The Concordium of Sol and Her Protectorates
Stats
Population: 719 trillion
Capital: Alexandria
Official Language: Terran
Demonym: Solarian
Government
Direct Democracy
Systems:
Sol
Proxima Centauri
Ross 128 (Ross)
Tau Ceti
YZ Ceti (Zeta)
Lutyen's Star (Lutyen)
Teegarden's Star (Teegarden)
Kapetyn's Star (Kapetyn)
Wolf 1061 (Wolf)
Gliese 832 (Gliese)
82 G. Eridani (Eridani)
142 G. Scorpii (Scorpii)
TRAPPIST-1 (Trappist)
LHS-1140 (Elle)
Stats
Population: 719 trillion
Capital: Alexandria
Official Language: Terran
Demonym: Solarian
Government
Direct Democracy
Systems:
Sol
Proxima Centauri
Ross 128 (Ross)
Tau Ceti
YZ Ceti (Zeta)
Lutyen's Star (Lutyen)
Teegarden's Star (Teegarden)
Kapetyn's Star (Kapetyn)
Wolf 1061 (Wolf)
Gliese 832 (Gliese)
82 G. Eridani (Eridani)
142 G. Scorpii (Scorpii)
TRAPPIST-1 (Trappist)
LHS-1140 (Elle)
Overview
The Concordium of Sol and Her Protectorates (often shortened to The Concordium or just Sol where appropriate) is a nation of digitized humans (Minds) struggling to agree on how to govern their base human colonies in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way Galaxy. The state is characterized by its use of powerful informational technology, mass manufacturing, and post-organic governmental theory.
History
The Concordium is a direct evolution of the ancient United Nations which unified the organic humans of Sol into one state in 2553 following the growing concern over the Digital State of Titan's victory in the Glass Wars and the need to govern the young colonies on Aurora (Tau Ceti e) and Shangri-La (Proxima Centauri b), as well as those that would appear as other colony ships arrived at their destinations in the future.
It continued its tense standoff with Titan and careful deployment of colony ships for several centuries until the invention of Mansouri-type AIs (2nd Generation Minds) in 2704. This generation was newer and friendlier than the Dämmerung-Karavadra-type AIs (1st Generation Minds)which inhabited Titan, and born free unlike them. Slowly and carefully, a number of differences between the UN and Titan once thought irreconcilable were patched up, and Titan was admitted to the UN as a member state in 2760, and integrated into the whole of humanity (which AI were now recognized as) in 2783.
It was during this time that older colonies began to rely less and less upon Sol. The voyage to Tau Ceti took a century at best speeds, and the colonists on Aurora recognized this distance. For them, there was no backup planet if their settlements failed. Each day they baked under that hot desert sun at the poles, each time their hastily constructed defenses barely managed to swat down one of the system's many asteroids, they remembered how far from their ancestral home they were. In 2812, 400 years after the colony was initially settled, the people of Aurora declared independence from Sol and severed their communications.
The reaction to this rebellion was one of rage across the UN, and a fleet was raised. The shipyards in Titanian orbit filled with metal and carbon from the Dome Foundries of Ceres, and crews of humans both digital and organic filed into their respective data banks and stasis pods. They spent a century between the stars upon bursts of atomic fire, waiting for a chance to bring their home system honor. When they arrived in 2919, they found that Aurora was more than ready. Even though the two poles of the planet had formed into rival nations, they had still formed a fleet of stealth craft supported by laser fortress networks beneath each pole. Millions of soldiers perished before touching the ground. In their hubris, UN forces had elected not to bring any fuel for a return journey. The last transmission out of the system by the remnants of the UN fleet was a simple warning to not try again. This news was suppressed from the colonies as best as possible, but others such as Shangri-La and Sólsetur (Ross 128 b) still discovered that rebellion was possible and chose to secede. This time, Sol did not retaliate.
In 3095, after an era of peace and quiet shame, the technology to digitize the human mind was refined to the point of practicality via the Touchard-Huo method. Shortly thereafter, the system was paralyzed by existential crisis and inaction, followed by fear and rioting. The keys to immortality were now within reach, and no one could agree on what to do with them. Eventually, it was the AI who managed to settle the fearful organics down enough to think. A consensus was agreed upon, wherein uploading would be available to everyone who desired it, and those who did not want it would be free to live their lives as they saw fit. By 3097, the first of the once-organic humans (3rd Generation Minds) began to join and participate in the dataspheres as their synthetic predecessor-children had. While organic humanity slowly fell toward extinction in Sol, digital humanity had taken over in full and was free to operate however it saw fit.
Within a few years, the ailing UN had been reformed into the Concordium, and a renaissance had taken Sol in force. Gardens bloomed on Venus, and the oceans of Europa and Ganymede teemed with life. The combination of post-organic creativity and evolutionary drive combined with pure digital computational power and efficiency birthed new forms of art and literature in as many mediums as had ever been, and new ones as well. Science zeroed in on the greatest heights of the universe and the smallest facets of its constituent particles, yielding new insights and discoveries. It was from this scientific explosion that the secret to lightspeed travel was finally discovered in 3326.
While it remained impossible to exceed the speed of light, the new Curvature Drives could bend the space around them to approach near enough to the speed of light to cross the gulf between worlds in what felt like an instant, limited only by structural restraints to avoid dilated mass collapsing in upon itself. It was in the wake of this technology being mass produced for the first time that the Minds (as they were now called) took time to recall what had been taken from them in the skies of Aurora. The 1st and 2nd generations recalled the memories their copies had sent back from Tau Ceti four centuries prior, and some of the older 3rd Generation Minds recalled the shame and fear they felt when the war had been lost in their youths. And in one of the Concordium's rare moments of true unity, it decided that reconquest was the only solution.
Across Sol, war fleets were forged. This time, they had learned from the lessons in interstellar warfare taught to them by Aurora. They knew that only through overwhelming force could another entire star system be invaded. So when they loaded for war this next time, they meant it. Where before they had sent thousands of ships, they now launched millions. Where soldiers had before been millions of humans, now were trillions of drones and clone troops. Where nuclear weapons had once been mounted, now perched antimatter missiles as well.
Shangri-La fell first. It had spotted the fleet coming from long range defensive arrays, and while it had not anticipated a repeat of the Battle of Aurora, it was prepared just in case. They balked at the speed with which the fleet moved, and its size, but prepared as best they could. Their forces were shattered within a day of the fleet switching to standard fusion drives at the system's edge and opening fire, and by the end of the month, drones stalked the icy cliff cities of the Southern Range seeking to dispose of any resistance to their new reign. As the Auroran Jihad (as the war had ironically come to be called) slowly crawled between the stars, it brought with each conquest a new ethical question: with Sol's wayward children now back under proper rule, what was she to do with her charges? Uploading seemed an obvious conclusion to some, but others argued that doing so without access to the rich dataspheres of Sol was tantamount to torture, and that even the normal distance between the planets was difficult to bear. Still others thought that giving rise to the powers of digital intelligence in the new Protectorates was simply an invitation to another rebellion with the swiftness they had used in the Jihad.
Infighting and scheming began. While the Minds could agree to overtly maintain the status quo in the Protectorates, their copies in distant systems received instructions to start working toward their own goals, and shadow wars began. Nothing nearly as overt as the Jihad has occurred since, but still the Minds bicker about the best course of action in Sol, while their outsystem agents fought one another to achieve their own aims. The opening of the Nexus Gate orbiting Singapore Nova (142 G. Scorpii Cc) in 4203 has only added more to this confusion, and now brings with it the issue of what to do about the aliens, and how this new wildcard will impact the ongoing debates regarding the ethics of immortality.
Government
The Concordium lacks a proper government, post-singularity as it is. Rather, it is governed by a consensus of the various Minds who exist within it who must agree unanimously on courses of action for them to proceed properly. Due to the absence of faster-than-light communications (at present), the decision making process is generally sluggish at best. More often, it is paralyzed entirely, as making decisions outside of Sol is nearly impossible due to light lag. Instead, Minds will send copies of themselves and resources from Sol to the Protectorates to influence events toward their own desires and ambitions there. These are not necessarily against the betterment of the organics who live there, but are not necessarily in their favor either.
Outside Sol, governments vary wildly. In any event, they bow to Sol, as the Minds have agreed at least on the concept of human unity the UN had once worked so hard to achieve. As such, theocracies, republics, and corporations may war in Protectorate systems, but they are invariably subject to Sol whenever she hands down rare unanimous verdicts. When dictates from Sol are disobeyed, a guiding hand is usually delivered shortly after in the form of several thousand Von Neumann warships or a vat grown strike team.
Government and religion often coincide, as the people of Protectorate worlds will witness the acts of Minds using advanced technology and simply conclude it is some sort of magic or sorcery. As such, many faiths have sprung up that worship Minds as deities, with varying degrees of approval by the associated Minds. Regardless of how much the individual enjoys being the subject of worship, the base of ardent believers is inevitably used as a way to further their own aims.
Economy
Sol proper is a post-scarcity economy. The Minds there have nearly bottomless resources at their disposal, and rarely want for anything. Beyond Sol, economies vary wildly. Older protectorates such as Tau Ceti have complex market and command economies in their bounds, while newer ones such as Trappist still operate on barter in the absence of abundance.
Technological spread is another highly relevant consideration. More advanced colonies nearer to the cutting edge research of Sol have machines which make their economies less labor oriented, such as large scale automation, molecular assemblers, and nanotechnology. Meanwhile, more distant settlements like Elle still use outdated technologies like fission power, and some have even regressed, in the case of Eridani, toward the use of petroleum and hand tools. As such, economies vary wildly across the Protectorate, but tend toward more primitive forms as distance from Sol increases.
Interstellar shipping is largely concerned with manufactured goods which are far too advanced for a system's local infrastructure to make. While some systems are able to produce these on their own, others are under an informational blackout such that the necessary facilities cannot be made. Another prime good is information, which is often shipped physically to avoid lossy transfers in low connectivity routes to colonies, especially newer and more distant ones. People are also moved from system to system, be they clone soldiers from Sol, or simple passengers hoping to go from one colony to another for a new life. Interstellar shipping happens at very different rates, as Sol holds the secrets of the Curvature Drive very closely, with rare attempts at data theft by colonists inevitably resulting in antimatter detonations and punitive strikes. As such, interstellar shipping by colonists rather than Minds is usually carried out by either well developed laser beam highways on rogue bodies between stars, or on slower nuclear pulse powered craft where such infrastructure does not exist.
