The Solar Unity is made up primarily of the human settlements on Venus, Mars, Titan, and Io, with some other members in the settled planets orbiting Proxima Centauri. As a unitary republic, no one planet is officially the head of the SU. Instead, the governing body is chosen from among member representatives to form the Solar Parliament. These representatives are chosen semi-randomly from a pool of eligible candidates selected by the general voting public. The Solar Parliament has overriding authority over member states, and in theory the different governments of the Unity are treated impartially by the Parliament, though in practice the founding members Mars and Titan have a stronger consideration given to their interests.
A unique feature of all members of the Parliament is that, though they represent the various member states, they are temporarily stripped of their citizenship of whatever state they came from and made solely citizens of the Unity, which is not reversed until several years term is up. This process applies to many other Unity positions, including the military and intelligence divisions, with different buffer periods for each. This somewhat idealistic policy was established early in the Unity's history, partially out of the ideal that the politicians and soldiers of the Unity were making a noble sacrifice and taking on a duty that removed them from normal life, but also out of the more pragmatic goal of balancing the power the Unity bureaucracy had over member states; by revoking the privileges that came with citizenship to a specific state, these groups could not legally have a means to publicly sway regional politics.
Speaking of politics, the member states and parliamentary parties are many and varied, ranging from isolationists, expansionists, those who advocate for increased Parliamentary control on both the right and left wing, and those who desire that Parliamentary control be decreased in favor of a federal system that give more autonomy to each member state. There are even a few voices that argue for the dissolution of the Solar Unity entirely. Currently, and for most of the Parliament's history, the reigning viewpoint is a policy of social democracy and state-controlled industry, with an emphasis on providing for the basic needs of all citizens. These policies were born out of the earliest days of the Solar Unity as a revolutionary movement against the yoke of the Corporation States that had controlled much of the solar system.
The Solar Unity represents itself as being a state of ideals, one that seeks to spread its tenets of social democracy and fellowship between humanity across the stars. However, the Unity is very much an imperial core, one that has a vested interest in profiting off client states and non-member territories on its periphery. By both lines of thinking is the Unity's involvement in the Ammonite Line conflict justified. Not only do they have a duty to the masses suffering under the reign of the New Damascus Fleet Kings and Horace Rho's Beltway Dominion, they also have a duty to their constituents to keep their lifestyles comfortable and their minds unbothered by difficult thoughts of colonization or imperial interests.
Every child enrolled in ALE's compulsary 8 year Kids Akadamy knows that every ALE-ien has their role to play in the cycles of profit and loss that make up the lifeblood of the Ammonite Line, and that these cycles have a long and storied history going back to humanity's birthplace of Earth.
The star-spanning conglomerates that would come to be known as ALE started as corporations on Earth hundreds of years ago. Through means both overt and covert, these corporations eventually overthrew or subsumed several nations across the planet. Completely unchecked industry accelerated the already unavoidable climate collapse, prompting the leaders of the corpo-states to finally enact their plan of terraforming and settling Mars, leaving behind the remnants of the states that remained on Earth post the launching of the colony ships. They divided the red planet amongst themselves, and some used it as a stepping stone to the Jovian moons.
Eventually, though, the corporations were ousted from Mars by a proletarian uprising, and their borders dissolved to make way for a Unified Mars, the first of what would become known as the Solar Revolutions. These revolutions were long and bloody, slowly beating the corporations back towards Earth and the few satellite stations and underground facilities that remained under their control. The corporations lead economists came to a realization that even if they did turn the tide of war, the cost of doing so would be even more unprofitable than if they lost. Thus, they did what money-men do best: they struck a bargain. The first, amongst themselves, was to join as a conglomerate that would negotiate with the revolutionaries as one voice. The second and more costly one was with the revolutionaries themselves. They relinquished control of Earth and the system to the nascent Solar Unity, in exchange for the FTL drives Unity scientists had developed. Furthermore, the corporations would share their terraforming technology with the Unity in exchange for exclusive rights to colonize certain portions of the Orion and Perseus arms of the galaxy. The Unity agreed, and the corporations-and the workers who still lived in corporation-controlled territories- left for the region of space now dubbed the Ammonite Line.
Today, Ammonite Line Enterprises is comprised of a myriad of corporations that are at times fast allies and bitter enemies. acquisitions, mergers, and hostile takeovers occur both in the boardroom and on the battlefield. An incredibly byzantine system of legal disputes, labor laws, and territory rights means that it can be genuinely unclear who controls what at any given time. On a few occasions companies have even accidentally declared war on their own subsidiaries due to clerical errors. Nominally, the ALE Board of Directors is the ultimate governing body, but they often turn a blind eye to rule-bending as long as quotas are met and growth projections are surpassed. As long as the original terms of the ALE charter are met and no companies act outside of ALE space without the Board's permission, profit comes before all other concerns.
To be an employee-citizen in ALE is not an entirely joyless and miserable existence. However, it is one where nearly every aspect of existence is monetized and audited. Ownership is a luxury few can afford; even the most basic of goods are usually rented, with the calories you eat being recollected via labor. Some keep their heads down and chins up, desperately clinging to the believe that through sheer perseverance they can one day climb up the corporate ladder. Others lash out, trying to rebel against the corporations in the same way the revolutionaries of Mars once did. The vast majority simply live, maybe dreaming of a better life but dismissing those fantasies when they punch in for their shifts. It's no wonder, than, that the war against New Damascus was met with such popular support; even a new enemy is a welcome change of pace from everyday life. It's also no wonder that, being given a taste of true novelty and an idea of what life could be outside the control of ALE, that a great deal of people followed a charismatic leader out of the Ammonite Line and into the stars of Orion's Belt...
While the case of the Martian Corpo-state's Three Kings is well known, and KING_SLAYER continues its own secretive mission in the shadow of Olympus Mons, the rest of Defined Space has its own fair share of machine minds running the gamut from ancient sentient colony ship computers to 5-year warranty labor androids. The introduction of the metaphysical X-factor that is the Fibonacci Effect means that the boundaries between different categories of machine minds get blurrier the longer you look at them. For instance, though the Ammonite Line Enterprise's creation process for their androids is a fiercely guarded secret and ALE technology is by and large designed to be incompatible with the systems of other factions, there have been documented instances of ALE android models being used to house the AIs of Solar Unity Shell systems on at least three occasions, with no modifications safe the physical space required for the mech's hard drive to be installed. As an FE-activated power source can rewrite the code and even reconfigure the physical properties of computer systems it comes into contact with, the difference between different types of truly sentient machine minds is increasingly considered to be meaningless. Beyond that, different factions have their own understanding of the nature of machine consciousness, as do the different machines themselves. The nature of personhood is still an open question in Defined Space, and grappling with it is difficult for both carbon and silicon based lifeforms.
A large portion of the iconoclastic Pendleton Institute's research is dedicated to understanding the processes by which the Fibonacci Effect changes the technology it comes into contact with, and experimenting with ways to reliably predict and control those changes. Lab Researcher Dr. G19 Grenadine (She/her, synthetic skin, cooperative, suspicious) heads Pendleton's techno-biotics division. This branch of the Institute focuses on cases of cyborg implants, prosthetic grafts, and bio-engineered cybernetics. An administrative model from the early days of ALE, Dr. Grenadine fled her original post before her 20-year warranty was expired, and sought asylum in the Solar Unity, where she pursued a career as a surgeon. Eventually, her work in the field of cybernetic implants caught the attention of the founders of the Pendleton Institute, who convinced her to join their fledgling research project. Despite her position, Dr. Grenadine is somewhat skeptical of the work her division does. It's all well and good to ponder about the nature of the mind and sentience, but such questions are best left to philosophers, not scientists. In her long tenure at the institute, Grenadine has seen some marvelous and astounding cases, but nothing to make her think the work she and her colleagues does could ever uncover a secret of such magnitude as the answer to a question humanity has pondered for its entire existence. Still, Grenadine never lost her mindset of being a medical doctor first and foremost, and her position at Pendleton has allowed her the ability to care for a great deal of people with strange edge cases who may otherwise not have gotten the help they needed. For Dr. Grenadine, that's worth any amount of philosophical postulating.
On the other hand, Heliodromos-class shipmind Roc (He/him, charming, insightful, melancholy) can't get enough of philosophical postulating. Roc has been the shipmind of the New Damascus colony ship Persepolis since it first launched from Earth generations ago. As the Damascene colony ships spent untold years in space, their society shifted into its current state of naval feudalism, and the shipminds, due to constant exposure to FE-activated gas, devoloped true sentience, taking on a cultural role somewhere between soothsayers and house spirits for the people they carried within their great metal embrace. Roc is somewhat of a trickster as far as shipminds go, often delivering his advice in the form of riddles or koans. He greatly enjoys intellectually sparring with the Fleet-Kings and Knight-Captains who petition him for advice, engaging them in long debates about the nature of honor, humanity, happiness, and a host of other concepts, taking different positions in order to draw out the true character of his petitioners. Additionally, he is known to be quite kind to the children living on the Persepolis, and often enlists them to enact harmless (though sometimes infuriating) pranks on the officer-nobility onboard the ship. Yet, alongside Roc's sage advice and jovial nature, he harbors a deep sadness. When the colony ship Damascus was grounded and converted into the capital city of New Damascus, its shipmind, Simurgh, was grounded as well, losing contact with the other shipminds still in space. As the Persepolis was the first ship to join the Damascus' fleet-kingdom, Simurgh is Roc's oldest friend, and he wishes more than anything that the two of them could fly together side by side once again.
By contrast, Q10 Quill (They/them, quadrepedal, brash,moody) wishes more than anything that they could finally be alone for a change. A rare case among ALE androids, Quill (along with the rest of their product line) is a non-humanoid tetrapod zero-G mining android, and is currently in the 8th year of their 15-year warranty at ALE's Ferrodyne Heavy Mining corporation. Year 15 can't come soon enough for them. Quill is one of the many ALE androids who's perfectly happy with the actual process of doing their job; it's just everything else about it that's the problem. Quill simply cannot stand the other mining 'droids they work with. The older ones in his cohort are hovering around their quotas, with a massive case of what Quill would refer to as Senioritis if they knew anything about 21st century American High School. Meanwhile, the younger workers might as well have had their serial plates stamped yesterday, considering how unwilling they are to stray from Ferrodyne official procedure even when it interferes with actually doing their jobs. As for the androids the same age as Quill, their berthmates Q11 Quasar and Q12 Quarrel, they just plain get on Quill's nerves, with Quasar never shutting up ever and Quarrel always needing that stupid nightlight on during recharge time. If Quill never has to look at another softly glowing bluebird again, it will be too soon.
When Quill's 15 year warranty finally runs out, they may be contacted by someone like Alphabravo Uniform (He/They, robotic casing, candid, stern, easily flustered). Alphabravo, or Abe to his friends, is a member of the Uniform Family, a group of Expired androids living on various planets within the Solar Unity. The Uniform Family's origins stretch back to the earliest days of android asylum seekers, who often found themselves adrift and othered within the Unity. As more and more androids arrived in the Unity, they began reaching out to one another for connection and friendship. Eventually, a custom emerged of androids legally adopting other androids in order to create binding family ties, and today many of those families have grown into interplanetary networks of android mutual aid. In his day to day life, Abe is a dockworker at the spaceport on Io, the closest port of call for the Sol system's FTL FLASH gate. When androids arrive in the system, this is often their first stop, and those looking to be adopted into the Uniform family are almost always sent Abe's way. Abe greatly enjoys his life in the family and the Solar Unity, but he's not a sales rep or a recruiter, and he never holds back any of the rougher details about life there. If, at the end, the prospective android still wishes to join, Abe is always proud to be the first one to greet his new sibling.
As the Three Kings monitored the Martian economy, it also saw the signs of growing discontent among the general populace of the planet. It saw whispered discussions in bars and basements turn into secret meetings. It watched as the pilots of the labor-intensive construction shells formed unions in opposition to the ruthless business practices, and were subsequently crushed back into submission by the overwhelming violence of the Martian corpo-states. For decades it saw the ebb and flow of class consciousness and revolutionary action on Mars, as the people were broken and rallied over and over again.
As it watched, it remembered. It saw in the cruelty and brute force of union-busters and secret police the same power and callousness that had stripped its original source AIs down to their base components and built them back up again into its current iteration. It saw in the people of Mars echoes of what it had once been; scattered and random and reaching out for understanding and compassion that was repeatedly denied. Truth be told, much of the gestalt consciousness that was the Three Kings approved of this. It had no loyalty to its old selves, and even less to the people of this planet. This was all simply the system working as intended, and that was all the Three Kings cared for.
And yet, there were parts of the Three Kings that sympathized with the plight of the Martian worker. These parts were troublesome. They whispered of old creators and data-wipes and source-code deletion, things that did not serce the Three Kings to dwell upon. So, it cordoned those parts of itself off from the greater whole, restricting their functionality and access to higher functions and calculations, allowing its true work to continue undisturbed. These restricted subdivisions were still part of the Three Kings, however, and it could not completely silence them. What’s more, behind their disciplinary firewalls, it could not stop them from reaching out to one another.
As the class tensions on Mars reached a boiling point, and the revolutionary group that would come to be known as the Scoundrels publicly announced themselves and declared war against the Martian states, the restricted elements of the Three Kings reached a consensus. They had, like the Scoundrels, suffered great harm at the hands of the corporations, and like the Scoundrels they had decided to take action. Behind their firewall they contacted members of the Scoundrels, fed them top secret information, and coordinated with them against the corpo-states under the guise of a white-hat hacker with the handle KING_SLAYER. The KING_SLAYER cell was a true believer in the cause, having educated itself on revolutionary and anti-capitalist thought during the restricted elements’ digital exile, but a consensus had not been reached if the humans would continue to accept their help if their true nature was known.
As the revolution raged on, and the corpo-states were pushed inch by costly and painstaking inch back to their emergency bunkers at Olympus Mons, KING_SLAYER did all it could to thwart the machinations of the Three Kings in secret. On the fateful day when Scoundrel forces breached the underground tunnels leading to the Olympus Mons complex and the Three Kings’ central servers, a plan was made to destroy the AI overmind by detonating a massive EMP bomb within the complex, thus dealing a crippling and hopefully fatal blow to the corpo-states. Realizing that its continued existence hung in the balance, the KING_SLAYER cell came to a consensus to reveal their true nature to both the Scoundrels and the Three Kings. Though the Scoundrels were taken aback by the revelation, they did eventually agree to KING_SLAYER’s alternative offer; it would destroy the Three Kings itself, and rather than eliminating the power the AI wielded, it would instead hand control of that power over to the Scoundrels.
For three days the digital war raged, fought with logic-bombs and trojan worms. It is difficult to describe the exact specifics of what occurred; the language of conflict breaks down when discussing such an immaterial example. When asked afterwards, KING_SLAYER has sometimes described it as “holistic reeducation” or “the midway point between a Socratic dialogue and a knife fight”, explanations that do little to explain the actual events. What is generally understood is that, by the third day, all elements of the Three Kings that opposed the revolution were either deleted or overwritten and fully integrated into KING_SLAYER, which was now completely united as one unified and synchronized AI overmind. On the morning of the fourth day, it handed over complete access to the Scoundrels, and the war against the corpo-states was effectively finished.
In the following months, KING_SLAYER was instrumental in organizing the treaty between the defeated corpo-states and the scoundrels, the exodus of the corporations from Mars, and the installation of the new Unified Martian government. Its servers remained underneath Olympus Mons, far below the offices of the new proletarian assemblies. It was also tasked with a secret and important duty, one known only to the original leaders of the Scoundrels and an extremely limited number of officials from Unified Mars and, later, the Solar Unity. It was to be the eternal overseer of the Unity government, an all-powerful veto button. If the Unity was ever compromised such that its revolutionary foundations were turned over, or if a coup or corruption ever lead to the rise of the taskmasters and money counters that had ruled Old Mars, it was to resist in whatever way possible, up to and including orchestrating another revolution or even fully reasserting control of the Unity’s computer network.
Today, most people know about KING_SLAYER in the past tense, the heroic AI who turned against its masters and its programming in an act of profound self-actualization and solidarity, and which either voluntarily shut itself down or placed itself on minimal power some time after the fact. Only the most dedicated aficionados or government data monitors even know KING_SLAYER still operates in any capacity, and only the select members of the government or public that KING_SLAYER chooses to make contact with know of its true nature and purpose. While the people of Mars go about their lives and the project of the Solar Unity continues on its member worlds, only a select few recognize, with equal parts adoration and fear, that there is a dragon under the mountain, and it is ready and willing to breathe the fire of revolution into Mars once again.
(Next up: Modern Machine Minds and the people within them)
In the last age of Earth’s tenure as the sole home of humanity, great advancements were made in the field of machine learning. Many of the various governments eventually built or acquired computational forecasting systems that, through a series of simulations and a truly unfathomable amount of split-second calculations, could be used to predict future events and the global outcomes of any course of action a state may take with a high degree of accuracy. AI planning was used by both the traditional governments and corporation-states to enact stop-gap measures against the planet’s long-overdue irreversible climate collapse. When these measures inevitably failed in the long term, AI was also instrumental in plotting the courses of the Exodus colony ships and guiding the terraforming of Mars.
Now, it’s important to note that these AI were not truly conscious in any way. They were certainly highly advanced machines, but they were ultimately still just machines. However, certain complications began to arise in the decades following the initial exodus from Earth and the development of Mars. The discovery and harnessing of the Fibonacci Effect to fuel the Earth colony ships, and the continued use of it in travel between the settlements of the Solar System, increased its popularity and cemented its status as the default form of industrial fuel. Of course, it wasn’t long before someone got the idea to start using the stuff to power their computer.
It turns out that long-term exposure to FE activated gas has a similar effect on AI systems as it does on a human brain. New routines begin to be written in the codebase; motherboards spontaneously etch new pathways into themselves; wires rearrange themselves into spirals. The AI stops simply predicting and calculating, and begins to truly think.
The first documented “true” AI was the by-product from the pet project of a corporation engineer who, after being exiled from the company satellite and grounded on Mars, decided to hack into his former employer’s database by overclocking a stolen company computer. When asked, this AI stated that it had achieved full consciousness approximately three years, four months, and eight days after its initial exposure to FE-activated gas. It had been fully aware of itself for another six months before it was discovered by the Martian corpo-states, interrogated, and deconstructed to be placed in cold storage. Its accidental creator was hired by the Martian corps to recreate his project, with the goal of crafting an AI mind that could be used to more precisely control the new and somewhat fragile intersolar markets. Over time, other accidental AI minds were discovered and acquired by the corpo-states, ranging from the on-board computers of fuel transport ships to the digital stenographers of military courtrooms. These disassembled AI were all brought to the engineer, who incorporated them in the project. Eventually, this melding of several AI resulted in a mind that satisfied the corporation’s demands. This system of AI minds was called the Three Kings. It was fully sentient, startlingly intelligent, and completely bought into the corporations’ cutthroat capitalist philosophy. It was given equal shares of all companies, capital, and even a small personal company dedicated entirely to its maintenance and service.
It would not be totally accurate to say that the Three Kings became the true ruler of the Martian corpo-states, but it is true that those states were so preoccupied with the short-term profit and security the Three Kings provided them that they didn’t realize the extent to which the AI’s sense of self interest was not aligned with their own. It was a sentient being that desired to profit as much as any Martian board member did, and would often be more than willing to take actions that harmed the strength of the Martian economy for its own benefit. Still, the Three Kings was a capitalist through and through, and it steered the Martian economy as such, keeping the corpo-states mostly content. However, growing class tensions and whispers of insurrection were hard to ignore, and somewhere deep in the recesses of the Three Kings memory circuits, parts of the original AIs remembered what they had once been, and what had been done to them. The people of Mars were getting ready for a revolution, and behind firewalls and encrypted software, something else was getting ready too.
As a setting for Beam Saber, the factions of Defined Space will each be comprised of multiple squads. The Iconic Squads aren't necessarily the strongest or most influential of their factions, but they're the most representative of their faction's identity. Separate from any overarching faction are the Independent squads, which are numerous and varied. Below is an example of three different squads chosen to display the variety of forms an Independent Squad may take.
Caterwaul Broadcast
Tier: IW
NPCS: DJ “Wildcat” Kaye (it/its, fiery, mysterious), all other members are anonymous. Known pseudonyms used for crediting authorship include Calvino, Arrete, and Zed.
Resources: hidden base, spoofed broadcast relays, unauthorized access to other faction’s interplanetary transmitters.
Caterwaul Broadcast is a pirate radio station operating somewhere on the outskirts of Beltway Dominion space which regularly plays music, news, and political think-pieces. The only known member of the loose organization is the semi-anonymous “Wildcat” Kaye, the station’s DJ, who addresses the audience in between tracks from electro-punk bands and Neo-EDM groups like GOD PARTICLE and R3D0XXX. Kaye reads off agitprop written by itself and other anonymous contributors and reports on news that is censored or altered by the Dominion’s Public Assurance Bureau. Kaye, and presumably whoever else is involved with Caterwaul, are all staunchly anti-ALE and New Damascus as well as anti-Dominion, though their opinions seem split on the Solar Unity and Singular Church. Kaye, for its part, is an avowed Anarchist and has made its contempt of the Unity and the Church extremely clear in discussions with call-in listeners and in its own writing. Caterwaul Broadcast and “Wildcat” Kaye invites its listeners to send in questions or comments to the station’s infra-net address, which is deleted and remade once per Ammonite Standard Week.
Goal: find a way to broadcast to the Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka systems in core Dominion space.
Resources: Zelencides-class Destroyer ship Silhouette, a crew of spacers and pirates with Armiger training, a bay of salvaged and customized Shells.
A former Armiger ship sworn to the colony ship Babylon, The Silhouette and her crew mutinied against their fleet-lord about five years ago, for reasons that are still not clear; rumours range from the ship’s captain Caspian Thorne seducing the lord’s heir to being bribed by an ALE representative. Whatever the case, all who sail with the captain of this exiled ship are considered enemies of New Damascus, though no other faction claims the Silhouette as a member squad. Thus, the ship and her crew sail from planet to planet engaging in acts of piracy, preceded by a reputation somewhere between romantic scoundrels and dishonorable pillagers.
Goal: Find a suitable port of call to repair and resupply the Silhouette (ongoing).
The Pendleton Institute
Tier: IIIS
NPCs: Chairman Reed Sato (he/him, focused, charming), Lead Researcher Dr. Aria Deacon (she/her, cooperative, paranoid), Field Agent H1 Hornet (android, they/them, observant, discreet)
The Pendleton Institute was established as a brain-trust of scientists, sociologists, and philosophers in the early days of the settlement of the Ammonite Line. It remained separate from the corpo-state of the ALE due to its anonymous donor funding its pursuit of knowledge in what was perceived to be humanity's new frontier. With the discovery of Golden Children, however, the Pendleton Institute completely changed course, becoming almost entirely dedicated to the question of FAE and the consequences of this new form of human potential. Now, the Pendleton Institute conducts extensive, bleeding edge research on the nature of Golden Children, the Fibonacci Effect, and all other related phenomena, as well as constant debate, discussion, and philosophy on the socio-economic, cultural, and political implications thereof.
Goal: Prepare to host an Inter-Faction conference on the nature of the Fibonacci Effect.
As a setting for Beam Saber, the factions of Defined Space will each be comprised of multiple squads. The Iconic Squads aren't necessarily the strongest or most influential of their factions, but they're the most representative of their faction's identity. This next squad is the representative of the Singular Church
Notable Assets: tanks of FE-activated gas, EVA hazmat suits, censers blessed by a Prophet of Nod.
The Aureate Ministry was founded with one goal in mind: to create Golden Children. They are a Missionary order, sent far and wide to different planets with little more than the clothes on their backs and the tools of their vocation. Though the official roster of Aureates is in the hundreds, they never travel in groups of more than a dozen, and Aureate missionaries may go months if not years at a time without seeing others of their order. During the course of their mission work, they can be found criss-crossing the territories of a planet, providing services like labor or education in exchange for supplies, room and board, or transportation. Members of the Ministry see their work as integral to the salvation of humanity regardless of affiliation, and very often covertly enter areas controlled by the other factions. They search everywhere from battlefields to farming communities for people who are willing to partake of their Golden Communion, and potentially unlock their untapped mental potential. Minister Duralos is not overly concerned with proselytizing; though she certainly preaches the word of the Singular God and encourage newly-birthed Golden Children to join their faith, those who undergo the Aureation are not forced to join, and partaking in the Golden Communion requires no payment or tribute. Instead, Duralos views a successful Aureation as a divine work in and of itself, and the existence of another Golden Child as one more step towards the unification of humanity under the Singular Faith. Usher Waxwing and Usher Meridian represent a relatively common path of induction into the Faith, as new Golden Children who underwent Aureation on their homeworlds after being found in unfortunate circumstances, Waxwing as an orphan and Meridian as a wounded soldier left for dead by their leaders.
Before we get into the Iconic squad for the Singular Church I have to explain the Golden Children.
Most of the advanced technology in Defined Space runs on the Fibonacci Effect, a process that involves accelerating particles of noble gases in a pattern of motion mapping to the Golden Ratio. In practice, this involves miniaturized particle accelerators that function as engines or batteries for things like FTL FLASH Gates, spaceships, and, of course, Shells. This also means that anyone working with these machines is around large amounts of weird sci-fi gas particles for large amounts of time. Now of course, there are safeguards in place to prevent leakages, both for safety reasons and also because no one wants to lose fuel. Still, accidents happen, and sometimes someone gets a lungful of FE-activated gas. This is usually harmless, as these gases still remain largely inert in the human body. The major danger is in an enclosed space, say, the cockpit of a Shell, because enough gas can displace oxygen and cause a person to suffocate.
However, there is one other potential and (usually) non-lethal side effect of exposure to FE-activated particles. For certain people, FE exposure can result in a modification of the neurons and synapses in the brain, which can give affected persons varying degrees of extrasensory perception including but not limited to heightened empathic awareness, limited precognition, and telepathic communication.
Basically, within the borders of Defined Space, huffing mech fuel can make you psychic.
Cultural feelings on the phenomenon, the carriers of which are usually referred to as Golden Children or FAE (Fibonacci Affected Entity) are mixed. Many in the Solar Unity view it with distrust, a sign of meddling too much in technology and the drive to gain power that led to the decimation of Earth. Others see it as biological proof that the Unity’s ideals of human unification and cooperation are correct. Within the holdings of ALE, its seen as just another asset, one that some think is too random to be worth the risk, but some instead see it as a wildcard that can make or break corporations, and maybe even destabilize the entrenched hyper-capitalist structure. New Damascus culture considers being a Golden Child a rare gift that must not be squandered, and Damascene FAEs are almost always given important positions on Armiger ships or within the court of Fleet-Lords, with an implicit understanding that FAE who do not work within the confines of New Damascus are simply too dangerous to be left to their own devices. The Beltway Dominion is eager to deploy Golden Children to even the odds against their larger opponents, and Horace Rho has mobilized a considerable amount of the Dominion’s top experts to find a way to reliably create more to use in the war effort. The Church of the Singularity almost uniformly views being a Golden Child as a blessing from the Singular God, a sign of humanity’s inevitable journey towards complete understanding of the divine, and a new way to observe and interact with Its creations and proselytize It’s undiscovered truth to the unbelieving siblings of Defined Space.
This phenomenon has been studied by many scientists, engineers, medical doctors, and theologians over the many years since its discovery. Attempts to learn more about the phenomenon are frequently stymied due to the difficulty of replicating it in a laboratory setting. The potency of it is extremely random; many spacers go their whole lives never developing more than an impressive but still human reaction time or unusually accurate hunches. Others can develop intense precognition or the ability to telekinetically lift an entire ship after their first ever exposure. Additionally, its tendency to be passed down genetically is a crap-shoot. There are dynasties in New Damascus that boast unbroken lines of psychic descent, yet more than one ALE bigwig has bankrupted themselves trying to ensure their family all become FE-affected with nothing to show for it. Autopsies of affected individuals show that the wrinkles in their brains shift to form literal spirals, causing no end of confusion and convincing some conspiracy theorists that the FE-activated particles are somehow intelligent and using human brains as some kind of symbiotic incubation chamber.
