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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« on: January 31, 2014, 06:31:36 PM »
Please note that what follows is a VERY rough draft and subject to extensive change before publication. Red Markets is the intellectual property of Hebanon Games and Caleb Stokes.
Ubiq and LifeLines
Austin Palbicke grew up in a rural Texas trailer with no internet and less opportunity. He didn't see his first functioning Wifi connections until he switched high schools at 16, but he was instantly hooked. By the time he grew into a multi-billionaire through his software start-ups, he had already planned the Ubiq system in his head. "Nobody, no matter how poor," he said at the launch, "has to be cut-off anymore." If we Takers could still believe in anything, we'd inscribe that under a stained glass window in the church built for the poor dead bastard.
Ubiq utilizes thousands of high altitude weather balloons composed of prototype synthetic fabrics, each carrying a solar-powered, self-sustaining satellite transmitter and server. Solar winds shift the balloon cloud at all points around the globe, an ever-shifting pattern of coverage that is unbreakable for more than a few minutes at a time. The signal was meant to be everywhere, and everything could be managed from the Ubiq compound built in the Colorado mountains: an entirely green tech start-up city powered by an experimental geo-thermal reactor that cost more to build than the GDP of most developed nations. It was in beta when the Crash started, and as Ubiq programmers transmitted desperate pleas for help over the snarls of their cannibalistic coworkers outside, it looked like it was never going to get beyond the testing phase.
But then, after weeks with the power out, after starving in pitch-black basements under the government orders, the signal came back on. What few laptops could be charged suddenly had email. Cellphones, long since abandoned, had reception. All survivors needed was a hand crank or a solar panel...
One of the programmers had survived and, somehow, gotten Ubiq online. She called herself Gnat. Her forum was the LifeLines. She whispered the truth in all our ears.
Ubiq had been keeping an eye on everything while the rest of us huddled inside. The government blackout, the destruction of the United States, was just a stall tactic. They were marshaling forces, pulling back to beyond the Mississippi in preparation for the establishment of the safe zones. Gnat had found their traffic since they worm piggybacking signals using backdoors the NSA had wormed into the Ubiq signal, and all of us got to see their plans.
Fall back. Order everyone to stay inside at all costs. Use the entirety of the armed forces to secure the Mississippi and cordon off infected Eastern cities. And wait. Wait until the infected died and their puppeteer-ed corpses got dry, brittle, and slow. Wait for torpor and rigor to set in...then clear them out of the Eastern states using every round in the armory and every soldier that had ever enlisted. Launch a full-scale assault to take back the country, but only half of it. The West was to be cut off like a gangrenous limb.
Gnat posted their emails, then told us to run.
The rush on the bridges over the Mississippi was insanity. People thronged. Fresh outbreaks occurred. The Blight’s body count paled in comparison to those desperate fools that tried to swim across the river. Realizing the dam would break, the government backpedaled and set up checkpoints, stripping and checking all comers for infection. They'd never meant to abandon us, they claimed. This was all part of a plan. They called it the Recession.
But even when all the power was out, before they knew Gnat had their number, they never wrote down their plans to nuke the Eastern Canadian cities. Pre-preemptive genocide, they called it later. When the sun rose in the North in the middle of the night, then again, and again, those of us still waiting at the bridges knew that they were done making concessions. The bridges were blown and mined a few hours later; the border shut down. The West was closed off by a mighty river and a 200 mile long manned wall spanning from its mouth to the Great Lakes. And there was no one left in the North to become infected.
The country was divided: those of us safe in the Recession...and those of us written off as the Loss.
Ubiq and LifeLines
Austin Palbicke grew up in a rural Texas trailer with no internet and less opportunity. He didn't see his first functioning Wifi connections until he switched high schools at 16, but he was instantly hooked. By the time he grew into a multi-billionaire through his software start-ups, he had already planned the Ubiq system in his head. "Nobody, no matter how poor," he said at the launch, "has to be cut-off anymore." If we Takers could still believe in anything, we'd inscribe that under a stained glass window in the church built for the poor dead bastard.
Ubiq utilizes thousands of high altitude weather balloons composed of prototype synthetic fabrics, each carrying a solar-powered, self-sustaining satellite transmitter and server. Solar winds shift the balloon cloud at all points around the globe, an ever-shifting pattern of coverage that is unbreakable for more than a few minutes at a time. The signal was meant to be everywhere, and everything could be managed from the Ubiq compound built in the Colorado mountains: an entirely green tech start-up city powered by an experimental geo-thermal reactor that cost more to build than the GDP of most developed nations. It was in beta when the Crash started, and as Ubiq programmers transmitted desperate pleas for help over the snarls of their cannibalistic coworkers outside, it looked like it was never going to get beyond the testing phase.
But then, after weeks with the power out, after starving in pitch-black basements under the government orders, the signal came back on. What few laptops could be charged suddenly had email. Cellphones, long since abandoned, had reception. All survivors needed was a hand crank or a solar panel...
One of the programmers had survived and, somehow, gotten Ubiq online. She called herself Gnat. Her forum was the LifeLines. She whispered the truth in all our ears.
Ubiq had been keeping an eye on everything while the rest of us huddled inside. The government blackout, the destruction of the United States, was just a stall tactic. They were marshaling forces, pulling back to beyond the Mississippi in preparation for the establishment of the safe zones. Gnat had found their traffic since they worm piggybacking signals using backdoors the NSA had wormed into the Ubiq signal, and all of us got to see their plans.
Fall back. Order everyone to stay inside at all costs. Use the entirety of the armed forces to secure the Mississippi and cordon off infected Eastern cities. And wait. Wait until the infected died and their puppeteer-ed corpses got dry, brittle, and slow. Wait for torpor and rigor to set in...then clear them out of the Eastern states using every round in the armory and every soldier that had ever enlisted. Launch a full-scale assault to take back the country, but only half of it. The West was to be cut off like a gangrenous limb.
Gnat posted their emails, then told us to run.
The rush on the bridges over the Mississippi was insanity. People thronged. Fresh outbreaks occurred. The Blight’s body count paled in comparison to those desperate fools that tried to swim across the river. Realizing the dam would break, the government backpedaled and set up checkpoints, stripping and checking all comers for infection. They'd never meant to abandon us, they claimed. This was all part of a plan. They called it the Recession.
But even when all the power was out, before they knew Gnat had their number, they never wrote down their plans to nuke the Eastern Canadian cities. Pre-preemptive genocide, they called it later. When the sun rose in the North in the middle of the night, then again, and again, those of us still waiting at the bridges knew that they were done making concessions. The bridges were blown and mined a few hours later; the border shut down. The West was closed off by a mighty river and a 200 mile long manned wall spanning from its mouth to the Great Lakes. And there was no one left in the North to become infected.
The country was divided: those of us safe in the Recession...and those of us written off as the Loss.