Chapter One

The day of the announcement was unlike any other day since we came out of the cave. The sun was brighter, the air sweeter, and the subtle fear we had lived with for millennia was lifted. Death had ended. The very notion of clocks seemed almost to be a joke in its own right. What was time now?

It was a bright day, a sunny day. The sun stood high in the skies of Terra Prime, the colors of the trees were truer than usual. Perhaps the earth itself had breathed a sigh of relief, perhaps we just couldn't see anything but perfection now. We had done it. Our greatest accomplishment had been made. We were now the apex, and ourselves immortal. It was early in the day when the news hit the Central Media Feeds. Screens popped up in our hands, all work stations were interrupted. The Chancellor of the International Union of Principalities sat in the grand chambers, his face alight with pride and excitement. He began slowly, or as slowly as the poor man could.

"Attention Citizens, at 24:47:51, this morning on the 25th of June 2117, a team of scientists from the United Collective of Research Fellows out of Cambridge published their findings of a new inoculation. It has been peer reviewed by 17 independent firms throughout the Union and the findings have been confirmed as of 30 minutes ago. We have solved the problem of aging. We have defeated death. Nothing stands in our way, we have achieved eternity."

We had known that this research was being done, little in the Union could be kept secret at this level anymore. But, like most things, we never assumed we would see it happen. When the broadcast ended, there was a press conference with several representatives of the Collective of Scientists stood to answer questions posed by the Regional Press and Propaganda Associations.

Employers exited their offices with edicts of the end of the work day, it was a national holiday. The Day of Infinity.

People from every place poured into the streets in a frenzy. it was as if time stood still and it would eternally be a sunny day in June with birds singing new songs, and the limits of human progress had broken like old wooden fences against our supremacy. There was dancing in the streets, merchants offering free food or drinks to passers by, drugs flowed freely; everyone was high on our greatness. It went on like this for days. Countless parties, or perhaps one party that was as endless as we were to be. Days of drinking and singing, passing out in the streets. But humanity cannot be changed so easily. An ancient man once said "nothing is sure but death and taxes." Though death had been eliminated, he was still at least half right. It would take time to innoculate the entire population, and time was something we had plenty of now. But above all else, men desire power, so a decision was made.

Over the next few weeks, the International Union of Principalities moved that the inoculations would be distributed by the Federated Medical Groups, on a case by case basis so long as you could prove sufficient contribution to the perfection of the Union. A new system born.

It soon became clear that eternity had become the birthright of the rich and remained the dream of everyone else. With money you could buy your inoculation, with status you were gifted it, and with connections you were waved in. Realistically, it would have been relatively simple to immortalize the known worlds. It only required a simple injection once every 40 years. This, our greatest invention, was a nano-virus. It re-writes your DNA --adding a line of code preventing telomeres from shortening. Thus preventing cellular deterioration, and essentially halting the aging process. But that was exactly the problem, no one aged. No one died.

By the next year the population had almost tripled, water was becoming harder to find, food stores depleting rapidly. Housing would be next.

For the first time in 100 years, the principals of the nation-states within the Union began restricting access to essential resources to only local citizens. Ex-patriots residing in Paris were unable to purchase food or water without natal documents. Soon the Celtic Islands had run out of food and exceeded their union aid allotments. People grew desperate. Within a few years the governments had fallen, the only surviving powers had been the corporations. They offered to buy out the state powers, and in exchange set their own boards up in a new order. The Corporate Congress. But not everyone was pleased with this arrangement.

Outer settlements and stations had enjoyed relative autonomy from the political strata of Terra Prime. The further from Terra Prime you traveled, the harder it was for the United Protectorate of Planets to impose its rules, and the more insignificant the day to day minutia of the International Union of Principalities and their edicts seemed. Out in the colonies, the main concerns were more primal, more primitive. Water, air, food, crime.

However, this changed everything. Such a dramatic shift in trans-solar politics could drastically alter their own political systems. Many of the colonies still relied on Terra Prime for monthly supply shipments and replacement repair crews. Not to mention military and security personnel. With Terra Prime under the control of the Corporate Congress, and each of those corporations having a significant influence in each of the colonies; there was pressure to capitulate or risk open war.

What made matters worse was that the colonies were disproportionately divided among the reigning corps. There was now a new threat. Inter-corp war.

Once the corporations wrested control of the international senate, the first stop-measure was to limit production of the nanovirus. It was only to be administered to citizens of the protectorate on their 25th birthday, provided they had no criminal history and no affiliation with anticorp rebels. It cost 1000 corporate credits. And the last straw for the anticorps, sterilization.

By the year 2250, the anticorps made their move.

You see, we could still die, just not naturally.

It was a sunday, in mid August when the first attacks came. The central power grid was hit, the United Credit Bureau, and the corporate senate building. over the next few days, dispensaries on the four satalite stations were raided. It was chaos.

The United Corporate Congress responded by revealing phase two. UCSS, the United Corporate Congress Security Service deployed in the territories, stations, and each of the populated settlements with orders to eliminate anyone with anticorp affiliation, and 33.572% of the population.

News coverage of the rebellion had been on continuous loop for weeks: death tolls, rising attacks on anticorp cells, and announcements of additional rationing.

Monday morning, at 09:05:33 every screen in the United Territories glitched as the broadcast interrupted UCC news. Sitting at an ornate mohogany desk was Anastasia Ishita, the ginger blossom trees eclypsing the serene vistas of japanese gardens and synthetech naturescapes of the Mars colony in the background.

"The policy of disproportional response taken by the United Corporate Congress is a violation of human rights which the Ishita Protectorate will not tolerate. Repeated attempts and appeals have been made, and rejected by the UCC. These senseless killings and refusal to listen to reason have forced our hand. From this point forward, any envoy from the United Terrotories will be treated as hostile. All diplomatic ties and commercial trade are suspended, and any attempt to enforce these draconian policies on our territories will be met with the full force of the Ishita Armada. Long Live The People of Ishita"

Immediately following the broadcast was deafening silence. Soon to follow were the raids on the Eschelon.

I was only 10 when I saw the CSS board the station. We had been on the run, my mother and I. It had been just the two of us for a long time, and when they came, it changed everything.

That day, we had just arrived at Campus Martius, the prime settlement on Mars. We were touring the Solarium Augusti, surrounded by unbelievable hanging gardens, exotic flora and fauna from all over the solar system. Fountains of rich sapphire waters and brilliant lights... Campus Martius was the crown jewel of Planeta Martis, one of the few places left that prized art and music above credits. We had just rounded the Obelisco di Montecitorio when the alarms sounded. A great and terrible whirring resounding off of the syntheclay facades as the first wave of CSS began. Hundreds of soldiers in Military grade Biosuits and pulse-rifles marching through Porta Fontinalis, accompanied by a cloud of strategic midrange fighters. Screaming in the streets, energy discharges landing on bodies, missed shots collapsing walls, chaos. A thermodet dropped maybe 20 meters from us and everything went black. When I woke up, my mothers head less than a meter from me, her body... shredded. The Corporate Congress had meant to reduce the population, what they hadn't meant to do was give birth to their undoing. Me.

The minute I could stand, I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I could, following the Severus Wall until I found a small hole. I ran, and I ran, and I ran, I ran until I collapsed on the ground... until my head was too heavy to lift against the rising of Luna. It must have been nearly 23:00, the sky was sapphire again and I could see Solus nearly hidden behind the Tharsis Ridge. I was barely able to keep my eyes open, my body bloodstained and bruised, covered in terra roja and bile. The last thing I remembered was seeing a pair of black boots kicking up dirt as they sidled up to me.