The Wireless World

## Where We Are Now

So that brings us up to 2065 through today (2072). Most of you  know what happened, having already lived it, but for completeness sake, I’ll lay it out for you, so you’ve got the whole picture. You can’t appreciate the puzzle’s image until all the pieces are in place after all.

### Neonet and the WMI

The first priority was having a system in place to replace the old Matrix ; we’d become so dependent on it to run everything that society, for awhile, simply fell apart in some places. Here’s where two companies, Transys Neuronet and Erika , come on the scene: they’d been developing wireless technology for the Wireless Matrix Initiative (WMI) since 2058 and had been planning on getting it online in the fall of 2064 anyway. With the second Matrix Crash happening in that same timeframe, it was a foregone conclusion to many that this was the answer to our prayers. After Transys Neuronet and Erika merged, Novatech  immediately entered into negotiations for a merger as well, wanting to take advantage of the additional influx of money it would bring and having the advantage of being a corporation used to dealing with Matrix-related technology. The only problem was that in the minds of many who were aware of what happened the day of the second Crash, Novatech’s name was mud. The new combined corp christened itself NeoNET  and proceeded to set up the Matrix in its virtual and augmented form as we know it today.

### Winners and Losers

   The years following the Crash saw some significant changes on the Corporate Court  landscape, as the megas jockeyed for position and took advantage of each others’ weaknesses. The two biggest changes occurred as one mega lost its seat on the Court and another one rose to claim it.

Cross Applied Technologies ’ troubles began when its CEO, Lucien Cross , died in a plane crash on the day of Crash 2.0. Damien Knight of Ares  had always had his eye on CATco but Cross’ death brought him out to declare open warfare, snapping up Cross assets left and right as Cross’ son tried desperately to hold the corp together. This, coupled with various other financial difficulties and irregularities, placed CATco’s Corporate Court seat in extreme jeopardy.

In the same period, another corporation was making its move, this time in the other direction. Horizon Group , a corp specializing in public relations, entertainment and marketing, leveraged its close relationships with several key nations (including Tir Tairngire and Pueblo , among others) and its exclusive contracts for rebuilding California  into a successful bid to claim CATco’s vacated Corp Court seat. They’re a new face on the AAA scene and we have yet to see what they’ll do with their newfound power, but it should be interesting to say the least.

### General Colloton for President

   The second Matrix Crash also completely screwed up the November 2064 election, as far as electronic or remote-voting was concerned. In addition, a group call itself the New Revolution , with the aim of forcefully reuniting the oldUnited States of America , attempt to stage a coup and failed. Still, they succeeded in killing quite a few leaders (President Kyle Haeffner among them) before loyal UCAS troops were able to wrest control back. Under orders from the President-pro tem Nadja Daviar , General Angela Colloton (famed for her work with the Renraku Arcology situation back in ’59) declared martial law until the country was brought back under control.

When the elections were held again, we had little choice but to elect a President who ended up being nothing but a tool of the corps for his entire term. We’d been through enough at this point that controversy wasn’t at all welcome in a candidate. We learned from our mistakes though and in 2068 elected General Colloton as President.

### Nation (Re)building

Everyone slowly began picking up the pieces of their lives as soon as they could after the Second Crash . In Boston , for example, a memorial was erected to mourn the loss of so many lives and the ECSE was moved back to New York .

Meanwhile, the Ute Nation in the NAN , having already been in a slow downward spiral since the early 60’s, finally cracked in the aftermath of the Crash. More in need of resources than pride, they grudgingly but gratefully accepted assistance from the newly wireless Pueblo Corporate Council  and were absorbed in 2067. Their sector in Denver  followed suit with Ghostwalker’s  blessing. The withdrawal of the megacorporation Mitsuhama Computer Technologies from Tsimshian  after it was finished plundering left the territory rather empty; the Salish-Shidhe lost no time in making it a Salish protectorate . This started some interesting rumbling in the Sovereign Tribal Council , so I’d keep an ear out for more if I were you.

CalFree  finally saw the last of Saito , but not the last of its woes. In early 2069 a pair of major earthquakes coming from the San Andreas Fault Line and the San Pedro Shelf caused widespread flooding and destruction, killing tens of thousands. Much of Southern California and the Central Valley dropped below sea level and were inundated with tidal waves. While San Francisco and the Bay Area were mostly spared, waters flooded most of the Central Valley and Los Angeles (which, if nothing else, had at least fortified their sea walls in the more affluent corporate areas decades ago). They say that the floodwaters may recede in a year or two, but we’ll see. Meanwhile if you want to visit, you’ll have to fly or lean to swim.

### Times of Emergence

Unbeknownst to the masses of metahumanity, the Crash of 2064 laid seeds that would take years to bear fruit in the fertile digital fields of the new Matrix. It is now widely believed that the Crash, intentionally or not, resulted in a singularity event . While thousands of online users were killed, others found themselves subtly changed, becoming true children of the Matrix. A select few survivors discovered they were able to interface with the new wireless Matrix using only the power of their minds and the elusive force known as the Resonance . Though their numbers remain small, they seem to have grown in the years since the Crash.

Identifying rare individuals with this strange gift, the megacorporations initiated secret pogroms to ruthlessly capture and examine these “technomancers ” in a bid to contain, control and harness their power for profit and security. In June 2070, the disastrous and bloody breakout of a handful of such test subjects from a research facility in Hong Kong shoved technomancers into the public eye in the worst possible way. Faced with justifying their actions or scapegoating these potentially dangerous individuals, several megacorps fed the media hysteria and public paranoia. Technomancers were linked to the Crash of ’64 and the virus and blamed for everything from illegal Matrix access to brainhacking. The media-fed frenzy quickly spiraled into worldwide persecution and violence, forcing many technomancers further underground and into the shadows.

### A Second Revelation

During the height of the technomancer persecutions, metahumanity stumbled upon an equally unexpected and frightening surprise. Matrix security trawls for virtuakinetic activity revealed an increasing number of anomalies, strange oddities and sightings in the Matrix started to add up, and soon we were faced with the undeniable truth that technomancers were not the only children of the Crash. Forced from hiding by stringent new Matrix security measures, a new generation of Artificial Intelligences emerged from the depths of the Matrix.

Significantly less powerful than the first generation of self-aware Matrix programs, these new AI’s emerged from existing software and programs. They soon found themselves not only facing metahuman prejudice, but also locked in a battle to see their rights as autonomous sentient beings recognized by the corporations that laid claim to their original programs.

While the debate blazed for months, with some megacorps siding with the Emerged factions – whether for strategic convenience or enlightened self-interest – it was only the revelation of the horrors of unsanctioned experimentation on technomancers and the compromises struck by an AI faction led by the digital intelligence Pulsar  that settled things down. Though this was not before stringent security and Matrix regulation legislation was passed in several nations.

### Underworld at War

The echoes of the technomancer witch-hunts and the AI emergence had barely settled down when a very different sort of social problem took hold of numerous sprawls in early 2071. A mysterious new bioengineered Awakened Drug named ‘tempo ’ took inner cities and youth culture by storm. Granting limited astral  sight as well as an empathy-heightening buzz, tempo soon became the drug du jour insinuating itself into all walks of life by exploiting legal loopholes regarding Awakened drugs. The damage the tempo craze wrought on traditional syndicate gold mines like BTL and regular drug trade as well as the impressive profits it pumped into its distributors, soon set the global criminal at each other’s throats . Syndicates clashed locally and internationally. Drug-related crime and violence soared to unprecedented levels in many sprawls. Syndicate wetwork hit all-time highs and some big names were removed from play. Gangland battles have shaken the underworld status quo so badly the dust has yet to fully settle.

It’s been a busy few years, but like the old shadow adage goes, “Trouble is good for business.” And business has definitely been good.

* Back to: The Second Crash
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