming partisans after China and the United States decide to halt efforts to reverse the Ares Plague. Anglo-German expedition reaches Venus. The Duncanite exiles begin a program to alter their descendants for long-term survival in microgravity.

2064: Moderate Arab states led by Saudi Arabia establish the Islamic Caliphate. A multinational science mission lands on Jupiter's moon Europa. Ice-penetrating 'cryobots' explore the subsurface ocean and discover primitive life.

2065: Biotech Euphrates markets standardized genetic upgrade gene sequences that enable parents to create children with guaranteed improvements in longevity, appearance, health, and mental stability.

2066: Red Sword anti-government insurgency begins in Peru. Vosper-Babbage builds Solaris, the first fusion drive spacecraft. The first of many giant arcologies is constructed in South China.

2067: Concerned by the threat that Peruvian instability poses to the space launch facilities at Quito, the United States joins Chile and Brazil in providing military aid to the Peruvian government. European Mercury base begins export of heavy metals. Nanodynamics develops sensory-link brain implants and software that allow one person to share another's senses, surface thoughts, and even dreams. 'Simsense' experiences become a new mass media.

2068: U.S. ground troops are committed to the escalating Andes War in Peru. Civil war in Iran sees return of a secular state. Duncanites begin rapidly expanding their population using exowombs.

2069: Treaty of Jerusalem settles most outstanding disputes between Israel and its neighbors. In the Andes War, the U.S. use of orbital weapons and teletroopers to fight 'by remote control' (while Peruvians on both sides die) shakes the morale of guerillas and government forces.

2070: Peruvian government forces collapse. Red Sword insurgents take Lima as U.S. withdraws. The European Union builds Research Station Aphrodite on Venus; it is soon nicknamed 'the Hell Hole.'

2071: The Genetic Regulatory Agency is established in the European Union to police abuses of human HuGE technology. An infosocialist party is formed in Thailand, inspired by the theories of Kyle Porters. Russia faces a separatist movement in Siberia, the start of a string of nasty, low-intensity insurgencies around its periphery that consume its attention over the next decade.

2072: First fusion-drive spacecraft begin carrying colonists to Mars. The 'second age of sail' comes to an end. Xiao Chu and Biotech Euphrates design the first Mars-adapted parahumans. 2072 is the 'International Astrophysical Year.' Centre de Recherche AstroBiologique d'Europa (CRABE) research base is established on Europa. United States Astrographical Survey (USAGS) is formed and takes over NASA's responsibility for planetary exploration. First baby born on Mercury.

2073: Zarubayev regime intervenes in ongoing Russian conflict, providing support for Russia. The first successful microgravity-adapted Duncanite parahumans are born, nicknamed Tennin (heavenly people.

2074: Dr. Arifa Ali develops a Grand Unified Theory that successfully reconciles gravity and quantum mechanics. China builds the Taiko Station spaceport in Earth orbit.

2075: Fusion power fueled by Lunar He-3 now provides 5% of all Earth's energy needs and half of offworld energy requirements. As part of the renewed terraforming program, teams of Martian and (later) Duncanite space workers go to the distant Kuiper Belt. These 'comet herders' begin installing fusion engines on icy Kuiper Belt objects and directing them towards Mars.

2076: 'Fauxflesh,' vat-grown meat, goes on sale, after a decade-long battle with safety regulators and the ranching industry. Similar products are artificial hides, horn, and fur and vat-grown wood and pulp. Dr. Raymond Garcia founds the Christian hyperevolutionist movement.

2077: Infosocialists win election in Thailand, the first of several info- or nanosocialist parties to achieve power over the next twenty years. Transhumanist movement pioneers 'accelerated learning' techniques based on virtual reality immersion, memory-enhancing drugs, and brain implants.

2078: Vosper-Babbage establishes Aletheia Station asteroid base in the Main Belt. Nanodynamics begins development of cellular regeneration technology. Microbot toothpaste introduced.

2079: Neglected by the Moscow government, Russia's small Mars colony declares unilateral independence, the first Earth colony to do so. The first baby is born on Venus. USAGS sends a manned mission to Saturn's moon Titan. Wealthy Christian hyperevolutionists purchase a second-hand space station in Lagrange 5 and found Seventh Heaven, one of the first 'junk jungle' L5 habitats.

2080: Duncanites fracture into two factions: Green Duncanites, who remain centered in the main belt, and create Avatar Klusterkorp to market Tennin biotechnology to finance future pantropy projects, and so-called Red Duncanites, who leave Silas Duncan Station and settle in the Greek Trojans near Jupiter, with their main homes at Diomedes (Liang Mountain) and Agamemnon (Freehaven).

2081: LOGOS, the first sapient AI, is created. Valles Marineris on Mars is flooded. Chinese cybershells explore Pluto.

2082: Chinese cybershell mission continues to explore Pluto. Biotech Euphrates' offworld division create the first bioroids. They are living beings functionally similar to humans, but assembled using tissue engineering and 'biogenesis' nanotechnology, and educated using accelerated learning techniques. Some are 'bioshells' with decereberate brains housing puppet implants, while others are designed with intelligence up to or exceeding that of a human.

2083: On Luna, Shackleton Station becomes a free city. Nanostasis, a form of suspended animation, is developed by Xiao Chu researchers. Posthuman Consumer Review begins publication. Zarubayev earns nickname 'Stalinaskha' due to his bionic implants and ruthless suppression of dissent.

2084: Lunar business interests complete Islandia, the first true O'Neill colony, located at L4. Australia and Indonesia rattle sabers over the autonomy of ex-Indonesian microstates. SpaTek builds a resort on Luna. Biotech Euphrates markets biogenesis nanotechnology and customized bioroid designs to orbital corporations who want to create a 'made to order' workforce on site.

2085: U.S. President Crystal Lee Robinson announces the NAGHI project to settle Titan and mine helium-3 from the atmosphere of Saturn. Nanodynamics begins marketing cheap cellular repair nanosymbionts to spacers as an anti-radiation treatment. Xiao Chu creates bioroids optimized for Mars colonization. The nomadic, nanarchist Gypsy Angels Collective begins to coalesce from a loose coalition of Duncanite freehauler and comet-herder families.

2086: System Technologies AG establishes Exogenesis research station on the asteroid Vesta in the Main Belt. USAGS sends probe to Neptune's moon Triton in consort with commercial teletourism company.

2087: GenTech Pacifica, an Australian-based transnational, begins the construction of the first large aquatic habitat, Elandra. GenTech makes extensive use of uplifted sea life and parahumans. Humans arrive at Huygens Station, establishing first permanent settlement on Titan.

2088: Xiao Chu and other Chiense biotech girms complain that unlicensed clones of their pharm animals are being pirated by Indonesian and Thai companies, and demand action. China threatens sanctions. U.S. Army inducts its first bioroid soldiers. First 'cyberdemocracy' system enacted, in Switzerland.

2089: Indonesia, Peru, Thailand, and Vietnam establish the Transpacific Socialist Alliance (TSA) and release statement of principles. Reference to open access to nanotechnology leads to them being dubbed 'nanosocialist' by the media. The Blue Shadow preservationist grop founded, dedicated to fighting the 'biocybernetic enslavement' of sea life. India's Mawari Digital media conglomerate is created. Russia establishes mining colony on Mercury.

2090: Ziusudra-series 'ideal parahuman' genetic sequence becomes the first transgenic design to achieve widespread popularity on Earth. Chinese police begin investigation of Triad crime syndicate operations on Mars. Consumption of vat-grown fauxflesh exceeds that of 'natural' meat in Europe, and approaches it in many other developed nations.

2091: Titan Consortium begins building Cassini Station and Huygens Base. Exogenesis researcher Gilbert Stokes is the first human to have his mind emulated, or 'uploaded,' in software. Founding of the TSA's secret Bioweapons Directorate, which investigates nanovirus weaponry. Term 'infomorph' becomes popular, referring to any digital mind, AI, or emulation.

2092: China, the European Union, the Pacific Rim Alliance, and the United States all impose limited trade sanctions against the TSA. Most other nations follow suit within two years. In Europe, the transgenic calf Ermintrude is a spokesperson for the growing movement demanding an end to the raising of animals for food. Construction of the space elevator begins on Mars.

2093: The sapient artificial intelligence LOGOS publishes its revolutionary study of memetic theory, The Propagation of Human Ideas. Conclusive evidence of long-extinct microorganisms is found near Hellas on Mars. This leads to renewed recriminations against the Chinese-led terraforming process, which many Preservationists claim may have destroyed the last remnants of any actual life.

2094: Space carrier Mars Interplanetary starts replacing human crews with bioroids, igniting a lengthy labor dispute. Pan-Sapients Rights activists arrested in Los Angeles for attempting to 'liberate' a sapient AI.

2095: Transhumanist Kazuhiro Nishimori is the first healthy human to undergo destructive uploading. Antimatter production begins on Mercury. The Aegis Project begins: an attempt to repair Earth's ozone layer. Avatar Klusterkorp sells Tennin genetic sequences to Xiao Chu and Tenzan Heavy Industries. European Union investigation into troubled Das Luftschloss L4 factory complex uncovers mistreatment of bioroid spaceworkers. Genefixed people now represent a majority of Earth's 11 billion people.

2096: The first Titan Consortium He-3 tankers reach their Lagrange 4 collection point. European Union passes laws that will phase out the raising of meat animals in favor of fauxflesh. The ghost of Kazuhiro Nishimori is first posthuman to visit Triton, his consciousness transmitted via laser communicator to a cybershell there. Green Duncanites sponsored by Avatar Klusterkorp begin secretly seeding Europa's oceans with altered life forms.

2097: The National Alliance, an anti-nanosocialist coalition, seizes power in India. Islamic Caliphate extends civil rights to sapient AI. Telepresence Experience Network is founded. First human born on Titan. The Unusual Kuiper Belt Object 112434 Shezbeth is discovered. European Parliament's Report of the Temporary Committee on the Situation of Biological Androids condemns the bioroid industry. Biotech Euphrates and Xiao Chu dispute the findings, but halt production of controversial models and add new regulations.

2098: China demands that the TSA allow inspection of nanoweapons facilities. Incidents occur between TSA submarines and Chinese arsenal ships. PLA troops exercise near the Vietnamese border. The United States embargoes He-3 shipments to China and the TSA. Martian Space Elevator is completed.

2099: Near Saturn, Gypsy Angels Collective migrant workers occupy U.S. Astrophysical Survey base at Hyperion, then intercept an American He-3 shipment to sell to Rust China. China launches a surprise attack against Thai Bioweapons Directorate facilities and satellites. The other TSA nations honor mutual-defense treaty obligations, and the Pacific War begins, as TSA forces fight back in space and fire cruise missiles against Chinese ports and naval vessels. In deep space, TSA vessels launch multiple autonomous kill vehicles (AKVs) at Chinese targets. China destroys most of the TSA's orbital and surface space facilities, including their solar power satellites.

2100: A construction accident at Shackleton Station on Luna kills hundreds and forces the city's evacuation. Fierce fighting rages on the Chinese-Vietnamese border, but a royalist coup topples Thailand's hard-line nanosocialist government, and the TSA agrees to a European Union-mediated peace. Some Bioweapons Directorate personnel flee Earth. U.S. task force evicts 'helium pirates' from Hyperion and establishes bases on Titan and Rhea.

2101: United States ends the He-3 embargo. Exogenesis places a robot factory on Io. Nicaragua becomes a nanosocialist nation. The ghost of Exogenesis engineer Susie Xu is the first posthuman to enter Jupiter, her body the cybershell probe Not in Kansas. To go places and do things that have never been done before - that's what dying is all about. – Susan Xu

2102: Remaining TSA powers, now led by Indonesia, meet in Lima, Peru, and renew their 'peaceful commitment to nanosocialism and the ideals of Kyle Porters.' Solar Express space courier service founded. Martian Triads begin manufacture of pleasure bioroids. First 'xox cult' appears, in which followers are monitored and advised by a low-res mind emulation ('shadow') of its leader.

2103: The first cellular rejuvenation treatments are successful, using radical nanosurgery to restore the aged to vigorous health. The fastliner Empress of Helium is destroyed by rogue AKVs left orphaned by the Pacific War. It is the first of several victims. Red Duncanites at Liang Mountain install old-style deuterium-lithium-tritium fusion reactors to avoid dependency on imported He-3.

2104: A 'crime war' between rival Triad factions on Mars secures the independence of the Martian Triads from Earth-based crime lords. Biotech Euphrates is contracted to grow a new Luna City using nanotechnology. Islandia space colony bans the ownership or indenture of bioroids.

2105: Nanodynamics establishes an ice-mining base on Jupiter's moon Callisto. Coup attempt against Zarubayev regime leads to a ruthless purge ('the Silence'). Many massacres are carried out by bioroid soldiers.

2106: Xoxing (making multiple self-aware mind emulations of a person) is made a felony in China. Similar laws are soon passed elsewhere. Muldoon expedition reaches KBO 112434 Shezbeth and discovers a primordial black hole inside it. European Union courts determine that sapient bioroids and infomorphs are 'persons' under the law, resulting in an outright ban on bioroid manufacture and ownership in the European Union.

2107: FBI-Interpol investigation of the source of 'brain bug' 3D printer programs are traced to the Greek Trojans, which are gaining a reputation as a marketplace for black market technology. The term 'Trojan Mafia' is coined. Hawking Industries founded to exploit Shezbeth mini black hole.

2108: Work begins on the Olympus Project, an Earth space elevator designed to touch ground in Kenya. Hawking Industries team installs a high-impulse fusion torch drive on 112434 Shezbeth, and begins accelerating it towards their headquarters in the Main Belt.

2109: Rust China police barely prevent Negative Growth terrorists from destroying the Mars space elevator with a nuclear device.

2110: Martian Triads expand their operations into the Main Belt. Xiao Chu launches expedition to Oort cloud in quest of mini black holes. Space crews of Triplanetary Lines and Solar Express unionize, forming the Farhauler's Guild. Mars Interplanetary successfully resists unionization by employing (or threatening to employ) bioroid crews.

2111: Astrobiologists studying Europa stumble upon pantropic life forms, exposing the Europa Project's existence. It is denounced by preservationists as a clear and present danger to the Europan ecology. Seventh Heaven founds New Covenant asteroid colony on 511 Davida.

2112: 76 people in Shaoxing, China are forcibly uploaded by a rogue 'emergent intelligence.' Exogenesis builds the first bush robot. Chinese agents trace tritium used in Negative Growth nuclear bomb to the Trojan Mafia. PLA Navy Space Force mounts a punitive strike against Liang Mountain using space dominance vehicles. Red Duncanite 'privateers' harass Chinese spacecraft. As Shezbeth passes Jupiter, a Red Duncanite privateer attempts to board her, dubbed a 'blackjacking' by the media.

2113: European Union begins using military force to suppress 'bioroid slavery' in areas without national government. Preservationist radicals calling themselves the Europa Defense Force arrive on Europa, and launch attacks against the Avatar Klusterkorp operations there. The 'War Under the Ice' begins. French Foreign Legion commandos raid a bioroid factory in L5.

January 2114: Eugenics Liberation Front terrorists threaten to unleash Lucifer Plague nanovirus in Istanbul, causing mass panic. Anti-Zarubayev revolt in Kazakstan is crushed by bioroid and cybershell troops.

February 2114: Xiao Chu builds Jiangli base on Titan. European Union authorities determine that many bioroid factories in L5 have moved to the Main Belt. After a month of heavy fighting, Kazakstan rebels retreat to sanctuaries in neighboring Uzbekistan, but continue to launch guerilla raids.

March 2114: Genetic Regulatory Agency investigation links bioroid trafficking to Martian Triad-controlled gas stations in the asteroid belt. Royal Navy Space Service sends a squadron to the belt to suppress the activity.

April 2114: Xiao Chu officials accuse the U.S. military of planting microbot spies in Jiangli, and harassing them with low-level reconnaissance flights.

May 2114: Zarubayev regime in Kazakstan launches assault on rebel sanctuaries in Uzbekistan, seizing control of a transborder 'security zone'. Rumors emerge that some government anti-guerilla units are 'special forces' composed of former rebels now controlled by puppet implants.

June 2114: The utility space vehicle Charlevoix is destroyed in the Greek Trojans, apparently by another orphaned AKV from the Pacific War.

July 2114: System Technologies AG sells Exogenesis to Nanodynamics for $16.7 billion.

August 2114: A property rights dispute between Nanodynamics management and former Exogenesis employees and infomorphs results in a tense standoff at Exogenesis Station on Vesta.

September 2114: Simsense superstar Xu Fang Shan is kidnapped and xoxed while vacationing in Spain. Black market mind emulations of her are sold throughout the system.

October 2114: Executive Decisions Inc. mercenaries under contract to Nanodynamics seize Exogenesis Station. Several ex-Exogenesis spacecraft scatter into the asteroid belt. Fighting is reported at Exogenesis bases elsewhere in the system.

November 2114: Royal Navy raids Martian Triad bioroid factory at Morrigan's Rock. Journalist Copernicus Jones escapes Europa Defense Force captivity. His testimony and recorded simsense experiences concerning the 'War Under the Ice' are broadcast on Telepresence Experience Network.

December 2114: Xiao Chu's Titan base manufactures a garrison of combat cybershells and bioroids, and demands USAF reconnaissance flights cease immediately. Infomorphs at Vostok Station in Antarctica report their humans are showing symptoms of massive nanovirus infection, then go offline.

In the last decade of the 21st century, humanity faced two of its greatest challenges. The first was the transformation from a single, evolved species to a multitude of artificial races. The second was the settlement of the vast reaches of the solar system. Away from the prying eyes of Earth, space-going transnationals developed technologies that governments feared to investigate but could not ignore, while bizarre posthuman cultures bloomed like exotic flowers. It was a time of wealth and adventure, of transformation and terror.

The timeline of Granite City Limits postulates no cataclysms that cause the fall of civilization as we know it. Its timeline begins in the not too distant future of 2025, and it paints a relatively optimistic picture of the future: the mass of humanity shares in the fruits of progress, while technological advances have neither choked in regulations nor devoured their creators. Resources are not running out, and fewer people spend their lives suffering the privations of sickness or hunger than in the 20th century. Through strenuous effort, cancer and AIDS were defeated, the nuclear doomsday clock has been stopped, and even the ozone layer is starting to recover.

Still, the world of 2155 is no utopia. Far too many of Earth's species became extinct before people thought to preserve their genes against a more enlightened future. Global warming is a constant battle, not from greenhouse gases, but from thermal emissions produced by cheap fusion power. Access to space has opened up new resources and opportunities, but created conflicts over who will use them, and for what. Wearable or implanted computers, augmented reality, virtual telepresence, and artificial intelligence have given everyone their own set of personal aides or companions, banishing 'twen-cen' concepts like 'office' and 'school'. Loneliness is rare. Rarer still is privacy, on a crowded Earth where every glance from a passer-by means being scanned by digital video and profiled by inquisitive data-mining software.

If anything, the gap between rich and poor has become greater. A wealthy person does not just have a better education - he may have better genes as well. A poorer person may have a wearable 'virtual interface' comp, but if he can't get work because his parents couldn't afford to tweak his genes for the aptitudes others have, he's still out of luck. With more and more jobs going to artificial intelligences, the competition for work can be fierce, especially as medical longevity has made 'retirement' and 'pensions' things of the past. Many countries have shortened work weeks and added social assistance programs that would seem extravagant by 20th-century standards, not in the name of charity but social stability.

In the advanced firstworld nations, the older generation spends much of their income on investments and health care. For the well-off, 'break-even' has been achieved: thanks to ever-advancing biotechnology, every year a person lives, his life expectancy is increased by an equivalent amount. There are millions of people a century old - or more - and still active and healthy today. Many nations are dominated by an upper stratum of conservative, potentially immortal plutocrats. The good news? More corporations and governments now plan for the long term than ever before, rather than the next quarter or the next election. The bad? Waiting for the 'old guard' to retire or die out is no longer an option, in politics, business, or academia. As a result, even moderate activists and reformers often resort to extreme measures, and radical social movements are making new strides.

That's all well and good for the hyper-developed world. In less fortunate regions, only a tiny elite can afford longevity or genetic enhancement, and things like computer implants and infomorphs do not enhance the citizens - they monitor and control them. That's if you're lucky enough to live in a well-organized tyranny. There are regions that have been swept beneath the tide of technology, shards of broken dreams that resemble the worst cyberpunk nightmares, polluted by the detritus of runaway nanotechnology and genetic engineering. AIDS may no longer stalk Africa, thanks to Ithemba's bioengineers, but that is scant comfort to nano-plague victims in Central Asia or brainbug addicts in Istanbul, Sao Paulo or east Los Angeles.

Discrimination by sex or skin color is a footnote in the history books, or so people like to believe, but speciesism and enslavement of sapient constructs is alive and well. Nor is the world at peace. Conventional warfare fought with robot tanks, microbot swarms, orbital kinetic kill clusters, and old-fashioned rifles have left millions dead in the last twenty years. Predatory infomorphs - orphaned military projects from the Pacific War - hide in the dark corners of the global datasphere. The discovery of primordial black holes has raised a specter of terrible new weapons that could not merely poison or devastate our planet, but utterly destroy it.

Yet things have changed. A future that might have been a zero-sum game on Earth has suddenly become infinite. For the first time in over two centuries, there is a wild new frontier: a place to rediscover a pioneer spirit, confront the challenge of alien environments, and build new lives, new societies, and new realities.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win… This is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not know what benefits await us… But space is there, and we are going to climb it.” – John F. Kennedy, Rice University, 1962

“We slipped and fell, and almost lost our nerve. Then we got up, and did the other things.” – Luu Sharon, professor of Earth history, University of Mars, 2155

The early 21st century saw an explosion of popular interest in space travel and colonization, thanks to advances in robotics technology. Missions to Mars, the moon, and the asteroids becgan to carry hundreds or thousands of tiny minirobots. Possessing one-way and two-way telepresence capabilities, they allowed paying customers - teletourists - to actually walk, crawl, hop, or drive across the surfaces of extraterrestrial worlds. Far from quenching a desire for a manned presence in space, interplanetary teletourism fanned its fires. Mars, the asteroid belt, and the deep beyond were no longer an impossible dream. They had become real: places not merely to explore, but to live.

The first American manned Mars mission was launched in 2039, preceded by unmanned supply rockets and robotic base-building. It ended in disaster in 2040. A software glitch caused a landing craft to collide with the main mission vehicle, the nuclear-powered Horus I, resulting in three deaths. The surviving astronauts were forced to take a long flight home. NASA's Mars program was crippled - but the Americans were not the only players in the game.

The People's Republic of China developed an increasingly active manned space program in the early 21st century. In the late 2020s, China acquired a large chunk of the commercial heavy satellite launch market, as the last shards of Russian space industry collapsed. Their Mars program was to be the social glue that joined many Chinas into one, in the wake of the reunification with Taiwan and unrest in the far western provinces. It would not, immediately, pay for itself, but would build to a sustainable level, with the hope of eventual economic benefit from such activities as mining deuterium and sale of real estate. Spinoffs from the effort were thought to give China the capability to match American aerospace power, should the western giant interfere with China's growing hegemony in the pacific.

Taking a leaf from early American “Mars Direct” concepts, China fired off a series of Long March VI heavy-lift boosters from Earth, throwing equipment, hydrogen fuel, water processors, and small groups of taikonauts onto the red planet. The first launch was the Chaosheng ('Pilgrimage') mission, which reached Mars in 2041. Over the next ten years, China launched dozens of rockets carrying people and supplies to Mars. The 'China Express' also transported paying passengers from other nations. Nor was China alone: the United States got its act together, and their Thunder Bird nuclear-powered mission arrived safely in 2042, supported by many follow-up missions.

As the human presence on Mars grew, national missions were followed by corporate enterprise. In partnership with Japan's Tenzan Heavy Industries, China Aerospace established a number of Mars-Earth cyclers, spacecraft in permanent orbits that traveled between near-Earth and near-Mars space. These began carrying as many as a hundred visitors per trip - colonists, here to stay.

Mars caught the imagination of China and America, but it was far from the only concern of the mid-21st century. In the 2030s and 2040s, the expanding world demand for energy had almost exhausted the accessible reserves of petroleum. Oil and natural gas were running out, but in many countries environmental concerns prevented the construction of new coal or nuclear fission plants. The solution proved to be fusion power, which bore fruit after decades of development. The first successful reactor program was led by a consortium of European and Japanese business and national interests. The U.S. government opted out, preferring to leave it to the private sector - which balked at the high start-up costs.

“First generation” prototype fusion reactors fueled by deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen) became operational in the 2040s. They were cheap to fuel, with deuterium being refined at modest expense from sea water, and the rare isotope tritium being 'bred' by jacketing the reactor with lithium. However, much of the D-T reactor's output was in the form of neutron radiation. Less radiation was produced than a fission reactor, but D-T reactors proved to be politically unacceptable, as well as complex, expensive to run, and far too heavy for use in space. Nevertheless, they were a stepping stone to a “second generation” reactor. This used the deuterium-helium-3 reaction, which required a higher ignition point, and was thus more difficult to achieve.

The first of these new D-He-3 reactors was built at Tomakomai (Hokkaido, Japan) and went online in 2054. Its energy was released in the form of charged particles, which could be easily harnessed for power. It was more compact, safer, and required less maintenance. There was only one catch: it had to be fueled not just with deuterium but also with the exceedingly rare isotope helium-3, which was available only in minute quantities on Earth.

Fortunately, He-3 was far more abundant elsewhere. The solar wind had been blowing atoms of He-3 across the system for billions of years. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field prevented these particles from reaching our planet's surface, but on airless Luna, eons of exposure had impregnated the moon's regolith (its 'soil') with hundreds of thousands of tons of He-3. A single pound would allow a second-generation fusion reactor to produce 74 million kilowatt-hours of clean, safe energy. This made He-3 worth over a billion dollars a ton - a prospect that meant shipping it down from Luna was a viable option.

In the 2030s and 2040s, the availability of cheap nanofactured composites had given birth to a new generation of reusable space launchers. These craft - some powered by ground-based lasers, others by conventional rockets - drastically reduced the cost of shipping mass into orbit, from $10,000 a pound in 2001 to less than $500 in 2050. As a result, the now-decrepit International Space Station was joined by a growing cluster of manned and robotic space factories and labs. There was also a small unmanned permanent moon base, the Tsiolkovsky Farside Array, a multinational observation facility established by American, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and European space agencies.

While Mars consumed the imaginations (and occasional lives) of Americans and Chinese, a number of visionary transnational companies saw that the infrastructure now existed for corporate development in translunar space. The money (and in Europe and Japan, the political will) was found. An alliance of aerospace and fusion power companies arrived on Luna with mining robots and human engineers. They established a pair of permanent lunar bases and went to work. Thousands of tons of Lunar regolith had to be excavated and baked to get even a few pounds of He-3, but the process also liberated vast quantities of oxygen and smaller amounts of nitrogen and carbon, useful for agriculture, rocket fuel, and manufacturing. By the 2060s, those nations and transnationals that had invested in Lunar mining turned the moon into a self-sustaining venture which paid immense dividends.

Fusion power, fueled by Luna, began to transform the Earth. Its most dramatic result was the cheap energy necessary to sustain existing industrial growth, to reclaim areas lost to creeping deserts by making desalination plants economically viable, ad to halt the environmental degradation produced by the burning of fossil fuels. A more subtle result of fusion energy was to alter the balance of power between nations and corporations, raising up those who had chosen to cast their bread on the infinite waters of space.

In 2055, there were thousands of people living and working off Earth: a few hundred on Luna, several hundred more in various orbital and Lagrange-point stations, and a few dozen lonely souls on long-range asteroid survey and retrieval missions. The largest population was on the Red Planet: over 4,000 pioneers, more than half from China.

The first generation of Martians studied the planet's geology (or 'areology'), grew plants in greenhouses, built underground habitats, tapped aquifers, tested new equipment, established model industrial parks, and entertained 10 billion people with the mid-21st-century version of reality television. They searched diligently for signs of past or present life. They did not find it… but Mars was a big planet, and some continued to hope.

The majority of the new Martians were scientists, engineers, and biotechnicians, but an increasing number had arrived not merely to study Mars, but to develop it. The most contentious issue facing Martian colonists and entrepreneurs (whether they came from Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, or Houston) was the question of terraforming. Should Mars be transformed into another Earth? Or would that hopelessly prejudice the continued (if unsuccessful) search for Martian life and destroy a unique planetary environment?

The existence of multiple science bases on Mars, each with different agendas, hampered consensus. Public opinion in America, China, Japan, and Europe was torn between those who favored preserving the pristine Martian environment, in the hope of finding life, and those who saw the terraforming of Mars as opening a new frontier. American space advocates believed the 'threat' of a 'Red Mars' should spur a crash U.S. program to settle the planet, and that the only way to do that would be by promising to terraform the surface. In the middle stood China's political-economic elite, with an interest not so much in terraforming as in the transformation of Mars into a giant industrial park. Visionary Chinese had begun to speak of Mars as 'Rust China' - the new frontier for a new millenium, one that would eventually eclipse the thriving industrial cities of the south coast.

But in the end, it was not the Chinese or American government that called the shots on Mars, but the people living there. Two visions collided, and changed the destiny of mankind.

The Ares Conspiracy was a multinational cabal of Martian colonists, primarily genetic engineers and planetary scientists, who believed that terraforming would be forever mired in bureaucratic red tape and international wrangling. For two years, they planned and initiated terraforming techniques designed to trigger polar cap meltdown, including methane-producing bacteria, black, sun-absorbing lichen, and concealed robot-manufactured CFC factories in the wilderness. They had hoped to remain anonymous, but their activities proved impossible to hide. Some hailed them as visionaries. Others denounced them for an act of 'planetary ecocide', referred to the lichen and bacteria as 'the Ares Plague', and called for their arrest, deportation to Earth, and worse.

The result was a near-insurrection on Mars. As tension mounted, a way out was offered by Captain Latisha Fox, who commanded the NASA deep-space operations vehicle Michael Collins, in Mars orbit. Fifty-two of the conspirators chose to leave on the Collins rather than face arrest. Captain Fox's defiance of her superior officers, and her epic flight to the asteroid belt, in which overloaded life-support systems nearly led to disaster, is now a legend. The exiles were able to abscond with a substantial quantity of equipment, including state-of-the-art industrial robots and genetic-engineering gear meant for the Mars colony. They chose as their destination an unmanned Tenzan Heavy Industries outpost located on the asteroid Ceres in the Main Belt. They renamed it Silas Duncan Station, which Fox proclaimed 'free of all government and gravity.'

Outrage at the actions of the ares Conspiracy led to the birth of the Preservationist Movement. Initially formed from activists who had opposed the use of nuclear reactors in space, they grew into a global coalition of environmentalists, planetary scientists, bioethicists, and astrobiologists who deplored the unilateral transformation of the Martian environment. Preservationists vowed to prevent further desecration of other planetary bodies. Their greatest success was pushing through the sixth protocol to the Revised Outer Space Treaty, which strictly prohibited terraforming other planets without international consensus. They would later expand their interests beyond the protection of planets to the protection of species genomes, including that of humanity. Preservationist ideology would ultimately lead to the creation of Europe's Genetic Regulatory Agency… but that was decades in the future. Now they looked upon what they saw as a ruined Mars, and wept.

Mars wept too: as the bacteria spread, temperatures rose, ice began to thaw, and advocates of terraforming rejoiced. China and America spent much of a decade in half-hearted studies of how best to reverse what the Ares bioengineers had wrought. Then they gave up. It was obvious that the Martian environment would, eventually, be hopelessly altered. Global public opinion had demonized the Ares Conspiracy as radicals, but a majority on Earth and Mars supported continuing the terraforming after the fait accompli.

The European Union had stayed out of the Mars controversy: most individual Europeans tended to support the Preservationist view, but Europe's space advocates were settling the moon, and sending missions to Mercuty - where, everyone agreed, there was no likelihood of life. America's Martian passion, strongly felt, was also diverted: the nation was becoming tired of Mars scandals. The United States became embroiled in a nasty war in South America, and U.S. voters became more interested in watching Marine Corps teletrooper operations in the Andes than bacteria multiplying and ice melting on Mars.

Not so China. In 2071, Beijing announced an ambitious program aimed at further accelerating the terraforming of Mars, with the ultimate goal of human settlement. This decision was denounced by Preservationists worldwide, but in 2072, the fusion-powered heavy transport vehicle Huayang ('positive energy of the people') began shuttling large numbers of Chinese colonists to Mars. Built around the latest Euro-Japanese fusion reactor, the Huayang and her many sister ships were capable of ferrying colonists and supplies to Mars in under two months. Chinese colonization was backed up by a plan to divert ice asteroids from the Kuiper Belt and an ambitious program of pantropy aimed at genetically engineering humans to the evolving Martian environment. Pantropic ideology also took hold on Ceres, where the exiled 'Duncanite' genetic engineers of the Ares Conspiracy had begun to create their own new form of space-adapted human, the 'Tennin'.

The development of D-He-3 fusion had provided a safe, compact, and theoretically inexhaustible energy source. Unfortunately, He-3 fuel was still very expensive. The moon's regolith held upwards of a million tons of He-3, but the extensive refining that was required limited the profitability of the operation. Moreover, although the reserves provided more energy than the world's entire supply (known and estimated) of fossil fuels, the planet's energy consumption was effectively doubling every 20 years.

No one was more aware of the high cost of fusion energy than the United States. The decision of America to opt-out of the aneutronic fusion power and lunar mining projects had not been entirely misguided. The cost of processing millions of tons of Lunar regolith for a few pounds of He-3 remained enormous, even when done largely by autonomous robots built on Luna. Nevertheless, the decision had its price: it left America's energy needs depending on rapidly waning fossil fuels and foreign He-3 imports. Attempts to establish a solar power consortium foundered on Preservationist protests against beaming microwaves into Earth's atmosphere. While some American firms had invested in Lunar He-3 mining, they could not afford to compete with the head start that System Technologies A.G. and its partners possessed. America needed another source of He-3, one that did not require the massive and expensive refining process that lunar regolith mining represented.

He-3 existed in a much purer state in the atmospheres of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Here for the taking were virtually unlimited quantities of the element - if it could be reached. The obstacles were formidable. Jupiter was the closest gas giant. Unfortunately, as the largest planet in the solar system, it had a deep gravity well which added a major penalty to any vessel attempting to skim its atmosphere and return with cargo. Moreover, Jupiter's magnetosphere created intense radiation belts that made any close approach hazardous, and its atmosphere was alive with terrible storms that made a terrestrial hurricane look like a child's sneeze. There was no way that a gas-mining operation could succeed. Neptune and Uranus were smaller and safer, but so distant that operations seemed economically unfeasible. That left one choice: ringed Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, sixth from the sun. Its shallower gravity well and less-fierce radiation made it more attractive than Jupiter for helium miners willing to take the risk. It also offered a second prize: its planet-sized moon Titan, the only rocky world in the solar system besides Earth and Venus to have a dense atmosphere, albeit an unbreathable smog of nitrogen and methane. Titan's seas resembled an ice-cream-sundae version of the primordial soup that had spawned life on Earth. It was rich in industrial chemicals, and potentially more hospitable to life than Mars… save for its terrible -300F cold.

Stung by Chinese and European successes in space, the American public had the will to embark on a new project. Thanks to successful robot exploration of Europa and Titan in the early 21st century, the American aerospace industry had experience near the gas giants. In 2085, the United States inaugurated the National Atmospheric Helium Gas Initiative (NAHGI), the largest government project since the end of World War II. Its goals were to free America (Brazil, parts of Canada, and Mexico opted in) from dependence on Lunar He-3 and foreign oil, and secure Saturn, 'The Persian Gulf of the Solar System,' as the source of America's (and the world's) energy needs for the foreseeable future.

NAHGI began with the construction of a robot outpost and factory on Titan. Known as Huygens Base, its purpose was to control, maintain, and (later) build drone scoop systems to mine helium-3 from Saturn and materials from the other Saturnian moons. It was managed by Titan Consortium, a coalition of government and industry dominated by two large corporations: Nanodynamics and Columbia Aerospace. The former oversaw the construction and operation of Huygens, while the latter developed the drone scoops and robot tankers which would operate from the newly built Cassini Station, a partner facility in close orbit around Saturn.

With the assistance of late-21st-century construction robots and experienced space workers (including a small Duncanite contingent), the two facilities were completed in 2095, a mere four years late and 52 billion dollars over budget - an amazing success. The following year, the first successful drone scoop test was completed, using a robot nuclear rocket to dive into Saturn's atmosphere and scoop up tons of gas giant atmosphere, retrieving more He-3 in a single day than System Technologies could process in a month. Seven months later, both Huygens Base and Cassini Station were fully operational. In 2096 the first of many Columbia-Nanodynamics robot gas tankers began boosting back to Earth-Lunar space. The price of fusion energy - and the influence of the Luna combines - was about to take a nosedive.

Gas tankers were heading Earthward, but the majority of the Titan Consortium's construction crews and administrators stayed behind. The original concept had been a largely automated station and transport operation plus a small manned scientific base, but unforeseen breakdowns and difficulties with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in NAHGI's early years resulted in a need to retain a larger than expected technical staff on Titan itself. Initial accommodations were spartan (although salaries were high), and required a regular rotation of crews back to Martian or Earth-Lunar space. This was both disruptive and expensive, and so a decision was made to improve Huygens' habitability with the eventual goal of making it fully self-sufficient.

Almost by accident, America had established a permanent human colony in the outer system. Initially an adjunct to the He-3 business, the rest of the colony began to show considerable profit in the 2100s, when Titan began exporting nitrogen and other compounds (and later industrial and luxury agricultural products) to space habitats in the asteroids and outer system.

The most dramatic contribution that NAHGI made was to space travel. The expansion of human settlement to the outer system made fusion drives more necessary. In the 2060s, only a few of the largest spacecraft had used fusion engines. The 2090s, with drive, reactor, and fuel prices falling, saw a revolution in the design of deep space vessels, as more and more fusion drive spacecraft were built. The result was a revolution comparable to the supplanting of sails by steam. The slow cyclers, fission drives, and plasma sails that had taken months to cross the solar system were rendered obsolete, replaced by the new 'fasthaulers' that could manage the same trip in a matter of weeks. Only for crossing the vast distances to the outer edge of the system (such as missions to the Kuiper Belt and beyond) would travel times still be measured in years and decades.

With travel increasingly convenient, hundreds of thousands of people began to emigrate beyond Earth-Lunar space. China developed the immense Zhong-guang class of heavy space transport vehicles, capable of carrying 5,000 colonists (frozen in nanostasis) per voyage. The first Solar Express fastliners were developed, carrying time-vital packages, business travelers, and tourists. A trip to Mars or Titan became no stranger than a transatlantic steamship journey at the dawn of the 20th century. The first private interplanetary spacecraft, the Executive Space Vehicles, began to appear. Designed to transport officials and diplomats to business meetings - light-speed lag made face-to-face vital - an ESV also became a coveted status symbol for the system's billionaires and transnational executives.

Space was not the only place experiencing radical change. The 2070s and 2080s were a period of turbulence on Earth as well. Nations were both growing into larger alliances and fragmenting internally. States and provinces within nations broke into smaller units, leading to a limited return of the old 'free city' concept. As longevity ended the concept of 'retirement', the younger generation sought new forms of political power aimed at breaking the stranglehold of patronage and connections. A new, profound understanding of the way that ideas propagated through individuals and society - memetic theory - allowed politicians, social activists, and religious leaders to package and deliver their messages as never before.

“The transnationals create a false scarcity economy, placing barcodes and v-tags on everything from minifacturing software to genomes, claiming copyright on our common heritage of prosperity. We expose the real world, the world of abundance, as we strive to assemble a non-polluting molecular socioeconomic system. They brand us criminals, but we are reality hackers, and we see the singularity forming. So can they! As we embrace inevitable transformation into an unknowable sphere of posthuman consciousness, we must be on guard to prevent the corruption of our destiny into nothing more than a frozen hyperemulation of the present. We seek a just transcendence! Information must be free before we can become information!” – Infosocialist activist Pradhana Na Songkla, at the Global Conference for Economic Displacement, telepresence from Bangkok/Thailand, 2096

In the 2050s, the socioeconomic philosophy of infosocialism began to gain adherents world wide. A nationalization of the idea that 'information wants to be free,' infosocialism failed to make much political headway in the highly developed nations. However, in the 2060s, a new incarnation of infosocialism - popularized under the name 'nanosocialism' - gained adherents in Thailand and Indonesia, and later Peru and Vietnam, and also made strong headway in other countries. Friction occurred between nanosocialist countries and other nations over their radically different treatment of intellectual property rights and perceived willingness to tolerate piracy of genetics, software, nanomachines, and other technologies. Trade sanctions against nanosocialist nations led to a siege mentality, resulting in the formation of a tight bloc of countries with nanosocialist governments: the Transpacific Socialist Alliance, or TSA.

A variety of issues, chiefly Australia's actions to promote the formation of breakaway Indonesian microstates and the growth of Chinese naval power following its absorption of Taiwan, led the TSA powers into a series of confrontations with their Asia-Pacific neighbors. TSA nations Thailand and Indonesia began developing and acquiring bionanotechnological weapons, to counterbalance Chinese numbers and Australian-Japanese technology, as well as building up their own space assets. The TSA refused to confirm the existence of their nanovirus program, and a series of diplomatic confrontations led by China (who demanded international inspection) did not produce the desired result.

In 2099, Chinese intelligence discovered the location of the Thai-led nanovirus program, the TSA Bioweapons Directorate. Acting 'in the interest of global peace and nanotechnological nonproliferation', China launched a strike on the facility using kinetic-kill orbital weapon clusters. However, Beijing had underestimated TSA resolve, and the 'surgical strike' triggered full-scale war.

The Pacific War was characterized by information war, special forces, submarine and orbital space actions, but (except for fierce ground fighting on the China-Vietnam border), relatively low civilian casualties. A large part of this was the result of other nations actively using their own space defense platforms and ground-based laser weapons to intercept and destroy stray missiles. Nuclear weapons were not used, but some targeted nano-bio weapons were released, with effects that persisted beyond the conflict.

The United States enacted sanctions against both China and the TSA, of which the most severe was was an energy blockade that cut off supplies of He-3. The measures had an impact on China's Martian colonies, but an even more severe effect on the TSA, since their solar power network had been crippled in the first hour of the orbital battle. Most of the TSA's space weapons were destroyed by superior Chinese forces, but the TSA's aging stock of second-hand French-made Autonomous Kill Vehicles had been upgraded with new infomorph software, and these fought on even after their command centers were destroyed. However, the war on the ground had turned in China's favor. Despite a limited use of nanovirus weapons by desperate TSA commanders, Chinese People's Liberation Army forces pushed deep into Thailand and Vietnam. As casualties mounted, the Thai government collapsed in an internal coup, and withdrew from the TSA. Vietnam sued for piece and Indonesia took up leadership of the bloc. In 2085, the war ended in a European Union-negotiated ceasefire.

The Pacific War shocked the world. Over 316,000 people died in the war (and more in its aftermath), and the economic damage ran to hundreds of billions of dollars. The People's Republic of China claimed victory: it had lost soldiers, ships, and space assets, but achieved its objective, and neither mainland China nor Taiwan suffered heavy attack. In contrast, Thailand and Vietnam had suffered severe losses in infrastructure, and the other TSA powers were not unscathed. However, they had also not been defeated: they denounced Chinese aggression, foreswore the excesses of the Bioweapons Directorate as the work of militarists in the now-purged Thai government, and began to rebuild. Nanosocialists worldwide condemned the Chinese as hegemonists and offered support - and aid - to the TSA. Others were not so sanguine: fearing both China and a resurgent TSA, the governments of Australia, Korea, and Japan strengthened existing ties within a formal structure known as the Pacific Rim Alliance.

In 2082, infrared astronomer Dr. Shiyomi Muldoon, working at the TSA's Chantarang Space University, discovered an anomoly. 2082 VK8 was an asteroid-like body with an unusually high temperature for its location: the cold reaches of the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Further study showed this object, later named 112434 Shezbeth, was a source of radioactivity. It was intriguing enough that Muldoon was able to get funds from the Thai government for an expedition. Then came the Pacific War, and in the confused orbital fighting, Chantarang was targeted by a Chinese particle beam.

Counting her blessings that she wasn't aboard at the time, Muldoon refused to give up. Though the discovery's association with the TSA was an obstacle to mainstream funding, she nevertheless managed to put together an unlikely coalition of backers. Her spacecraft was the antique deep space operations vehicle Alan B. Shepard, donated by eccentric billionaire David Mbengi; he'd planned to refurbish her as a yacht, but had never gotten around to it. A trio of Christian hyperevolutionist ministers from the Seventh Heaven L5 colony provided her with a crew of ghosts and sapient AIs (to save on life support). One corporate sponsor came through: the British aerospace company Vosper-Babbage lent her mining cybershells and donated her spacecraft's fuel.

Muldoon's expedition reached 112434 Shezbeth in 2106. Its rocky surface had odd fracture patterns, but due to its stable orbit it had remained largely untouched since the birth of the solar system. Instruments showed anomalous gamma radiation readings. Most of all, it appeared to mass roughly twice what its density would indicate. Muldoon was pleased: her theory was correct. The asteroid held a primordial black hole. Muldoon and her backers now owned an atom-sized remnant of the Big Bang. While the vast majority of such objects should have evaporated in a storm of Hawking radiation long ago, Muldoon believed the Shezbeth anomaly had extended its lifespan by feeding on the asteroid itself, taking in just enough matter to keep it from evaporating.

It was a priceless commodity, both as a scientific curiosity and for its potential utility in high-energy physics experiments. The partners formed a corporation, Hawking Industries, to exploit the hole. A scinetific foundation was established to study it… and to look for others.

By 2115, six other mini-black holes have been detected, most in the more distant Oort Cloud. Governments, corporations, and would-be prospectors raced to be the first to claim them, even as cosmologists debate the implications. Meanwhile, scientists continue to study the Shezbeth hole.

The concept of 'waves', first coined by Alvin Toffler, is a popular term for the techno-social complex that determines the nature of an entire civilization. These are the primary technologies in each Wave:

• First Wave: Labor-intensive agriculture.
• Second Wave: Industrial manufacturing.
• Third Wave: Digital computers and networks.
• Fourth Wave: Genetic engineering and biotechnology.
• Fifth Wave: Artificial sapience and nanotechnology.

In the 2100s, the economies of the hyperdeveloped nations (led by the European Union, but including the United States, Japan, most space colonies and parts of China) were booming, with GNPs several times greater than in 2001. Quantum computers, microbot labor, cheap fusion power, asteroid resources, space-based manufacturing, memetic education, and emergent nanotechnology resulted in unparalleled growth. Symbolizing this was China's Martian Space Elevator: a giant nanofactured elevator that linked planet and sky.

Earth was still the center of the solar system, with 11 billion people forming a compact information gestalt. The data-flow cuture of the mother planet was something space could not match: speed-of-light lag meant that it was Earth and Earth orbit where ideas could propagate the most quickly, with Mars not far behind. Disturbingly to some, the pace of development was increasingly set by posthuman technologies: pantropic engineering, robotics, self-aware artificial intelligence. On Earth, and to a lesser extent Luna and Mars, powerful governments and non-governmental forces acted to keep these in check, voluntarily accepting some restraints on technology, particularly self-aware AI. Still, many feared the idea of Singularity, a point at which development would spiral out of control, and humanity would change beyond recognition.

“Homo sapiens is a lifestyle choice.” – Chance Mackintosh, transhumanist activist

By 2155, biotechnology had been propelled into areas once considered radical by human nature and market forces. Everyone wants to live longer and healthier, and improve the lot of their children, and in the 21st century, human genetic engineering gradually became able to grant both wishes. As ethics struggled to keep pace with desire, the rich funded radical biotechnology procedures, including somatic genetic engineering, to ensure their children were free of genetic diseases, and gene therapy, to reset the aging clockwithin their own cells.

The mass-market acceptance of biotech products in wealthy nations was initially hindered by fear of genetically modified organisms. Europe did not need GMO crops - but high-population nations like Bangladesh, China, and India did, and desperately so. Buying GMOs from multinational biotech firms initially, they soon developed a sophisticated genetic engineering industry of their own. This helped diffuse biotechnology expertise worldwide, with unpredictable consequences.

If the driving force behind Earthside human genetic engineering (HuGE) was health care and longevity, the power behind offworld HuGE was pantropy, the adaptation of terrestrial life for extraterrestrial and harsh terrestrial environments. There were some ideological pantropists, such as the Green Duncanites of Silas Duncan Station, and many in the growing ranks of the transhumanist movement. Even some moderate preservationists supported HuGE as the lesser of two evils: modify man, but leave worlds or ecosystems intact. However, ideology was not the main force driving pantropy. Economics was. Pantropic modifications made humans and animals tolerant of extreme environments, saving vast amount of money.

An altered human could not survive long on a partly terraformed Mars without some degree of artificial protection; he certainly could not breathe vacuum. However, genetic engineering and bionanotechnology could produce muscles and bones that suffered less debilitation in microgravity, or a physiology more tolerant of sudden pressure loss, radiation exposure, or carbon-dioxide poisoning. In turn, this went a long way toward making colonists feel at home, and reduced the dependence on expensive life support and the high costs of multiply redundant safety systems. The so-called 'calcium hack' that allowed Duncanite parahumans to survive in microgravity or zero-gee without bone degeneration was the most important of these modifications, drastically lowering construction costs of spacecraft and space stations. The same was true, to a greater or lesser extent, of other harsh environments. Pantropy lowered life support costs to the point where it was affordable and desirable to colonize space with humans (or near-humans) rather than machines.

Contrary to some predictions, sapient artificial intelligence has not yet superseded humanity. One reason is that Moore's Law (which predicted that computing power would double every year or two) eventually failed. Computers continued to get better, but the growth curve flattened out. More important, progress in truly human-superior AI turned out to be very difficult. It was hard to figure out a way to use the theoretical computational ability of a machine to produce true superintelligence. Moreover, humans themselves were getting smarter. While highly intelligent AI exists, no one has yet achieved one that is an order of magnitude faster and smarter than a human who is assisted by the latest in brain implants, mind-enhancing drugs, and networked nonsapient AIs.

So far, the 'singularity' once imagined by author Vernor Vinge - a point where change occurs so rapidly that we cannot see or comprehend what lies beyond it - has yet to occur. However, as technology continues to mature, there's no telling when - or if - such a point may be reached.

Life extension and pantropy together pushed the frontiers of HuGE outward. On Earth the tide of public opinion ebbed and flowed between revulsion, indignation, fascination, and toleration.

Standards change, and what was unthinkable in one generation becomes merely eccentric and finally unremarkable. In 2001, cloning a human was a scandal, sex change operations were still controversial, and for many people, the idea of prenatal genetic engineering to prevent diseases in children was blasphemy. In 2065, it was a scandal that national health plans did not provide for genefixing every newborn to wipe out hereditary diseases; elections were fought over how to pay for it. An average citizen of a well-off nation could go to a clinic and undergo nanomedicine treatments to live a longer, healthier life. If he was a millionaire, he could also go to Quito or Bangkok or Cape Town and clone a dead spouse, grow a dog that talked, or arrange for his child to be born with a strong tendency toward beauty, mental stability, and mathematical aptitude. By 2115, those procedures were routine - but if a person wanted to build a custom bioroid sex toy, or upload his mind into a spaceship, or to give birth to a baby dragon, he would need to visit one of the more permissive transhuman enclaves - many no longer located offshore, but offworld.

Since the turbulent 2060s, a supranational body, the Genetic Regulatory Agency, has exercised a degree of influence on Earth, especially in the European Union. There are still some illegal 'black clinics' in certain parts of Earth, but by the dawn of the 22nd century, the cutting edge of illicit HuGE had already moved far offworld: to the orbital fringe, L5, and the Duncanite enclaves in the asteroids and Trojan points.

In many eyes, the central question of the world of 2155 is the definition of humanity. Hundreds of modified human germlines and dozens of parahuman species now exist. There is intelligent software that seems to be self-aware; there are gengineered beasts with the knowledge of good and evil, not to mention voices and opposable thumbs. Is an intelligent computer program, a talking dog, or a self-aware bioroid a machine, a pet, a slave? Are they our children, or our future?

A conflict is brewing that may dwarf the 19th- and 20th-century struggles over slavery and apartheid. While past differences between the shades of human ethnicity is a matter of thoughtless prejudice, those between artificial constructs and humans are real and demonstrable. If a bioroid or artificial intelligence is designed to be the slight inferior of a human, is it wrong to treat it as subhuman? If it is a potential superior, should it be allowed the freedom to do as it pleases, even to reproduce? There are no easy answers.