-Set 60,000 years in the future, ''The Terraformers'' traces the development of a [[terraformed]] planet over the course of 1,000 years. The planet, Sask-E, has been transformed from a wasteland into a habitable planet by human involvement. Destry, a member of a team dedicated to continuing the planet's transformation, uncovers a secret city underneath the planet's surface that changes her understanding of the planet and her purpose.
+Set 60,000 years in the future, ''The Terraformers'' traces the development of a private [[terraformed]] planet over the course of 1,000 years. Slaves of Verdance, an interstellar real estate corporation, have transformed the planet, Sask-E, from an anoxic wasteland into an oxygen-rich planet habitable by ''H. sapiens''. Destry, a member of a team dedicated to continuing the planet's transformation, uncovers Spider, a secret underground city founded by escaped slaves who chose not to go extinct 10,000 years ago. City residents include a diverse set of people, including bots, cats, cows, mole rats, moose, beavers, and the non-oxygen-breathing ''H. diversus'' Archaeans descended from the first terraformers. Destry's team secretly helps resolve a water shortage problem by redirecting a river using an engineered lava eruption. They observe that the eruption was controlled by bot people living in the mantle. These people also chose not to go extinct and continue to maintain ribbons, artificial [[plate tectonics|plate tectonic]] infrastructure from an early terraforming phase. Upon learning that the ribbons still exist, Verdance declares war on Spider, firing orbital lasers. Verdance employees rebel. Destry is able to force Verdance to sign a treaty, granting Spider limited sovereignty under threat of the ribbons.
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+700 years later, a new team composed of Spider residents (an Archaean named Sulfur and a bot) and Verdance employees (a cow and an ''H. sapiens'') are tasked with performing an environmental survey and creating a planetary inter-city public transit plan for Verdance and the largest landowner, Emerald. They tour several settlements and observe that both Verdance and Emerald aim to keep Sask-E a private planet by hamstringing all public services in favor of private ones. In protest, the team recommends establishing a community of self-governing anti-gravity train people under Spider sovereignty as the best long-term solution for providing transport. Emerald approves the plan, ignoring the sovereignty implications. Spider bioengineers birth the first trains.
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+904 years later, Scrubjay, a member of the Flying Train Fleet worker co-op, befriends Moose, a homeless journalist cat, who is digging up dirt against Sask-E's monopoly landowner Emerald. Moose teaches Scrubjay about protests to make Sask-E a public planet in response to widespread [[gentrification]] problems. They help evacuate refugees evicted by lethal orbital strikes fired by Emerald to cleanse its cities of unslaved non-''H. sapiens''. Scrubjay and Moose uncover ancient legal documents that prove Emerald defrauded real estate customers by charging license fees for public domain ''H. sapiens'' genome sequences. They also discover that Emerald's approval of the self-governing train community also disqualifies Sask-E from private planet status in the interstellar government. Spider and the Flying Train Fleet vote not to activate the ribbons in response to the orbital strikes and to apply for recognition by the wider interstellar government as governments of a public planet.
projects / BK-2020-09.git / blobdiff