Swedish Empire (the Symphony That Never Ends)

The Swedish Empire is a totalitarian state, the first in its timeline, devoted to the synarchist ideology. It controls the European lands around the Baltic Sea and much of North America. It invented the atomic bomb and briefly seemed to threaten world domination. The inhabitants of Shikaku-mon are so used to thinking of Sweden as the great threat that they have scarcely noticed its slipping power and grave internal tensions. The Poles and Danes have always been restive under Swedish control, and recently the Russian subjects of the empire have also become insubordinate.

Of its 280 million inhabitants, about 100 million live in the European provinces. Sweden has a navy about the size of Brazil's and the largest army in the Western hemisphere. The Swedish economy is not very efficient and cannot really afford to maintain such a large military establishment; the cost has been dragging Sweden down year by year.

Even now, 88 years after the synarchist takeover, many people cannot bring themselves to believe the horrific reports that have circulated since the 1930s. Since synarchist doctrine revolves around the importance of ideas, thought control has been the explicit goal of the state since its inception. The logical extreme of isolating or exterminating those attached to "erroneous" ideas was reached during the 1940s and has remained a permanent feature of Swedish society. Its Control Rating is 6, of course.

Six "Directorates" govern the Swedish Empire. The First Directorate administers the basic functions of government in policy and foreign affairs. The dreaded Second Directorate is supposed to collect and provide information; it is really the secret police ~ the world's largest and most feared covert operations agency. The Third Directorate handles culture, education, and propaganda. The Fourth Directorate attempts to manage the economy. The Fifth Directorate controls the armed forces. Finally, the Sixth Directorate is the judicial system. In practice, the Second, Third, and Fifth Directorates form a sort of balance of power, with the Third Directorate playing a role similar to the political parties of the old Homeline totalitarian states. (All political parties have been abolished as inappropriate to the new order.)

Sweden gives the impression of being frozen while in the process of crumbling. Every other city block seems to contain a half-completed repair project, as if the workers lost the energy to continue. Shortages, breakdowns, and impossible bureaucracy, which elsewhere cause a simmering unrest among the lower orders, here seem to produce only a crushing gray apathy. The population is relentlessly pressured into mimicking authorized views that nobody believes any longer, so that increasingly they pay no attention to *any* public pronouncement. Only the small opposition groups, under constant threat from the Second Directorate, show any life.

* Swedish America

## Nuclear Pulse Drive

It is possible to propel a *carefully*-shielded spacecraft with exploding nuclear bombs. This method is obviously dangerous and also wasteful. Nuclear pulse drive ships are not very long-lived; the vibrations cause components to break down rapidly despite shielding.

Sweden is the only nation that has used them, when they broke the French lockout on Earth orbit by lifting the armed satellite *Edvard Bagare* directly into orbit. The Earth Orbit Disarmament Treat made nuclear pulse drives illegal ~ but the Swedes are believed to retain two or three nuclear pulse drive ships in case they ever want to lift a lot of mass into space *fast*.