Talking boars were now part of Earth society and had their own culture.
On Earth, governments used genetic manipulation and intelligent chips to maintain their soldiers’ loyalty. [196]
Earth had now experienced hostile alien visitors such as the Sycorax and the Slitheen, and friendly ones such as the Svillia and the Hive of Mooj. The Flisk arrived on Earth after a stellar cataclysm almost wiped out their race, and were welcomed until they were revealled as telepathic, whereupon they became targets of suspicion. Nonetheless, their expertise with computer programming helped many of them find employment across the globe. [197]
2080 - Loups-Garoux [198]
The ancient werewolf Pieter Stubbe tried to reclaim Illeana de Santos, now the de facto werewolf leader, as his mate. Illeana resisted Stubbe’s advances, but Stubbe seized control of Illeana’s werewolves and directed them to assault Rio de Janeiro. The fifth Doctor and Turlough broke Stubbe’s dominance of the pack. Stubbe died when he rushed into the TARDIS, enabling the Doctor to materialise in orbit and sever Stubbe from the Earth - the source of his elemental power - thus aging him to death.
Rio de Janeiro now had a monorail and spaceport. ID implants were compulsory, and robots checked passports. People had hover vehicles including limos, jeeps and four hundred mile-an-hour trains. The currency was the credit.
A body scan predicted that Henry Louis Noone was likely to die at age 82. [199] Circa 2084, on the planet Cray, the game Naxy started out as an innocent arena sport. The Naxy fans became increasingly violent, and took to fighting outside the arena before matches. The public’s interest shifted to the bloody fan conflict, and Naxy was soon re-tooled as a sport in which teams fought to the death. [200]
c 2084 - Warriors of the Deep [201]
Earth consolidated into two blocs, the East and the West, and a new Cold War developed. New weapons technology was developed: Seabases sat on the ocean floor, armed with proton missiles that were capable of destroying life while leaving property intact. Sentinels - robots armed with energy weapons - orbited the Earth and large Hunter-Killers patrolled the seas. “Synch-operators” had computer interfaces implanted into their heads, allowing split-second control over proton missile runs. Soldiers carried energy rifles.
At the height of interbloc tension, a group of Silurians and Sea Devils attacked Seabase 4. They planned to launch the missiles there and provoke a war that would kill all human life. The fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough failed to prevent a massacre at the base, but saved humanity.
First Contact
The Arcturan Treaty of 2085 was often officially counted as mankind’s first contact with alien races, as it was the first diplomatic contact. [202] The whole of humanity finally accepted the existence of aliens. Danny Pain’s role in stopping an alien invasion in 1976 was now legendary. [203]
The first lightspeed mission to another solar system launched in 2085. [204]
2086 (25th April) - “Black Destiny” [205]
The fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry landed at the Troika Cultural Centre to celebrate world peace in Takhail in Russia, but the staff suddenly started dying. The Doctor met Direktor Arkady, the great-grandson of a boy who had been exposed to radiation there a hundred years before. The dead bodies reanimated as zombies. The Doctor checked the world-net computer network, and discovered that Arkady was fascinated by nuclear accidents. Arkady began to glow with energy and transformed into an energy cloud, then attacked Moscow, but the Doctor managed to neutralise and disperse him. Sarah noted that Chernobyl had a new nuclear power station.
The Threshold abducted Sarah during this encounter.
The Doctor believed that Disneyland would be worth visiting in future, after it “had time to settle”. [206]
The Thousand-Day War
Out of the blue, one day in 2086, the Martians attacked. Paris was hit with a meteorite that killed a million people, and wiped out centuries of history including the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, Notre Dame and EuroDisney. [207] Humanity united behind President Achebe against the common enemy. First in were the Zen Brigade, the Blue Berets of the United Nations Third Tactical Response Brigade, made up of Irish and Ethiopians. They dropped in from orbit, and the Martians cut them to pieces. One of the few survivors was their commanding officer, Brigadier Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart. But the Blue Berets completed their mission and formed a bridgehead: the UN forward-base at Jacksonville halfway up Olympus Mons. More crucially, their engineers set up the first interstitial tunnel, a refinement of old Travel-mat technology that allowed instantaneous travel between Earth and Mars. Men and materiel poured through the Stunnel.
Half-kiloton groundbreakers poured from the air onto the Martian nests. Tactical nuclear weapons were used. The early stages of the war were dogged by friendly fire incidents, but these were ironed out. As the war dragged on, some soldiers were genetically and cybernetically augmented to increase their efficiency. These first-generation ubersoldaten retained less than 50% of their natural DNA. Just about every soldier took combat drugs like Doberman and Heinkel to make them better fighters. [208]
At one point, the Zen Brigade was ambushed at Achebe Gorge - pinned down by snipers, they retreated under cover of a storm. [209]
New slang entered the language: Greenie (Martian), pop up (a cannon used by the Martians), spider trap, fire mission, medevac. During the war, hologram technology became more advanced. The Ice Maiden, an R&R stop in Jacksonville, became notorious. For a generation afterwards, the imagery and iconography of the War was burnt into the minds of humanity, and was popularised in vids like Violet Sky.
The war ended in 2088, exactly a thousand days after it had started. The surviving Martians had either fled the planet or gone into hibernation in deep nests. At first, the human authorities were worried about “stay behind” units, but it became clear that the Martian threat had completely dissipated, and the military satellites were decommissioned. A memorial forest was set up at Achebe Gorge on Mars. A tree was planted for each one of the four hundred and fifty thousand men who had died in the War, which didn’t include the death toll in Paris. For many decades, Victory Night was celebrated every year on Earth, and trees were planted to honour the military dead. [210]
The only human defeat was at Viis Claar, or the Valles Marineris, when Abrasaar killed fifteen thousand humans and ten thousand of his own men in a trap. [211] 99% of Martians headed for a new planet, Nova Martia, beyond Arcturus. Hundreds of thousands of Martians remained behind, hidden in subterranean cities. UN peacemakers found the planet deserted. The bodies of six of the eight members of the ruling Eight Point Table were found, but these did not include Supreme Grand Marshal Falaxyr or Abrasaar. [212]
The Martian fleet heading to Nova Martia stopped off in the Rataculan system. A few Ice Warriors remained behind to found a colony on the planet Cluut-ett-Pictar. [213] There was little or no contact between the Ice Warriors and humanity for nearly a thousand years, and the Martians rarely allowed any visitors to their new world. In the twenty-sixth century, the “extinct” Martians briefly became a curiosity for archaeologists, but after that, mankind forgot all about their old neighbours. [214]
2088 - The Story of Martha: “Breathing Space” [215]
The alien Benefactors arrived in Earth orbit, offering to end global warming and atmospheric pollution. The tenth Doctor and Martha found themselves at an Earth space station, and the Doctor recognised the aliens as the Cineraria - a hostile race that subjugated planets by dropping space whales onto heavily-populated areas. The Cineraria’s plan relied upon secrecy, and they retreated when the Doctor exposed their intentions.
The Colonisation of the Solar System
Wal-Mart began building the first trading post on Mars, but this was abandoned when the settlement Sheffield was established on Olympus Mons. [216] The World Government invested heavily in the state-owned Sol Transit System (STS) over the next twenty years, and soon Interstitial Tunnels linked every city, continent, habitable planet and moon in the solar sy
stem. Transportation within the solar system was now instantaneous and readily available. For the first time, the solar system had a single elected government, the Union of Solar Republics.
In the decade following the Thousand-Day War, Paris was rebuilt. Lowell Depot on Pluto was built to soak up population overspill. [217]
In 2089, thirty years after Bowie Base One was destroyed, the granddaughter of Adelaide Brooke - Susie Fontana Brooke - piloted the first lightspeed ship to Proxima Centauri. Some form of computer news service still operated at this time. [218]
c 2090 - Paper Cuts [219]
By the eightieth Year of the Blood on Draconia, no alien had set foot on Draconia for over fifty Earth years. The Fifteenth Emperor (a.k.a. the Red Emperor) was declared dead, and was placed in an orbiting tomb - still alive - alongside his predecessors. Four vigil-keepers were summoned to the tomb to witness the rite of succession - the sixth Doctor and Charley (actually Mila in disguise) answered this call, which had sat in the Doctor’s In-Box for one hundred and fifty years.
The fifteen dormant emperors remained aware, and had a half-set of life-size Sazou pieces that responded to their mental commands. The White Emperor sought revenge on the Doctor for his role in the collapse of the Draconian Empire - in the power-struggles that followed, all of the emperors revived from stasis. It remained to be seen who would ascend to the throne. Despite this political quagmire, Draconia in future would forge a new empire.
Gypsy culture was subsumed in the late twenty-first century after proto-viruses left many ethnic groups sterile. [220] The Boor were interplanetary gangsters; the planet Oblivion was decimated and recolonised when it failed to pay one of their protection schemes. The Stellar Police ended the Boor’s operations, but the key Boor entered suspended animation on Venedel. They expected to awaken in three decades, but wouldn’t for five hundred years. [221]
The Halavans, humanoids who resided on Petreus III, destroyed their homeworld through misuse of their mental abilities. Some of their elite escaped on a spaceship, leaving everyone else behind to die. In-fighting amongst the Halavans made the ship crash on an unnamed planet; they tried to conquer the one-eyed humanoids who lived there, but were themselves enslaved when their telepathic boosters were destroyed. The subjugated Halavans named their masters “Monoids”. The rest of the civilised universe believed that a natural disaster had ravaged Petreus III, and the Galactic Trust worked to preserve it. [222]
Zoe Heriot read the ingredients of a tea box in a kitchen on Pluto. [223]
2092 (29th August) - “Ground Zero” [224]
Ace was arrested on suspicion of theft at the Notting Hill Carnival, but the policeman was actually Dixon, an agent of Threshold. The seventh Doctor met another agent, Isaac, who showed him the abducted Susan.
Meanwhile, Ace met the similarly kidnapped Sarah Jane and Peri. The Doctor learned that Threshold were an organisation that opened doors in space and time for their clients - their clients in this case being creatures living with the collective unconscious of mankind, the Lobri, who manifested as giant fleas. The TARDIS interior was heavily damaged. Ace sacrificed her own life to save the Doctor from the creatures - but the last Lobri nonetheless started to manifest on Earth. The Doctor materialised the TARDIS inside the Lobri, destroying it. He then returned his surviving companions to their rightful places in time, and was left travelling alone.
Tracks for a linear-induction monorail on Mars were first laid in 2093. Terraforming efforts started in 2095; the University of Mars was founded in the same year. [225]
2096 - The Indestructible Man [226]
Inter-continental travel was impossible, and the world was broken into city-states. France and the former United States of America were in a state of civil war. Japan had invaded New Zealand. There was a United Zion Arab States. Only Australia was spared the worst effects of a collapsing society. The second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe defeated the Myloki’s plan to use Captain Grant Matthews as the ultimate agent of mankind’s destruction.
In 2097, the eighth Doctor, Fitz and Trix prevented an unnamed alien race from exterminating the Pope on Mars, allowing her to consecrate the first cathedral on another planet. [227]
The economic boom promised by the Transit system didn’t arrive. Instead, the ability to move freely around the solar system caused massive economic and social upheaval. Small companies saw an opportunity to undermine the industrial zaibatsu. Household names such as Sony, IBM and Matsui went under, and new companies from Brazil, China and Africa - such as Imbani Entertainment, Mtchali and Tung-Po - took their place. Power shifted to Washington, Brazilia, Harare, Beijing, Tehran, Jacksonville and Zagreb. Japan’s economy collapsed and plans to terraform Mars proved more costly than had been expected. The money ran out, the floating cities planned for the Ionian Sea were never built and Australia starved. A new genre, silicon noir, charted the resultant corporate battles in the datascape.
The recession was not harsh on everyone. Relatively speaking, Europe was less prosperous than before, but many in Brazil, Africa and China were a great deal wealthier. For millions in Australia, though, and at the Stop - the end of the Transit line at the Lowell Depot - extreme poverty became a way of life. Whole areas became dead-end ghettos, and urban areas became battlegrounds for streetgangs. Vickers All-Body Combat Systems offered the option of using the Melbourne Protocols, automatically preventing the wearer from shooting civilians. Millions fled the riots using the Transit system, and relief workers rehoused the poor anywhere that would take them, mostly on Mars. Private security firms such as the KGB and V Soc became very rich. With freedom of transport, humanity became more open to ideas from other cultures and to more experimental ways of living. Communal marriages enjoyed a brief vogue.
In 2090, Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart came out of retirement one last time and raided the headquarters of the genetics company IMOGEN. He stole a single child, the first of the second-generation ubersoldaten, and all the files pertaining to her creation. He named her after his great-grandmother, the historian Kadiatu. [228]
Two hundred years after they’d travelled with Pierre Bruyere, the tenth Doctor and Martha visited a museum of Polar Exploration. [229]
Out to the Stars
After mankind “had sacked the solar system they moved on to pastures new”. [230] Twenty-first century ships still travelled slower than the speed of light and the crews were placed in suspended animation. It was not unusual to discover such ships many centuries later. [231] These were NAFAL ships, meaning Not As Fast As Light. [232] Nuke burning cadmium-damped spacebuckets were the first ships used to conquer the stars. The galaxy was full of the so-called “nukers” at one time. The first ships Earth built for deep space exploration were the starjammers, and great fleets of them were constructed. By 51,007, only one ship of this type, the Paine, remained. [233]
Huge Pioneer stations were set up, lining the way to the stars. They helped with refuelling and restocking of colony ships. [234]
Manned space travel remained enormously expensive prior to the advent of gravity plating. Once the hyperdrive was developed, Earth authorities - including the United Nations Aeronautics and Space Administration (UNASA) sent out unmanned Van Neumann probes to the first colony worlds to prepare them for human habitation. The probes were extremely adaptive but often disruptive - one landed on Arcturus and started to build a city, oblivious to the fact that the planet was already inhabited. [235]
The children of Susie Fontana Brooke and their children forged their way across the stars to the Dragon Star and the Celestial Belt of the Winter Queen. They mapped the Water Snake Wormholes. A Brooke fell in love with a Tandorian prince, which was the start of a whole new species. [236]
Prospectors such as Dom Issigri and Milo Clancey were the first men into deep space. Clancey’s ship, the “C” Class freighter LIZ 79, remained in service for forty years. Spacecraft at that time were built with the metal tillium and used a thermonuclear pile to supply power. Mined ore was sent to refineries in “floater
s”, slow unmanned vessels. An almost indestructible metal, argonite, was found on some of the planets in the fourth sector. Soon, all ships were made from argonite, which became the most valuable mineral known to man.
Clancey and Issigri became rich over the next fifteen years of working together, especially after they had spent ten years strip-mining the planet Ta in the Pliny system. Clancey became something of a legend on Reja Magnum. The partners eventually split, though, and Issigri went on to found the Issigri Mining Company. [237]
Robots such as the self-activating Megapodic Mark seven-Z Cleaners had some degree of autonomy. Scanners were developed that could track individuals. Miracle City had been masterpiece of the architect Kroagnon, but he refused to move out and let the residents sully his work by moving in. He was forced out, but the booby-traps he left behind massacred many of the residents. Kroagnon fled and was allowed to build Paradise Towers. During the war, youngsters and oldsters were evacuated to the 304-storey building, where the authorities forgot all about them. [238]
Earth’s Colonial Age began in the 2090s. Multinational conglomerates started the Century Program, sending colony ships to a dozen worlds in the hope of alleviating the population crisis on Earth. [239]
Slow Century Class ships were sent into deep space - once they arrived at their destination, they became useful space stations. Two such vessels, the Castor and the Pollux, were sent out into a demilitarised sector by the New Rome Institute to house dangerous criminals. Earth at this time was ruled by a World Minister. The Pacific Rim Co-operative was in conflict with the SubSaharan Autonomies. Quad fuel cars were operating. [240]
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