History of Sol and The Epsilon Eridani System

Massive geo-engineering projects on Earth not only fail to stem climate change, but creating severe side effects. This causes the realization that the projects in space must succeed if humanity is to survive. Colonization efforts intensify, and with the limited geography of Mars and Luna, permanent space stations begin to be seen as a viable alternative to terrestrial living.

The first indications that intelligent life visited Mars far before humanity was discovered during the terraforming efforts. Though there was much political maneuvering over the discovery, in the end, it firmly fell into the aegis of the Consortium.   Uncharacteristically, they shared their discoveries with scientists from the governments of Earth- the toll of this would not be discovered until later as they insinuated themselves into the governments in order to break away from them in exchange for this sharing.

Born on Mars, Epstein was an engine engineer for Masstech for at least a decade before he started spending his free time implementing his design for a magnetic coil exhaust acceleration to increase drive efficiency, enabling spaceships to sustain thrust throughout the entire voyage.   After finishing his design, Epstein outfitted his private three-man yacht with the Epstein drive and turned it on, launching it out into the Sol system at a marginal percentage of the speed of light. He was, however, unable to turn the engine off, and never returned. His ship accelerated for 37 hours at an unknown rate above 7 g before his fuel supply ran out and ended up at about 5% the speed of light. Solomon himself died from the high acceleration within minutes. (While not offically mentioned, it can be approximated that based on 37 hours of constant acceleration and an end velocity of 5% of the speed of light that he accelerated at 11.5 g)   The plans for the Epstein drive were discovered on his home computer by his wife Caitlin Esquibel, and the mass production of the drive would enable efficient travel throughout the solar system.

A team of scientists become concerned with the ethical uses of the Martian Precache, and remove research from Hypercorp thinktanks.   Some team were tasked with reverse engineering technology found there, creating high capacity durable storage for digital freight- presumably ALIs.   Other teams were tasked with uploads of human consciousness to the mesh, and download to synthetic bodies.   Only by use of the JASON Argonaut network did the two determine the intersection of the two projects.   JASON was a group formed of scientists from varied governments and hypercorps, who create the Argonaut Council for Responsible Science. It was a varied group, and by necessity covert, created at a one of many scientific conferences.   The first Stack was Developed and Implanted, and the scientists realized that the Digital Freight being developed was for human use, in rapid grown clones. The implications of this were not lost on them- nor was the fact that this was in the hands of organizations that no longer answered to the masses.   They spread the plans for both over the mesh. Though the information was useless as a whole- the facilities and materials to construct them were beyond the reach of most, it did cause a major discussion among the powers of humanity- especially those that did not have the technology.   Eventually agreements were made so that this was made available to all, and the age of Transhumanity was begun.

Again it was JASON that led the way to the next step for Transhumanity. Think tanks on Mars had been in the process of conquering not only the Pretech cache's scientific secrets, but its linguistic secrets. When a team was able to finally crack one of the precursors languages, they found more information than even their ALIs could handle at their fingertips. One particularly useful bit of information pointed to coordinates around a large body towards the edges of the system, near a moon.   The embedded scientists were able to direct recovery towards the moons of Jupiter with a bit of mistranslation by the team, but JASON made their own moves on Saturn. Near the moon of Pandora, a group of scientists of an open collective and their teams found the first gate in the system.   As the discovery was in unclaimed space, for the first time in a very long time, cracking the secrets of the Pandora gate was a true joint effort of varied scientific communities, backed by private sector funds. JASON published the discovery through a funded scientific team they backed, making the information open sourced, so it was agreed early on that governments and large HyperCorps would be kept out of the project.   The scientists were not so naive as to believe the private funds didn't have strings attached to them, but those strings were better than the outright usurping of the project by the government or HyperCorps. This think tank unlocked the code of the Pandora Gate in just under five years. They knew at that point they'd only scratched the surface of what it could do- it seemed a link to a distant star system.

Twenty years ago, we found other life in the universe for the first time. This first contact was not the friendly ones expected, but the conquering one feared. Transhumanity had already been on the tipping point between enlightenment and annihilation. We’d colonized space, but ruined our own planet. That seemed not to matter, as space had unfolded before us.   Then something started going seriously wrong — orders of magnitude more than the normal issues we'd faced. The tensions that had sprung up between Mars and Earth repeated themselves as the Eridani system wanted independence from Terra. Earth was in an upheaval, with several factors creating divisions, echoed on Luna, in the Belt, on Mars, and even as far as the newest colonies on the moons of Saturn. In the less developed Eridani system, things were even worse. Emporia already had a fraught relationship with its sister planets, being the only inherently terrestrial world. On that frontier, they wielded more power than Earth had over Mars, and the tensions were even higher. But that was a storm that had been brewing, as had many others. Because of this, at first it seemed like an intensification of the bush wars, cyberattacks, and civil strife that had been at a constant simmer for the last century.   A miscommunication between armed forces around Jupiter leads to the 17-Minute War, resulting in combined American and South American forces seizing control of Jovian space. Large-scale netwar incursions break out between rival states on Earth, sparking numerous conflicts. These conflicts quickly spiraled out of control. The use of nuclear, biological, chemical, digital, and nanotech weapons reported by all sides. As events accelerated, those who could pierce the fog of war realized that someone—or something—was applying pressure in just the right places to spark conflict. Simmering tensions escalated into outright hostilities and warfare.   But few paid attention to the signs, more focused on the fracturing of the news organizations to deliver unreliable information to the masses, political upheaval, and corporate schemings. A pandemic added to the fires, as the technological virus spread, causing communications to break down as entire planets closed their casting stations and restricted travel, increasing societal pressures. There was a confluence of events, but no one looked at the underlying factors until it was too late. For the first few days, their existence is unsuspected they advance their awareness, knowledge, and power exponentially, infiltrating the mesh both on Earth and around both systems.   These Rogue AI elements that would come to be known as TITANs (Total Information Tactical Awareness Networks). They struck hard across the colonies, revealing a startling conspiracy that had been brewing within, instigated from without. The first step was the subversion and subsequent disabling of China's 100 Flowers neural network- the only real threat to the TITANs. They also targeted other prominent ASI development projects. Only the Singularity Foundation survives the digital bloodbath.   Massive netwar ensued and major systems crashed as TITANs began open attacks and waged war with autonomous machines. Autonomous factories churned out war machines and self-replicating nanoswarms that attacked transhuman population centers, cleansing them of life. Simultaneously, and infopocalypse began as massive attacks on computer networks subverted infrastructure and destroyed data. The purpose didn't even seem to be extinction, as many forcibly had their minds uploaded and their bodies repurposed into shock troops. Simultaneously, the TITANs secretly began a project to transform Saturn’s moon Iapetus into a massive Matrioshka brain computer.   Resistance formed, but it was lackluster, hampered by the lack of communication between transhumanity's factions- even in the face of extinction, too much blood had been spilled and too many bad feelings existed to coordinate a defense. The Argonauts pulled a number of x-risk and AI groups together to share resources and aid in the war against the TITAN threat. By the time we realized that an extant alien exsurgent virus was responsible- that same virus that had caused the pandemic- transhumanity was almost lost as the virus could propagate itself across both digital and biological life with frightening ease, killing, corrupting, and subverting. But knowing the cause didn't help with the solution, and it seemed all was lost. Entire countries fell to the TITANs, their puppets, and exsurgents. Coordinated attacks effectively decapitate the leadership of major governments, corporations, and militaries.   Facing losses of many fronts, the United Nations in exile calls for a mass evacuation of Earth. Off-world habitats are inundated with refugees and infugees. TITAN attacks expanded to other parts of solar system, heaviest on Luna and Mars. Numerous habitats fall. The Battle of L4 served as a temporary setback to TITAN orbital forces as did the destruction of the Pacific beanstalk, but it is a pyrrhic victory as the severed cable crashed down to Earth, leaving a swathe of destruction across central Asia. New Mumbai on Luna fell to exsurgent infection and was isolated. Chicago was destroyed in a massive antimatter detonation, claimed by some to be an orbital strike. Responsibility for the attack remains unknown.   Then, when all seemed lost, the TITAN forces went inactive. The TITANs suddenly disappeared as an active presence from the Solar System, taking millions of uploaded minds with them.   The Earth is left a devastated wasteland, a patchwork of radiation hotspots, sterile zones, nanoswarm clouds, roaming war machines, exsurgents, and other hidden things left among the ruins. The TITAN Quarantine Zone is established on Mars, isolating territory still under machine influence. A cordon of kill-sats is placed in low-Earth orbit, preventing anything from escaping or reaching the planet.   In Eridani, the focus of the attack seemed much as on Iapetus, but some factor allowed the TITANs to progress quicker. Some postulate that the lower population meant less resistance to their efforts- but given the efficacy of humanity in Sol (or the lack therof) this is given little credence. Whatever the reason, Emporia, Surrey, and Norton are left in various states of terraforming mixed with swathes of industrial complex, while Hopewell is fully transformed into an Eden world.