Awesome setting. I really like it.

I especially like the armor the guy wears, the cape is a nice touch.

So, how is life like for the average citizen in this setting?

Escavel 2009/09/14(Mon)21:51 No. 2758 ID: c4f697
File 12529902589.png - (186.08KB , 688x1023 , terran scout wip.png )

>>312453
I'm glad you asked! However, I am a little disappointed because Gnome used a lot of the elements seen in Solis for Vresch's utopia.

Pictured here is the stature of your average Terran. No, that's not exaggerated angles, the human form has changed in the indeterminately distant future. Centuries of industrial pollution and dependence on machines (as opposed to natural evolution) have rendered these neohumans frail, thin, and waiflike. The bone structure has become jagged and brittle, the muscles are less pronounced, and the senses dulled. Athletic neohumans are about on par with the average guy of today.

CITY LIFE

The majority of the populace live on arcade planets such as Terra, Hearth, Villanova, and Andrandia. These worlds are covered most notably by colossal urban-industrial zones and (if the planet is adequate) continent-wide automated farming facilities. Since the universal ban on AI systems, machine operator and computer management positions have become the primary occupation of the populace, followed by marketing, administration, entertainment, and business. Manual labor, retail, and service are now 100% automated.

Arcade citizens work eight hours per day, but only require five hours of sleep per night due to aforementioned physical changes. Their job grants them access to a modest three-room home, a personal vehicle, all the mass-produced food they can fit into their faces, clean water, and a wage used to purchase quality items. (The currency is backed by kilowatt-hours: the one resource that is used and produced at the same constant rate. Currency is handle entirely electronically in a government-controlled bank, forcing illegal transactions to rely on barter. The base unit is the Tesla, worth one kilowatt hour.)

It was thought that this new system would remove the caste-like structure of paupers, bourgeoisie, and the privileged, when in reality, it only served to expand the middle class. There are some who refuse to work and so have turned to crime or begging (the latter of which is seen as more reprehensible than the first) while those with a successful business, administration job, or scientific prestige have the potential to earn far greater pleasantries, such as one or more personal SOULs.

Society has already been through and grown out of the cyberpunk age. Transhuman implants and prosthetics exist and are available, but are costly and generally seen as unnecessary outside of military and other special applications. The most common implant is the Internal Data Portal, which fulfills the same role as the standardized PDA-computer all citizens own, only with an Augmented Reality interface. It is estimated that 31% of citizens have this implant.

EXTRAPLANET LIFE

A lesser percentage of humanity lives in orbital space stations or migrating metropolis fleets. The second category is not too different from the humans that live on arcade planets, only their primary industry is product transport and the maintenance of the fleet. The station populations on the other hand, range from ten thousand to, at their largest, one million. The stations have such functions as collecting mass amounts of solar energy, zero-gravity materials production, and the maintenance/operation of the Imperial travel routes (more on that later). Station dwellers rarely live in the same place for their entire lives and immigrate/emigrate regularly to planets and other stations.

There isn't much else to say about this class of citizenry except that it is a more precarious life, due to the exceedingly hostile environ that is space and has a higher pay rate than arcade jobs as a result.

>>312558
>However, I am a little disappointed because Gnome used a lot of the elements seen in Solis for Vresch's utopia.
I assure you it was entirely unintentional.

FRONTIER LIFE

Terraformation was a failed experiment. In the early days of the Empire, when it was merely an independent conglomerate known as Planetary Development and still under the influence of separate nations, the issues of overpopulation and the Earth's diminishing resources demanded a new kind of solution. It was believed that Mars and Ganymede could be transformed into human-supporting biomes within a century's time, but a combination of poor cooperation, skepticism, unforeseen accidents, and sheer scientific oversight forced the many human migration programs to end before they ever began. The best remaining relic of this time is the Mars colony that likely will forever be nothing more than a colony.

Instead, it was interstellar travel and tireless exploration the hard way that lead to the discovery of earthlike planets and their subsequent settlement. This method is the method that is still used by the Empire (only now there are sophisticated computer models that can judge the location of these planets to save time).

The life of a citizen in a new colony, be it on a newly found habitable world or in the encapsulated haven of a hostile-planet mining base, is far different from that of an arcade dweller and can be best compared to the frontier towns of old.

More often than not, these new colonies are owned by private companies (there are only 13 owned by the Empire proper and 54 inhabited total). Citizens are employees working for the sustainability of the colony as well as its profitability. Local laws may be different, security may be tighter or looser, living conditions are invariably less comfortable, and it is possible for a man to succumb to the silence. (Man has adapted so much to his mechanical surroundings that the constant electric hum [an extremely faint F minor] of powered devices is necessary to maintain psychological integrity. Pure and absolute silence has been described as deeply unsettling and has in extended periods been the cause of insanity. This silence is only possible to achieve in hospitable-world colonies.)

On the other hand, when a government colony is established, it is established with the intention for global expansion and eventual formation of a new arcade planet. The people of these protocities are almost entirely operators of construction devices.

>>312560
I don't doubt it. Futuristic utopias can only have so much variance.