The Federal Government Saga: Centennial Recollection, Parts 1 and 2

There have been many visions of the future...In this vision, it is the year 2198, a century after the after World War IV and the subsequent Reform spearheaded by the revolutionary Robert Flagler. Humanity is now united under the Federal Government, and the new world that has risen up from the shattered fragments of the old is a very different one indeed. While great advancements have been made and humanity's true ventures into the vastness of space have begun, there are things ahead that the now-peaceful world as a whole is not prepared for...

This is the world of the Federal Government of the Galactic Sector Alliance, the next stage in our history...

---------------------------------BEGIN TRANSMISSION-----------------------------

FedNet Accessed Recorded Message
FARMed: July 3, 2198
Subject: Centennial Recollection
Author: President Gerald Solomon

Devastation. This was the state of the world in the aftermath of the combined effects of the Fourth World War and The Reform. Looking back, President Flagler had one hell of a job to do after The Reform made its effect felt on the shattered world. With no opposition whatsoever, even at a time when anyone even associated with the United States of old could have been kept out of power, he became the first Federal President, and with popular global support, he stayed in this position until third and final term in 2112. While popular support clamored for a fourth, he voluntarily stepped down to ensure his personal ideal of fairness and innovation of government would be carried on, and watched the future he worked hard for begin to unfold until his own passing in 2134.

In the ninety-eight years that have passed since the first popular Federal Election, many great Presidents have risen up to set the standard in this ever evolving civilization; Presidents such as Justin Helmsley, the second president and youngest brother of Britain's final Prime Minister Laura Helmsley (whose death prompted Flagler to initiate the rebellion that ended World War IV and led to The Reform). And let's not forget Presidents such as Hasaad, Braga, and Park...all fine presidents who brought new ideas in the wake of the Reform and new innovations that have taken the world to a new place.

Among the many innovations begun with Flagler was the restructuring of national borders. While regional identities are still permitted and even nurtured as a way of keeping human culture alive (thanks to the efforts of the Federal Cultural Board), the former nations of Earth were broken down into set regions based on continent, region, and longevity. They were dubbed "Sectors", a name scheme which continues even now that we have expanded beyond our terrestrial confines and started to expand into the reaches of space. Since their restructuring, the Four Sectors of Earth have been working diligently to ensure safety of their citizens and the serving as the pillars for one of President Flagler's longest legacies: the Space Voyager program. The more I think about the importance of this program, the more I remind myself about how integrated the history of the program's development is to the chaotic history leading up to The Reform...

See, sometime shortly after World War III ended, the old United States Government revealed its facilities at what once was known as Area 51 to the world both as a show of goodwill and, to some degree, intimidation; because of the advanced (in some cases, extraterrestrial) technology being studied there, the world finally understood how humanity could seemingly overnight "begin" the development of have energy-based weapons, craft of unimaginable speed and maneuverability, and robotics more advanced than anything seen in the world up to that point.

The key focus of everything that had been done up to that point centered around an extraterrestrial ship whose markings seemed to spell the word "Etax" to those who studied it, particularly the light-speed drive and power source on the ship. Besides the mysteries that lay within the Etax drive was the mystery of how it had been secretly donated in the early 21st century so that research could begin on implementing this technology in a reasonable way. While both mysteries were solved, the latter is another story for another day...

The initial research done for the Etax program was summarily halted when global catastrophe in 2040 and turmoil in the immediate aftermath necessitated research into other technologies, such as renewed interest in advanced robotics to rebuild in areas unfit for unprotected human labor, or the development of the terraformation technology that was later tested on Antarctica in 2063 (the same one that left it uninhabitable during the early stages of The Reform, thus it's designation as the Scientific Hub when the Sectors were being drawn up). The Etax drive itself was a unique power source as the on-board energy generator had the capability of powering entire countries' worth of (then) modern devices. In fact, in the days following the Panic of 2040, the original Etax drive was secretly utilized to restore emergency power to the shattered United States for days while the government set about rebuilding the national power grid.

With the outbreak of World War III not long after the Panic of 2040, the Etax program was formally reopened out of desperation for new technology to forcibly put down the entities that were wreaking havoc across the globe with nuclear technology, further poisoning an already sick planet. It was at this time that renowned scientist Erik Kelez first discovered the power source that would later bear his name as a result of his experiments with the Etax drive, and his discovery was hastily re-purposed for the development of the "induction beams" that would swiftly bring the war to an end. It wasn't until many years later that he would formally reveal the technology, claiming to have only "perfected it" for public use when he did so. Ultimately, the Etax drive was again left to the wayside and Kelez's discoveries were again turned into a weapon of mass destruction in the form of the first Kelez missile in 2098. This was the weapon deployed towards the end of the Fourth World War which not only redrew parts of the Neo Eurasian map, but directly provoked the events which led to The Reform.

Following the peaceful time of rebuilding after The Reform, the Federal Council agreed that there was now a more pressing need to begin the terraformation and population of other planets in order to ensure the survival of the human race in the event of future cataclysms like the ones experienced prior to this period. The rationale was that "with each technological innovation and dissension, [the world came] closer and closer to destroying itself outright." At least, that's how President Flagler put it in his second inaugural address. In order to speed up the process (cultivating techniques from the experiment in the Scientific Hub that allowed it to develop faster), more trips would be needed to be made and with much shorter trips than what was the norm then.

Thus, from the ashes rose a new (old) ship technology, and once we figured out how to tap into the Etax drive's full potential for space travel, the drive (and the ship it was built for) led us back out into the vastness of space, albeit with new ways to expand our reach amongst the cosmos. With the newly unlocked technology in hand, as well as some additional advancements we derived from it, we were able to rapidly build the first iteration of Flagler's dream venture: the "capital without boundaries"; the Unity Sector. It was originally crafted as an orbiting station to allow the President and Counselors of each Sector "to be free from the dissension that could arise from geographical advantages and to forever have an eternal reminder of the responsibility of one's duties below them."

With this technological and political advancement as its backdrop, the early Space Voyagers program (which eventually was based in Unity Sector once completed) was originally a strictly scientific venture made up of crews from across the Four Sectors. While it allowed us to easily begin the Martian Terraformation project in 2127, the Fed decreed it would eventually to utilize this new venture along with the refined Etax technology to develop new vessels and see what lay beyond our own system. Even with that being intended for sometime off, it seemed fate had other plans:

On one of the early visits to Mars with the original Etax ship (specifically a visit in 2132), a legacy code was accidentally tripped in the cartography process before one mission, and an early group of Space Voyagers were transported to a planet that wasn't on any charted system at the time. We later learned it was a planet called Centuri, which turned out to be the planet the original Etax ship originated from. While the planet was uninhabited at the time due to a self-sustained global apocalypse during events there in the 21st century, those particular Space Voyagers made contact the humanoid Rylians, the descendants of the Centurians and another dead planet called Xanatox (a former ally of Centurai). With first contact having been made with an extraterrestrial entity, or more accurately first recorded contact as the Rylians had their own secret ties to human history, we had a new ally in space, and the Federal Government was now reaching out to systems beyond our own. What was to come next was both a period of unfettered discovery and unforeseen conflicts beyond our new found borders...

But that's a tale for another time...it seems my duties await. The rigors of being a President, eh?

-------------------------------END TRANSMISSION----------------------------------

---------------------------------BEGIN TRANSMISSION-----------------------------

FedNet Access Recorded Message
FARMed: July 8, 2198
Subject: Centennial Recollection, Part 2
Journal Entered by: President Gerald Solomon

Kinship. It's a hell of a thing to come by, and in some cases incredibly hard to maintain. In others, you sometimes wonder how you could live without these close allies. That being said, it's somewhat apropos that I had to end my last FARM at the first contact with the Rylians...See, the "duties" I had to attend to were the annual Contact Day celebrations we hold in honor of the event. The Rylians have been our staunchest allies in the years since 2132, and the alliance with them would drastically alter the course of our history...

Any historian would agree with me when I say that the period between 2132 and 2170 was nothing short of spectacular: technology shared between the Rylians and our world would evolve everything we knew at a rapid pace: we had new vehicles for air, land, sea, and space; new weapons of both lethal and non-lethal varieties to ensure peace both at home and abroad; battle suits so advanced that they're still in use by all forms of defense personnel today; new means of communication with the neural uplink construction that became the Social Patchwork Human Environment RElay (or as it's more commonly referred to as, The SPHERE), and the encrypted government version, the FARM. Since their inception, SPHEREing and FARMing have allowed us to communicate in new ways with each other and with our Rylian counterparts, driving up human/humanoid interactions a thousandfold and bringing people in general to a whole new plateau of understanding. As we came to become inseparable allies, the Rylians introduced us to the makers of much of their newer technology, the inhabitants of Datak 5. The Dark Eyes, as we call them now, were apparently the "grey skinned" extraterrestrials we'd come to know in the past, but thanks to The SPHERE, we've grown beyond our past prejudices and have found it incredibly easy to co-exist with them.

As our technology for world colonization also evolved rapidly, so did ambitions between the Fed and its new allies: While we did complete the terraformation of Mars well ahead of schedule with new Rylian technology, we were soon able to utilize this tech to begin setting up exploration outposts across different galaxies. And while the Federal Government was still referred to as an Earth-based political entity, it was by 2163 that our alliance with the Rylians prompted the Council to offer them full participation in the Federal Government. With this, the second phase of the Federal Government, the Galactic Sector Alliance, began.

(I should note that the Dark Eyes, while offered a spot on the Council, politely declined as they saw themselves simply as a collective of craftsmen and researchers, not rulers; they still are an honorary Protectorate Sector as a gesture of goodwill for their assistance in the development of the Galactic Sector Alliance.)

No surprise then, after both the welcoming of the Rylians into the Fed and the..."appealing" benefits of their their the humanoid nature, that we began to intermingle with them, integrating their culture into ours as much as ours into theirs. In fact, my own wife, D'inna, is a Rylian, and nobody gives it second thought these days. And while there was initial concern about preferential treatment because of the advancements of their society (brought about by the fact that their whole planet was designated the Rylian Sector), the fact that they inhabited an undivided world for so long and had past ties to the human species made these concerns subside quickly. It seemed as if after eons of turmoil, humankind and its newfound allies were about to enjoy an era of peace and understanding. It was a perfect time, and looked like it would be perfect for a long time to come.

Unfortunately, as with all things, nothing is ever truly "perfect." The events of the last twenty years gave testimony to that...

In 2178, the past came back to haunt the newly expanded Federal Government and its Galactic Sector Alliance in the form of the Vlatchtarians, a shape-shifting race that was an old mutual threat to the Centurai and Xanatox. Posing as rogue Rylians in an attempt to sew distrust amongst the allied worlds, they had first reared their head that year in guerrilla assaults on the colonial planet of Alba, which was first visited in 2149 and inhabited post-terraformation in 2162. What we didn't know, or more accurately, what we weren't told, was that the planet we knew as Rylia was forcibly wrested from the control of the Vlatchtarians by the joint Centurian/Xanatoxan remnants in the wake of the destruction of Centurai and, subsequently, Xanatox. With the Vlatchtarians having played key roles in each of these, there was little to no regard for their future survival by what became the Rylian people. In essence, the cycle which we thought we had broken on our own world after the formation of the Federal Government had been repeated off-world in the past by our new allies. Flagler's words of "preserve the future, protect today" never quite meant as much to the Rylians as they did at that point...

This touched off a new conflict, the one week Alban Strike in 2183. While restricted to just the planet of Alba, the toll was heavy on the fledgling military division of the Space Voyagers, the Voyager Elite Ops Unit (known only as the Voyager Elite these days); we had invested so much into peacetime measures out of fear of sparking new conflicts with ourselves that a lightly defended outpost was, essentially, invaded. And with the resources mounted from not just ourselves, but our allies, to regain control of the planet and suppress this new threat which had gotten their hands on new technologies to rival our own, this short engagement became synonymous with the bitterly remembered conflicts of Earth from the 20th and 21st centuries. While those who fought in the battles were never treated poorly upon their return, the government received the harshest criticism in almost a century in the wake of the Alban Strike.

In the subsequent years, the Fed (grudgingly) invested into re-developing all our defensive technologies to take on the threats they knew were on the horizon...things like the mechanized tank being transformed into a new kind of "walking power armor" for troops, new combat weapons being crafted from Datak 5's technological research of new Vlatchtarian tech, and new ways to revitalize and even enhance the now-aging Kelez-powered weapon systems. We even went back and built a sister ship to the original Etax craft which, once it's officially launched later this year, will serve as a flagship vessel for both space exploration and space combat. Thanks to having the original Etax craft as another module for both added transport speed for long jumps and for quick relay jumps will benefit us both for combat ops and further exploration since, minus a few small updates here and there, the technology of the ship has held up well over the almost two centuries since it's donation. This new ship will also benefit from the detachable space station module, as well as the fact that the entire ship will be a mobile District. In essence, this new successor to the Etax will be a wonderful companion to Unity Sector.

And as for Unity Sector itself, it too is going to adapt to the era we find ourselves in now. While once intended as an orbiting station for Earth, it is being integrated into a new behemoth of a structure: it's essentially a mobile city-state which has landing modules to allow it to dock on different worlds for either defensive purposes or for long-term sector tours. It can also utilize a long disused Rylian technology for long distance teleportation called the Ellipsis. With these structural changes and the Ellipsis transport system, the Unity Sector has become the ultimate expression of Flagler's vision as we push further out into the cosmos.

I hope that for the most part, minus a few of the more unfortunate happenings in recent times, I've painted a fairly rosy picture of the time since The Reform. In my mind and because of the things I've experienced in my own life, I see it as mostly accurate. Even with the blemishes that exist, I still see this world (or should it be worlds?) that we have now as a beautiful place and the closest thing to utopia that any of our planets have had for what feels like forever. As I gear up for a second term (the first consecutive term in decades), I look back on this century of development with joy and gratitude because I treasure it so much. It is this joy and gratitude that keeps me focused on my duty. In essence, I look back to see where I need to look next.

I am, after all, the President of the Federal Government of the Galactic Sector Alliance; I have the responsibility of keeping not just my homeworld, but the worlds of others, fully protected. Though Robert's presidency all those years ago was to promote peace after war, I can already sense that I will be the president who must carry us through war after peace. I was there at Alba to witness the future I will inherit firsthand, and I've had the people of the Sectors place their trust in me for one term already because of this. I owe it to not just one civilization, but many, to be prepared for the threats that loom on the horizon. Robert once said "preserve the future, protect today." I intend to do that and more: I will protect today and tomorrow for all those who came before me, and for all those yet to be.

I am a President; this is the duty that I'm entrusted to carry out.

-------------------------------END TRANSMISSION----------------------------------