Kedalion

Welcome to Kedalion. The Corporate Council invites you to visit the Grand Showcase, and see what services we are able to provide. Visitors are reminded that they are responsible for their own personal and data security while on planet, and no liability is accepted by the corporations for the unsanctioned actions of any person. I am an Opti configured to help guide you through your visit - in the event of a question requiring human intelligence, I will be able to pass you on to a human operator.
- Introductory recording for the Gamma standard visitor assistant, provided to visiting diplomats and businesspeople.

• The Kedalion system has one inhabited planet, with three (uninhabited) moons. The other planets in the system are unremarkable gas giants.
• Before the war, Kedalion was a centre of industry - with particular specialisms in manufacturing, automation, and cybernetics.
• The system was also infamous for a tangled culture of corporate espionage, both within Kedalian society and against foreign businesses.
• The corporate leaders from before the war have not been seen for some time, and the planet’s day-to-day management is controlled by a series of optimisation programmes which keep the cities running according to schedule.

From the start, Kedalion was pure business - settled close to both the resource-rich Achelia, and the (at the time) wealthy Eunomia, Myriad Manufacturing Corp and their partners aimed to create an industrial and engineering powerhouse. Free from excessive regulation. Free from the constraints of an already settled planet. Free from anyone else's taxes. With some generous trade deals set up in the early days (already accompanied by allegations of corruption and espionage), Kedalion grew quickly. The executives of the corporations made more and more money, the workers kept a good enough life that it wasn't worth leaving, and the corporate espionage operatives were kept busy acquiring or destroying secrets, technology, prototypes, and people.

By the time of The Ananke Conference, Kedalion was ruled over by a council formed of representatives from the various corporations with an interest there - their representation proportional to their contribution to the economy. The three big players were Myriad Manufacturing (the founders of the settlement, and still the largest corporate interest there), Opti Automation Solutions (a close second) and NewYou (a distant third, specialising in cybernetic enhancement). Much of the day to day running of operations was handled by “optis” (or “optimisation engines”), not true artificial intelligences, but programs which could optimise towards a preprogrammed set of goals and priorities, taking into account all the data available and any preset limits. The leap to a true AI - which could change its goals in response to a changing situation - was never made.

Soon after the Ananke conference, Kedalion announced a new corporate strategy and the development of a new set of optimisation processes to improve Kedalion’s strategic position. These included the adoption of a series of new governance opti programmes, responsible for different areas. These optis were called Mother, Oracle, Housing, Security, Recreation, Education, Health, Research and Cyber Security. It is notable that the Security was never activated, as it interfered with the parameters of the optis already running on the planet.

The planet also began gearing up for war. A number of Kedalion agents had struck a deal with the Tungsten Roses at the conference, promising to work together against Klaycorp. The combination of Kedalion’s resources and the Roses’ conviction and tactics, the tides were very quickly turned against Klaycorp, and the three major Kedalion corporations were all able to set up bases of operation of the planet. The expanded productive capacity helped when Kedalion invaded Cheimeros, though the war was still slow and bloody.

Meanwhile, at home, the first “enhanced” were slowly becoming known to the public - people with Optis integrated to a high level into their neural pathways, encouraged by the new set of optis. Five years after the new governing optis were first brought online, a voting system was brought as well. This allowed people to modify the priorities of the Optis, broadly regarded as a positive change.

However, it has led to disagreements between the Enhanced and non-enhanced Kedalions on two fronts. First, there is a perception that because the Enhanced have generally better and faster network access, they have more voting power. Second, there is a constant debate as to when Enhancement should be performed on biologically born Kedalions - proponents of early enhancement point out the quality of life benefits, and the fact that enhanced “Jupes” (artificially grown humans) have a better integration with their enhancements than those born later in life; opponents reject the parent’s right to consent on their child’s behalf for such a life-changing decision.

Factories cover large portions of the planet, churning out an endless supply of weapons. However, many of the factories have been moved to external locations, such as asteroids and satellites. The planet has suffered somewhat from the conflict with Klaycorp, and more from the conflict with Cheimeros, who have not been above employing what are, effectively, terror tactics on the planet.

The people live in cities, many of the purpose-built in the early stages of the war. Living conditions are not exactly spacious, but nor are they so cramped as to allow disease and misery to spread. Smaller dwellings tend to make up for it by having good access to services and jobs. All citizens are educated to a good standard and provided with basic resources. Entertainment is available, mostly in the form of streams pirated from Kybele, and each skyscraper has an exercise suite to keep people in good health. Any may seek employment in order to afford greater luxuries.

Trade and manufacturing are conducted by the individual corporations of Kedalion, rather than centrally by the Optis Occasional proposals are put forward to centralise these, but there is (unsurprisingly) a large amount of resistance from the corporations, who see it as a severe encroachment on their freedom to operate.

There are still rough areas of the cities where gangs are active, and corporate espionage agents still steal secrets from other planets or corporations. While Enhancement theoretically has some ability to prevent the Enhanced from committing crimes, the restrictions on surveillance through augmentations or direct control of augmented individuals make this rather toothless - and most would-be criminals will just hack these functions out, anyway. This is tolerated provided the crimes remain low-level, but there are occasionally harsh crackdowns if regions of the cities become too violent. A notable example of this is the Menageris uprising, who smashed several living units in protest at what they called the ‘surveillance state’. The gang members were quickly removed from the situation and put in ‘Ultimate Safety Bunkers’ for their own protection. This stuck many people as odd, as the Ultimate Safety Bunkers had otherwise been reserved for Kedalion’s elite of executives.

Little has been heard from the bunkers, but occasionally hackers from the Menagerie manage to get some contact with the outside world. The picture within is one of absolute safety, with any possible hazard removed from the environment and inhabitants often sedated if they attempt anything remotely dangerous - or controversial.

The general population of Kedalion lives in carefully planned cities, and most eat the nutrient mush rations which are supplied from automated farms outside the cities and made from crops carefully engineered to be nutritionally complete. The joke is that these are enough for you to survive on, calculated down to the calorie, by some Opti which has been told to keep everyone alive at the lowest cost possible. This doesn’t seem to be entirely accurate, as the nutrient paste does at least come in a few different flavours, and various entertainments are provided. Black market farms and food smuggling were rife for a while, but tightened security measures have made this difficult. Often, the people can be found in the small stretches of park land between the tower blocks - either participating in communal tech projects (and trying to be the first to run off with the idea and sell it to one of the corporations), or just enjoying the dubiously fresh air.

Over the past few years, more and more people have opted for the enhancements offered by the Opti programmes, to the point where anyone without the upgrades is immediately seen as suspicious and locked out of a number of positions. These enhancements allow the person to access all manner of information, to offload any logical deduction or calculation to the Opti, and even to allow the Opti to take control for physical tasks (e.g. allowing the Opti to handle thing like walking to a destination, or manual tasks requiring little in the way of creativity). New features have been added - easier communication between people, almost to the point of telepathy, the ability to visualise projections of others, allowing people to interact even over great distances.

At the present time, most Enhanced are still those born biologically, who later take the implants. However, Research has also created “Jupes” - artificial “vat-grown” humans, who have integrated enhacements. They are functionally the same as those born biologically, except that they have access to their Enhancement abilities from birth, which makes them much more comfortable in the new world. Biologically born humans can only get Enhanced at 15, though this age tends to move lower every few years as the Enhancements become more and more a part of everyday life.

Most executives of smaller corporations spend their time reassuring the public at large that they are still in charge, and this is all for their own good in the long run, but their assurances fall mostly on deaf ears. The Executives of the larger corporations spent most of the war in heavily fortified bunkers, allowing Optis to manage their day-to-day operations, but have now emerged and are once again taking control of their companies - though greater opti integration has led people to question the level of control they really have.