It is the year 2050 and this is a world where the corporations rule. As previously mentioned, they stepped in after the grinding depression of the credit crunch years, bailed out the governments pretty much worldwide and took them over wholesale.
The rich get richer and the poor get credit seems to be the maxim that most corporations work by, therefore ensuring a steady flow of money from both ends of the market. You don’t get anything for free; it just depends on what you’re willing to pay. Most people live in the cities now, sprawling conurbations that deface the landscape, belching out smoke and pollution at a rate not seen for almost a century. Nano-cleaners deal with the pollution, preventing in from harming the atmosphere, so everyone can be as carefree as they like with their manufacturing, as long as they keep up the Atmos-tax. The well travelled roads between the cities are fairly safe, as long as you go armed and in convoy, but in the wastes all manner of dangers lurk, things rarely seen but often deadly. The dispossessed, ripper gangs, mutants, genetic experiments gone wrong; all of these are rumoured to be out there, just waiting for the unsuspecting traveller to make their way overland and into their clutches. Only the Nomads really know what’s out there, and cheap bars resound with the sounds of their improbable tales as they get bought drink after drink for the telling.
Whilst the Corps rule from their sheltered bio-domes and ivory towers, the people of the street get on with their lives as best they can, making deals, occasionally hiring out to the big companies and generally existing from day to day.
The middle classes still play with the pretention that the world is a nice place, and struggle along sandwiched somewhere between the people they look down upon and the Corps they aspire to, having 2.4 kids, taking the bus to work and sitting in front of the Tri-D in the evenings catching up on all the soaps and the 32nd run of the X-Factor. (Is that really still Simon Cowell, or a clone, who knows?) Occasionally a group of lads might slum it for the weekend, heading to the Dives for a bit of light entertainment, but only ever once, as they stand out like a beacon to those who live there, ripe for the plucking.
The cities are safe, havens for the rich and their workers, whilst on the outskirts the poor grub a living in the shanty towns that have sprung up. The lands between the cities, however, have become a dangerous place where law holds no dominion. As the crime rate rose due to the global recession, the sensible people moved to the cities to escape the terrors that were being inflicted on a daily basis. There are three main ways to travel. The rail network is still in place, but is prone to hijacking and derailment by the people who live in the wastes. Very few people put their trust in trains if they can afford another option. Air is much safer, with AV’s taking freight and passengers up and down the country in comfort, but this is prohibitively expensive, so only the rich and the corporations can afford to do this on a regular basis. The third way is to book passage with a Nomad clan. The clans have everything you need, from vehicles to armed guards and outriders, and make it a point of honour to get you or your goods from A to B with a minimum of fuss or bloodshed. Few people in the wastes, even the psychopaths and weirdo’s who inhabit the darker places, will willingly tangle with a Nomad convoy.
Then there’s the Corps. If you work for the Corporations, it’s a lifetime commitment. In fact, you can pretty much guarantee that unless your kids are total morons, they’ll be working for the same Corp too. Keep it in the family, that way the gene pool doesn’t get polluted. Don’t get me wrong, people from all walks of life do end up working for them, but generally it’s as a grunt on a battlefield in an underdeveloped country where two or more corporations are slugging it out for resources.
This is a good way for the underclasses to get cheap Cyberware and other implants. A five year term in a Corp army will just about cover bed and board and a couple of implants of choice. Only one problem with getting your metal that way; if you break the law after you leave, they claim it back, even if it’s a replacement that’s keeping you alive.
One good way to make a living is to download the Bount Lists from any public terminal. Plug in, download and go turkey shooting. Anyone can claim a bounty, no license needed, just a pistol and a pair of cuffs and away you go. This has two benefits. Firstly, it means that people with a bounty on their head find it hard to hide out anywhere for long, and secondly, it keeps the population down. Over three hundred people per week die as a result of failed bounty hunting. The Corps even run a lottery based on the figures.
Another way of making a living is the buying and selling of information and intelligence. Since 2031, the police have been forbidden to gather intelligence from anyone with a criminal record thanks to the Jefferson Trial, so a class of middleman has sprung up, buying from crims and selling to the authorities. As long as you don’t have a record, you can make a fairly lucrative living that way. Until your info turns sour, then you get charged with wasting police time, have a record, and have to sell to a middleman yourself.
Solos find themselves in an enviable position, being able to drift between all strata’s of life. Sometimes they come from the grunts that survive their five year term and shine, sometimes they’re bored Corporate kiddies with a penchant for violence and the skills to make it their living. Sometimes they’re just a street thug with a sadistic streak a mile wide and the animal cunning to pull it off. They get used for almost every function you can imagine, from messenger to bodyguard, extraction team to assassin. Rare is the poor Solo, but equally rare is the old one.
The emergency services have evolved along with the socio-political climate, and now can offer you an unprecedented service - as long as you can pay. Details of your pay as you go policing and medical plan are shown below.
Both in policing and trauma response, there is a four grade plan to ensure that you get the most out of your essential emergency services, and the best value for money. If you are on a tight budget, you might think you’d be better off waiting for the NHS to get to you, but a few extra dollars is worth a lot more to you when you’re bleeding out in a dark alley, wishing for that emergency card to snap to bring the cavalry......
Bronze: $100 per month. Guaranteed to get to you within 30 minutes. Will provide a good response, at least two officers of varying experience, mostly out of probation. It is understood that this service will give precedence to any Platinum calls in the area.
Silver: $250 per month. Guaranteed to get to you within 20 minutes. Will provide a good response, at least two officers with more than 2 years experience.
Gold: $500 per month. Guaranteed to get to you within 15 minutes. Will provide an excellent response, at least four officers, two of whom will be sergeant or above, and are guaranteed to find someone guilty for your crime.
Platinum: $1500 per month. Guaranteed to get to you within 10 minutes, will break off from bronze calls if other caller not in immediate threat of death. As many officers as are in the area will attend. As part of the service, you will be fitted with a neural transmitter which will be monitored constantly. Should you come under threat, our advanced satellite targeting systems will be locked onto your attacker from the moment they threaten you. This means that when we arrive, we can guarantee the apprehension of your assailant, no matter what.
The police force has been nationalised, but what with the lack of resources and increased crime, they had to turn to the pay as you go system. This means that various companies have begun offering Paycop services, although they have limited jurisdiction if outside their area. For example, a community can get together to pay a company such as SecureSec to patrol their area, which is 3 miles square. Within that area (normally marked by audible warning systems upon entering and leaving), they have complete jurisdiction to kill or capture, but are subject to the same investigative processes as police would be should they kill someone. Outside that area, they would only be acting as a civilian, unless they are escorting an employer or a prisoner and have the correct paperwork for this.
The other companies do offer a Pay as you go system, but by law they are not allowed to undercut the police, and the service is often far worse.
Although the Police are still subject to investigation if they are involved in a shooting, in practice this has generally fallen by the wayside. As the Police as so overburdened with work, practicality seems to finally won out. Most cops now carry cameras to record the situations they are in for evidence reasons. This evidence is admissible in court and has been used to successfully prosecute a number of high-profile cases
The NHS is a decrepit, old fashioned chunk of machinery that should have been tossed out with typewriters. Today’s state of the art trauma teams run by the fire department can offer you a 100% satisfactory service. Death within our care guarantees your money back*. We have developed a 4 grade system that is much the same as the police, and look forward to bringing you back from the brink with a smile!
* (only to the patient, and only if death is permanent).
Bronze: $100 per month. Guaranteed arrival within 30 minutes. Will only stop working on you if brain death occurs. If replacement organs or limbs are needed, standard waiting times apply, and will be NHS grade parts.
Silver: $250 per month. Guaranteed arrival within 20 minutes. Will only stop working on you 10 minutes after brain death occurs. If replacement organs or limbs are needed, fast-track through the system is guaranteed, but will be NHS grade parts.
Gold: $500 per month. Guaranteed arrival within 15 minutes. Will only stop working on you when death is agreed by a nominated relative or other person. If replacement organs or limbs are needed, they will be vat grown, but standard waiting times apply.
Platinum: $2000 per month. Guaranteed arrival within 5 minutes. Will not stop working on you until you leave our special trauma facilities with a smile on your face! If replacement organs or limbs are needed, they will be vat grown and you will be sequestered in one of our luxurious suites while you wait. As part of our premium service, you will have a bio-monitor installed that will let us know there’s a problem before you do! Our teams will arrive before you even know there’s a problem and ensure that you are in tip top health before they go on their way.
Other companies do provide a private medical service, and rates depend on the quality of service received. Unlike the police, firms are allowed to charge less, such as the Red Cross or St John’s, but the service is very much what you pay for it. Firms such as TraumaSpec can guarantee an armed, armoured and troop heavy AV for your every medical emergency need, but for a platinum service you are looking at $5000 a month with a maximum 6 times a year call out. The discerning Euro Solo carries both TraumaSpec and an FD card, depending on the situation they expect to find themselves in.
If you rely on the NHS or the limited amount of community policing, you are likely to end up very dead or robbed blind before you can blink. The police do sometimes turn up to incidents of their own accord, but if they haven’t been called, they are generally likely to assume that everyone in the area is hostile, and react accordingly.
This brings me rather neatly onto personal defence.
Any weapon up to and including an assault rifle is LEGAL to own. However, to have a firearm on the streets of fear you need a license to carry. These licenses are provided by the police after a careful background check. Depending on your occupation, criminal record and Psyche profile, they will allow you to carry a specific type of weapon or calibre. If you run a cleaning company (dirt, not killing), then you are unlikely to be allowed to carry anything larger than a .38. If, however, you are a solo, bounty hunter or nomad (living in the wilds between cities is dangerous), they will allow you to carry larger calibre weapons, and even upgrade your license to allow for SMG’s and in extreme case assault rifles. Should you be caught with the hardware but no license in a public place, you will be arrested and charged. There is no leeway here; the police don’t like more guns pointed at them than they have to face already.
Most melee weapons are not licensed, and you may carry what you wish as long as it is discrete. If you have a bladed weapon more than 20 inches long, you must obtain a license for it. The police are extra careful about these, as in their opinion only psycho’s want to carry large blades. And as for chainsaws, you would probably be locked up just for asking to carry one. Grenades are socially unacceptable.
The laws that apply to self defence have changed somewhat since the corporations came to power, and have a more American flavour. The statutes are as follows:
Section 15 of the personal safety act 2037
Where a person reasonably believes that the actions of some person other than a police officer threaten the safety and wellbeing of themselves, a dependant or a person unable to defend themselves, that person may use such force as is necessary in the protection of themselves or aforementioned persons, up to and including lethal force, so long as that person surrenders themselves and their weapon to a designated police station upon the request of the police.
Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 (revised 2026)
A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances;
In the prevention of crime, or affecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or persons unlawfully at large, or placed on a regulated bounty list by a lawful and registered corporation.
If a person holds the honestly held belief that they or another are in imminent danger of attack, they may make a pre-emptive strike to prevent that attack from happening.
Basically, if you feel threatened, you can shoot first, but you may end up explaining the circumstances to a judge anyway. But only if the police bother to investigate. The trick is not to shoot someone with a Platinum response card.......
Gang Culture is even more predominant than in the past. Armageddon Cults sprung up and in many cases have become a somewhat twisted version of what they were intended to be.
The Salivation Army are a gang that follow the Police, or TraumaSpec about to accidents and hostile situations in the hope of harvesting limbs and organs from the corpses of the fallen before the authorities can cart them off.
The Brothers of the Neon Light are a religious organisation that keep themselves very much to themselves. Sometimes they can be seen proselytising on the doomed future of humanity. Rumours abound that their leader has been alive for over a hundred years either through cyber enhancement, drugs, or ‘Vampirism’, although this is plainly bullshit.
There are many other gangs, from small to large, most of them with stupidly macho and utterly ridiculous names.
Back at the turn of the century, there used to be an online massively multiplayer game called Second Life. In this game, you took on a different persona and lived an online life. Things in game could be bought with real money, and in-game money could be transported out of the game to buy real world items. This game got big. Huge. Global in fact. The graphics engine got better. Computers became awesomely powerful. People started to live more of an online life than they had ever done before.
And so Cyberspace as we know and love it was born. People can now ‘trode into their computers and view the net as if they were there. People can even ‘jack into the net and get phenomenal access speeds and control, but surely you’d rather not have your brain hardwired into a source of electricity would you?
So online villages were set up initially. Then the corporations got involved and these villages became cybercities. Tall, oddly shaped, weird looking high rise buildings (I had to get High Rise in there somehow) with neon signs showing who they belong to.
And all around you can see fantastic creatures moving about and conversing with each other. These are the avatars, or online personas of each and every one connected to the net. The better the avatar looks, the more expensive the software and the better the skill of the user controlling it.
There are also hundreds of pink and black chequered cubes floating about. These are the default avatars of those new to the internet. Those people either haven’t got a powerful computer and so see the world through rendered vector graphics, or that lack the skill or creativity to make something better for themselves, or those that use the default option when logging on from one of the many dataterms that litter the real world.
Zone map of Europe