>>intercepting broadcast...
>>masking source...
>>executing cloak_proto_01...
>>running...
Do not adjust your comm, sit back, and enjoy what's to come. My name is not important, hell, I'd be crazy to give any of the sharks out there an ounce of information about me with the times as they are now, but for the sake of familiarity, you may call me Doc Mitnik, and this is the first broadcast of The Transmission.
But what is The Transmission, you ask? Simply put, it's the alternative to "the official truth", you know, what our good friends from both New Geneva and ONN will say is the really real truth, of course there's no reason for you to doubt the "official" truth when it comes to recent events, but there's that little scratch on the back of your head that makes you ask yourself "What if this isn't exactly true?" and, my friends, that's why we're here, The Transmission's objective is to shed light on the dark side of the truth, that little uncomfortable side that makes our corporate masters look anything less than perfect and flawless.
So let's start from the beginning, shall we? Let's start with the Great Lie. Listen up people, I've got a story to tell, and it goes back a few centuries back. Get some snacks, get a drink, and get comfortable, we're looking back at The Transcendence War.
So what exactly is the Transcendence War? Well folks, to put it simply, it's the event that led to a significant change in humanity's existence, and the event that put an end to Earth as we once knew it.
So what is it we know "officially"? It was those dastardly AI's that rose up against humanity, wrecked the planet and waged war for decades, humanity barely managed to survive securing last minute evacuations, and the planet was so irradiated that no life could be sustained anymore.
It's all good, but... That's a lie, and dear listeners, you know that's a lie. What if I told you that corporations used Earth as their own private landfill dumping more than questionable materials without any care or any worry? What if I told you that not only were there survivors to the Transcendence War, but they managed to ensure that their descendants lived, thrived, and created different tribes, and folks you know that is true because you've seen it, you can book passage to what was once known as Earth Site X-17 and despite the destruction that Jericho V brought, you can still see a lot of Tribes, Mutants, and Chimeras run around, so what changed? To understand this better, we have to go back to the beginning.
It all started, if Professor Holden's timeline is to be believed, in the 2080's, long time ago. And we have two sides to this conflict, the United Nations and the Coalition of Progressive Nations. Think of the UN as the oldest form of government on Earth, the powerful and the elite want to keep things under their control and they exercise their power through politicians and different countries, but not everyone thinks the same way. The CPN is more oriented towards progress, corporate entities want to move forward with bolder products that the UN blocks on account of morality and hypocrisy.
Now folks, I am a man of my time and I understand that true progress is a delicate ballet of balance, I know that if you wanna get something, you gotta give something first. The CPN wanted corporate based progress, and the UN attempted to retain any and all power and influence they could, this rift was the beginning of the end because it split the Earth in two sides, and it was the beginning of the end. And lo and behold, as tensions continued to rise, so did hostilities. Over the next 20 years, politics were subtle, unrelated accidents there, unknown catastrophes here, it was all business as usual until this guy came along, Radovan Dracul.
Now this guy Radovan was probably the biggest player at the time, as he played both sides, and pitted both sides against one another. Eventually, each side came out with ultimate weapons: The Satellite Defense Network, the Alpha Battalions, and Project AP. Now here comes the elemental flaw of these weapons. Both the Alpha Battalions and Project AP were AI based, and at the time, there was no restriction on AI development, because both the UN and the CPN were on a hurry to get to the top, and any form of restriction on their AI projects would just slow them down, and on this same vein, human decision was completely removed from the Satellite Defense Network too, in other words: The most dangerous weapons on each side were ready, primed, and aiming at each side, with no way of stopping them once they started. By the end of the 2130's that's exactly what had happened, and by the time both the CPN and the UN wanted to stop the destruction of the world it was already too late, and they had no choice but to leave Earth for Floating Cities, Space Stations, and Luna itself. Home One was still unknown and no one was sure if the one-way mission had succeeded in colonizing Mars so it wasn't included in the immediate, panic fueled plans of the survivors. A handful of "humanity's best and brightest" managed to leave the dying planet, leaving behind millions of horrified and ignored survivors.
Now, most of this you can find on Professor Holden's "uncovered" timeline, which New Geneva hosts here, that is the "official" story anyway, and has to be edited and redacted in a way that they would be comfortable with it, otherwise you know it wouldn't be there to be seen and Professor Holden's expedition would have been dead in the water. But don't you have any questions on that "truth"? Do you really accept the fact that two super powers with dozens of countries to back them up just decided to go full throttle into war with no way of stopping? It doesn't really make a lot of sense, does it? Because history has a way of repeating itself, and if that's how things would have truly gone, we would see a full blown New Geneva-Mars conflict burning right about now, and it wouldn't even be a difficult one either, statistically speaking New Geneva has state of the art equipment, hell, state of the art everything. It has several megacorporations under its command, and all they need do is say "Go" and an insurmountable force would be knocking at Mars' door right about now. But folks, what if I told you that there was a third party involved during the Transcendence War?
Now, I want you to think, really think about this. You are at the pinnacle of power back then, you see your opposing neighbor also be at the pinnacle, you are equally powerful to each other, and despite your own views on the matter, you have millions, billions of people looking up to you and making your government apparatus work. You'd have a better shot at converting people from the other side to your cause than trying to wage war on them and reign over the ashes, you've got nothing to win by nuking the other side, just like the other side has nothing to win by nuking you. But what if there was a third side that had nothing to lose, and everything to win? An agent of chaos, perhaps? Or a very early incarnation of what is now known as New Geneva. Think about it, survivors of both the Coalition of Progressive Nations and the United Nations went on to join forces and lay the foundations (Officially, anyway) of what New Geneva would later become: The sole reigning power of the Sol System with megacorporations at its beck and call. And all they had to do was sacrifice a planet, and billions of innocent people.
What if at some point, the UN and the CPN were on the verge of reaching a truce and eliminate all hostilities so they could work together, and someone decided that's not what they wanted? What if there were really security measures to implement on AI's so they would be stopped when things got too hot, but someone made a move not to implement those measures in the end, so their agenda would be fulfilled? That's how you kill two titans without even stepping out of the shadows: Sabotage, infiltrate, and strike when the moment is right, even if it takes you hundreds of years. Doesn't that sound like someone you know? Think about it.
Well folks, that's about all the time we have before our signal is knocked down, but keep an eye out for the next edition of The Transmission, this has been Doc Mitnik, and I leave you with today's musical selection.
(("The Transmission" is meant to be seen as both an OOC archive of the lore, with a spin on interpretation, and it's also meant to be seen as an intermittent IC intrusion of PublicNET devices, it overall serves the purpose of counter to ONN/Corporate points of view and information, players are more than welcome to use or reference "The Transmission" on any way that may complement their stories.))
