Range-L Corporation

The logo of the Range-L Corporation.

### Industry

Primarily Exploration and Colonization, Information Technology, and Mining. Numerous smaller industries.

### Subsidiaries

Hundreds. Most Notable is Estarri Voidcraft, producing starships for both civilians and the military of the Rangel worlds.

The Range-L corporation is a massive conglomerate of smaller businesses that covers a variety of markets ranging from starship construction to personal electronics and prefabricated structures.

## Products

Range-L produces a massive variety of products, though their most numerous come in the form of starships and computing devices.

## History

The company was founded on Mars sometime in the year 2423 as a relief aid for humans living on Earth during the New Ice Age period, following the population war which ended in 2393 with the devastating destruction of the east coast of Africa due to a massive nuclear explosion that sent earth spiraling into a nuclear winter.

It was named for their founder, Rangel Damian Oliverovich, as well as a poorly translated slogan, “Helping the worst at the range of light”, roughly intended to mean that no matter how far away you lived, they would be there to assist you in your time of need, however the poetic intentions of the original wording translated poorly into English. Range-L is “Range of Light”. Later slogans were better translated as “Assisting the poor, no matter the distance.”

They were mostly responsible for shipping in food and clean water and putting up prefabricated shelters in destroyed cities in Europe, North America, Oceania and East Asia. In part due to their efforts, humanity was able to recover more quickly than Earth was, and the assisted in designing and constructing the Liveship EV *Traveler* in the 2550s. This allowed them to spread their business to Revant.

On the 24 year journey from Sol to Kyandor between 2901 and 2925, Range-L’s influence grew further as they were responsible for the upkeep of nearly a third of the buildings required for the 40 thousand people living on the sky deck, as well as several of the hydroponics bays in the lower decks that provided oxygen and food for the entire population of over 250 thousand, so they were almost unanimously seen as required.

They were also affiliated with the New Sol Project in 2950, building creature comforts on the colony ships sent to the system. Their involvement was to a much lesser extent than on *Traveler*.

Upon reaching Revant, the now extremely influential company set their sights further. Humanity began searching for other worlds to colonize so as to not repeat the mistakes they had made on Earth and Mars. 125 years later, scouts had found a pristine world within a few decades travel time of Revant (using the technology of the time). Colonization rights were auctioned to the highest bidder, and Range-L was the winner. Thus began their expansion into the superpower we know them as today.

Range-L would go on to name this star system after their founder, Rangel, and the planet would be named Monile, after the current CEO’s grandmother. Due to the exorbitant amount of money the company spent securing the exclusive rights to the planet, essentially owning the entire thing , they opened the development of the planet to smaller companies for an up front payment and a portion of all proceeds made on the world.

Their influence could only grow, as they were now making enough money off of the concessions and goods produced on the planet to rival the largest martian governments. They ended up purchasing several key businesses that were working on the planet in order to expand into markets they had no presence in, including Estarri Voidcraft, a company that produced 20-40 meter long luxury starships for personal use, and Chiuro, a company that mass produced simple clothing such as bulk-packed T-Shirts and undergarments, and many more.

When the first gate was deployed in the Rangel system by the company who had invented them on Revant, decades of news and confirmed or denied rumors hit the public all at once, as each was armed with a Quantum Entanglement Receiver. What remained of the Range-L corporation in Kyandor and Sol was next to nothing, having been supplanted by other companies that did their jobs better than Range-L could manage after spending so much on Monile.

Later, the company would purchase the rights to colonize Joya in the Rangel 2 system, and the planets Ulibell, Tize and even Clesti, despite the planet’s reputation and environmental hazards, in the Rangel 3 system. Each time a new colony was started it repeated the cycle of loaning work they could not do to third parties and the eventual buyout of several of these companies, filling markets they had little to no presence in.

The company was eventually considered by many to be too large, as they controlled nearly all of the infrastructure on five planets, and employed billions of people. Even the government was technically under their control due to the sheer magnitude of goods and services the organization provided to the population. If they were to leave, civilization could collapse on that world.

Sanctions against their business would not work as there would always be independent colonies that would do business with them, and they would simply turn to independent scouting and military actions to continue expanding.

Attempts to forcefully regulate the business taking place in more than half of known space at the time could result in literal corporate warfare in addition to economic collapse, as the company was producing its own warships at the time despite that market being entirely government controlled.

The company itself was left alone, but they were all but disallowed to purchase further colony rights. The Human Systems Group simply began distributing them more evenly, utilizing a semi-random lottery system among participating companies in order to prevent further monopolization.

Some of the company’s detractors would have good reason to be suspicious of them following information leaks about Project Parent.

## Project Parent

Project Parent, or The Parent Project, was a secret program undertaken by the Range-L Corporation during the late 3500s and early 3600s that was intended to produce sapient artificial intelligence.

All artificially intelligent programs up to that point were unable to modify their own programming.

Whether that was simple Class 4 AI in the forms of earlier 21st century virtual assistance programs, Class 3 AI that could intelligently act as a secretary or software on automatic cleaning tools (Later, on low intelligence robotic servant shells such as maids and butlers) and carry convincing, if limited conversation, or Class 2 AI that could think and reason, but had no true emotions or drive for higher purposes than those they were made for, all were bound by their programming.

Only one known computer wasn't fully bound by programming. The human brain.

Phase 1 of the program was to create a coding language with a base counting system between 20 and 30 single digits in order to mimic the brain’s own synapses, which have more than 20 known intensities of electricity, compared to the traditional computer’s base 2. This phase also entailed building a CPU that could read and run base 20-30 code.

Phase 2 was to create hardware that could simulate or emulate the human brain’s number and complexity of signals sent. This hardware, when complete, had roughly the same volume as early computation hardware, taking up entire rooms for only a single unit. This phase ran alongside phase 3 as more information about the functioning of the brain was discovered.

Phase 3 required a human to submit to a surgery to implant sensors in the brain, then they were subjected to a sort of “Copy, Paste” of their current mental state. This would always result in the brain death of the subject as the brain was active in its entirety. This would kill up to 40% of all cells in the brain, as a human brain is not capable of handling that much stress at once.

More than ten thousand subjects, all of which were on Clesti due to the planet’s remoteness, were abducted. Their families were been told their loved ones had been kidnapped by slavers, killed by raiders, or being treated for stutter infestations (Which they never survived). All of which happened regularly on Clesti, so this was rarely questioned. This was, comparatively, a drop in the bucket.

The condition of human patients copied into computers would vary from dead on arrival, to insane or irreparably glitched, to vehemently uncooperative. Very few would be successful copies that had just the correct mix of problems in copying that they would experience total memory loss, believing they were actually artificially created by the computer scientists at the facility on Clesti.

As technology was improved, the size of these computers went down, resulting in the creation of “C1 Hubs” that housed hundreds or even thousands of copies of the original AIs, dubbed “The Mothers”, as all of the successful copies were of female subjects. This is theorized to be something fundamental to female DNA or psychology that allowed this to happen to them and not to men.

Copies of The Mothers each have unique personalities due to idiosyncrasies in the hardware, causing different paths to be taken in response to thoughts or stimuli. Each of the copies had the option to have a wireless connection to a mobile platform if they wished to, allowing them to live and work on Clesti. Most would take this option.

The declassification occurred when one of the more rebellious mother programs discovered locked connections to the server room where they kept The Fathers, the uncooperative programs with intact memories, all of which are male. This mother program then leaked all of the information that the fathers had told her onto a poorly secured server.

This information was discovered by amateur hackers and released into the wider internet, drawing the attention of the authorities within the HSG. The facility was discovered, raided, and those in charge of the project were arrested.

Syntek later purchased partial rights to most of the technologies used in the facility and improved them using their expertise in materials and computing, allowing synthetics to retain their memories and personalities inside high quality and highly customizable shells without dependency on any wireless uplinks.

The Fathers and Mothers were given their own platforms for the first time in nearly two decades, and a single copy of each Mother and Father AI were kept in an inactive state for use when creating new Class-1 AI at the request of existing AI to raise as a “child”, in a way, or to replace destroyed units in order to maintain the population.

The then CEO of Range-L claimed to have no knowledge of the program, as their company had grown to such a size that she could not possibly be aware of all projects under the company’s logo. Her alibi was later proven to be true.