Artificial Intelligence (AI), Androids
The Information Age leads to machines that “think” beyond simple programming.
Harnessing vast networks and exponentially rising amounts of data in them trains algorithmic models of increasing sophistication including agent software designed as friendly interfaces for humans to use these networks.
Engineering increases the power and throughput of hardware while decreasing the volume of space needed to achieve the same scale of throughput.
The trend of rising sophistication and shrinking hardware eventually cross resulting in a small enough computing network with a sophisticated algorithmic “brain” that can be packed into human scale robotics.
Artificially intelligent machinery arrives, but not without controversy, setbacks, social, and legal adjustments, which continue into present time.
Synthetic Intelligence (SI), Synthetics, Clones, Replicants
The Information Age advances in networking and algorithms unlock deeper and deeper understandings of biology and the human mind itself.
Recreating each of the subsystems of life unlocks synthetic replacements of organs and organisms, including the most complex structures of the human brain.
The ability to grow organs and organisms give rise to organ, limb, and even whole-body cloning.
Applying computational understanding of learning models unlocks how the human brain uses those complex structures to function.
The ability to “grow” synthetic brain tissue leads to Synthetic Intelligence.
Synthetically engineered humans, while possible, generate incredibly steep resistance to widespread acceptance, remaining controversial to the present time.
First offworld outposts: Moon, Mars, Asteroids
The exponential demand for energy and resources drives the outward expansion from Earth into the Solar System.
Increasing energy and resource gathering satellites and outposts require increasing infrastructure support.
Artificial and Synthetic Intelligence finds increased acceptance off-world.
Fusion
Generations of successive improvements in each piece of the chain eventually lead to sustained fusion reactions which generate energy efficiently enough to be practical and useful.
Fusion moves out of the lab and into military, civil, and industrial applications.
Fusion-based Span Drive (system drive)
With enough energy, a new spacecraft drive system and design opens the Solar System to increased traffic.
The economics of energy and resource gathering across the Solar System change drastically with the Span Drive, allowing colonies and outposts to spring up deeper and deeper into the Solar System.
First extrasolar survey missions launched
Artificial, Synthetic, and Human intelligence build and launch the first fusion-powered extra-solar surveys, testing and pushing the Span Drive to its limits.
Some surveys lead to disasters as the young technologies encounter setbacks in the long dark between the stars.
First Extrasolar Colony
One success can overshadow many setbacks, such as the first successful extra-solar colony mission.
The first returning survey bringing news of an off-world colony triggers a “gold rush” to launch missions to the stars.
Slow Expansion / Human Colonization Era
The pattern emerges where humans slowly creep outward from the Solar System by launching flyby surveys through distant surveys.
Surveys that eventually returns promising results trigger greater investment in a system survey that launches into the target system to stay, gathering far more data before returning.
Missions to place orbiters and mappers around the most promising targets eventually lead to a ground survey mission.
Successful ground surveys ultimately may lead to Outpost missions or even planting a full colony if the resources seem rich enough.
Human Colonization Expansion / Contraction cycles
Unfortunately, not all surveys pay off, and not all outposts or colonies survive.
Worse, humanity cannot always fully cooperate in something as vast as colonizing space.
The rivalries flare into occasional wars and more frequent economic upswing and downturn cycles lead to waves of canceled surveys and outposts or colonies failing from lack of infrastructure support.
Successful “Zero Time” experiments
During an economic upswing, a breakthrough to “zero out” the effect of time (a component of the c constant itself) shatters one of the two fundamental barriers to faster-than-light travel.
Successful “Negative Space” experiments
The “zero time” revolution in exotic industries leads to a second key breakthrough, the ability to “compress” space by increasing metrics up to the amount of space between any two points.
First Interstellar Communication / Transmission
The ability to cancel and negate the two largest barriers to exceeding the speed of light leads to the first successful experiment to communicate in real-time between Sol/Earth and a colony.
Faster-than-light communication revolutionizes each colony which eventually is able to upgrade to it, despite the enormous expense in equipment and energy.
Jump Stations (massive energy requirements)
As colonies come online with the growing communications network, the richest of the colonies, working with Earth researchers begin applying the Zero Time and Negative Space concepts to a series of stations designed to bridge spacetime itself and allow massive objects, not just messages, to traverse the gap.
First Jumps (unmanned then manned)
After a series of disasters and economic setbacks for the experimenting colonies, a successful jump and return finally links the colonies.
Colonies race to license and build jump stations.
Farspan Drive (intersystem drive)
The massive power requirements and scale of the Zero Time and Negative Space equipment delay the integration of these with spacecraft to allow a mobile jump gate.
Finally, successful integration leads to the Farspan Drive which can cross the stars without the destination already having a jump station built.
The Farspan Drive gives rise to the Colony Trains, a small number of fantastically large and expensive starships which make circuits around the colonies not yet equipped with Jump Stations.
Initial surveys performed by colonization corporation under colonial lease
The initial system flyby survey of Gliese 14 returned promising results: a potentially useful mainworld, large asteroid belt systems, two gas giants and an intriguingly rare planetary system of two worlds in the same orbit.
Funds were easily obtained for such promising results, allowing a pair of probes to start an orbital and ground survey of the mainworld and an extensive in-system survey of the asteroid belts, gas giants, and tantalizing planetary system.
The mainworld survey results help expand the survey corporation fortune as any habitable world can, prompting the first outpost and colonization mission.
A two-stage mission places a station in orbit over the mainworld, christened Niecti, to support a groundside outpost.
Alien ship graveyard found in Gliese 14
Meanwhile, the in-system surveyor returns increasingly confusing resource reports from the asteroid belts and outer planet surveys.
Slowly, the data returned outlines multiple wrecks of spacecraft of non-human origin, confirming the first evidence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life.
Colonial corporation fails to keep the discovery secret
A discovery of this magnitude inevitably leaks.
Unfortunately, the initial leaks happened far too quickly for the discovering survey corporations to develop a significant lead or exploit any finds in secret.
Frontier “gold rush” for alien artifacts
Corporations and governments across Alliance space send treasure hunting missions into Niecti, each hoping for everything from fantastic new extra-terrestrial technology to unique trinkets for private collections.
Piracy galore
Without strong Alliance oversight, many shady and predatory treasure hunting missions hijack finds made by others.
Colonization corporation overrun by competitors before Alliance Navy can intervene
As the colonial survey corporations falter under competitive onslaught, they eventually appeal to the Alliance to place the system under edict to prevent priceless xeno-archeology from ruin in the “gold rush”.
Alliance Navy finally clamps down but the damage is done
With access to the full original survey data, the Alliance Navy aggressively builds up bases and patrols within Niecti.
Over time, an inner system base and patrols slows the initial gold rush exploitation, forcing the treasure hunters outward, deeper into the system attempting to avoid the reach of the Navy patrols.
The Navy matches this expansion with an outer system base in the newly christened moon Kamsa, within the Jahannam-Argosa planetary system sharing a single orbit between the inner and outer gas giants.
The worst of the remaining fortune hunters form the backbone of the criminal underworld in the Niecti system, remaining elusively hidden among the colonies, outposts, stations, rings, and rocks across the system.
With a semblance of security from the Navy, trade expands
As the piracy drops and the Alliance Navy establishes a level of security across parts of the system, merchants and traders move in.
The spreading stations, outposts, colonies, and asteroid belters all require supply and trade.
The Alliance itself subsidizes some trade, but most happens under commercial charters which appear, change, and disappear as quick as the fortunes of those funding the charters.
As the system settles - civilization sophistication, adventurers, and drifters increase
While the Alliance builds up its own xeno-archeological surveys across the system, the lack of labor force in this frontier system opens the door for recruiting and licensing independent surveyors under Alliance institute charters.
Chancers, dreamers, fringe theorists, scientists and pseudo-scientists all flock to Niecti each searching for their own unique “score” among the ruins, provided they can afford the stake to get to the Niect system in the first place.
Present Day