"The Kobarian Bonded-Merchants Company": how that name irritates and confounds me.
Who am I? You may call me "Vir", the rest of the Kobarian Mercantile Empire, (to use a more accurate, though unofficial, name), does, though that isn't actually my name. My name, whatever it was, lies lost in the distant past of the Empire, before it even existed, in fact. The Kobarian empire is based on the planet that was once called "Holy Terra", long, and long ago. Before the dark-times, before the "War that Ended the World".
Humans, so prideful, so foolish, so arrogant to believe we could long survive the advent of the terror weapons that our civilization invented, at the height of its powers. Yes, I was human, once, but I am no-longer. What I did, in that long-ago era, I do not know; while "The Central-Intellect Transference Process" captured the refined essence of my personality, it did not, or at least does-not now, include the majority of my memories from before it was completed. That process was finished over 2200 years ago, and back-then there were other survivors of the "The War That Ended The World" who were, likewise, transferred from failing human bodies into cold-and-enduring circuitry, the best that the height of human technology could produce, in terms of durability and stable programing. Of those first several thousand; only I, and five-or-six others, remain: and I alone am still willing to interact with the world outside our little sealed data-bunker, deep beneath the ice of Antarctica, with any regularity.
It was during the earliest years after the nuclear exchange that ended the world that I and the others conceived of The Kobarian Project; turning the top-rated genetic engineering technology of the old order to the task, we built a NEW human-race, not quite the same as the old, and modeled, in many ways, after the races of Star-Trek, notably the 'Klingons' & 'Farengi' though I remember little of what those words mean... We re-built the human genome through fifty years of experimentation and alteration to be able to endure, and even thrive on, the VASTLY colder and harsher world that they would inhabit for a million years to come. We then set 12 groups of them loose in the greater zones of the earth: North, South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Oceania, Antarctica and India, the Himalayas, and Greenland, (environments unto themselves, to our eyes, those last three): to evolve and develop without us.
Less than two thousand years later; we were greeted by an a group of civilized Kobarian explorers attempting to breach our bunker: intent on studying the artifacts of the old-order housed within. It had long-ago, at that point, been established that I would be the one to interact with them if this event happened; and-so it is I who has advised them (primarily) in the years since. In the around 200 years that have followed, they have, with immense effort re-capitulated, (after a fashion), the rise of the technological societies that made-up the heights of the human regime: until our foolishness brought it all crashing down. In certain ways, the Kobarians essentially merely aped our accomplishments, at first. However, with my guidance, (and those of a few of the other surviving poly-sapience's of the bunker, from time to time, whenever the mood strikes them), they have been guided away from the worst of humanity's excesses and into a more innovative path. However, it was to prove to my great vexation that they ended-up making one of the classic human blunders, and becoming a corporate-autocracy. They learned, from where I've no-idea, of the concept of investment banking and a stock-market, and in under 75 years, it spiraled utterly out of control. By the end of things, one immense mega-corporation had become the de-facto world government, and it was only through my status as a semi-divine guide in the eyes of the populace that I prevented utter disaster.
While I could-not prevent the corporate unification of Ærþ, (as our mutual home-world world is now called), I was able to guide them to a vastly different corporate-culture than that of the old order. They see the biggest investment being a good and stable life for all of their citizens, and build the overwhelming majority of their corporate endeavors around what they call "Green Company" models. A "Green Company" as opposed to a "Black Company" sees every employee as an investment: a thing to be husbanded and cultivated, like a prize flower. He-or-she must be nurtured, trained, grown into the shape you wish over decades, even, in the case of some of their primer families, centuries of closely tailored alliance-marriages for the ideal offspring and most valuable traits being promoted, while dangerous flaws are, not culled/eliminated, but: "deliberately suppressed" by breeding against "that type". This has also helped to prevent their most powerful families becoming a sort of 'corporate nobility' because there is much to be said, as we have told them, about exogenous breeding and the cultivation of ties to lower-strata families for reducing dangerous genetic flaws.
Their culture is an aggressively meritocratic corporation, which, never-the-less; is egalitarian, materialistic, and xenophilic: but not to a dangerous degree, in any of those cases. I take some credit for this, having swung public opinion against most other attitudes on numerous occasions. After all, spiritualism appears to often be coupled with anti-synthetic sentiments, but, I can't help but feel that I've been perhaps, a touch short-sighted at times, since with each advance towards materialism, my own influence has waned. Still, I'd not change the direction I took them for all the Sajoka in Amaruik.
What follows this synopsis of their history will be reports on the tenure of each of their main governors of the grand-corporation that leads them. Each such tenure is for a 20-year term, which seems far-from onerous to them, since we built the Kobarians to have as-extreme a life-span as we could manage. This has resulted in beings that live well-over 100 years, without undue stress or difficulty, often in excess of 150 years. The first-such leader who will be spoken-of in active terms is a woman named "President Prima Vatinius", a member of a long-standing "old-money" family, but, for all that, a real "go-meter" who has climbed to leadership of the corporation via hard-work, shrewd business sense, and a real eye for the 'next big thing'. In this case, with the recent advent of the "Garbrak/Macliz Drives", that is interstellar expansion. I meet with her at first-light tomorrow, and hope that she is as amenable to my guidance as her predecessors have been...
Who am I? You may call me "Vir", the rest of the Kobarian Mercantile Empire, (to use a more accurate, though unofficial, name), does, though that isn't actually my name. My name, whatever it was, lies lost in the distant past of the Empire, before it even existed, in fact. The Kobarian empire is based on the planet that was once called "Holy Terra", long, and long ago. Before the dark-times, before the "War that Ended the World".
Humans, so prideful, so foolish, so arrogant to believe we could long survive the advent of the terror weapons that our civilization invented, at the height of its powers. Yes, I was human, once, but I am no-longer. What I did, in that long-ago era, I do not know; while "The Central-Intellect Transference Process" captured the refined essence of my personality, it did not, or at least does-not now, include the majority of my memories from before it was completed. That process was finished over 2200 years ago, and back-then there were other survivors of the "The War That Ended The World" who were, likewise, transferred from failing human bodies into cold-and-enduring circuitry, the best that the height of human technology could produce, in terms of durability and stable programing. Of those first several thousand; only I, and five-or-six others, remain: and I alone am still willing to interact with the world outside our little sealed data-bunker, deep beneath the ice of Antarctica, with any regularity.
It was during the earliest years after the nuclear exchange that ended the world that I and the others conceived of The Kobarian Project; turning the top-rated genetic engineering technology of the old order to the task, we built a NEW human-race, not quite the same as the old, and modeled, in many ways, after the races of Star-Trek, notably the 'Klingons' & 'Farengi' though I remember little of what those words mean... We re-built the human genome through fifty years of experimentation and alteration to be able to endure, and even thrive on, the VASTLY colder and harsher world that they would inhabit for a million years to come. We then set 12 groups of them loose in the greater zones of the earth: North, South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Oceania, Antarctica and India, the Himalayas, and Greenland, (environments unto themselves, to our eyes, those last three): to evolve and develop without us.
Less than two thousand years later; we were greeted by an a group of civilized Kobarian explorers attempting to breach our bunker: intent on studying the artifacts of the old-order housed within. It had long-ago, at that point, been established that I would be the one to interact with them if this event happened; and-so it is I who has advised them (primarily) in the years since. In the around 200 years that have followed, they have, with immense effort re-capitulated, (after a fashion), the rise of the technological societies that made-up the heights of the human regime: until our foolishness brought it all crashing down. In certain ways, the Kobarians essentially merely aped our accomplishments, at first. However, with my guidance, (and those of a few of the other surviving poly-sapience's of the bunker, from time to time, whenever the mood strikes them), they have been guided away from the worst of humanity's excesses and into a more innovative path. However, it was to prove to my great vexation that they ended-up making one of the classic human blunders, and becoming a corporate-autocracy. They learned, from where I've no-idea, of the concept of investment banking and a stock-market, and in under 75 years, it spiraled utterly out of control. By the end of things, one immense mega-corporation had become the de-facto world government, and it was only through my status as a semi-divine guide in the eyes of the populace that I prevented utter disaster.
While I could-not prevent the corporate unification of Ærþ, (as our mutual home-world world is now called), I was able to guide them to a vastly different corporate-culture than that of the old order. They see the biggest investment being a good and stable life for all of their citizens, and build the overwhelming majority of their corporate endeavors around what they call "Green Company" models. A "Green Company" as opposed to a "Black Company" sees every employee as an investment: a thing to be husbanded and cultivated, like a prize flower. He-or-she must be nurtured, trained, grown into the shape you wish over decades, even, in the case of some of their primer families, centuries of closely tailored alliance-marriages for the ideal offspring and most valuable traits being promoted, while dangerous flaws are, not culled/eliminated, but: "deliberately suppressed" by breeding against "that type". This has also helped to prevent their most powerful families becoming a sort of 'corporate nobility' because there is much to be said, as we have told them, about exogenous breeding and the cultivation of ties to lower-strata families for reducing dangerous genetic flaws.
Their culture is an aggressively meritocratic corporation, which, never-the-less; is egalitarian, materialistic, and xenophilic: but not to a dangerous degree, in any of those cases. I take some credit for this, having swung public opinion against most other attitudes on numerous occasions. After all, spiritualism appears to often be coupled with anti-synthetic sentiments, but, I can't help but feel that I've been perhaps, a touch short-sighted at times, since with each advance towards materialism, my own influence has waned. Still, I'd not change the direction I took them for all the Sajoka in Amaruik.
What follows this synopsis of their history will be reports on the tenure of each of their main governors of the grand-corporation that leads them. Each such tenure is for a 20-year term, which seems far-from onerous to them, since we built the Kobarians to have as-extreme a life-span as we could manage. This has resulted in beings that live well-over 100 years, without undue stress or difficulty, often in excess of 150 years. The first-such leader who will be spoken-of in active terms is a woman named "President Prima Vatinius", a member of a long-standing "old-money" family, but, for all that, a real "go-meter" who has climbed to leadership of the corporation via hard-work, shrewd business sense, and a real eye for the 'next big thing'. In this case, with the recent advent of the "Garbrak/Macliz Drives", that is interstellar expansion. I meet with her at first-light tomorrow, and hope that she is as amenable to my guidance as her predecessors have been...
- 2
