A Paradox World

[Lynneth]

OOC: Disclaimer: This scenario is based upon Wiz' Hohenzollern Mega-LP found [url="http://lparchive.org/Paradox-Hohenzollern/"]here[/url]. Map taken without permission, though open-domain last I checked.

[b][Earth][/b]

[i][Excerpt from a article about world history][/i]

[url="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/Lynneth_del_Serpentas/AE/CNRP/Newness/ANewMap004.png"][img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/Lynneth_del_Serpentas/AE/CNRP/Newness/th_ANewMap004.png[/img][/url]
The world in circa 2003

To understand the world as it is now, one must look at its history.
In 1946, the Great War ended, leaving the world devastated and with only Mazula and Japan as clear winners. In the following years and decades, the world recuperated, democratic and autocrat powers often enough working against each other. However, there were only two powers great enough to directly challenge each other, just those who had 'won' the long, decade-spanning war during the end of which more than one atomic bomb was dropped.
Since then, never again, luckily.

[url="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/Lynneth_del_Serpentas/AE/CNRP/Newness/world-1946.png"][img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/Lynneth_del_Serpentas/AE/CNRP/Newness/th_world-1946.png[/img][/url]

In the first decade after the Great War, the old alliances slowly broke, and three new blocs began to emerge. Mazula, together with the other American and Jardakalian (South America) states that were dependent upon its economy created the [i]American Community Treaty Association (ACTA)[/i]. The only states not involved in this largely muslim alliance were the caribbean state Tarrbitz and the Jardakalian nations of Gustavia and Nova Aquitania, tracing their roots to Scandinavia and France, respectively. Together with Vinland, they were the only nations on the twin-continent not of muslim colonial origin. Eventually, Australasia joined ACTA in response to a powerful and less-than-friendly northern neighbour.
By 1998, the relatively young nation of Papua had joined the treaty as well, ACTA then reaching its greatest amount of members.

The second of the blocs emerged around the Federation of Japan, which had successfully invaded much of east Russia, China and Indochina, with puppet states then existing as Annam and Imperial China. While for several decades, only these two were in the [i]Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere (JPS)[/i], others eventually joined as new nations formed and became independent. Over the decades, the Japanese subdued and allied themselves to Brunei, Pegu and Tibet until 1998.

The third bloc - and the oldest - was the Holy Roman Empire under Germany. It had been one of the original alliances fighting in the war, and was regarded as the 'winning' alliance by its historians, though the rest of the world brought some doubt upon these claims. While Germany and its allies had forcefully brought a number of nations into their number, over the years a number left, and eventually, the HRE had to be replaced by a European alliance called [i]Western Unity Pact (WUP)[/i]. Founding members were Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Romania while over the years, several others joined as well. France, Brittany, Occitania, the Lombard League, Switzerland and Scandinavia are now members, while Iberia, Lithuania, Don-Volga and Georgia have at one point or another made comments about wishing to joing in the near or far future, as of 1998.

Of course colonialism was still strong in 1946, but as the decades passed, colonised peoples began to become aware of their rights. Between 1960 and 1987, the vast majority of the world's remaining colonies achieved their independence, with the exceptions of Scandinavian Formosa and Ceylon, which had changed owner from Germany to Byzantium some time in the intervening period.
The last colony to achieve independence was East India in 1992 from Germany.

[i][Excerpt end][/i]

Further topics between 1946 and 1998:
- Byzantine Revolution
- Africa's freedom
- The Rise of Russia
- The race into Space

Edited November 1, 2012 by Lynneth

[Lynneth]

[b][OOC post][/b]

This post will be used to gather general random information about this here RP, I suppose.

Right now, I'm still working on the history of the world between 1946 and the final beginning date of the RP, [b]2166.[/b]

Forum-goers may RP one to three individual persons, eventually achieve control of maybe corporations, in cooperation with each other maybe even win elections in a democratic nation. This is a character-based RP, with me as ultimate authority.
Participation is voluntary, naturally, and I'm going to keep writing even if nobody joins. This thread is intended to be the central for all my writings.

That's it for now. This post may be edited in the future. Actually, it's very likely.

Song of the day: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eyFiClAzq8"]End of the world (as we know it)[/url] (and college humour's [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTwWqzKeXc"]parody[/url])

[Lynneth]

[i][The Byzantine Revolution][/i]

The Byzantine Commune as it is now known has a long and volatile history. The most obvious parts of this can be seen in the 19th century when marxist rebellions managed to push the Imperial family out of Anatolia and Greece, forcing them to take refuge in the Byzantine colony of India while the Union of Rome created one of the most aggressively communist nations in recent history. The Union was also one of the most industrialised nations by the start of the Great War, arguably on par with powers such as Mazula and Germany.

During the Great War, Imperial india miraculously managed to hold against Turkestan (which held Persia and the Mughal Empire at the time) and the Union while Germany and its allies fought against the other communist nations as well as the democrat states of the world such as Mazula or Iberia.

The end of the war saw Byzantium restored not just to its former glory, but also under control of the vast lands between Anatolia and India, some people of the time comparing it to Alexander the Great's conquests. However, with the end of the war didn't come an end to conflict. Mere months into spring of '46, the first revolts sprung up, brutally repressed by the Imperial Family. Over the next three decades, internal pressure and problems only grew until in 1973 when, sponsored by Japan and Mazula, rebellions began nearly simultaneously in Persia, India and Tibet, soon spurning the regions nowadays known as Turkestan, the Mughal Empire and Assam into rebellion as well.

With the uprising of well over 90% of its population, including the Indians who had been thought of as exceptionally loyal, the Imperial Family resorted to using even chemical weaponry to try and bring the revolts under control. For a time, it seemed as if they might be successful, though in late 1975, even Byzantium's own people rose against their autocratic rulers. The exact cause is widely debated, but most historians agree that it was several factors, including high unemployment, the far too liberal use of chemical weapons and payments by the Lombard League and Germany to revolutionary leaders.

The conflict took another three years to resolve until eventually, six new nations were born out of the ashes while one once more embraced communist ideals, though to a far less extreme than half a century beforehand. The Imperial Family was wiped out completely in the process of this, though there are rumours that a single baby-daughter was smuggled away before the palace in Constantinople was stormed.

The Byzantine Empire was, after over a millenium, finally wiped out entirely.

[Lynneth]

[i][Africa's freedom][/i]

Africa, a continent of many shades. Friland, a small but relatively rich nation, right besides Songhai, which practised slavery until 1992 before civil unrest and militias ended the state. Even today, Songhai is riddled with internal warring and warlords fighting each other, one of the least stable nations not just on the continent, but the world.

[url="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/Lynneth_del_Serpentas/AE/CNRP/Newness/world-1930.png"][img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/Lynneth_del_Serpentas/AE/CNRP/Newness/th_world-1930.png[/img][/url]

At the beginning of the Great War, six powers shared Africa. Friland as Africa's puppet. The North African Commune as communist France, Angola under Lithuania, Congo to serve Germany's leadership, Ljanistar to protect Iberian interests and finally, the only native power, Egypt with Somalia under its thumb.

After the war, 4 powers were left. Angola and Ljanistar were annexed by Italy, France's puppet came under German control, Kongo in the meantime didn't change ownership. It still was subservient to Germany. Friland, for its performance in the war, received lands almost 6 times its original size, bringing with them many problems. Egypt had by the end of the war taken de facto control of Somalia.

The new order, as one might expect, was nowhere as stable as its creators would have liked. While Germany and its allies controlled the entire continent, the natives were less than thrilled about merely having new borders assigned to them. The first to take arms, in 1958, were in fact the people of Songhai, followed shortly by independence groups - in all cases violent - rising in Guinea and Mali by 1961. From here, a cascade of rebellion swept over very nearly the entire continent and by 1970, it was in flames. Only Friland did not experience dissent, the government having done the utmost to pacify the population and keep it happy with the aid of its overlord Scandinavia. In the process of this, they accidentially kickstarted a vibrant economy that would lead the small but populous nation to become the most powerful economy on the continent.

The civil wars were with rare exceptions some of the bloodiest the world has seen, with millions upon millions losing their lives as they resisted their overlords, then turning on each other and bringing Africa into chaos. The least death occured in Madagascar, which was released almost completely voluntarily by Germany, and in the nations of Adal and Kanem Bornu, having attacked Kongo simultaneously. With the german Emperor busy elsewhere, the puppet government collapsed, leaving its people to try and organise a new state while the two invaders retreated in a relatively orderly fashion and began rebuilding.

While Germany and Italy had abandoned the continent by 1998 because of ongoing bloodshed in many regions, Scandinavia held on to Friland - by then a free and allied government, no longer a puppet, in recognition of its stability and rising economy. Egypt had lost Somalia to rebels, Palestine had achieved its independence and in the struggle, an opportunistic Iraq was able to slice a path towards the Mediterranean, giving it access to two oceans. Close to the end of the 20th century, Africa's maps were redrawn, and the borders as they are seen today were for the most part established.

Peace, however, never did come for the African continent, and both wars and civil wars happened numerous times in the period between then and now.

[Lynneth]

[i][The Rise of Russia][/i]

After the Great War, Russia was down on its luck. Beset by war on three gargantuan fronts - against Lithuania in the west, Japan in the east and Byzantine/Indian combatants in the south, it collapsed, though its democratic institutions survived. Bruised and battered, but the state continued as well as it could into the future.

After the Great War, however, Russia had lost much influence, just barely keeping itself solvent by selling its gargantuan amounts of natural resources to its neighbours, especially Japan. This brought dissent from the population, and they began to resent especially Japan and the Don-Volga Principality with its overlord Lithuania. These two had taken the most land in the 'peace' after the collapse and were thus made out to be the natural enemies of all Russians by various nationalist parties which obviously began to gather power around themselves for the next three decades. Despite regularly achieving super-majority - over 67% of the voters' approval - these parties barely managed to do anything, however, Russia's economy recovering only little.

Then, while much of the world was in flames, rebels against perceived occupants, democratic parties managed to gain power once more, cooperating to try and push the nationalists away and bring more moderate policies back. For this, the military was soon scaled down by 20%, the service economy strengthened and investments into the riches of Siberia made. This kickstarted a growing economy in a time when the world GDP was shrinking slightly every year thanks to civil wars. Demand brought money into the large Republic, money allowed the government to finance further projects and over the course of the next twenty years Russia's GDP rose by an average of 7% per year, roughly quadrupling in the whole timeframe.

Despite this great success and meteoric Rise, however, Russia was still dependent on its neighbours, lacking warmwasser ports of all sorts. This forced them to move closer to Mazula politically, while also befriending Persia and Finland in order to export its resources and products more easily. Especially Finland turned out to be a good friend and partner, and the two nations decided to, despite differences in previous centuries, seal an alliance independent of the three major blocs in 1990. Persia was a somewhat less reliable partner, though mostly because because Iraq, the Mughal Empire and the Byzantines all attempted to pressure it into ceasing support for Russia. Nevertheless, the massive democracy survived and even thrived despite all attempts to weaken or even destory it.

Indeed, Russia's enemies worked for a long time to undermine its successes by financing nationalist or terrorist organisations. In two cases, local militias even attempted to declare autonomous republics, but both were shut down relatively quickly by the military in cooperation with surprisingly loyal civilians who had seen the rise of democracy and the failings of nationalism. Thus, over time, the investments into guerilla troops lessened and eventually, most were forced to disband. By 1998, only one nationalist party, "Russia First" still exists, the other 6 parties being moderate left, moderate right and centrist.

After a long struggle, it seemed that 'Mother Russia' was once again on its way to become a relevant power in world politics. But before it would truly arrive there, more time would have to pass and further reforms would need to be made.


OOC: I made the mistake of writing 'Empire of Japan' in the first post. It's in fact a Federation, after the Ikko Ikki rebellions succeeded in bringing the imperial government down during the 16th/17th century. I fixed that.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Lynneth

[Lynneth]

[i][The Space Race][/i]

After the invention of rockets and rocketry turning into a science during the Great War, it was only natural that some men, visionaries, wished to see these incredibly powerful devices propel not a bomb, but a man. Many attempts were made to achieve this until a Mazulan scientist developed a capsule that would, situated in the rocket's tip, let a human travel in relative safety for hundreds of miles before detachment and then deployment of a parachute. This success of the powerful country was publicised rapidly, and by the end of 1957, the launch year of this rocket, the incumbent President Abdul Barack Abassadid promised that Mazula would do its utmost to try and bring a man into space. And perhaps onto the moon.

Such a prestigious endeavour of course attracted attention from the other great powers Germany and Japan, both of whom then declared they would try to beat Mazula both into space and onto the Moon. Of course, whether they would be able to keep this promise depended in a considerable part on their location on the world. Mazula's southern border went relatively close to the equator, giving them an excellent launch location in Yucatan. Here, their main base for launches into space would be constructed, serving for a very long time indeed.

Germany was less optimally positioned, having to use at first the Kongo and later, when the rebellions began, bought Frilandic territory as base for their launches. This relocation of their assets put a noticeable damper into their efforts and the Kaiser was less than pleased - though knowing that it was better than losing the entire project to rebellious 'scum'.

Japan meanwhile had its puppet Annam close to the equator, the federal government simply seizing a territory large enough for the base and everything needed to supply it and keep it working. Unlike Germany, the Japanese experienced little resistance from their 'allies' and could thus continue their program without problems into the 60s, much like Mazula.

With the three powers positioned, the space race was on.


The first attempts to bring a rocket into space were rewarded by explosions all around, rockets veering off-path, in one case a German rocket even slamming into a small village natives had built near the rocket platform in Kongo, obliterating the flimsy constructions and the fuel incinerating many of the people. While the accident was played down in the homeland, it contributed to the resentment locals had towards the government.

In the end, the first living being to be shot into space was a trained dog by Mazula in 1961, though the capsule had insufficient heat shielding for proper re-entry and burned up in the atmosphere, taking the canine with it. The tragedy was repeated by Japan mere months later, who had strapped a small ape into the capsule and watched its panicked reaction to being in weightlessness for a good hour before re-entry and subsequent heat death.
Germany's space program took much longer to achieve the same feat, and by the time they had shot a dog into space, Mazula and Japan were already working on delivering men into orbit - this time with sufficient shielding, allowing them survival upon re-entry. The prestige for delivering a man into space and having him survive went once more to Mazula, leading to Japan intensifying its efforts, while Germany decided to drop out of the race - and do everything in their own pace.

Thus only two contenders were left, and both were determined to bring the first man to the moon. The race thus continued and only two years after bringing the first man into space, Mazula proclaimed its readiness to send men to Earth's satellite. This turned out to be a feint, however, an attempt to force Japan into trying to launch a rocket earlier and with less preparation. In the end, the bluff was called, Mazula's try a failure resulting in the loss of 2 astronauts and a loss of face on the world stage. For a time, relatively little happened. Germany managed to send a man into space on its own, Japan's Conclave announced that the nation would build a scientific research station within 2 decades after landing on Luna.

In 1966, the Japanese manned mission to orbit the moon three times before returning to Earth came out of the blue, surprising the world community. The launch had not been announced, and some wondered whether other unsuccessful missions were being kept under wraps to create the illusion of Japan being infallible. Countering this were the missions already undertaken by Japan that had indeed resulted in failure. Conspiracy theorists had a field day.

1967, Japan landed an autonomous, radio-controlled lander on the lunar surface, by now outpacing Mazula, which had been thought of as favourite in this race thanks to its vast resources and society promoting free thinking. Mazula's automated lander touched down almost 10 months later in February '68, at a time when the Japanese were already making preparations to land people on the moon.

Then, 18th June 1968, Japan launched the historic mission with the aim of sending three men to the moon. For almost four days, they travelled, then going into lunar orbit for another day before finally undertaking the manoeuvres that would gently bring their lander downwards. Lunar soil was touched upon on the 23rd June of 1968. The team staid for a considerable time, gathering rocks, soil and performing research as well as planting the Japanese flag in Lunar soil. A plaque to commemorate this historic moment was set down besides the flag before the team finally left for Earth.

Their arrival back on Earth was celebrated throughout the world - even by competitors Germany and Mazula - as one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind, if not the greatest. Mazula was the second to set foot on Luna in October 1968. Though several of Japan's and Mazula's allies were permitted to send single astronauts on subsequent missions, the third nation to set foot on the moon under their own power was Germany in 1973 with the largest team to date, comprising five men.

With this, the initial space race was over, no other nation developing the capabilities to launch men to the moon in the following decades. But, Japan's Conclave did indeed make good on their promise, beginning construction on a space station named Kaze (Wind) in the early 80s.

It took 7 years to construct and was built with a resident crew of three in mind, though capable of accommodating larger crews for short-term visits. The first part of the modular station was launched in 1983, followed by six more over the next several years. Once complete, the station was comprised of seven pressurised and several further unpressurised components. Its mass reached approximately 130 tons at the end of construction, with a pressurised volume of 350 square meters. Its approximate height, length and width were 27.5, 19 and 31 meters, respectively. Photovoltaic arrays were utilised as power supply, mounted directly on the modules.

Following this station, Mazula and Germany decided to cooperate in the construction of a station by 1989 despite their less than friendly relationship in the previous half or so century. With both Mazulan Arabic and German being difficult languages to learn, they agreed to use the 'simpler' English language on the station itself, though many of the more important signs were written in all three languages. Their allies merely providing manpower and resources but little in the sciences had barely any sort of say. Otherwise Sweden might have argued about its language being even less difficult to learn than English.

Regardless, two stations were orbiting Earth by 1998. The Japanese station Kami at roughly 640 km above the surface, the 'international' station Peace at 565 km height. The race was over – for the time being.


[OOC: Basically, Kaze is the Mir equivalent, Peace the ISS equivalent. Also, if there's inconsistencies in the timeline you notice, do tell me, please.]

Edited October 25, 2012 by Lynneth

[Lynneth]

[i][The 21st Century - Part I][/i]

In the years between 1998 and 2001, very little happened. The world was without major conflict involving one of the 'Big Three', the economy grew and inventions were made. Things had begun to be interconnected with the invention of computer networking on a large scale, allowing at first universities, later even households with a personal computer to access this treasure-trove of knowledge. Especially in Japan and Mazula, great investments were made into the new invention while the German Empire (and by proxy its allies) were somewhat more wary of it, as it could allow people to organise far more easily and with greater anonymity than ever before.

The march of progress was unstoppable, however, and by 2004, millions of people in Europe, East Asia, America and Jadakal as well as Oceania had access to this 'international web of communication' as a prominent scientist of the time had called it during its early days - effectively coining the term 'Interweb'. Originally, it had been a project by the Mazulan and Japanese militaries to connect their respective military outposts more efficiently and with less of a chance for others to listen in, as radio-waves were notoriously unsafe even when using encrypted messages.

This plan eventually got through the net of secrecy and university professors in both nations got wind, soon getting together with infotech engineers to try and work out a way that would allow them to communicate easily without using radio. Soon enough, an experimental network was established between three renowned universities in Mazula City, while two Japanese universities in Kyoto had done very much the same, if with slightly differing methods and protocols. Over time, more universities joined this network in each nation and soon entire companies grew around laying and selling access to this network. As uni servers were overwhelmed by non-students trying to access it, they came to an agreement with the 'providers' to cut the uni networks from the general one and instead establish public servers on which people could put - if they knew the programming language - websites.

By 2000, the world was connected, a universal web-language had been agreed upon and even then more and more households joined this communications network daily. Globalisation changed into a higher gear and in the following years, a new culture established itself, centred around the web. The economy experienced a surge as an entirely new sector was established in which customers could spend their money. Sites of all kinds by all sorts of people for all sorts of people were made and established, and the imaginary market grew, reinforced only by the zeros and ones that were written on servers, and the belief in their being worth money.
By 2015, it was impossible to think of the interweb as anything but mandatory in nearly everyone's life, and in 2017, access to it was made part of the basic human rights in Japan, followed by its allies and soon a few other nations while in the Mazulan and German spheres, this development took somewhat more time.

Hand in hand with the 'web, other technologies advanced at a staggeringly rapid pace, mobile telephones turning from 5-kilogram bricks at their inception into smooth, nearly indestructible pocket-sized beauties. Computer games were an entirely new market that suddenly brought in hundreds of millions while the film and music industries suffered somewhat. At first, many in their ranks were against any sort of change to their business model, but the moment a socialist musician became vice-president of Mazula in 2016, the change was forced upon them. Both industries experienced a mild revival as exclusivity was removed, interweb platforms established an so on, attracting more people with the ease of use. Interweb-piracy became a thing and though the affected industries suffered for it, trying to eradicate it, a sort of balance established itself in which neither faction could ruin the other.

As the world talked with itself, as it moved faster and faster, even Germany forced to concede certain rights to its citizens regarding access to the 'web, sciences advanced faster, technology improved. Many optimists and advocates of computer technologies claimed a singularity was inevitable to begin within the next decades, though such a thing never manifested. Nevertheless, the world changed rapidly, wars were covered more easily than ever, and 5 billion people watched the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2024, more than ever before.

Medicine advanced to the point that in 2017, the first human heart was 'printed'. Japanese scientists perfected a suit to help the elderly and disabled in 2018, many calling it simply an 'exosuit'. Facilities for wireless power transfer as a man with the name Tesla had envisioned it were begun in construction by 2020. Uranium power began to lessen in importance as thorium-based power plants were built even as oil got more and more expensive. Gustavia, Arabia and Persia got richer than ever before, though already looking into the future and investing into more permanent means of acquiring money than a finite resource.

Electric vehicles received more attention in these times, as well as ways that would allow the nations to sustain their standards of living more easily, strengthening the green power and recycling advocates. Three looked upwards, where they had been half a century ago. True, scientific missions were sent into all corners of the solar system, telescopes of all sorts and sizes fired into orbit and the two failing stations eventually replaced by a single, humongous effort of all three nations. However, since the last man landed on the moon in the early 70s, barely any person had been much further than 3,000 kilometres away from Earth. In part, this was because of the great expense that had to be paid per kilogram.

7,000+ dollars per kg simply didn't allow for any serious long-term operations despite all wants and wishes by people all over the world. Only as the progress of technology continued did mega-projects slowly inch into the realm of possibility. In 2023, an exceptionally powerful and pure strand of carbon nano-tubes had been made in a lab, theoretically allowing for one of the most ambitious projects ever proposed: A space elevator. Mass-production of these nano-tubes was still a great problem, however. A problem that needed to be solved if any sort of serious space-exploration was to be undertaken.

Following: Technological advancements between 2015 and 2050
'15-'17
'18-'20
-'25
-'30
-'35
-'40
-'45
-'50

[Lynneth]

[b]Period: 2015-17[/b]
In these short years, a few important technologies that had the potential to revolutionise their fields were developed. One of the most important of these most likely was the 'robotic surgeon', a machine with a dozen arms capable of doing surgical interventions mostly on its own, up to 80% of the procedure done my the machine and only 20% assisted by a surgeon, or done completely under his control. This took incredible amounts of pressure of the surgeon's backs and revitalised these disciplines, which had previously been slowly shrinking in attendance of students, or newly enrolled ones.

Another important invention was a fully functional artificial eye constructed by a Mazulan university which, when implanted and connected to a blind person's optical nerves, could allow them to see again. Though only showing shapes and grey shades in the first iteration, it was refined over the next years and decades, until they were good enough for a child that had been born blind but given these eyes was accepted into the Iberian military in 2048. True perfection of the technology came in the years following this.

The last notable invention of these short years was a wearable computer - quite literally a flexible sheet of 'digipaper' that could be placed on one's arm, allowing the user to use its capabilities with ease. Though it had a bumpy start with low battery-life and little in the way of computing power or RAM, a mere decade later, a good 10% of the population - mostly young people - were using these instead of mobile phones. While never as popular, its uses were impossible to deny, and the digital paper continued to see use throughout the century.


[b]Period: 2017-20[/b]
Science never sleeps, and that was the case in these few years, too. Something especially useful for military application was the development of so-called sintered armour gel, semi-liquids that were soft and malleable when moved slowly, but hardened rapidly upon hard impact, dissipating a bullet's energy far more efficiently than any solid armour such as kevlar or similar bullet-proof materials. The relative difficulty of use and requirement for high-tech industry to create it gave the world powers' armies an advantage over militias, guerillas and terrorist threats as well as less developed nations' anti-infantry weaponry. The gel found its way into other applications as well, however, providing for example additional protection to bomb technicians.

2019 was the year in which the first 150 G-Byte flash drive was built, giving people who could afford it the ability of carrying a good dozen films or hundreds of high-quality audio files wherever they went. It was relatively small a development if compared to the digital mirrors, however. These amazing contraptions allowed a person to try any sort of clothing on without actually taking it off any shelves. Thus, especially companies selling clothing benefited, but the customers themselves gained from this as well, allowing everyone to try things on before even going out to buy them. The technology was deceptively easily made, superimposing a three-dimensional image of the cloth on the person's reflection, giving the impression of actually wearing it.

Another medical breakthrough were plastic bones. Though only called such and not actually made of plastic, these artificial bones helped people with various hereditary diseases such as brittle bones. The bones themselves were initially made of honeycombed titanium, later biocompatible polymers using a similar lightweight structure were developed, allowing for lessened rejection-rate, reduced weight and similar durability. The operations were expensive at first, as any new procedure, but over the course of a few years, it cheapened to the point of allowing access to the middle class with relative ease, and even less well-off people could afford it after some time of saving up, or being insured appropriately.

The last major invention of these years were DNA computers, utilising the very structure of life to encode information in a way usable by computers. While not able to store as much information as recently developed hard drives, they were a far more reliable and long-lived storage, surviving temperatures and environs in which standard computers would long have lost all data-coherency. A significant drawback to this was, however, the speed of writing and reading the data, which was abysmally slow in comparison to modern artificial devices. Thus, DNA-based computing, while a most innovative thing, was more suitable for biological interfaces, where man and machine needed to communicate with each other. regardless of access speed, some manufacturers began to offer computers with a dual HD-system, using a DNA-computer for the OS and standard computing for everything else, lending some greater reliability as the operating system was unlikely to fail.

[Lynneth]

Oh, hey.

Haven't posted much here recently, have I? Well, for a reason. I've decided to remove my presence from the forums. Go inactive, as it were.
The game I'll continue to play, I suppose, if I don't forget about it and get my nation deleted. But I won't join IRC anymore or post here. I'll write my stuff elsewhere, a place where the people from whom I get the most feedback don't need a nation in a silly online game to comment directly.

Seeya.

[Centurius]

And no $%&@ to give could be found anywhere.