Star Peace news

1. What year is it? Action takes place between the years 2030 and 2050--Earth-time. However, each world of the Parallel Domain has its own time vector. Due to relativity, clocks go crazy when a Portal is crossed; there is no clear relationship between Earth-time and the time of a given world. The first time a given planet is visited by a human, its clock is set to 00:00 January 01, 2000 as a matter of convention. 2. What happened to Earth? Earth is dying. Greed, global warming, nuclear and chemical pollution, ethnic wars, new virulent viruses and super bacteria, overpopulation--the World's population has doubled again, in just 20 years... these are the ingredients of the human nightmare on earth. Even advanced capitalist societies are being overcome by this hell now. They blame Third World countries for the overpopulation problem and are planning to go to war against them, in the hopes of reducing the world's population by 70%. That would herald the start of World War III--it's scheduled to last less than two weeks. But that's the First World's version. Third World countries take the First World to task, claiming to have been victims of the First World's greed and exploitation. The Third World states that they don't plan on being victims again. They will win the War. 3. Why portals and not starships? Let's face it; if technology continues on its current development trend, by the year 2030 we could expect superb Internet connections and juicy mutant chickens but certainly nothing like portals or intergalactic starships. The portals used to travel to the new worlds are not a result of human technology, or at least not a result of human technology available in 2030. Portals came from somewhere else, most likely the future. 4. Why did humans from the future only send portals and no other technology? Nobody knows. They are apparently very mysterious people. After the Experiment of the Chest a brief communication was received during another singularity point test. It was printed on bond paper and written in very poor Spanish. There was no information regarding the senders, no dates or references to any form of human civilization. The message stated that they (the senders) considered the present earthlings an "especie en extinción", and that they were determined to provide a partial solution to the problem. They described the use of portals and listed the spots where they should appear. Needless to say, lots of people were disappointed with the apparent impersonal detachment of the message. However, the Catholic Church presented a theory that became extremely popular in a matter of months. After Blömke's study was published, scholars at the Vatican performed an exhaustive search of the Judeo-Christian religion's history. They found an amazing number of matches between singularity points and very well known miracles and acts performed either by Jehovah or Christ. "God," they said, "touches the real universe through these singularity points. He is the v-pond. In the past He spoke in parables, now there is no need for that. Armageddon is coming, and He has sent another Noah's Ark." The document in Spanish was attached to the Holly Bible in 2035. Nothing that dramatic had happened to the Church since the Lutheran reform. Another theory was advanced almost simultaneously. The famous science fiction writer, Agustín De Rojas, who was born in a Latin American country, claimed to have found evidence of falsification in the message. While he admitted the validity of Blömke's theory, he was positively certain that such a message could not have been composed by a human mind, not even by one that is thousands of years ahead of us. Some experts from the Real Academia de la Lengua Española supported this theory. According to De Rojas, the portals were sent by a possibly hostile alien civilization whose only interest could be to have human colonies on other planets, who knows for what purpose. 5. What do the portals look like, how do they work? It started as a trickle, then hundreds of portals started appearing after year 2039. They cannot be opened or examined using x-rays or anything similar. All portals came in the same shape and dimensions, which happened to be huge. Each one is an arc 100 meters in diameter. Although they have a highly detailed surface, the only visible part that can be acted upon is a square block with a carved hand and engraving that reads "Mano" (hand in Spanish). A six-fingered-hand portal appeared in Libya and disappeared a week later. That remains the only irregularity observed to date. Another interesting fact about the portals is that they can only be activated by a woman's hand. This fact became even more intriguing when scientists found that the woman needed to be fertile for the portal to work. Once the portal has been activated all the objects that go through it appear instantaneously (from the traveler's point of view) on the other side. If the woman withdraws her hand the portal it's turned off. Of course, beside a female's hand, the portal also needs a singularity point to become active, but these points happen to be very frequent at each portal location. Every time something is transported the portal produces a dull noise, later identified as a very low frequency vibration. A large number of anthropologists and ergonomists examined the design of the portals. They could not conclude if they were the work of human beings or some other kind of intelligent being. NATO almost immediately tested the portals. A large number of soldiers explored the worlds over the course of a ten-year period. The reports could not have been more promising: the new worlds proved to be like copies of Earth. However, it was worrying that there was no evidence of animal life, while plant life was thriving. 6. What is the IFEL? IFEL stands for International Foundation for Extraterrestrial Life. It is a non-profit organization founded by Blömke himself. Thanks to a long and painful trial (where even the Pope was called to testify), the rights to the portals were assigned to Blömke in 2043. The "Extraterrestrial" term, according to Blömke, does not refer to alien life forms, but to humans that live on the new planets. The IFEL controls migration to the new worlds. Since IFEL is very selective, only a small portion of Earth's population could actually move to the colonies. Also, the immigration rate is designed to allow for the natural development of these emergent economies. They offer three kinds of visas to enter the new worlds: Visitor Visa, Resident Visa and Investor Visa. Visitors cannot settle on the colonies nor undertake any kind of profitable activity. Residents have the right to work and own private businesses. Investors are carefully chosen. The IFEL gives them $100,000,000 that has to be fully invested in the colonies. This scheme has proved to be efficient. Since there is a personal interest involved, an Investor is far more dedicated and honest than any designated administrator. The new worlds also needed technological support. The IFEL created a licensing system to ensure a balanced yet diverse technological spectrum. Only a few companies have been authorized to sell their technology to the colonies. There are two categories or "Seals", as they are called by the IFEL. Companies licensed with the Big Seal have to supply a wide range of technologies, from farming to TV stations, passing through all kinds of industries and other facilities. Also, a Special Seal exists for those areas that are somewhat specialized or do not require too much diversity. 7. What will happen next? The Star Peace future is far from over. Humans will soon find out that they have jumped into a challenging long-term adventure where their strength and will to survive gets tested to the limit. Right now there are several juicy questions that cannot be answered. Who sent the portals? Are they humans of the future? Is it God? Is some some evil force framing us? What happened to the animals in the new worlds? Was there ever any intelligent form of life? Were they exterminated by someone/something or are they just hiding? Why can fertile human females only activate the portals? Will humans at the colonies live in peace or will they start fighting against each other? Only time will tell in which direction the human race is headed...