Future timeline I created.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Alright, I wanted to create my own future science-fiction scenario as a setting for some stories I eventually planned to write. I figured the best way to do this was establish a timeline that, at the very least, doesn't suspend too many peoples' SOD.

So I came up with the following after a night of too much caffeine and too little sleep. I'm open to any thoughts and/or suggestions, and especially open to having any glaring holes, inconsistencies, or scientific errors (I tried to avoid using any sort of hard numbers and keep things vague enough for the scientific and technical-minded to fill the gaps with something workable, because I sort of suck at the science).

So anyways, my as-of-yet unnamed future timeline:

2012 - Economies around the world shudder as peak-oil hits hard. Great Britain, Australia, and the US are hit hardest by it, their economies taking nosedives. China and Russia are also hit by the oil-shortages, but manage to scrounge along better thanks to easier access to the dwindling reserves.

The Bush Junta, rallying around a popular cry of restoring a traditional america, stages a military coup and manages to take control of the US government, declaring martial law.

The middle-east, nearly a constant battleground for the better part of a century, sees unprecedented levels of violence as the economic backlash destabilizes some of the governments there.

2020 - After the overly vocal minority had shouted, the silent majority in the US finally begin raising their voices against the Bush Junta and the dictatorship/military rule the country is now under. Large segments of the military agree with them, and in true irony, large segments of the northern mid-west and western US declare secession from the country.

These factions are declared 'terrorist cells' by those in power, and the promise is made to free those
unfortunates living under the radical dictates of the treasonous unamericans. This is easier said than done, as several prominent generals had deserted to the secessionists, taking their troops with them. 'Border' cities experience massive amounts of civil-warfare, guerilla tactics, and urban combat between the secessionists and Washington loyalists, much like Baghdad several decades before.

Though the secessionists have much greater numbers, militarily, they are also split into several different factions, depending on geographical location and general ideology. Washington also has far better access to the increasingly precious oil, ransoming it from the middle-east under threat of the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. On top of that, they also continue to run their elaborate propaganda-machine relentlessly, and many under their shroud remain ignorant and unaware of the greater conflicts about them.

Iran's economy and government begin to crumble under the strain of Peak Oil. Isreal, sensing weakness, and still having US backing, initiate full hostilities. Many middle-east territories fall to this alliance, further polarizing the middle-eastern conflict.

Japan and South Korea form an alliance, moving together in a relatively casualty-free annexing of
North Korea, gutted by poverty and civil-war. This alliance finds evidence of massive genocides covered up by Kim Jong's junta before the government finally imploded under its own economic strain.

Africa, always a brewing-ground for disease, is now struck worse than ever. Several highly virulant
plagues sweep across the continent, leaving death and chaos in their wake. By 2025, an estimated 40% of the continent's population is dead.

The European Union has sealed its borders, no longer allowing the exponentially growing tide of immigrants through. Despite the growing number of terrorist-style attacks from within, this continent fairs better than most of the world, responsibly (relatively speaking) managing its own dwindling oil reserves and enforcing social order.

Canada begins following the US in economic decline, but its central government holds the territories
together far better than the US did. Quebec threatens to secede many times, but is shouted down both from without and within each time and never actually follows through.

2050 - The Bush Junta fractures from the inside. It's leader now dead after a long bout with liver-cancer, and many of those who originally held the personality-cult together long gone, internal rivalries take over and a power struggle takes place. Eventually an impotent figure-head is installed as leader on the agreement that he's too incompetent to deliberately further the agenda of any specific faction. The rest in power know that this is only a temporary measure, though, and continue plotting to seize their own power and hopefully retake the entire nation from the secessionists.

What's left of the US joins into an alliance with Great Britain and Australia. The former having long seceded from the EU and the latter on the verge of complete collapse. This new alliance is held up partially by what little economic clout Great Britain has left, and by the stockpile of nukes the US still controls.

The New Confederate States of Christiania, originally secessionist states from the bible-belt area of the US, ally themselves with the Washington Loyalists, on the condition that the Baptists be made the official religion of both countries.

Global warming has been showing more and more noticeable affects during the past half-century. But now it takes a dramatic step upwards as both the Gulf of Mexico is decimated by multiple hurricanes, far worse than anything seen before, and the west coast of the US is hit with flooding of a magnitude never before equaled.

The African plagues find their way overseas, despite attempts at quarantine. South America and Mexico are struck hard, quickly suffering the same fate as Africa. Africa is now almost completely devoid of human life, the last estimates before borders were declared completely sealed by joint military action placing the death-toll at about 98% of the continent's population.

The European Union enters progressively more militaristic regimes to counter the rising terrorism, social dischord and economic crumbling thanks to Peak Oil and their increasingly isolationist nature. Again, despite this...or because of it, the average citizen of the EU is far better off than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

Russia regains a little power and influence in world-politics by trading away some of its oil-fields, the last remaining fields in the world, and its few viable nukes. China, on the other hand, collapses thanks to a two-front cold war with Russia and the Korea-Japan alliance. Singapore and some of the few relatively affluent nations of southeast-Asia join this growing alliance.

The African plagues also spread northeast. India, economically worse than before, though not completely devastated, and many areas of the middle-east start reporting cases of the plagues.

Isreal's offensive against the entirety of the middle-east comes to a faltering halt as aid from the US dwindles to a trickle. Sensing the weakness, many arab nations strike back hard, taking back much of the territory they lost. Several nuclear detonations are reported in the area, who set them off, where they precisely occured, casualties, etc., were never reported. Much sabre-rattling on all sides ensues and the world is poised at the brink of complete, mutual nuclear bombardment.

2080 - The Calamity occurs. Just as the world was about to annihilate itself with nuclear war, nature pre-empts it. Yellowstone Park, always a hotbed of geological activity, simply blows up. Not nearly as badly as it could have, thankfully, but enough to turn pretty much the entire US and all its secessionist states into a wasteland.

The entire western hemisphere...the parts that survived the eruption, following winter, and those
that survived the plagues still ravaging Mexico, Central, and South America, are reduced to pre-industrial technology levels. Around the world temperatures drop sharply, an almost welcome change from the steady rising global-warming had caused. Heavy cloud-cover from eruption-detritus causes an almost constant cold-gloom to settle over everything.

The EU continues to decline, finally beginning to succumb to the effects of Peak Oil and split at the seams. Rioting increases, as does terrorist activities, and the EU begins to fracture from within, still desperately trying to hold together.

The middle-east and southern Asia actually calm down somewhat, militarily. But that is only because the plagues are spreading, and a majority of the population is finding out that massive internal hemorraging is a bit more pressing than religiously-motivated warfare.

Great Britain, suddenly severed from the US by the Yellowstone eruption, collapses from within. London is burned down, again, this time due to rioting, bombings, and famine.

The Korea-Japan alliance, on the other hand, seems to maintain its holdings with little trouble at all. Though they don't seem to have the might to continue aggressively expanding, any attempts at hostility against the alliance are decisively turned away with overwhelming force. Those few outside the alliance who are still in an economic position to observe note that the Korea-Japan alliance seem to have an outside supplier keeping them afloat, though no one has any idea who it could be.

Australia continues to decline, but no one gives a shit about them. Fucking kangaroos.

2100 - A new force appears rather suddenly. A government operating out of bunkers and protected areas in several provinces of Canada. The government is a meritocracy of scientists, engineers, and social and psychological experts.

They reveal that they had been building power in secret for several decades now. Having predicted the Yellowstone eruption, they were able to take measures to survive it far better than the rest of the continent. During the past half-century, their technological and scientific progress had continued advancing, mostly in secret, while the rest of the worlds' declined. They had entered into a pact with the Korea-Japan alliance thirty years ago, trading technology and military supplies for raw materials for construction of more.

This new government expands aggressively, quickly taking over a mostly-helpless and decimated North America. The Korea-Japan alliance also does so with Asia, now openly aided by the New Montreal Protectorate.

It turns out that the NMP had developed a new sort of power. Vaguely related in ways to both nuclear and petroleum power, this new energy-source combined the best of both. Like nuclear power, it was massively efficient, even exheeding it by several orders of magnitude. Like petroleum-power, though, it could easily be scaled up and down to power anything from small electronics to massive cities.

With a fuel-source literally millions of times more efficient than gasoline, the NMP and KJA encountered very little resistance to their expansion.

They offered a simple deal to the countries they invaded: Either allow occupation and integration into the alliance (which included submitting to state-sponsored non-denominational schooling and disbanding of all state-sponsored religions), or have their borders sealed and quarantined. Citizens of resistant countries were offered open access to the alliance's benefits if they 'converted'. Otherwise, enough food and supplies to barely subsist on were allowed into quarantined countries and no more.

The crumbling EU is approached with an offer for membership in this new alliance. In return, they are offered economic re-vitalization, military aid to put down insurrection, and relief-efforts in their more poverty-stricken areas. Some in the EU power-structure insisted they remain independent from this new power, consequences be damned, but more reasonable minds prevailed, and the EU is integrated into the newly-dubbed Freethought Alliance.

2130 - Now with nearly the entire northern hemisphere under its control, the Freethought Alliance turns a significant portion of its resources to space exploration. With their advances in fuel-efficiency, the problems of massive fuel-tanks are a thing of the past.

Within a period of years, resource-mining is taking place on the moon, and orbital shipyards are being constructed in Earth-orbit.

In 2142, a manned mission to Mars is attempted. The mission is a resounding success, with some unpredicted side-effects that would prove to be one of the single largest events to ever happen to mankind.

Upon her return to Earth, one of the crew of the Mars mission begins displaying scientifically verifiable psionic abilities. Though rigorously studied, scientists only come away with a very incomplete picture. They are completely unable to determine how or why these powers manifest, but they are able to verify under controlled, repeatable conditions that this woman has powers of telekinesis and a limited telepathy and empathy.

Further study shows strange EM patterns in her brain that had never been observed in anyone else before. What's stranger is that a technition, by sheer chance, happened to compare these patterns with scans of general background EM radiation on Earth and find several matching signals.

Knowing they are on to something big, the Freethought Alliance tracks down these signals. Massively powered, yet highly focused and narrow, to several locations in Greece, the middle-east, central-america, and elsewhere. Here, mostly in incredibly deeply buried ruins bearing similarities to several ancient styles, yet fully matching none, they find artifacts code-named 'The God-Machines'.

Experimentation on the God-Machines reveal them to be millions of years old, at the very least. Constructed and running on a technology far beyond anything even analyzable by the Freethought alliance, they still ran even during the testing. Then something went wrong. One of the machines shut off in the middle of a test, and the rest quickly followed suit.

What happened over the next several days was widely referred to as 'The Awakening'. It was quickly realized that what the God-Machines signals were doing was actually suppressing similar signals from developing in the brains of humans. Their signal-power was great enough that the signals extended even past the moon, but not to Mars. It was sheer luck that a psionically-capable human was on the Mars exploration trip, and her own powers grew and manifested in the absence of the supressing signals of the God-Machines.

Who built the machines, and why they apparently did not wish humanity to express psionic potential, is still unknown.

Over the next week, The Awakening occured. With the God-Machines shut down, about one in every ten-thousand people awoke to their own psionic potential. Many were caught unprepared for this, some experiencing sanity-shattering nightmares and hallucinations, others suddenly experiencing fits of uncontrolled psionic-expression. Incredible amounts of havoc were centered around these people and the Freethough Alliance had its hands full trying to overcome the ensuing chaos.

As the FA's scientists, a few now psionically capable, quickly moved to catagorize these new unknowns in some attempt to make sense of them, other groups took it in their own way. Many psionics in lesser-developed and/or highly religious areas were revered as deities or reviled as devils. Nearly overnight hundreds of new cults and religious-movements spring up, centered around the Awakened.

2200 - Psionics are now well integrated into the space-program. Sensitives among them lead FA members to 'strange-feeling' areas of space around Earth and Mars. Here the first Fold-Space gates are discovered.

Apparently constructed by the same ones that built the God-Machines, experimentation with psionics eventually activated these gates' powers. Under psionic control, the gates 'open' by violating the laws of physics in much the same way the psionics do. With no obvious ill-effect, the gates 'fold' two points of space together, create a temporary hole between the two point, and allow near-instantanious travel from one point to the other, the 'other' being anywhere from a single planet over to millions of light-years away. Interstellar travel is now possible.

Closer to home, Mars is now under colonization. There are no attempts at 'terraforming' or any other such inefficient nonsense. Instead, further advancements in fuel efficiency allow massive interconnected, sealed 'cities' to be constructed on and beneath the surface with superb environmental control within them. Easily equalling these cities, and often excelling
them in size and complexity on both the moon and Mars are the orbital platforms built around both.

The Asteroid-belt also becomes the scene of massive mining efforts. Even though fuel is now practically free, raw materials for construction are still needed in obscenely large quantities.

Exploration reveals that the Fold-Space gates lead mostly to relatively local star-systems. Colonization on planets orbiting Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, and Sirius2 take place.

As this happens, various religious splinter-groups, having integrated themselves into the growing colonization and expansion program, begin striking against the FA from within. In response to this, development of warships takes place and the FA becomes a greater military power in space.

2200 - First contact is made with a sentient, advanced alien race. Dubbed 'Centaurians' due only to the fact that they were contacted first in the Alpha Centauri system, things were shaky at first due to the complete inability of the two races to communicate. Again, psionics proved invaluable as telepaths from both ends eventually managed to establish communication between Centaurians and Terrans.

The Centaurians appear to be best likened to molluscs or gastropods. Their bodies appear to be a mass of thin yet highly flexible and elastic tentacles centered around a central sac that contains most of the creatures' vitals. The Centaurians are masters at manipulating their tentacles and can bundle and form them to appromixate the general body-shape of not only Terrans, but any beings they encounter, to help facilitate negotiations with other races.

The Centaurians apparently are mostly explorers and traders. They have few permanent colonies, but have scanned and explored hundreds, possibly thousands of star-systems. Their main interest appears to be trading technology they've discovered abandoned, or possibly traded with other races.

Militarily they can easily hold their own against outside attack, and it appears they would likely defeat the Terrans if it ever came down to an all-out war. Thankfully conquest doesn't appear to be their interest.

The Centaurians end up trading several other old technologies they've traded or discovered abandoned for several Terran technologies. Over time the Terrans are able to reverse-engineer these technologies to greatly increase their own technological level.

Soon after, contact with another interstellar race is made, but this one not nearly as benign. A strip-mining colony on one of Procylon 2's three asteroid belts is attacked and destroyed by an alien force. All attempts to retake the colony are soundly rebuffed, but the aliens make no attempts to further molest the Terrans so long as they are left alone.

Observation and discussion with the Centaurians reveal some information about this new race. Dubbed 'Lectrids' due to their strange and frightening abilities, this race appears to have no technology, at least not any technology that Terrans can even remotely relate to.

Instead, the Lectrids appear to have mastered several areas of psionics at a level the Terrans could not even hope to compare to. Lectrids have established fine control, at least local to their own bodies, over the very nature of sub-atomic particles themselves. They are able to control, over almost any local scale, the formation and arrangement of protons, neutrons, electrons, and other particles.

In short, they can appear to create and destroy matter and energy. Individually they can use this ability to levitate themselves, create air-tight pockets of gas and 'walls' to protect themselves in almost any environment, and channel destructive energy at anything that threatens them.

Together it gets much worse. Groups of Lectrids working together can create 'shields' capable of withstanding Terran starship fire, and channel enough destructive energy to pierce the hulls of those very same starships.

Thankfully, this terrifying control over matter doesn't seem to extend to living beings. Some subtle psionic current present in all life, even that which isn't 'awakened' prevents them from being directly
manipulated by the Lectrids. This doesn't stop them from telekinetically hurling sculpted rock-spears through the hearts of attackers, though.

The Lectrids have the appearance of massive, horse-sized worms with toothy maws and a pair of
tentacles as long as they are thrashing around the mouth. Also around this orifice are six fan-shaped antennae. Their namesake comes from the fact that often a large static charge builds up from the molecular chaos that constantly surrounds them, and thus they seem to always be surrounded by arcing bolts of electricity.

The Hammer of God, a religious faction of xenophobic Terrans who believe any association with alien species is unholy and blasphemous, splits off the FA, claiming the entire Tau Ceti system for itself. Several other smaller factions do the same, though of these, the largest only has the power to claim several individual planets as its own. The Freethought Alliance hesitantly acknowledges these defections on the condition that trade and communication is kept open between all Terrans, regardless of faction.

2250 - With Centaurian guidance and aid from psionics, the first stargate to the Subtle Realm is opened. A second universe, somehow layered on, through, and alongside our own. Where the laws of physics appear to be far more mutable than they are here.

Formerly accessable only to a few powerful psionics, the stargate allows not only 'normal' Terrans, but also starships to be brought into this strange realm. 'Colonization' is impossible due to the constantly-changing nature of the realm. But the strategic possibilities of having a 'backdoor' realm cannot be ignored.

Within the Subtle Realm first contact is made with several other species. Mindworms are discovered. Psionic parasites that slowly and insidiously infiltrate the crews of starships, eventually taking full control of them by psionically breaking down their willpower and turning them into puppets. Their own 'fleet' is made up of a ragtag assortment of ships from various races they had 'assimilated' members of.

Though able to control the members of these races, they cannot, apparently, access the portions of the brain dedicated to research, replenishment and advancement. So they continually expand outward, attempting to take over more ships within the Subtle Realm.

Why they are so aggressive and why they appear to be completely apathetic about those they control are still unknown. Thankfully, Mindworms appear to be incapable of surviving for long outside the Subtle Realm. Mindworms appear as thumb-sized, leech-like creatures.

The other contact was made with beings dubbed 'Demons'. Like Mindworms, they seem to be largely aggressive and hostile to others not of their race. They seem to utilize some sort of bio-technology, but the 'rules' of the Subtle Realm, and their own Psionic augmentation make their otherwise soft, fleshy ships just as, and often far more resilient and damaging than Terran ships.

What's worse, they have a disastrous effect on 'normal' space. With time and effort, they can 'infest' a normal-space area. The infested area begins to show more traits in common with the Subtle Realm than with normal space. And, with the mutable nature of the Subtle realm, the Demons' influence makes these areas decidedly hostile to most other life. Worst of all, Mindworms appear capable of surviving in infested areas of normal space, giving them beachheads to attempt to spread their influence further into normal space.

Demons appear as beings with too many arms, legs, or other body-parts, often covered in bony protrusions and spikes. The mutable and changeable nature of the Subtle Realm and its inhabitants means, though, that Demons' appearances can vary quite highly from one individual to another. No non-hostile contact has been established with either of these races, so motivations, society, specific biology, and the like still remain unknown.

Meanwhile, The Hammer of Light makes its first successful military campaign, taking out a colony of Lectrids in one of their asteroid belts. This does two things. First it reveals that there is something in asteroid belts that greatly draws the interest of Lectrids. Second, it turns most, if not all Lectrids against Terrans as a whole, and all contact from that point forward is of a hostile sort.

During this time extending association with the Centaurians exposes the FA to other factions within the so-far only friendly race they had encountered. They relate information about other races in the galaxy that the Terrans hadn't contacted yet, and offer potential for more profitable first-contacts.

Stories begin to surface, eerily similar to tales related by the Centaurians. Terrans tell of an entity of great power that is moving about in disguise in their own colonies, bases, cities. Allegedly it is a being of godlike power, yet its interest lies solely with sentient races and watching how they can fall
into ruin. The fact that the Centaurians have similar tales scares some, but other prefer to believe it's just a tale, vague enough to find common basis among two separate races.

First Contact is made very hesitantly with a new type of lifeform. As far as Terran scientists can tell, it is a type of sentient radiation that exists mostly inside certain nebulae. The contact is hesitant because the first several psionics who made contact went insane, unable to deal with the utterly alien senses and thought-processes they were experiencing. This new life seems content to merely sit back and observe the doings of others. Their powers, capability, and extent of their 'territory' (if they even have any) is unknown.

A vicious, prolonged battle over a resource-node in Lelande 21185 reveals first contact with another race. These creatures are named 'Metalloids' by most Terrans. The first and most obvious thing is that they are highly hostile and aggressive, apparently determined to dominate any and all resources in any given sector.

Metalloids are arguably the most technologically advanced species Terrans have yet encountered. They have advanced biotechnology in a way never seen before. Genetically altered to the point that from birth, Metalloid cell-structure is capable of processing, digesting, arranging and modifying inorganic elements. Metalloid bodies are the equivalent of biological factories, they consume raw resources and their cells modify them as needed.

Most Metalloids have the genetic information required to form 'basic' protective compounds and arrange them around their bodies, forming the equivalent of sealed encounter-suits and surprisingly durable armor. Genetic infusion and practice, though, allow them to create far more, even banding together in 'packs' to form starship-sized patterns of compounds, far more durable than equivalently-sized ships in other races and capable of forming and propelling super-dense projectiles at lethal speeds towards other starships.

If that weren't enough, often after successfully disabling enemy ships, Metalloids would often immediately move in to devour the ships, reprocessing the materials to 'heal' structural damage to their own compounds and reinforce their inorganic 'hides'.

The upside is their 'ships' (actually just packs of Metalloids who have bonded their outer shells together) are far more durable, modular, manueverable and easily 'repairable' than any other known race. The downside is that the biological nature of their technology-production is inefficient and requires massive amounts of material resources, hence their highly expansionist nature.

2275 (Present) - The Terrans declare open war against the Metalloids after several more of their resource-harvesting colonies come under attack. The Hammer of God, acting on its own, claims that the Lectrids are in league with the Metalloids and assaults several other colonies, causing more problems for the Freethought Alliance.

The Centaurians continue to offer free-trade and goods to help the Terrans, but refuse to lend any open military support. Demons and Mindworms begin taking over several other outposts, spreading the influence of the Subtle Realm into normal space.

A strange cube falls out of a Fold-space portal near a Terran border colony. This cube, obviously an alien technological artifact, appears to exercise some sort of psionic control over those that hold it or look directly at it. A cult is quickly forming around this cube, but this is overlooked in the face of the larger conflicts in other areas.

This is the state of things today. The Terrans consist of the Freethought Alliance, the smaller
Hammer of God, and several other factions, controlling about thirty star-systems and over a hundred planets. They face threats from the expansionist Metalloids, the territorial Lectrids, and the insidious Demons and Mindworms.

They have aid from the Centaurians. The known galaxy is apparently riddled with a network of Fold-space gates, leading from star-system to star-system. Over everything is layered the Subtle Realm, where all bets are off.

Other races are known to exist. There is possibly something or things moving unseen through the Terran society, disguised as one of their own, spreading havoc and dischord for its own sake. Next to nothing is known about the creators of the Fold-space gates or the God-machines. Only a tiny fraction of a percentage of the Milky Way has been explored by the Terrans.

[Sea Skimmer]

It sucks from the moment the ‘bush junta’ takes over. Drop all mention of that and make an original character and you’ll have a way better product.

[Gullible Jones]

Got to agree with Sea Skimmer, "Bush Junta" is a little bit distracting...

[Gullible Jones]

Addendum: I wouldn't say it "sucks" though. On the other hand, I had trouble making it past "Bush junta" without loosing track of things.

[Hawkwings]

I had trouble making it past "Bush junta" without laughing.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Yes, America, the most stable republic in history, will fall to the 'Bush junta' staging a military coup why? Where does Bush gain the political capital to pull this off? Why would he want to?

Also. 'The Confederate States of Christiania'. That's entirely plausible, yessiree Bob.

Also, Canada and Europe both escape the fracturous civil wars, despite being constantly in turmoil by inner conflicts of nationality (Quebec still has a fat minority wanting to secede, and Europe couldn;t even make itself a consitution) while America, one of the most nationally united countries today, has a civil war for no reason.

Israel becomes aggressive and declares war against the Arab countries, again, for no reason. Why do they attack? The muslims don't have the will to fight Israel again, there are no jews in Syria or Jordan, and no benefit would be won by attacking them.

So far, this has just been a laundry list of democratic underground-style tinfoil liberal cliches.

And now, like the white-draped cavalry covered in spunk, are the Canadians, a utopian elitist mix of technical personnel who foresaw the eruption (would have been nice if they had told people) and escaped its wrath! Even beyond that, they developed a magical energy source to ensure the rise of the Republic of Mary Sue. No, this timeline wasn't influenced by ideology at all. What happened to the super-plagues that killed off 98% of the population again?

Regardless. We then move on to generic psionics, Demon aliens relating to the above, biotech, etc.

Now, the bits after the whole 'Bush-n-Fundies-suck-Peak-Oil-Liberals-win' extravaganza isn't that bad. What it is, is generic. Run of the mill. Distinguishable thanks to its preposterous introduction and the sheer volume of cliches attached to it.

P.S. Looking at the above, I feel like I've been overly critical in most regards. However, it's late, I'm slightly pissed, my back hurts, and I don't particularly like my country, which is, in fact, not all that fucking great, surviving a catastrophe and coming out with a ridiculous author-masturbation-fantasy to save everyone's ass. I get enough of that during election years.

P.P.S. Seriously. Change the Freethought Alliance to make it less of an obvious author-wankfest-utopia, and remove the Bush junta and most of the Second American civil war. Then, just try to put some more originality into the work. Right now it's a series of cliches.

[Gullible Jones]

Actually Oni... Are you aiming for a satire? In that case, I think the best general advice I can give is that it needs less Cory Doctorow and more Charles Stross.

[Gullible Jones]

(Not dissing Doctorow, mind. I just find the naive, happy-go-lucky utopianism in many of his stories... annoying.)

[18-Till-I-Die]

I'll be a little kinder and say, it's fairly silly, at times. But it's ok, if you're not really taking it serious, like satire or something. Is that what you were aiming for, cause if it was, mission fucking accomplished.

It's just that terms like "Bush Junta", while not entirely inaccurate considering, are quite...distracting.

[Bounty]

So Africa is going to be decimated by plagues and the Africans just... sit there and die? This supposed super-alliance of freethinkers is willing to let the world go to hell in a handbasket just so they can take over by force? You go from a decimated planet on the brink of barbarism to space travel in a few decades? You think a junta of scientists can conquer the world just because they have a fuel that can drive... what? The world they try to take over won't have functioning economies, or ships, or planes, or mass-communication, or any of the structures needed to found a global empire.

I sorta zoned out when the intelligent slugs and space-psychics came in, so maybe your timeline got magically better from there on, but as it stands it reads like a really, really bad masturbatory fantasy. And an implausible one at that.

[Bounty]

Ghetto edit: there are a few interesting ideas here and I like the way you're doing a Shape of Things to Come from a modern POV, but it just feels really disjointed and random.

[ray245]

Well...america falls...asia rises to power...I'm happy about this story all right...

[Stuart]

Sorry, I stopped reading once it began talking about the Bush Junta and their military coup. It's so implausible that it condemns anything that might follow to the status of a rant.

[Beowulf]

The problem with the "Bush Junta" is: how the hell does he end up with the authority to do a military coup? Implausible is an understatement.

[Ryan Thunder]

Hahaha. Sorry, but the best way I can think of to describe this is some kind of retarded liberal's wet dream.

Peak oil kills Americans, check.
Bush gets his comeuppance, check.
The United States falls apart, check.
Christianity gets its theocracy-cum-fascist state so we can all have a good reason to blow them away, check.
Israel gets blown away. Check.
Meritocratic utopia based on science. Check!11shifteoneeleven.
Etc., check.

I kind of lost interest after reading that.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Oh man, its hilariously bad! Is the Freethought Alliance doubleplussgood? Seriously, the only way this story is readable is if you take a shot every time someone says 'Junta'.

Do you even know what a Junta is? Because you keep using that word, and I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Kodiak]

Or take a shot when the words "first contact", "insane", or "laws of physics"

[Enforcer Talen]

Hell, Im writing a paper on Bush/Police State/Peak Oil, and I had to tune you out when they found the energy millions of times more effective then oil.

Reminds me of the most paranoid intro to War40k by way of Shadowrun.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Alright, so there are a decent pile of fundamentally unworkable parts of the near-future that I'll obviously need to make some drastic changes to, thanks for the advice there.

Now, what about the latter half? Can I take the complete lack of commentary on that as an indication that you thought it was halfway-decent, or merely that the first half was so unintentionally bad that the second half looked tame in comparison?

And yeah, it was at the very least a semi-serious attempt at a plausible future storyline, but I obviously failed at that, so I'll be making quite a few changes.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Ok, looking past the badness of the first half:

The Good.
*God Machines: Cool, but I'd like to know where they came from.

The Bad.
*Lectrids: Awful. Space worms with mental powers? You say they're "Dubbed 'Lectrids' due to their strange and frightening abilities". Why? Is 'Lectrid' a slang term? Is it any more relevant than 'bellybutton'?
*Militant religious factions. We get it, you hate religion. How did they get warships in the first place, if they are fringe/splinter groups?
*Nonsense events:

Meanwhile, The Hammer of Light makes its first successful military campaign, taking out a colony of Lectrids in one of their asteroid belts. This does two things. First it reveals that there is something in asteroid belts that greatly draws the interest of Lectrids. Second, it turns most, if not all Lectrids against Terrans as a whole, and all contact from that point forward is of a hostile sort.

So, the Lectrids had an asteroid belt colony, but didn't realize it was important. Now that its gone, we they think asteroids are important... why? Also, why'd we go to war with psionic horse-worms-cosmoknights if they didn't want to fight us?

The WTF?
*Subtle Realm. Ok, I guess, but you could just call it the astral plane.
*Demons and Mind Worms. If they were always there and can hurt us NOW, why didn't they do it before?
*Sentient God-Energy radiation. Again, it MIGHT be cool if it had a point, but it sounds like you're using a Phaseworld Alien Species generator and throwing dice at it.
*If the Metalloids are basically a bio-organic ripoff of SG1 replicators, why are they called METALloids?
*Hammer of Light or Hammer of God. Pick one, or if it IS two groups, get more different names.

Honestly, it reads like four different fictional universes were in a horrible car accident and this was cobbled together from the remains.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

So did Bush live to be, ah, around 100 years old? While still in power? I mean even Pinochet lost the mental faculties to rule around 90.

Frankly you need to make sure that nobody is putting cocaine in your food before you re-write this.

And the names are very implausible. If a Christian government in the south was formed, it would be called the Confederate States of America just like the one before it. The further the "timeline" goes the less sense it makes, and it's less of a timeline than just a prospectus for an original fiction story.

[Hawkwings]

...and zombie Sherman rises from the dead at the head of his similarly zombified army to trash the South again!

[Phantasee]

I'm going to second the Duchess: make sure your Cheerios don't have any cocaine in them.

Seriously, what the fuck?

[K. A. Pital]

That can be summed up in one word... bad. Sorry.

[Steve]

They offered a simple deal to the countries they invaded: Either allow occupation and integration into the alliance (which included submitting to state-sponsored non-denominational schooling and disbanding of all state-sponsored religions), or have their borders sealed and quarantined. Citizens of resistant countries were offered open access to the alliance's benefits if they 'converted'. Otherwise, enough food and supplies to barely subsist on were allowed into quarantined countries and no more.

*has aerospace transports drop SHALO pods full of food and weapons to resisting countries, grins evilly*