Towards Blue Skies - a "realistic" UNE story (with 170+ mods)

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[Mod list posted here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ry-with-170-mods.1196623/page-2#post-25630841]

Prologue

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. - Carl Sagan

On January 1st, the first day of the 23rd century, the Republic of China, the European Union, and the United States of America officially became member governments of the United Nations of Earth, joining the eighty-seven other states who made up the federal system. The "Indian Project", as the federal structure had long been derisively called by Americans and Chinese critics, was assembled from the bones of the shattered United Nations after the end of World War III in 2087. The new name, meant to emphasize the shared terrestrial heritage of all nations, began as a voluntary sharing of sovereignty by which states could combine their war-ravaged economies, share technological developments, and receive aid from the strongest postwar governments (India and the two African unions). Originally, the United Nations of Earth consisted of only a few dozen impoverished states reliant on New Delhi and Nairobi for aid, but as the climate catastrophes and economic crises of the 22nd century compounded, more and more countries saw the benefits to membership in what quickly became the world's premier economic and political union. In time, the UNE developed into a true supranational entity, with conferred state-like power.

Civics of the UNE in 2200:

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Government description:

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China, the EU, and the USA joined the UNE by referendums, which were held in 2097-98. Each demanded that the other two join alongside them, and each secured permanent concessions from the UNE as a condition of membership. Hong Kong became the new headquarters of the Global Trade Organization (the successor to the WTO), the UNE Central Bank was moved to Frankfurt, and New York City once again would host the General Assembly of the United Nations. The lower house, the UN Parliament, would remain in Nairobi. Each referendum passed (though the objection of several western American states caused a brief constitutional crisis).

2199

2200

The UNE, now comprising more than ninety percent of the world's population and economy, determined in the interim that the federation needed a strong executive. After long debate, the elected office of President was established, with the right to initiate and veto legislation, to act as commander-in-chief of the UNE Peacekeepers, and to appoint the head of the Central Bank and the chief scientists of the federal Research Council. The position of Secretary-General, for decades no more than an empty honorific, was re-construed as the chief intermediary between the ninety member states and the federal government, to be appointed by the president.

The election of 2199 saw strong campaigning before a clear front runner emerged: Dolores Muwanga, a brilliant Ugandan professor of orbital mechanics who had served for nearly a decade as Prime Minister of the East African Federation. Emphasizing the role of space exploration and colonization in the future prosperity of humankind, Muwanga won a resounding victory on her promise to construct a permanent station with shipyards in orbit of the sun to act as a true springboard to the inner Solar System. Before an audience of more than a million at the Nairobi Parliament of Nations, President Muwanga was sworn in as the first President of the United Nations of Earth. Her inaugural address ended with a vow, and a calling:

...to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

 

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2200-2210 - The Muwanga Administration

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Dolores Muwanga was born in Mbarara, Uganda, in 2142. Originally a professor of orbital mechanics at the University of Kampala, and later Prime Minister of the East African Federation, Muwanga was selected by popular vote of all UNE citizens as the first President of Earth in 2200, defeating three other candidates. A political veteran, she nevertheless intentionally avoided affiliation with blocs in Parliament, believing them to be dangerous to the stability of the UNE's new global democracy.

As her inaugural act in office, President Muwanga established the Research Council by executive order, to serve as a global hub for top-level research of all disciplines. The Research Council, it was hoped, would serve to streamline the development of advanced technologies for worldwide use.

Fulfilling her election promise, President Muwanga also authorized the construction of Sol Station at Lagrange Point L1. The station, considered by historians to be the first human starbase, was finished in 2204. Sol Station boasted a research wing, a rudimentary shipyard (the first ever built outside Earth orbit), and an on-site alloy foundry.

The first crisis of the Presidential Era occurred in space. Just before Sol Station was completed, a trio of hijacked multipurpose utility vehicles slipped through orbital security and made for Mars. The ships were scanned as they fled, and were found to possess rudimentary (and extremely dangerous) laser weapon technology, haphazardly attached to makeshift external hardpoints. Led by an individual known as the "Red Prophet", the cult claimed Mars as its rightful territory, and warned UNE forces to stay away from the Red Planet or be fired upon. Lacking any armed ships with which to follow the hijackers, and fearing a confrontation that could lead to the destruction of Sol Station, President Muwanga ordered the ships to return, but did not pursue. Mars would be considered off-limits to UNE ships until its recapture in 2213.

Since their launch in 2179, the experimental science vessel UNS Discovery and two dozen smaller probes had completed basic scans of the entire Solar System. This task completed, in 2206 President Muwanga assigned Discovery to serve as a semi-permanent orbital research facility.

An interplanetary construction vessel, the UNS Pacific, was commissioned in 2205 from Sol Station to build platforms for mining and research throughout the system over the next two decades.

In 2206, President Muwanga oversaw drafting of the World Peace Concord, which formally outlawed offensive war between the United Nations and the twelve remaining non-aligned Earth countries. Crucial to the success of the negotiations was the UNE's unqualified acceptance of refugees; non-member states suffering heavy resource shortages, like Sudan and Australia, did not want hungry mouths turned back towards their borders.

In the last year of her administration, President Muwanga was finally able to pass her signature law, the Nutritional Plentitude Act, guaranteeing food and water to every citizen of the UNE. Unprecedented in scale, the Act mandated member governments to increase food production by nearly a quarter. Though it was passed in 2209, food production did not return to pre-Act levels for nearly a decade.

Deeply concerned about the development of informal party blocs in the Parliament, President Muwanga faced a strong challenge in the election of 2210 from Pelagia Michalak, the popular French Secretary-General, who was thought to be the preferred candidate for the so-called "Blue Group". After a very close race and over 90% voter turnout, Michalak was narrowly elected President.

Following her defeat, Muwanga retired to her home in the East African Federation, where she died in 2243 at the age of 101.

Today, Dolores Muwanga is well-regarded in public memory. While her insistence on remaining detached from the rapidly-developing party groups in Parliament limited her effectiveness, many historians consider her restraint crucial to the early development of true planet-wide democracy.

[At this point, I had not updated the default title of Prime Minister in-game; wherever the UI says "Prime Minister" should in fact read "President", so far as the story is concerned.]

 

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2210-2220 - The Michalak Administration

Last night I had the strangest dream
I've ever known before
I dreamed that all the world agreed
To put an end to war.
- Simon and Garfunkel

Before serving as President of the European Commission, Pelagia Michalak was a French lawyer and civil servant. After serving for nine years as Secretary-General, she defeated the incumbent President Muwanga in the elections of 2210 on a platform calling for a new series of accession talks with Russia, expansion of the rights of private companies in space, and construction of a squadron to retake Mars from the so-called Red Cult.

After her election to the Presidency, the unofficial party groups that had gradually come to dominate Parliament politics became effectively institutionalized. President Michalak, ever a careful politician, joined the the Democratic Rights Initiative, (the "Blue Group"), which had lent her campaign significant electoral support in 2210.

The First Party System:

• The Democratic Rights Initiative, colloquially called the Liberal Party, was a "big tent" political party encompassing much of the center-left and center-right that came about largely in opposition the the food quotas set by President Muwanga and in support of a UNE military presence in space. The DRI's base in West Africa, Europe, and East Asia provided enough votes to propel it to victory in 2210.
  
• The National Prosperity Board (informally known as "Sovereignists") was a loose alliance of smaller parties across the ideological spectrum that promoted individual rights and sovereign internal policy in the Member States, and opposed a UNE military presence in space. in 2210, the NPB was the only party to explicitly support the legalization of private exploitation of space. The main NPB bastions were the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.
  
• The Working Class Heroes Association, originally a tongue-in-cheek name given to the bloc by an NPB Member of Parliament, was adopted earnestly by left-leaning MPs who opposed the creation of military spacecraft and strongly supported President Muwanga's food quotas. The WCHA opposed private exploitation of space. Most of the party's support came from India and East Africa.
• The Alien Freedom Society was initially founded as the Refugee Freedom Society during the refugee crises of the mid-22nd Century, during which the UNE experienced a great deal of political conflict over the question of refugee acceptance. The RFS had developed as a coalition of firmly pro-refugee MPs, who caucused mostly with the Liberals. After Unification, and as it became clear mankind would expand outward into space, the party experienced an ideological shift towards the question of extraterrestrial rights, campaigning on a single-issue platform of a constitutional amendment to confer fundamental rights and protections on any alien sentients that might discovered. For the first several decades of its existence, the party only existed on the fringe of the political spectrum, and often voted alongside the WCHA.

Together, the party groups accounted for roughly two-thirds of the MPs in the Parliament, the remainder belonging to a scattering of regional and national parties. By the time of the Second Party System, the party groups would come to comprise more than 95% of Parliament's MPs.

Despite losing the election of 2210, former president Muwanga remained immensely popular in the "old" (pre-2200 expansion) countries of the UNE. Michalak's election, many feared, would bring about a shift in the balance of power, away from the traditional centers in India and Africa and towards the West and China. There remained a great deal of resentment about the concessions that had been awarded to the acceding Great Powers; many felt that the Central Bank in particular should be returned to Singapore.

In response to this budding resentment, President Michalak sponsored the candidacy of Musa Odek for Secretary-General. Odek, a Kenyan who had spent his career in various diplomatic roles for the UNE (including as leader of the UNE delegation during the accession negotiations of 2298), was considered a staunch defender of the core values of the federal system. His confirmation to the Secretary-General position cemented the political alliance of old and new UN citizens that would form the next three coalition governments.

After the worldwide economic crisis in 2209 and the collapse of the Russian and Bolivian regimes, President Michalak formally invited the eleven unaffiliated states of Earth to accede as full members in 2211. The proposal was considered audacious, even dangerous; Russia, Pakistan, Australia, and Congo were all nuclear powers, and three had fought deadly wars against UNE members in living memory. Nevertheless, over the next two years, President Michalak's audacity paid off.

• Armenia, Bolivia, and Laos agreed to accession immediately, having suffered immense economic damage from the Third Great Depression.
  
• Australia and the United Kingdom agreed to accession under heavy diplomatic pressure from the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Still reeling from the water crisis of the 2160s, Australia was offered a substantial aid package, which it accepted. In the UK, a scandal-ridden Labour government called for a referendum, which came to an inconclusive result and nearly spawned a decade of infighting before an impromptu Liberal-Green coalition took power and passed a second referendum. The UK regained its EU membership upon UNE accession.
  
• Congo, still led by its nationalist one-party government, was perhaps the state least inclined to accept accession. Only when it became clear that even the Pakistanis were joining the UNE did Kinshasa agree to accession, and only then once firm provisions concerning guaranteed representation in the Parliament had been confirmed.
• Pakistan, dismembered across three lost wars in the previous century and a half, still looked at the UNE primarily as a project of despised India. News of the accession proposal sent thousand of furious protestors into the streets. However, Pakistan's government was desperate. Though the truth of Islamabad's accusations regarding Indian/UNE water confiscation remain debated by historians, the calamitous state of the Pakistani economy indisputably forced the government to the table. A combination of skilled diplomacy from the European-led diplomatic corps and a substantial aid package finally won over Pakistan.
• Russia - more properly the "Fourth Russian Republic" - was a broken country in 2211, suffering from decades of corrupt institutions, internal separatism, and two failed revolutions following the stalemate that "ended" World War III. When Russia's military dictator died in a failed coup attempt, a haphazard democratic council came to power and began making inquiries about accession.
• Unlike the other ten acceding countries, Sudan had no recognized formal government to speak of in 2211, as two brutal authoritarians fought over the country. In an unprecedented Parliamentary-approved action, UN Peacekeepers were sent to establish a democratic government in Khartoum. Since neither Sudanese regime was internationally recognized, the brief "Sudan War' was technically legal, though many felt it compromised the values of peace on which the UNE was founded, not to mention President Muwanga's World Peace Concord.
  
• Switzerland was the last independent country on earth, only acceding after conducting a complex series of referendums that concluded in 2213. Although the offer was made, the Swiss did not accept a parallel accession into the European Union.
  
• The Vatican City joined the UNE under a special agreement in which it received no Parliament seats, but a single seat in the General Assembly. Pope John Paul IV approved the accession "so that all mankind may be as one".

On May 3rd, 2213, for the first time, all human beings on Earth lived under a single democratic government. The Unification Day ceremony - held at New York instead of Nairobi at the insistence of the Congolese - included the largest fireworks show in history, and flyovers by fifteen national air forces and the UNS Discovery.

In 2212, in response to growing concerns about security in the Sol system, President Michalak established the Earth Defense Fleet - five prototype Coyote-class corvettes armed with primitive railguns and experimental "deflectors" - and appointed the renowned American pilot Murray "Denver" Dickson as its first Admiral. The "Fleet" was little more than as squadron, in truth, but the appeal of defending the newly-unified Earth from extraplanetary threats prompted a more grandiose name.

Since 2204, when the so-called "Red Prophet" cultists had stolen away from Sol Station aboard hijacked ships, nothing but loose radio chatter had been heard from Mars. Long-range scans indicated that if the cultists had attempted to establish a permanent terrestrial colony, the effort had failed; only the remnants of the 21st century American and Chinese Mars bases were detectable. In 2213, the decision was made: the Fleet would sweep through Mars orbit in search of the Red Prophet.

The Fleet is ambushed at Mars; photograph taken by a a crewman aboard UNS America, 2213

The attack came swiftly; somehow, the cultists had been warned of the UNE ships' arrival, and attacked from behind as the Fleet fell into Mars orbit. The daring maneuver, though it caught Admiral Dickson by surprise, cost the cultists' ships their remaining fuel. Over the next several weeks, the Earth Defense Fleet steadfastly withstood a dozen attacks, in the process destroying two of the three enemy ships with railgun fire. The third ship, disabled early in the battle, was captured, and its crew imprisoned. No sign of the Red Prophet was found, and the crew claimed they had "left us all behind".

Disturbing data was found on the captured ship, revealing that the Red Prophets (now understood to a collective, rather than a single titular individual) had agents inside the government itself. This access had provided the cult with the means to escape notice during the initial hijacking in 2204, and advance knowledge of the arrival of the Fleet. Most unbelievable of all, President Michalak was briefed in top secret that agents of the Red Cult had fled beyond Sol at sublight speed. An investigation was immediately opened, though no more information was found on Earth or in Mars orbit.

The victory at Mars set a precedent that hostile forces would not be given free rein to flee beyond Earth and UNE control. More importantly, the way to Mars colonization now lay open.

in 2215, President Michalak supervised the drafting of the New Worlds Protocol, establishing basic laws concerning extraplanetary colonization to avoid another crisis. Though colonization of Luna and Mars would not begin for another several years, the New Worlds Protocol formed the legal framework through which the Early Colonial Period would come about.

Michalak also authored the Technological Ascendancy Doctrine, by which the Research Council was formally integrated into UNE government infrastructure. Decision-making, however, still remained in elected hands.

In the 2220 election, President Michalak narrowly lost to the popular Liliane Delmas, who pledged a return to the nonpartisan politics of the Muwanga administration and a less cautious approach to colonization of Mars and the Moon.

Joining the Parliament as the DRI's leader during the Delmas administration, Pelagia Michalak remained heavily involved in UNE politics until her death at the age of 88 in Marseille, European Union, in 2240.

Modern scholars remain divided on the Michalak Administration. Though she achieved true planetary unification and founded Earth's first space navy, Michalak presided over an unprecedented expansion of executive power, supported by the DRI-led Parliament. In addition, the Sudan War and the heavy-handed diplomacy of Unification led to long-lasting civil tension in Congo, Russia, and Pakistan.

 

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2220-2230 - The Delmas Administration, part 1

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
- John Ruskin

Born in Trois-Riviéres, Canada in 2157, Liliane Delmas was a lifetime academic, having been one of the world's foremost researchers of materials science at Canada's McGill University. In 2200, she was appointed to the Research Council as its inaugural Chief of Engineering, where she distinguished herself for both her scientific acumen and her ability to communicate with Parliament. A political outsider, Delmas won the 2220 election on a tide of popularity earned by the resounding success of her experimental Coyote-class corvettes at the Battle of Mars.

President Delmas, who had campaigned on her independence from the influential Parliamentary party groups, soon found herself beset by political challenges, and a new party system.

The Second Party System

• The Democratic Rights Initiative, still led by former president Pelagia Michalak, formed the largest group in Parliament throughout the Delmas administration. Strong supporters of the Fleet, the Liberals supported constructing more corvettes and further expanding Sol Station. President Michalak, wary of the political consequences of outright repealing the Nutrition Act, had allowed the policy to stand during her presidency; the DRI (which had been founded on opposition to the policy) thus found itself deeply split over the issue.
  
• The Labour Rights Network had emerged from the remnants of the Working Class Heroes Association, which collapsed due to infighting in the 2220 elections after a decade of hemorrhaging votes to the DRI. Branding itself a true left-wing coalition party, it initially struggled to gain MPs, with most left-wing MPs remaining independent through the first Delmas term.
• The Alien Freedom Society profited from the destruction of the WCHA, finding a role as a pro-sciences, pro-social policy coalition partner of the new Labour movement. The AFS, in keeping with its founding principles, strongly opposed further construction of armed spacecraft and settlement of Mars and Europa (which at the time were thought to potentially harbor life).
  
• The Internal Prosperity Board split apart over support for the Fleet after the Battle of Mars. Though many of its MPs remained in office, the party lost millions of votes in the Americas, where support for the Fleet surged after the defeat of the Red Prophets. It did not officially re-form until President Delmas' second term.

In 2221, the Research Council's Physics department announced that it had successfully achieved stable nuclear fusion. It would take years before the technology was ready for full deployment, and initially was made available only for terrestrial use. However, the potential for more energy capacity was seized upon by officials of the Fleet and scientists aboard UNS Discovery, who called for the new reactors to be made available aboard spacecraft as well.

The Delmas Administration placed a high priority on environmental protection and restoration. Shown above, the results of the 2224 Indian Dark Skies project, a program of the United Nations Urban Parks Service. Compare to China (which itself saw a light pollution reduction program in 2231.)

Faced with a Parliament in which every major party opposed her administration, President Delmas struggled to pass legislation in her first term. Instead, Delmas' administration took full advantage of the powers of the presidency, passing more executive orders in her first four years in office than the previous two presidents had in their entire terms combined.

In 2221, President Delmas founded the United Nations Park Service. Bypassing Parliament entirely, she secured support from individual Member States via skilled negotiation on a country-by-country basis and in the General Assembly. All Member States' national parks were combined into the joint structure of the UNPS, which Delmas infused with funding directly from the Office of the President.

In a later executive order, Delmas established the Urban Parks system, permanently placing the historic centers of more than sixty major Earth cities under UNPS protection (though formal sovereignty was still held by the Member States). While conservatives were pleased, the Urban Parks system infuriated the Liberals and Labour, who viewed redevelopment of the cities as crucial to ensuring sufficient housing. Earth's population - which had returned to early 21st century levels by 2130 and stabilized thereafter - had begun to rise dramatically following Unification and the passage of the Nutrition Act.

In a landmark milestone, and as a direct consequence of recycling programs established by President Delmas, mankind achieved net zero waste for the first time in recorded history in early 2222. Though later decades would see minor waste buildups, since the Delmas Administration maintenance of "Waste 0" on Earth has been considered a major responsibility of the President.

In 2222, a food crisis gripped Earth. The Liberals, calling once more for an end to the Nutrition Act, threatened impeachment if President Delmas did not act immediately. A tense Parliamentary crisis ensued, in which a vote to repeal the Act was voted down by fewer than ten votes. The DRI, lacking the votes for impeachment, stood down, and Delmas promised a solution to the food crisis by the 2230 election. Dismantling UN-owned mining facilities in India and Brazil, she authorized a massive land restoration project on the reclaimed land, and established a hydroponics facility on Sol Station "to ensure food supply in case of natural disaster or crisis".

The signature achievement of the first Delmas term, however, was not the president's environmental policy. Backed by a consortium of scientists, mining companies, and adventurous settlers, a "Luna Lobby" had long been a significant force in the Parliament. In 2229, President Delmas authorized Luna Colony, the first permanent settlement on another world since the abandonment of the American and Chinese moon and Mars bases during World War III. A vast network of interconnected habitats and laboratories, Luna Colony would become the model for future settlements in the Sol system.

President Delmas, increasingly politically marginalized during her first term by powerful Parliament opposition blocs who took advantage of her independent status, ran in the 2230 election as a member of the re-established Internal Growth Board. Though Delmas narrowly won re-election, her Sovereignists came second in Parliament to a resurgent DRI. In a bid to consolidate parliamentary support and avoid the gridlock of her first term, Delmas made a promise: if the Liberals would participate in a coalition government, Delmas would authorize a colony on Mars in her first year in office.

 

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2230-2241 - The Delmas Administration, part 2

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?
- T.S. Eliot

President Delmas began her second term by initiating a political upheaval, one that would yet again redefine the political landscape of the UNE for the third time in only four elections. Unlike its short-lived predecessors, the Third Party System would last long into the 24th Century.

The Third Party System

The Third Party System came about following the elections of 2230 and the successful re-establishment of the Internal Growth Board as a political power.

• The Democratic Rights Initiative, begun only as a loose alliance of center-left and center-right parties opposed to food quotas, had by 2231 become the most firmly established planet-wide political party. With more than a billion members, the Liberals embraced a wide approach to politics, accepting disparate MPs from all manner of political backgrounds, so long as they agreed to vote together with the party "on matters of principle importance". (A minor controversy erupted when two elderly Australians who had held high positions in that country's dictatorship during the Water Crisis successfully won seats under the DRI banner.) As the food shortages of the 2320s wound down, the party mostly abandoned its support for repeal of the Nutrition Act. Instead, the Liberals shifted their focus outwards, calling for colonization of the Solar System to relieve population pressure on Earth.
  
• Labour (formally the Labour Rights Network) has become a powerful political force during the first term of President Delmas. Incensed by Delmas' alliance with - and later, membership in - the IGB, Labour began assembling a grassroots political movement that would become a fulcrum of UNE politics during the latter half of the 23rd Century. Headed after 2238 by the immensely popular Secretary-General Musa Odek, Labour firmly embraced the legacy of President Muwanga, calling for firm protections of workers, further subsidization of key economic sectors, and a cautious approach to space colonization. Bitter enemies of the IGB, Labour would find cause over the decades to ally with the DRI, the AFS, and the resurrected WCHA to block Sovereignist-sponsored legislation.
  
• The Internal Growth Board, better known as the Sovereignists, never established the structure of a true political party in the traditional sense, preferring instead to manage party affairs via referendums and internal negotiations. This approach to politics, though deeply responsive to the desires of UNE Member States and Sovereignist citizens, limited its effectiveness as a dynamic political actor. Nevertheless, the long era of the Third Party System began with President Delmas' embrace of the Sovereignists in the 2230 elections, and the party remained influential throughout the remainder of the 23rd Century.
• The Alien Freedom Society was sidelined throughout the early colonial era. Its calls for a moratorium on human expansion into what it called "unlawful territory" were considered ludicrous by most UNE citizens.

President Delmas won a second term in 2230, but the Sovereignists did not sweep into power in Parliament as they had hoped. To consolidate power, and to avoid the steadfast parliamentary opposition that had tightly restricted Delmas' ability to govern in her first term, the IGB entered into a coalition government with the Liberals, promising support for the Fleet and the swift establishment of a Mars colony to develop alongside Luna. r first DRI after her reelection. In 2231, the UNS Hope, a refurbished technical vessel mothballed since the construction of Sol Station, was ordered to Mars to begin construction of a habitat complex on the Luna model. The speed with which the Delmas Administration rushed towards Mars alarmed many on scientists and members of the the parliamentary opposition; the Luna colony, while inhabited, was still technically under construction when the new Mars colony was officially founded.

Luckily for all involved, no major accidents occurred. Luna was officially incorporated into the United Nations of Earth on March 11th, 2235, gaining a seat in the General Assembly and a single Minister of Parliament. by the end of the year, Mars had been granted the same.

In under five years, mankind had gone from a species trapped on a single world, to one spread across three. It seemed to many the dawn of a new age, a new era of expansion for humanity. President Liliane Delmas, who had brought about this new era, reached more than 80% popularity in December 2232.

On March 27th, 2233, everything changed.

In 2177, a Flipino physicist named Angelina Iyana Saripada Balangao published a paper in an obscure scientific journal in which she detailed a hypothetical solution to the problem of the long-debated "Alcubierre Drive". Miguel Alcubierre, whose much-discussed 1994 proposal had introduced the possibility of faster-than-light travel via "exotic matter" with negative mass, had for two hundred years been considered little more than an intellectual curiosity; after all, creating the required "exotic matter" was impossible by any known practical means. Balangao proposed an alternative solution: rather than making use of the Casimir effect (as all previous attempts at implementing the Alucubierre theory had), a temporary state of negative mass could be created by [INFORMATION RESTRICTION - LEVEL 2B], though the superstructure would need to be maintained by a constant dampening field.

By the time Research Council had begun to look seriously at the potential of what would come to be called the Balangao Drive, Balangao herself was in her 90s, but nonetheless eager to see her work come to life. Development of the drive was controversial within Research Council leadership, on account of the extraordinarily dangerous process required to maintain it. If the containment field were to fail while Balangao's device was running, the resulting explosion would be enough to level a city. Consequently, tests were conducted only deep underground or in specially-designed autonomous spacecraft launched from Sol Station.

The March 2233 test was the fifth. A robot-controlled spacecraft, nicknamed "Flash V", successfully traversed the distance between Sol Station and a beacon placed in the Asteroid Belt at 2.2 times the speed of light. It was undetectable during transit, due to the spacetime-warping effects of the Balangao Drive. The success sent shocks through the scientific community, and set off a wave of excitement in the UNE. Mankind would no longer be functionally trapped in its home star system. President Delmas, with authorization from Parliament, approved the construction of two new Discovery-class vessels equipped with Balangao Drives, and began selection of the elite crews who would man them. Unlike UNS Discovery, whose fusion reactors supplied bountiful energy for shipboard scientific experiments, the new ships would funnel the vast majority of their power to maintaining twelve drive containment fields.

The UNS Galaxy was to be captained by So Su-mi, a Korean sociologist and pilot who had distinguished himself in previous sublight missions in the Solar System. It would be sent 4.24ly to chart Proxima Centauri, then onwards to nearby Alpha Centauri, on a mission expected to last nine years. The UNS Sputnik would captained by Argentinian Nadia Silva Schmidt, renowned for her heroic actions as captain of the UNS Oceania during the Battle of Mars. Sputnik would to be sent more than double Galaxy's distance, towards the binary star system Luyten 726-8, or UV Ceti. UNS Sputnik was expected to return in fourteen years. The crews of these ships, selected via an intense and demanding process to ensure psychological stability, physical fitness, and team performance, departed Sol Station for their destinations on October 1st, 2234.

Following the departure of Galaxy and Sputnik, the remainder of President Delmas' second term passed mostly quietly. In 2236, Delmas authorized a consortium of mining interests to begin processing minerals from 1 Ceres, the largest object in the Asteroid Belt. By the 2240, a permanent outpost had risen up rather by inertia, with a population of more than ten thousand. Bowing to local pressure, the government coalition allowed formal colonization to begin, opening the pathway for Ceres to gain admittance as a Member State by 2243.

After two terms in office, president Delmas was challenged in the elections of 2241 by a strong DRI, who chose the popular captain of the UNS Discovery, Afifah Al-Balawi, as its nominee. The Sovereignists achieved only disappointing results, having failed to campaign on the Moon and Mars and failing to win their base of support in the United States. Delmas came in third in the 2241 elections. After her presidency, she often advised President Al-Balawi on matters of state. Liliane Delmas died in New York in 2247, at the age of 90.

Today, President Delmas is near-universally ranked among the best presidents of the United Nations of Earth, both by historians and the general public. Although her political legacy still suffers from Delmas' heavy-handed approach to implementing her agenda in her first term (including the still-controversial decision to establish the Urban Parks), her achievements, including the first settlement of three worlds and the first manned extrasolar missions, precipitated a new age of expansion for humankind.

 

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The last monk, upon entering, paused in the lock. He stood in the open hatchway and took off his sandals. "Sic transit mundus," he murmured, looking back at the glow. He slapped the soles of his sandals together, beating the dirt out of them.
- Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

Afifah Al-Balawi was a Cairo-born, Oxford-educated scientist who entered politics after a distinguished career aboard the orbiting science vessel UNS Discovery. A charismatic, intensely effective communicator, she became beloved on Earth and in the colonies for her "Weekly Broadcasts from Space", in which she conducted experiments and spoke with celebrity guests in a 3-dimensional simulator aboard UNS Discovery, high in Earth orbit. Though she had intended to retire a scientist, deep personal disagreements with President Delmas' approach to colonial policy led Al-Balawi to file as a candidate for president ahead of the 2241 elections. Although she had initially intended to run as an independent, the Democratic Rights Initiative found her candidacy compelling, and threw the substantial weight of its political machine behind her campaign.

By the second year of the Al-Balawi Adminstration, Mars had surpassed Luna in population. Historians debate the primary reason for the First Martian Boom, but it is generally agreed that the availability of cheap residences, appeal of prototype replicator access, and flood of highly paid job openings combined to call millions to the Red Planet over its first fifty years as a human world. Talk of terraforming Mars dominated its politics from the beginning; as Mars increased in population and its citizens became accustomed to its low gravity and harsh terrain, the more its citizens called for a massive investment into terraforming technology by the government. Politicians campaigning on Mars often won or lost their seats in Parliament over the terraforming issue.

A firm believer in what she called "the destiny of peace", President Al-Balawi strongly supported expansion of mankind into the Sol system - and now, after the invention of FTL travel had made it plausible - even further. As President, she immediately took up the cause of Ceres' admittance to the UNE as a Member State, permanently severing the Liberals' already-strained ties with its former coalition partner, the IGB. The Sovereignists, seeing the rapid pace of colonization under President Delmas, worried that Earth countries' welfare would be neglected by what seemed to them an alarming shift in focus towards space. On Mars, where the terraforming issue threatened to break off Mars' quickly-growing population into a new political force, President Al-Balawi made a gamble. Leveraging the support of both DRI and Labour party MPs, the President persuaded Parliament to invest more than eight billion credits into implementing what she called the "Voidborne Doctrine". Under the series of laws passed, the habitats on Luna, Mars, and Ceres would be expanded and upgraded, and terraforming technology would be pursued intently by Research Council.

The political conflict that began in Al-Balawi's administration came to form, in decades to come, the fundamental fulcrum of UNE politics. Al-Balawi and the DRI believed strongly that colonization of space was not just advantageous, but indeed necessary to human prosperity. The Sovereignists, by contrast, were horrified at the idea of Earth and its nations becoming nothing more than one among a multitude of planets and moons and asteroids. Labour was split down the middle. As the UNE continued to expand, these fissures would only widen. In order to manage the practicalities of space settlements in a manner detached from political questions, President Al-Balawi established the Interplanetary Settlements Office in 2247. Although it began as merely a bureaucratic organ for formally authorizing exploratory missions to potential colonies, in time the ISO would become one of the most important government bodies of the UNE. She also oversaw construction of the final stages of the long-planned United Nations Capital Complex at Nairobi, a project that was finally completed in 2249.

In 2248, President Al-Balawi authorized a massive expansion of Sol Station, adding an array of construction bays and alloy refineries. Now a fully-functional spaceport, Sol Station became almost entirely self-sufficient following the expansion, and began to evolve into a true transportation center.

Ever the educator, Al-Balawi became convinced that the political conflicts of the day were secondary in importance to ensuring the spread of knowledge. After years of legislative impediments from Sovereignists resistant to federal education policy supplanting that of the Member States, Al-Balawi persuaded the General Assembly to pass the Education Acts in late 2248, guaranteeing equal access to unlimited, high-quality education for all.

The DRI struggled in the 2251 election. Although they had won support in the colonies with the laws of the Voidborne Doctrine, Liberals lost almost as many votes on Earth to the IGB and an ascendant Labour Rights Movement. The longtime Secretary-General, Musa Odek of Labour, was elected with an majority of 53%.

President Al-Balawi is little remembered in modern times, but her work stands as an important milestone in the history of the Late Sol Period. Just before the UNE's meteoric rise to the galactic stage, it suffered from immensely difficult political struggles as Earth's preeminence began to show cracks. If the Balangao Drive had never been invented, it's very possible that these early disputes between Sol colonists and Earthers could have torn the UNE asunder.

 

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Credit to Seraphim on Alternatehistory for solar system WorldA template.

The next chapter of the UNE's story will come soon.

 

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2251-2261 - The First Odek Administration (Part 1)

You can hear the words, so run away
Come, Hortator, unfold into a clear unknown,
Stay quiet until you've slept in the yesterday,
And say no elegies for the melting stone.
- The 36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon Five

Appointed Secretary-General by the General Assembly during the Michalak administration, Musa Odek became in 2251 the first person to serve as both Secretary-General and President. Born in Kenya to an English mother and a Kikuyu father, he was the second East African to win the Presidency, after Dolores Muwanga. In his three decades of service as Secretary-General, Odek had dramatically developed the office. Once a mostly clerical position primarily concerned with facilitating dialogue between Member States, under Odek the Office of the Secretary-General had become a political force in its own right, standing up to the President and Parliament when federal power seemed to encroach on sovereign national rights. The IGB, of course, was pleased to have such a stalwart defender in the Secretary-General; however, Odek was never sympathetic to the Sovereignists as a political party. Instead, his ideology was rooted in a left-wing skepticism of the UNE's growing federal power. "Only by the consent of the nations does the United Nations of Earth derive its power," he said in a 2244 speech at Kinshasa, "and only by the strength and sovereignty of those nations are the rights and liberties of the people protected." Throughout his life, Odek wrote of his fear that UNE institutions might be undermined and the great utopian project turned to tyranny.

Since their departure in 2234, not a word had been heard from the two ships sent out of Sol towards Alpha Centauri and UV Ceti. Although it had been anticipated that their experimental FTL drives would prevent communications, no one expected such a long period of silence from UNS Galaxy and UNS Sputnik. As the first years of the Odek Administration ticked by and the 20th anniversary of the launches approached, some media outlets and politicians began to float the possibility that the ships were permanently lost.

Then, on April 19th, 2253, a transmission was received; a brief message from Captain So of Galaxy, transmitted back to Sol via conventional means:

1st phase mission success. Galaxy at Proxima. Crew unhurt and in good spirits. All systems intact. 2nd phase to begin immediately. Further status reports to follow.

On Earth and in the colonies, the relief was palpable. Not only was an intrepid human crew exploring another star system for the first time in history, but the Balangao Drive project - which had been put on standby after ten years without a message over safety concerns - could again be pursued. in 2254, President Odek personally approved the formal re-opening of the FTL research facility on Luna. In time, further messages from the Galaxy would tell of how the Balangao containment device failed while the FTL system was depowered, forcing the vessel to make the rest of the trek under conventional power.

The years of gradual land reclamation, offworlding of polluting industries, and waste cleanup begun by President Delmas had by the mid-23rd Century paid off dramatically. Scientists of the Research Council and from several major universities declared in 2252 that Earth's ecosystems had recovered their pre-Industrial Revolution health and resiliency. Although many thousands of extinct species were likely permanently gone, the news buoyed the already-strong support for the UNE's environmental programs. The great climate crises, it seemed, were firmly at an end.

Following the closure of the last mining operations on Earth in 2255, President Odek established the Global Wildlife Preserve System, a department of the UN Park Service. The new department was given charge of many areas of especially high biodiversity or ecological importance, such as inner New Guinea, the Congo Basin, and a swathe of the southwestern United States. As with the other Parks, however, formal sovereignty remained with the Member States

On Ceres, President Odek saw a political opportunity in the person of Khalil Hamdouchi, a Moroccan-born former diplomat who had chosen Ceres as his place of retirement. Incensed by the continued existence of the Earth Defense Fleet, which he saw as "the fist of unchecked federal power", Hamdouchi lambasted the DRI and the pro-Fleet Sovereignists, whom he decried as threats to peace in Sol. Now a Member State in its own right, Ceres elected Hamdouchi as its delegate to the General Assembly, where he made a name for himself as a stalwart advocate for the rights of the three offworld states.

The question of the Fleet seemed likely to dominate UNE political discussion for the remainder of President Odek's term. But on February 14th, 2257, everything humanity knew about the universe changed overnight.

Just beyond the Oort Cloud, long-range scanners in orbit of Saturn detected a spacecraft of unknown origin moving towards inner Solar System at astounding speed. The memo delivered to President Odek as he was awoken at 04:00 Nairobi time was terse.

Unknown object en route to Sol. Speed at least 14.6c. Not slowing.

 

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2251-2261 - The First Odek Administration (Part 2)

Count o'er those lamps of quenchless light,
That sparkle through the shades of night;
Behold them!–can a mortal boast
To number that celestial host?

Mark well each little star, whose rays
In distant splendor meet thy gaze;
Each is a world by Him sustained,
Who from eternity hath reigned.

Each, shining not for earth alone,
Hath suns and planets of its own,
And beings, whose existence springs
From Him, th' all-powerful King of kings.

What then art thou, oh! child of clay!
Amid creation's grandeur, say?
–E'en as an insect on the breeze,
E'en as a dew-drop, lost in seas!

Be thou at peace!–th' all-seeing eye,
Pervading earth, and air, and sky,
The searching glance which none may flee,
Is still, in mercy, turned on thee.
- from "The Stars.", Felicia Hemans

The Theta Spacecraft

In early 2257, an alien object moving under its own power hurtled into the Solar System from deep space. It did not respond to hails of any kind. United Nations research outposts on the moons of Saturn attempted to transmit every conceivable message: greetings in four hundred languages living and dead, mathematical sequences, astronomical data, even rudimentary scans of the instruder itself. The entity did not change course or speed, and remained completely silent.

The extrasolar spacecraft, dubbed "Theta" by one of the transmission specialists charged with finding a way to make contact, traveled at speeds never before seen by UNE scientists. (While the Balangao Drive could theoretically achieve nigh-unlimited speed with sufficient access to negative matter, at the time of the Theta incident scientists had kept the prototype FTL systems firmly below even those primitive systems' limited capacity.) A cylindrical object with a shield-shaped nose, Theta appeared to lack armaments, shields, or even a recognizable bridge. The 6 kilometer-long object was awash in strange blue lighting, which pierced through its hull in a pattern than resembled side windows on a conventional spacecraft. Nevertheless, no sign of activity within the vessel was ever recorded.

President Musa Odek held an emergency Cabinet meeting at Nairobi the day Theta was detected. After three days of frantic attempts at contact and no change in the object's behavior, Odek made the decision to activate the Earth Defense Fleet and intercept Theta before it could cross the Asteroid Belt. Though the Fleet's Admiral, Maria Guimarães, had been given orders to attempt peaceful contact, the President's orders were clear:

Should the Theta entity pose a threat to Earth or any of the solar Republics, it is to be fired upon and destroyed.

Initially secret, the Fleet's orders were leaked two weeks before the expected rendezvous with Theta past Mars orbit. In Parliament, the reaction was pandemonium. President Odek was accused of warmongering, of overreaching his authority, of jeopardizing the safety of humanity by initiating belligerent first contact. A particularly incensed Sovereignist delegate even accused Odek and Labour of manufacturing the crisis, and Theta, in order to seize the Fleet and use it to take total control of the government. Impeachment papers were drawn up, though never voted upon. Amidst the political chaos, Odek held firm, giving a press conference on March 25th in which he reaffirmed his standing orders, insisted on his legal right to command the Fleet as Commander-in-Chief, and dismissed the parliamentary opposition as "dangerous to stability and the safety of humanity [...] in this time of peril".

Mankind waited with anticipation as Admiral Guimarães and the five railgun-armed ships of the Earth Defense Fleet intercepted Theta just past the Asteroid Belt on April 3rd. In order to force a response, the UNS America was placed directly in the path of the alien vessel. At 11:19 Nairobi time, Theta arrived as expected, whistling through the asteroid belt at a breakneck 14.6 times the speed of light. The Admiral broadcasted her messages, demanding that the intruder stand down and explain its purpose in the system, but she barely had time to finish before the spacecraft careened wide around the UNS America, never once losing speed. Guimarães ordered the Fleet around to pursue, but the sublight chemical drives of the first human corvettes could not hope to catch the object.

Earth watched these events with horror. The Fleet had proven less than useless; with its ships now trapped on the far side of the Asteroid Belt for weeks at least, Earth was undefended should Theta change course again. For another three weeks humanity held its collective breath, only to breathe a sigh of relief as Theta ignored Earth entirely, leaving the Solar System on June 6th. Since its last recorded heading led towards Alpha Centauri, the UNS Galaxy was given warning and asked to investigate Theta further should it appear.

The Theta crisis shook Musa Odek's first administration to its bones. Besides a small boost after a signal from the UNS Sputnik in UV Ceti was received in 2258, popular opinion of the Odek government plummeted steadily in the final years of his term. The Earth Defense Fleet, crawling home after its humiliation at the Asteroid Belt, became a target for ridicule, while the opposition of the anti-Fleet factions in Parliament remained no less stalwart. A coalition of delegates from sixty-three Earth Member States, plus Mars and Ceres, formally initiated legislation in the General Assembly to disband the Fleet in 2259, which failed.

President Odek lost the election of 2261 to Lu Guozhi, chief of the Research Council's sociology department, and an outspoken defender of institutional checks on executive power. But despite his first term ending in embarrassment and disgrace, the political legacy of Musa Odek was far from over.

Around all the breathless relief and political fury, one fact remained frighteningly apparent. Had the Theta spacecraft meant harm to Earth, no force on any of humanity's four worlds could have stopped it.

It took three years for the response from Galaxy to arrive. Theta had been seen in Alpha Centauri only two months after it departed Sol, but for once, the bizarre spacecraft lay completely stationary. As Galaxy had approached, it had set off towards the galactic north, again at great speed, but at its former position, the science vessel discovered something extraordinary.

Bathed in the light of three foreign stars, and orbiting an immense gas giant, a picturesque green world glimmered in the cosmic dark.

[Dates in this chapter - and future ones - may not match precisely with dates in screenshots. This is an intentional narrative choice. For example, although the crew of the UNS Galaxy observed Theta in Alpha Centauri in 2257, in that era of pre-subspace transmission, Earth did not receive its report on the encounter until 2260.]

 

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Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VII

2261-2262 - The Lu Administration

Lu Guozhi was born in 2172 in Wuhan, China. At the founding of the Research Council in 2200, she was the youngest of the three department heads (only 28 years of age), and a prodigy in biology and sociology alike. Lu was more importantly a capable popular communicator, well-known for her efforts to popularize the social sciences. Throughout her sixty-year tenure on the Research Council, Lu became well known in left-wing circles for her sharp criticisms of government policy concerning the rights of individuals. In Lu's view, the United Nations of Earth disproportionately prioritized the interests of the Member States and corporate entities over the interests of citizens.

The Working Class Heroes Association, a political afterthought throughout most of the first half of the 23rd century, had slowly gained influence during the first Odek Administration as left-wing MPs and voters dissatisfied with Odek's handling of the Theta crisis defected. Enjoying a brief surge in popularity that could finally win the party an election, the WCHA recruited Lu to head the party ticket, despite her advanced age - in 2261, Lu Guozhi was eighty-nine years old.

Lu Guozhi's first executive order set the tone for her brief Presidency. In order to establish a permanent bastion in the Alpha Centauri system, from which colonization or research might be supported, the UNS Pacific was equipped with a prototype Balangao Drive and sent to follow UNS Galaxy into the black. The Pacific, a sixty-year-old construction vessel lacking most of the Discovery-class ships' power capacity, was ill-equipped to handle a massive power drain like the Balangao containment device, but President Lu insisted that the ship's engineers make do.

Taking advantage of advances in the theory underlying the Balangao FTL system, Pacific reached Alpha Centauri in months, rather than years, and by early 2262 began construction on the first permanent extrasolar outpost: Delmas Station, named for the late President who had authorized the first manned missions to foreign stars. In preparation for what seemed likely to become a second colonization boom, construction began on a rudimentary shipyard immediately.

On the little green world to which Galaxy had been led by the Theta object, President Lu authorized a commission to begin colonial surveys, even allowing eager would-be colonists to choose an official name: Endor, after a similar forest moon from a popular 20th-century science fiction film.

Alas, tragedy derailed all of President Lu's grand plans. Just after construction was completed on Delmas Station, UNS Pacific suffered a catastrophic energy leak, and the FTL containment device failed, resulting in an explosion. The ship was lost with all hands, luckily out of range of Delmas Station.

President Lu did not enjoy popular support in the legislature. The WCHA had never made many friends among the other party groups, and even the Alien Freedom Society (whose membership had swelled as well after the discovery of likely alien life) withdrew support after Lu's authorization of the Endor colony. After the accident, Parliament demanded a moratorium on use of the Balangao drives aboard non-scientific vessels, lest a similar disaster occur aboard a colony ship. Besides a limited number of upgraded construction vessels deemed suitable for interstellar science outpost construction, this moratorium would hold until the development of a stable FTL drive in 2301. Colonization, until then, would be contained to the Solar System alone.

The elderly President Lu, now 90, did not get the chance to redeem her political career, though she did order a new construction ship built, the UNS Mediterranean. After only sixteen months in office, Lu Guozhi died of liver failure while attending a conference in Geneva. Following her death, the UNE lacked a President for the first time since the establishment of the office. Though some in Parliament feared crisis, ultimately the government followed constitutional protocol and a three month special election period was initiated, resulting in the election of the DRI candidate, Meng Liang, in 2263.

Historians consider the Lu Administration notable, despite Lu's short tenure. The political fallout of the UNS Pacific disaster shaped the direction of humanity's expansion into space. Had things gone differently, interstellar colonization would have have begun forty years earlier, and the later colonies of the Sol system, such as Mercury and Europa, might not have existed at all.

 

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Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
- Helen Keller

2263- 2264 The Meng Administration

Meng Liang was born in 2175 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Since 2254, he had served as chief of the Research Council's engineering department. A staunch advocate for the Council's legal advisory role, he had been foremost among those public figures who had warned President Lu about the dangers of rushing the Balangao Drive project for use aboard colony ships. The Pacific disaster raided Meng's public profile immensely, as did his work to develop a safer FTL variant system for construction vessels.

Besides his advocacy for the Research Council, Meng never made political waves, nor campaigned for or against any parties. Seeing in Meng's new celebrity an opportunity to avoid another Odek administration, the DRI nominated him as their lead candidate in the special election of 2263. Though the victory swelled the Liberals' membership, the new President Meng's non-ideological approach to politics would ultimately damage the party.

Restrictions on most use of the Balangao FTL drive made the second half of the 23rd century a strange time for humanity. A moon bristling with life lay just out of reach, and over the next decades, several more such worlds would be discovered. To mankind's despair, though, all of them were locked away, trapped behind an unimaginably vast expanse of space too risky to cross for any but the most specialized small vessels. The sense of missed potential and loneliness would come to dominate culture of the period, prompting a cascade of media exploring characters restrained or imprisoned by forces beyond their control.

In the meantime, the first solar Republics slowly filled up with people, and the "proto-terraforming" of Mars inched onwards. To many, it seemed humanity was slowing down, grinding into a second state of stasis focused on the Sol system, rather than Earth. To combat these feelings, President Meng pushed for the colonization of Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. A United Nations research base had been established on the moon during the early expansion of the 2230s, when it was thought that Europa might harbor life, and although no life was ever found, the warmth of Europa's volcanically-warmed subsurface seas meant large-scale colonization was possible.

Parliament, however, refused to authorize a Europa colony. The Alien Freedom Society - never a dominant force, but since Endor's discovery an increasingly influential one - demanded that because Europa could still host undiscovered life, it must not be settled. More importantly, Labour refused to lend its votes towards any further UNE expansion without a sweeping constitutional amendment guaranteeing certain social services to all, on Earth or in the colonies. The DRI balked at such a demand; voters in Liberal strongholds on Earth tended to support aid for the offworld Republics, but not the massive investments required for social policy on par with the richest Earth countries. The Sovereignists were even more strongly opposed, since such a policy would also require some Earth nations, notably Australia, Congo, and the Russian Federation, to adjust their domestic policies to meet higher federal standards.

Against the wishes of the DRI and their Sovereignist coalition partners, President Meng approved what would become known as the Social State Amendment in 2264, with Labour support. The largest social policy package in history, the Social State Laws permanently enshrined the various social laws passed since Unification in the UNE constitution, alongside a suite of new policies designed to, in the words of Labour leader Musa Odek, "make life worth living at any age, whether you have a job or not". For all intents and purposes, the United Nations of Earth was now a full social democracy. True to their word, Labour lifted its vote blockade, and the colony on Europa was authorized in 2264.

Meng's tenure ended even more abruptly than that of his predecessor. The President, in ailing health even when he was elected, died in office after suffering heatstroke during a conference in Quito. Yet another special election was called, to be concluded in July 2264.

The legacy of the brief Meng presidency is complicated. While the Social State Amendment remains in the UNE's constitution today, many consider the political gamesmanship that led to its passage an ugly reminder of just how dominant the forces of party politics had become in the mid-23rd century. President Meng's defection from the Democratic Rights Initiative - a party he theoretically led - to push legislation supported by the parliamentary opposition resulted directly in the fraught political circumstances of 2264 special election following his death, and the return to power of the even more controversial Musa Odek.

 

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So many gods, so many creeds;
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

2264-2274 - the Second Odek Administration, Part 1

Sweeping back into office in 2274, President Odek faced Parliamentary opposition immediately, primarily from Liberal MPs who were astonished at the rapid demise of Presidents Lu and Meng. Elected with a firm mandate of more than 60%, however, Odek felt unconstrained by Parliamentary restrictions, and set about running the government in what he called his "act first, ask forgiveness later" approach.

President Odek wasted no time shoring up his support in the offworld Republics, approving the Robotics Act in 2265. The Act overturned a number of half-century-old policies that barred large-scale deployment of advanced robotics in the interest of protecting human jobs. In doing so, Odek cleared the way for widespread robot use in the colonies, though only Mars built assembly facilities immediately. Protests took place in several countries on Earth and on Ceres, but within a few decades, robots would become a common sight throughout the UNE.

After surveys were completed by UNS Sputnik, President Odek authorized Lu Station in UV Ceti in 2266. Still restricted to colonial or civilian space traffic, being in another system, Lu Station nevertheless would come to serve as an important base for further nearby scientific endeavors.

Later that year, UNS Galaxy discovered a mysterious derelict in the gaseous atmosphere of one of Alpha Centauri's fifth planet. Hoping to discover some connection to the "Theta" craft, Galaxy's captain So Su-Mi received presidential authorization to extract and study the wreckage.

To the disappointment of the crew of the Galaxy, no explicit connections to the Theta object were discovered on Alpha Centauri V. Instead, the hulk appeared entirely distinct in design - and much less sophisticated - than the ship that had barrelled through Sol. Nevertheless, the wrecked ship had been more advanced than anything humanity possessed in the late 23rd century, and to the surprise of Galaxy's crew, although the FTL system was entirely lost, certain onboard records remained. A series of video logs, deciphered over the next several years by a groundbreaking international linguistic effort, revealed the struggle of a number of small rodent-like aliens to recover some artifact of great power called a "Rubricator". This fuzzy holo-log, the first definitive proof of sentient biological alien life, made many on Earth deeply nervous. Only three star systems had been truly explored by humankind, but two potentially threatening alien entities had already been discovered.

Following the discovery of the derelict, Captain So and the Galaxy were ordered west, towards Sirius, in search of further clues.

September 1st, 2266 saw a mass celebration on Earth, spontaneously organized by the 196 Earth national governments in commemoration of the end of war, the prosperity of the UNE, and respect for both the rights of the individual and the rights of the Member States. Although formally just a day of festivities, the Prosperity Day celebrations were seen by many as an implicit reminder to Nairobi not to ignore Earthside concerns in favor of its increasingly resource-intensive space endeavors.

Parliament took note, as did President Odek. In 2267, the General Assembly passed the Health Act (long held back by concerns over colonial rights and expenses), guaranteeing top-quality healthcare for all citizens, Earthside or otherwise. The consequent boost to the medical profession would see millions of new doctors and nurses leave Earth for the Solar Republics, where high-paying jobs in local hospitals were suddenly plentiful.

Another potentially habitable planet was discovered in Epsilon Eridani in 2269. A hot, mostly dry world with several shallow seas, the planet - tentatively called "Apulia" after the region in southern Italy - was distinctly less hospitable than Endor. Nevertheless, Apulia's discovery further motivated research into practical and reliable FTL.

The crew of the UNS Sputnik discovered a source of so-called "exotic gas" in the same system in 2270. The material, extraordinarily versatile in application, was unknown to humanity; samples were immediately collected and a mining site planned.

In 2274, President Odek approved the controversial Cloning Laws, legalizing the practice. It had been feared that cloning would incite a revolution in the human existence, that all the worst dystopian nightmares of the 20th and 21st centuries would come to pass, but the reality was much more mundane. Far from precipitating the establishment of a disposable slave class of mankind, cloning merely served in practice to increase the general rate of population growth, as many citizens (especially single-parent families and couples incapable of having children in the traditional fashion) turned to cloning as an alternative.

Musa Odek easily won re-election in 2274, with overwhelming support in the two African unions, the offworld Republics (except Ceres) and India. In doing so, he became the first president to serve three terms. As Parliament shrunk further from its lead role in government, many began to ask if the office of the President was growing too powerful. Only time would tell.

 

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Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.
- Johann Wolfgang von Geothe, Das Göttliche (The Divine)

2274-2284 - the Second Odek Administration, Part 2

President Musa Odek rung in his unprecedented third term in office by personally declaring the formal founding of the fifth Solar Republic, Mercury. Colonization efforts, initially limited to only a small scientific presence, had begun in earnest once it became clear just how much raw solar power could be harvested from arrays in Mercury's vast crater fields. Although the lack of an atmosphere confined settlers on Mercury to near-permanent confinement within radiation-shielded habitats, by the late 23rd century virtual reality technology was advanced enough that truly damaging psychological consequences of these conditions were rare.

Mercury's colonization coincided with an important milestone for the United Nations of Earth. By 2275, nearly five million humans lived somewhere other than Earth. To the alarm of the non-Labour parties, the vast majority of these voters had become loyal supporters of the LRN - or more specifically, President Odek. Prior to Odek's second term in office, no President had personally visited any of the Solar Republics; between 2265 and 2270 alone, Odek made six such visits (three times to Luna, twice to Mars, and once to Ceres). Meanwhile, Earth was politically riven along old lines. The DRI still dominated Europe, east Asia, and the Americas, while the Sovereignists firmly held Congo, the Middle East, and Russia. Labour continued to dominate East and West Africa and India. Though Ceres remained a bastion of IGB support, the utter dominance of Labour in yet another election led to many political scientists warning of the imminent collapse of the Third Party System.

In general, offworld citizens approved of Odek's commitment to economic expansion and state-subsidized colonial development. Unlike the Liberals, who opposed heavy subsidization of the colonial Republics, and the Sovereignists, who were opposed to adding new Member States in general, Labour made offworld job creation their priority. As more immigrants left Earth for these jobs in the colonies, so too did the political influence of the colonies - as well as their loyalty to Labour - increase.

Many elements of the UNE constitution, including several vital clauses concerning fundamental rights, explicitly defined their applicability to "people of Earth", rather than "people of the United Nations of Earth". Although citizenship was never truly in question for people of the colonies, and the courts of the UNE treated the question of constitutionally-defined birthright citizenship as a matter of implicit guarantee, President Odek had made revisions to the constitution central to his re-election campaign. From 2275-2280, the issue of constitutional reform was heavily debated; though the Liberals were supportive of the measure, many Sovereignists believed that handing Odek a "blank check" to rewrite the constitution was dangerous.

The great constitutional reform eventually found the votes needed to pass the General Assembly, once several Earth Member States withdrew their opposition in the face of heavy lobbying from Solar Republic citizens. Most consequential, however, was the addition of a single new clause, added in exchange for the support of Sovereignist Member State delegations on Earth:

"In accordance with Member State constitutional requirements, citizens of the United Nations of Earth may submit to the General Assembly a formal proposal to establish a new Member State, provided that:

1. The proposed Member State would exercise sovereignty over a geographically contiguous territory on a single world;
2. The proposed Member State would have a population of at least 250,000 citizens;
3. At least two-thirds of the population of the proposed Member State's territorial claim vote in favor of the proposed Member State, in a referendum with at least 70% voter participation;
4. The proposed Member State would exist on a world that is not Earth."

Perhaps no single piece of legislation since Unification has been of greater consequence to the development of the United Nations of Earth than the Offworld Member States Amendment, as it became known. The Solar Republics considered the measure politically cheap (after all, there were no secession movements on any of the worlds, with colonies bound so tightly together by habitats and shielded mag-trains as they were). But for the IGB, the Amendment was a major victory, and a guarantee that the offworld colonies would splinter before they could ever grow to threaten the political primacy of the countries of Earth.

With time, both sides would be proven wrong.

In the midst of the debate over the constitution, President Odek made a noteworthy appointment: Dalia Sekibo, a Europan security officer and the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, was appointed as the first non-Earthborn commander of the United Nations Peacekeepers, the mostly ceremonial united military of the UNE. Though the Peacekeepers had not needed to act as a fighting force in nearly a century, the appointment was nevertheless significant in history. Sekibo would be only the first of a long tradition of military and scientific officers born in the Solar Republics.

The Research Council remained active during the third Odek term as well. In 2281, orbital scientists developed a uniquely compelling zero-gravity simulator that could acclimate a person to navigation and orientation in a three-dimensional environment with only a few weeks of training. Combined with an existing suite of simulations developed over decades, the universities of the UNE immediately seized the new technology for application in all manner of disciplines, advancing fields from orbital mechanics to architecture.

In 2276, the noted Cerean Sovereignist leader and anti-Fleet activist Khalil Hamdouchi died. That same year, Parliament approved the creation of a monument in his honor.

With the passage of the constitutional amendments and the formal establishment of legal equivalent rights for offworld citizens, President Odek's popularity soared even higher in the Solar Republics. In Mars' largest habitat-city, Mangala, where Odek enjoyed 80%+ approval ratings, a 50-meter statue of the President was erected in 2282. Though Odek made a show of modesty and declined the offer to visit its commemoration in person, the honor disturbed many in the opposition. "Statues," said Shi Guanhong, an influential Chinese Liberal, "are for dictators and the dead."

Ceres faced an emergency in 2282, when improper habitat maintenance led to a disease outbreak and contamination of the six habitats' food and water. Though the Republic's government tried to prevent such rumors, some in the government openly speculated that the contamination had come about alongside the influx of earthborn workers who had constructed the monument to Khalil Hamdouchi. A number of incidents of prejudice against these workers were condemned by all leadership.

The election of 2285 was the closest in UNE history to date. Initial polling saw Odek still riding a wave of popular support, but by November his numbers had eroded in favor of the immensely popular Captain So Su-Mi, the celebrated captain of the UNS Galaxy. Conducting his campaign entirely via delayed transmissions from the Barnard's Star system, Captain So nevertheless managed to win an unprecedented coalition of Liberal loyalists, defectors from the IGB, and anti-Odek Labour members. In the end, he would defeat Musa Odek by just under a million votes.

The legacy of Musa Odek is deeply controversial. While most historians agree that his three terms made him the most significant 23rd century President, his significant expansion of executive power and public battles with a weakening Parliament foreshadowed many of the crises of the next hundred years. Additionally, Odek's willingness to allow the compromise Offworld Member States Amendment to pass would have a drastic effect on the future political trajectory of the UNE - away from single-world states, and towards political balkanization and fractionalism.

 

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The Solar Republics

Mankind's first permanent homes beyond Earth were not in other star systems, but on other bodies orbiting our home star, Sol. Though humans had been capable of reaching Luna as early as the late 1900s, serious colonization of other worlds did not (and could not, some historians maintain) occur until after Unification in the early 23rd century. At first, the only offworld settlements were permanent scientific outposts - in the case of Luna and Mars, as early as the 21st century - but with time, better technology, and the development of more reliable and cost-efficient space travel, settlement booms eventually brought millions of people who meant to make these desolate worlds home.

Life on Desolate Worlds

Science fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries often painted an intensely optimistic picture of interplanetary colonization. Alas, the reality is much harsher.

Humans are creatures evolved for life on Earth. Life on other worlds, without proper technological (and, often, social) adjustment, can and will wreak havoc on body and mind. Almost no element of human existence is exempt from danger of severe disruption by life beyond Earth. A selection - by no means exhaustive - of these problems:

• Low gravity will degrade and destroy the body over time. Even with constant, grueling exercise multiple times daily, bones and muscles will atrophy into uselessness. In low gravity, human reproduction is unreliable, and pregnancy is outright dangerous for both parent and child. Eyes will swell, sometimes hazardously so, and can result in blindness.
  
• Solar radiation, without a strong atmosphere and magnetic field to intercept, will barrage and destroy the body's cells. Over time, this exposure renders the body less capable of fighting disease, and can spur dangerous cell growth (cancers).
• Chemicals in alien soil can make growing crops all but impossible without prior treatment.
  
• In vacuum or near-vacuum environments, the slightest equipment malfunction can expose the human body to the effects of uncontrolled decompression. In the most dire scenarios (exposure beyond 90 seconds), saliva and blood boil, the circulatory system fails, and lungs collapse entirely.
• Ultraviolet rays received directly from a star will cause extreme sunburn.
• Variable and non-Earth standard day/night cycles heavily disrupt natural circadian rhythms, causing extreme fatigue and sleep loss.
• The psychological effects of all of the above, combined with the claustrophobia inherent to long-term confinement in small areas, cause stress and interpersonal tension far above normal rates.

Why, then, would anyone live in such conditions? For citizens of the UNE, the incentives were economic, the solutions technological. By the late 22nd century, several designs for artificial gravity habitats had been developed, preventing the most dangerous effects of off-world living by way of constant spinning. The development of virtual reality technology, though not quite matching popular dreams of Star Trek holodecks, nevertheless became invaluable to space settlement and exploration by giving people a chance to retreat from the confinement of a vessel or habitat into the world of their choice. So ubiquitous was VR by 2200 that even on Earth, it was considered unusual to not own a system. Film and television had long embraced the medium, entirely changing the way people spent their leisure time. Perhaps most notable was the shift towards acceptance of artificial gestation; many parents, unwilling or unable to carry a child, found instead that using an artificial womb was much safer and less disruptive than pregnancy. Since these devices function just as well in offworld environments as on earth, being entirely sealed, they became integral to the development and growth of the early Solar Republics.

Republic of Luna

For centuries, the moon represented the highest of mankind's immediate horizon. After the United States of America landed humans on the moon six times between 1969 and 1972, no humans returned until 2024, when the United States again landed a crew on the lunar surface. Unlike the first set of moon landings, which had marked the end of the First Space Race, the 2024 landings kicked off a series of high-stakes, high-prestige space endeavors, by the USA, China, the European Union, Russia, and later India.

The compounding crises of the 21st century overtook the Second Space Race by 2050, and though by that date all five main participants had made Lunar landings and the USA and China both maintained permanent outposts, dwindling public support, high costs, and political apathy eventually rendered the moon lifeless once more by the outbreak of the Third World War in 2087.

Over the next century and a half, a few tentative moon missions took place, mostly by the East African Union and India. In 2169 (the two hundredth anniversary of its first landing), the United States made an abortive attempt to reclaim its Armstrong base, but its condition was found to be too degraded for habitation, even with repair.

UNE President Liliane Delmas authorized the Luna Colony in 2229, asserting for the first time the executive's constitutional right to approve the creation of a directly-administered territory. The colony's first "city" and de facto capital was established at the location of the decrepit Armstrong Base, in order to make use of the raw material. Additionally, scientists hoped to use its equatorial location as the site of a space elevator, taking advantage of lower lunar gravity that would make such an endeavor impossible on earth using materials known to mankind in that era.

Luna Colony became the Republic of Luna not because of some massive swell of population, but because of legal necessity. Unlike crew in 21st-century Antarctica, for example, the cost of moving personnel between Luna and Earth routinely was extremely expensive. The goals of the UNE increasingly called for a leg up into the Solar System, and with an exponentially growing number of lucrative work opportunities available on the Moon, "crew" became increasingly replaced by "residents" willing to stay permanently, with their families. These first families required services, entertainment, civil society, and - most importantly - representative government. Thus did the first offworld society come to be.

By the turn of the 24th century, the Republic of Luna had a population of roughly 850,000, spread across a network of twenty-nine bases, and connected by a magnetic rail system to the capital "city" of Armstrong. The space elevator, successfully erected during the 2240s, made Luna a reliably low-cost hub for transportation to and from the rest of the Solar System.

Republic of Mars

The United States attempted to land humans on Mars in 2032. Unfortunately, a major equipment malfunction nearly caused a tragedy, and the Mars program was grounded for years as a result. China became the first to land humans on Mars, in 2046. During the 21st century, the United States and China alike built small outposts for research, but as with those one the Moon, abandoned them in the years leading to World War III.

India sent a series of major missions to Mars during the period from 2150-2190, establishing a base that would become the core of modern Mangala at Valles Marineris. When Mars Colony was established in 2231, the government of India accepted the accession of its small station into the new polity. Mars, as a result, started with two real cores; Mangala, or "Old Mars", the mostly-Indian habitats of the Valles Marineris, and "Young Mars" the much more multicultural area that would evolve into modern Elysium and Huǒxīng. The cultural divide, in time, would come to dominate Martian politics and society, though not for many decades.

Mars was the most Earthlike of the original Solar Republics, and the dream of a red planet made blue motivated the most aggressive early settler boom of any Solar System colony. Unfortunately, terraforming planets is no small endeavor, and the optimists of the earliest years that had speculated about breathable air within a single lifetime were quickly disappointed. For the first hundred and fifty years of its existence, the Republic of Mars was a republic of habitats, bound together much like those on Luna by maglev trains and shuttlecraft.

There was one exception, however. While large-scale terraforming had indeed proven only tentatively plausible, at the geographically unique Valles Marineris, a smaller-scale operation successfully "tented" the canyon. The project, which contained the entire valley in a superstructure of unprecedented scale, established a breathable atmosphere within. For the first time, the foundations of an Earth-like biosphere were established on another world. While it remained impossible to permanently live outside a gravity-controlled habitat, the "Mangala Project" turned Mars into a true beacon of human ingenuity.

By 2300, Mars was thriving, with a population well over three million and growing rapidly. Unlike the other Solar Republics, however, Mars' size meant that by the turn of the century, several significant cultural and political fissures had developed. In time, these would be the cracks along which the Republic would dissolve into its modern multitude of states.

Republic of Ceres

Ceres, the smallest of the Solar Republics, became one rather by accident. Rather than a planned colony, the dwarf planet's haphazard array of mining stations and temporary-turned-permanent settlements gathered residents by accretion over years. Eventually, in 2243, the UNE was forced to acknowledge it as a Member State, lest a political crisis develop between competing earth-based interests over "the Rock".

In many ways, Ceres is the anti-Mars. While Mars' size allowed it to become a frontier world for dozens of groups, Ceres' small size (roughly the size of Argentina) meant that all its settlements were packed tightly together, relatively speaking, especially around the richest mining areas. Where Mars was the beneficiary of concentrated efforts by the UNE to establish and maintain a colony, Ceres has mostly found it necessary to fend for itself.

Cerean culture, for these reasons, prizes toughness, ingenuity, and independence. Instead of individual habitats connected by mag-lev trains, Ceres is essentially one immense habitat, as much under the ground and connected via tunnels as it is on the surface. By 2300, the Cerean government had sponsored small settlements on other small bodies in the Asteroid Belt, though the legal status of such a move at the time was unclear at best.

Republic of Europa

Europa was colonized only reluctantly, at the request of the scientific community. President Meng Liang initially found the idea of large-scale habitation on such a far-off, inhospitable moon to be a vanity project unworthy of investment. No life had been found by the science outposts set up there during the 2240s, and the surface was uneven, frigid, and icy. Scientists on Europa, however, insisted that the moon could potentially become a hub for research, on account of the world's unique subsurface oceans. Warmed by a geothermically active core, Europa's seas are rich in the microscopic material from which life is speculated to have arisen.

The Europan habitats were constructed half-submerged, cut deep into the ice in order to access the relative warmth of the seas below. Settlement was sporadic, as expected, but the scientific community there and the associated services and staff gave it a population of roughly 270,000 by the turn of the century. In 2300, one main habitat existed, alongside a handful of smaller, entirely submerged habitats.

Republic of Mercury

Mercury was settled only late in the Early Colonial Period. Sun-scorched and inhospitable, it only received attention as a target for settlers in the late 23rd century, once the deployment of advanced solar cells revealed the lucrative potential of living and working on the little planet.

The vast majority of Mercurians live in the largest habitat, a sprawling affair that connects underground to the vast solar fields to the east. While most of its 110,000 residents were employed in fields somewhat related to the planet's main industry in 2300, it also had a growing population of tradespeople and service industry employees, eager to make use of Mercury's central location in the system and swift orbital period as a base from which to connect with the rest of Sol.