Look, I love my sci-fi property. It has been the catalyst of a creative renaissance for me, so unfortunately all of you are going to hear about it. A lot.
Parallax takes place 300 years in the future. Humans blew up Earth; it still exists but life only survives in a few domed cities. The rest, an irradiated wasteland plagued by a nanobot virus simply called The Source. No one wants to live on Earth and it is very hard to leave. The rest of the explored galaxy is governed by corporations. Yes, what's basically happening right now by Amazon is how citizens in the Parallax universe live their day to day lives. A corporation owns you, but also provides you with everything you need when you're on grid: a job, housing, medical care, food. Just keep your Reputation Score high enough and everything will be fine. Really.
Those that don't want to live under the corps rule or those that have made enough bad decisions to fall out of favor live off grid. It's tough there. Imagine not having any internet access, no credit card, a terrible credit score, and no transportation. Indentured servitude doesn't sound that bad compared to living off grid, right? It's not that people off grid can't find these things, it's just very difficult, expensive, or illegal.
There are some political factions, the most well known are the Reds, the Greens, and HOME. The Reds and Greens are more amalgamations of corps than a single entity; the Reds want to preserve the planets they encounter as humanity travels the stars. The Greens are quite the opposite; they support terraforming and spreading humankind across the universe as quickly as possible. HOME would rather take the whole corporate system down. They provide information free of corp interference in RIS (reality in situ, or virtual reality). They operate completely off grid.
Faster than light travel hasn't been discovered yet, but the Jump Point has been connecting distant star systems for a while now. Colony ships make the first trek out and advances in technology have gotten the construction of Jumps Points down to as little as 2-3 years. Once two points are operational, travel is near instantaneous.
Terraforming exists, but is slow and unreliable. Terran Systems, the largest of the corporate governments, made genetic splices available to their citizens to spread their reach across the galaxy faster. Why terraform a whole planet when you can change your citizens to suit their environments? Splices were usually born of a need, than for vanity, but anyone can splice their DNA if they have enough credits. More often than not, if a Terran wishes for a splice, they will find a career path that suits it and have their corporation spot the bill. They pay the loan back by service to their corp. Several generations of splices exist and all splices are still technically Terran at their core, so interbreeding can occur.
Cybernetics of all kinds also exist, so if you want to punch through walls, have swords pop out of your arms, or have an AI live in your brain, you can totally do that!
But what I really want to talk about is splices. Because they're cool. There are 7 genetic splices currently available through modern science. If you're still with me at this point, then buckle up, Buttercup. You're in for a treat.
Comments