Oh Tom Kratman No [COMMISSION]

A map commissioned by Agentdark, who wrote the writeup below. It's based on Kratman's Carrera series; Agentdark kept as close to the series as possible, while making a few changes and educated guesses. I didn't do much but make the map and add some annotations. Both Agentdark and myself regard this as black comedy, so don’t take it too seriously. If you're interested in your own commission, see this post and send me a message.

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It is the year 2552 and Earth is under the benevolent rule of the Consensus, the governing body that evolved from the United Nations Security Council in 2092. Standing where we are in 2012, very few could predict that eventually the United Nations would rule Earth as a hereditary aristocracy. So, first we have to figure out how exactly the United Nations came to rule the world.

In 2032, an unmanned, automated NASA vessel Christopher Columbus that was both an experiment in limited artificial intelligence and solar sail technology vanished in the shadow of Europa. The vessel’s disappearance was a complete mystery for 3 years, until controllers at Houston received a signal. The vessel had discovered a wormhole near Europa. The Wormhole led to a new world called Terra Nova, remarkably earth like, and mostly importantly needing no terraforming whatsoever. It was obvious upon reviewing the data that as the planet had been seeded with some life from Earth’s ancient past, that alien life was responsible in some ways. However, whatever reason, nobody on Earth really thought about this very deeply. (1).

However, the discovery of this new world was in some ways a complete godsend for the European Union. Economically battered by years of debt crisis, a growing social welfare state, mismanaged spending and a lopsided population that even with positive population growth measures, many of Europe’s youngest were leaving for the United States, Russia and Australia, where lower tax rates and less government interventionism led to lower unemployment and a drive to succeed.

The European President Michele Wallenstein (2) really hated the idea that people could have a strong economy and not listen to the European Union and the United Nations, and wanted to do what she could to weaken the more economically competitive parts of the world. Also President Paul Ryan in 2029 threw the United Nations out of New York because of an argument over UN diplomatic parking tickets. So Michele Wallenstien and Koji Annan (3), the UN Secretary General, came up with a plan. Planting the idea of international joint colonization of the new world to the rest of the international community, the idea kicked off. It was at this point that the UN was able to build contacts with a number of the worlds largest corporations, especially those within the high end computer manufacturing sector and bio-technology. Actual progressives would start raising some questions about this, but the were shouted down as the UN had already boarded the crazy train. Next stop, hereditary aristocracy.

So for the next 50 years, over 250,000,000 people were moved off world to Terra Nova on a series of massive bulk carriers that had cryogenic support units to carry more people. While many of these were volunteers, the European Union and a few other governments took the chance to “encourage” certain people to go off world. As well, the departure of many people from the developed world and the increased international cooperation led to the growing power of the United Nations. During this time Christianity was growing less popular for some reason, and most of Israel, seeing the writing on the wall, packed up and left in mass for Terra Nova. Also the Monarchies of most of the world sent branch members to Terra Nova, ranging from the British Crown to Tsar Putin III’s heir (4) The rest was destroyed during the final Israel-Arab conflict in 2088, with the UN activity supporting the Arabs, as Israel was a representative of colonial-imperialism and did not abide by the new global consensus. Also the Israelis had never played ball and developed their own high end computer manufacturing infrastructure, so silicon valley was happy to see some competition go up in a mushroom cloud.

While at first colonization had been willing by many, by the late 2070s, even in the parts of the world that had at first opposed the UN, Transnational Progressive Groups that were funded or supported by the Byzantine power structure of the UN-Corporate alliance and political movements had been swept to power and were deporting threatening right wing people, actual progressives or even just more national minded citizens to terra nova. To the point where the Mayor of Boston was able to have everyone who voted Republican or socialist in the last presidential election in the city deported to Terra Nova.

In 2088, war broke out on Terra Nova, with the colonists rising in masse against the UN government, and a devastating war killing a fair number of people. The end result of the war was that while the colony was knocked back to around 1650 for the most part in technology, the UN peacekeepers took such heavy casualties that the political will to control the planet was lost, and the UN retreated to a small island base and the UN Peacekeeping Fleet in orbit over Terra Nova.

After that, what happens on Terra Nova is mostly irrelevant to the rest of this. The Colony ships were retired in orbit around the moon as nobody really wanted to dump anyone else on Terra Nova.

So, in 2090, the United Nations Security Council, along with a number of international organizations including the European Union, African Union, World Food Organization, IMF, World Bank, Some other ones merged into one government. The following resolutions were passed.

1. Nationalities and nation states were irrelevant in the new United Earth, and would be replaced with UN governorships.

2. Certain High Offices in the United Earth Government would be hereditary, as some families were abler to display proper progressive credentials then others. This included all of the seats in the Consensus, the new General Assembly, the heads of the major organizations, and a few religious posts.

3. Christianity and Judaism were illegal, as tools of the imperialist-reactionary forces.

4. The only legal faiths of the world were Islam, Buddhism, Neo-Paganism, Atheism, traditional animist/spiritualism, and Druidism.

While the Histories of 2552 would claim that this transition was peaceful, it was anything but. Nuclear weapons were used to subdue parts of the American Deep South, Siberia and Japan. Australia was also invaded by a Peacekeeping force of troops from Southeast Asia for a more equitable distribution of its resources, and despite the plucky fight of a number of rebel groups, Australia was mostly crushed. A lot of Christians went underground. (5) A lot of actual liberals and progressives who had not joined the new Consensus were prosecuted almost worse then anyone else, as they were claimed to be traitors to the new world order.

450 years have passed.

The United Earth Government, if seen from a distance is undergoing a never ending belle époque of sorts. The pinnacle of human achievement has been reached, a free and equitable future for all of humanity. This is of course, a total lie. In the year 2552, the world population is officially 650 million (the number is closer to a billion, but nobody in the Consensus is taking a good count of the regressed, barbarian areas). The population was achieved by a mixture of available live extension technology, available at least to 1st and 2nd class citizens, a global increase in living standards after the die offs during the “troubles”, and using the World Health Organization to “ensure” that population numbers dropped by using careful viral targeting to render percentages of the world sterile.

The Hereditary nature of the Consensus has ensured that by 2200, the world had an actual caste system. 1st class citizens make up the ruling elite, the new nobility of the world. They have given up any pretentions of fair titles, for example, the Duke of Nicaragua is also the Duke of the World Food Organization. The Houses of Annan has ruled United Earth for 450 years, and Secretary General Kofi Annan II, 5th of his line is a healthy 220 years old, and if he does not get assassinated like his father, will likely see 5 centuries.

The 2nd Class Citizens are High Tier Administrators, and constitute a lower nobility of a sorts.

The 3rd class citizens are the middle class, and there are around a 100,000,000 of them.

4th through 6th class citizens constitute the poor and working class of the United Nations. Nominally equal, they are essentially serfs of a Dark Enlightenment, with an extensive passbook system, biometric scanners, secret police, and conscription in the UN peacekeepers keeping them in line. 6th Class citizens are actually slaves and political prisoners, with it being perfectly legal for a 3rd, 2nd or 1st class citizen to outright own a 6th class. Also, designer drugs, virtual reality immersion chambers, gladiatorial combat, hunting expeditions to chaos zones is all part of the package of sensation and escapism available to the upper classes.

The ruling elite of United Earth is hopelessly decadent. Life extension technology, and comparatively low rates of conflict have led to a massive increase in decadence. The annual Christmas orgy (6) is very popular amongst the Druids and the Neopagans, and every year some branches of the revived faith of the Aztecs and the Orthodox Druids hold a blood sacrifice at the spot were the last Pope, Peter II was burned at the stake as an Imperialist. (7). The Caliph of Rome, as the spiritual head of Islam, should express some issues with this, but he is part of the Consensus, and is not bothered by any of this. (8).

In theory, even the 4th through 6th class citizens have freedom of speech, freedom from hunger, freedom to practice religion in terms of legal religions, and free access to a fair trial. In reality they are basically at the whims of the ruling classes. A lack of conflict and a devotion to decadence and art has ensured that Earth’s scientific basis has effectively collapsed and the Peacekeepers are run by the nobility, so even the few officers that are competent are in much smaller number to the Princes and Lords who run the different regiments. Few scientific advancements have been made in the last few hundred years, and even the last space warship for the UN Peacekeeping Fleet over Terra Nova is 100 years old now. Some technological capability is even lost or even being lost, with the ability to make a New Warship likely gone, and the knowledge to make genetically engineered biological weapons like those used by the World Health Organization in 2090-2110 is gone as well.

Technology is varied. For the middle and upper classes, the technological marvels of 2100 are mostly available. Suborbital Air Travel, Advanced Computers and Mass Media (if very censored), self driving vehicles. For the Proletariat and the Serfs, life is harder, with most having a radio and an older television if they are lucky, living in tenement apartments and slum neighborhoods in various major cities, or in poor farming communities usually under the unofficial overlordship of a class 2 or 3 citizen. The UN government still tries to justify this with some propaganda, but its mostly bad and does not make any sense whatsoever.

An outsider looking into this society would find it very, very disturbing that you can buy a music player, hair dye, and an enslaved Christian captured in a raid in a reverted area in the same shopping center. All with paypal!

The Political Heart of the United Nations and seat of the Consensus remains Geneva, with the city being the wealthiest and most exclusive place on earth, with nobody below a class two allowed to maintain a residence in the city, and the serfs who maintain it bussed in from slums that are kept well out of site. Rome, seat of the Caliph and the burning of the last Pope remains the cultural heart of the United Nations, and is in many ways one of the worlds prettiest cities.

Global warming was in some ways reversed perhaps to far, thanks to a collection of massively reduced population, nuclear winter, and some slightly messy attempts at climate engineering. As such, the glaciers have crept much further South then planned, with large parts of Canada, Northern Europe and Russia and Iceland basically the home of Inuit and Sami Type Communities, Survivalists, Hunting Lodges, and the clinically insane (like the Russian Class 2 and 3s who maintain St. Petersburg, despite the city being about as cold as Barrow Alaska in 2012). Besides Europe, the strongest and most loyal portions of the United Nations include the Eastern Seaboard of the former United States, Southern Tip of Africa, and a High Tech Corridor stretching from Vladivostok to Shanghai.

Darkness Gathering (Or a Light Growing in the Darkness, because this sort of thing really depends on who you ask.)

However, nothing can last forever. The reverted areas are growing. In some ways it is interesting that the first nations that would accept the authority of the United Nations are the areas to have left it, though in what capacity it is different from place to place. If you follow the propaganda of the Consensus and the United Earth Government, the reverted areas are barbaric warlordisms, where hierarchical structures and inequality prevail. However, some of the reverted areas have managed to set up functioning state societies.

In North America, the frozen over parts of Canada and Alaska do have many subsistence level communities that couldn’t even begin to give a shit about the UN, though some are barely aware of what the UN is. Or a computer or a car for that matter. In the former United States, the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi river is mostly under the rule of Horse Nomads and some isolated city states at key areas of commerce. While fairly primitive, the Horse Nomads have managed to keep alive the ability to make automatic weapons and primitive explosives, and trade with the Mormons in Deseret, who have managed to restart a scientific tradition of sorts, even if it’s a militaristic one as they send their soldiers to defend the frontier with the UN in the Rocky Mountains.

The Neo-Aztec Religion in Mexico and Central America just can’t seem to sacrifice enough secret Catholics to Quetzalcoatl to keep a lid on things, and the former Central America is in a state of near open revolt, threatening to cut off trade between Northern South America and relatively state central and Southern Mexico.

Chilean and Pampan Rebels, supplied by the relatively functional Communist/Warlord State centered around La Paz in the Alta Plano have managed to overrun Buenos Aires, and despite the claims of the UN, the Rebels didn’t sack the city. But they did crucify every class 1 and 2 citizen they found who didn’t die in the fighting.

Europe between the Ural Mountains and Portugal remains the heartland of the UN, and is far and away the most stable part. However, someone did recently kill off the Caliph of Rome during a speech, and the Druids and Nordic Neo Pagans are hotly denying that it was them.

Because of the high status of Islam in the United Nations, the Middle East as well remains relatively stable and orderly for the most part, with large numbers of UN Peacekeepers being drawn from the population centers along the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates, as well as the Palestine Province.

However, parts interior Africa have never exactly been fully under UN control to begin with, and between the glittering lights of Coastal North Africa, and the slightly less glittering, but still well lit portions of West Africa, chaos reigns, with hundreds of small warlord states and armed bands slowly coalescing into states and becoming more daring in their raids.

Ethiopia’s governor has officially declared independence from the United Nations and slaughtered a peacekeeping force sent to stop him from crowning himself Emperor. He claims he has nuclear weapons and nobody yet wants to challenge him on it.

Meanwhile, starting from a base in Kisangani, a warlord who may be a military leader on the level of Napoleon or Alexander the Great has forged an Empire on the back of a primitive army of Technicals, scavenged UN tanks and Helicopters, and cottage industry gun and ammunition production. He does have a few random high tech items, and the fusion reactor in Brazzaville does help. Somewhat of a smug bastard, he does have his people’s best interests at heart, and he is happily killing slavers sent from Europe, and the fact that he just blew a UN Suborbital Shuttle Craft out of the sky with a scavenged Railgun he found somewhere is making some folks in Geneva VERY unhappy.

South of him is mostly chaos, though South Africa remains a well-fortified UN Stronghold.

Central Asia and Large Parts of Siberia remain lightly inhabited at most, with the massive depopulation causing a drop off and a movement of people to the better off regions of the globe, though Amur and Baikal remain bastions of civilization amongst nomadic communities and farming villages.

The Indian subcontinent remains another prime recruiting area for the UN Peacekeepers, especially Nepal and North India. However, with the revolts in Southern Asia, the region is about to become a battlefield, even as infrastructure, long neglected slowly falls apart.

Northern China remains a high tech hub, while Southern China’s serfs and proles provide a lot of the world’s food supply. The revolt of Southeast Asia though now means that Southern China is under direct threat, and Hong Kong and Guangzhou have fallen to the rebel army.

Japan is a depopulated, radioactive ruin, mostly used as a forced labor camp.

Southeast Asia is the site of the world’s largest revolt against the United Nations. From Bengal to Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are free. Ironically, the Southeast Asian coalition is a shining example of nations and peoples forgetting any quarrels they have with one another about race, creed or nationality. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu march side by side united in a burning hatred to hang the Secretary General and his cronies from a lamppost. This alliance of free peoples has undergone its first real test besides the revolt that threw the UN out the first time. Raising flags kept tucked away for hundreds of years, new national armies are on the march. A UN Peacekeeping Force with support from aircraft carriers and suborbital drop ships attempted to land forces near Jakarta and Siam Reap, and though the defenders were using inferior weapons, sheer bloody mindedness and actual use of military tactics carried the day, and now the Southeast Asian Coalition has captured a wealth of UN Weaponry.

Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand are both in open revolt against the UN, though have not yet managed to throw out their overlords.

After Buenos Aires was sacked/liberated (Always depends on who you ask), the UN sent a courier boat to the peacekeeping fleet at Terra Nova. Space support may be needed to stop the revolt. However, the new High Admiral (The old one met an unfortunate and gruesome end), is an interesting sort. Related to the Margarite Wallenstien of 2032, she has risen through the ranks mostly on merit, and while she has brought 4 ships capable of orbital bombardment with her, if she is willing to help the Consensus is very much an open question.

1. Yup. The fact that aliens made an interstellar gateway and might still be out there really never bothered anyone.
2. Not sure if I got the name right, but I don't care. 
3. The UN already was apparently getting oh so very hereditary. 
4. Russian Empire mentioned in the books, so I figure Putin crowned himself Tsar at some point. 
5. No explanation for how Christianity was stamped out in the Third World, so uh....
6. Yes, yes it is.
7. The name is in the book, but the idea that the last Pope is Peter II is amusing to me. 
8. Apparently Italy converted to Islam when nobody was looking.