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.
• Kedalion now is run by an assortment of computer programmes that work in tandem with each other to improve the lives of Kedalion citizens.

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 not yet made.

Following the Ananke Conference, Kedalion made a number of changes to its corporate strategy. First, following a deal struck with Achelia’s Tungsten Roses, the planet went to war against Klaycorp. The combination of Kedalion’s resources and the Roses’ conviction and tactics meant that the tides were very quickly turned against Klaycorp, and the coalition swept quickly to victory. Kedalion were able to push a number of concessions from Achelia, and set up a large number of factories on the planet’s surface.

Meanwhile, back at home, the governing council implemented a new set of governance processes to improve life on Kedalion. 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, Economy and Cyber Security. The Security Opti was designed to take over from the previous ‘War’ opti that had been in use while Kedalion was actively at war with Achelia. Following the Klaycorp victory, the new opti was set up to go.

The first five years after the introduction of these new optis were a time of radical change on the planet. The CEOs of the old ‘Big Three’ corporations were taken out, paving the way for the Economy opti to consolidate Kedalian industry. In a notable change from previous policy, the new opti placed a significant emphasis on both citizens’ quality of life, and the planet’s environment. Economy was able to consolidate a large number of the old corporations, with any who significantly resisted being pushed deep into the black market or simply wiped out.

After five years, a voting system was brought online to allow people to modify the priorities of the optis, making Kedalion a more democratic place, responsive to the needs of its citizens.

However, this was not without its controversies. At around the same time as the reforms, 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. While becoming enhanced is entirely optional, here is a perception that because the Enhanced have generally better and faster network access, they have more voting power. Broadly, however, the reforms made are well regarded and seen to have improved Kedalion signficantly.

Where Kedalion was once ruled by a number of squabbling megacorps, society is broadly governed by just one, Kedalion Inc. Much of the planet’s day-to-day governance is managed by the Optis which work to keep the planet going, though the fact that true AI has not yet been developed means that human input is still needed.

Kedalion Inc. has a number of divisions managing different aspects of production and technological development. The four most significant branches are:

• Cybernetics (commonly referred to as “The Menagerie”) - Headed by Melissa Hive
• Biological enhancement and engineering (commonly referred to as “JUPITER”) - headed by Daphne Jupiter
• Manufacturing (commonly referred to as “Myriad” - though this is officially discouraged due to the association with the outlawed corporation) - headed by Ann Lopez
• Opti Development (commonly referred to as “Persona”) - headed by Nix Ralone


The divisions tend to work closely together - with Persona, the Menagerie, and JUPITER each contributing to parts of the Enhancement system, for example, and Myriad producing the cybernetics designed by the Menagerie. Myraid operates mainly from Kedalion’s moons to spare the planet the ravages of the waste products from manufacturing, and there is still plenty of capacity for Myriad to expand and produce (not to mention, the lower gravity has allowed developments for some improved manufacturing techniques).

Persona is rumoured to be close to a breakthrough in creating a “true AI” - the details of this have been kept very quiet, but rumour has it that it involved experiments with a Chronos machine (though one set up to have no causal effect).

People live in purpose-built cities, designed by the Optis in the early stages of their activation to be pleasant places to live. Green spaces are limited, but growing in abundance, and there is plenty of space for leisure. Housing is not particularly spacious, but it is well designed, and ensures access to services and jobs. While all citizens are educated to a good standard and provided with the means of survival, any who desire greater luxury are guaranteed paid employment to acquire it.

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.

The Enhanced are one of the most significant features of Kedalion at present. Enhancement is a voluntary operation to integrate the individual with their optis. Enhancement comes with a number of benefits, including:

• External memory storage - more like a fully immersive vlog than true memories, this is essentially just a record of sensory inputs, with very little context included. Memory sharing has grown popular in recent years, and a market for other people’s experiences has grown rapidly.
• Access to information - as well as immediate access to the internet, Enhanced can use their Optis to collate information on any topic and load it directly into their brains.
• Automation - the Opti can take over certain primarily mechanical functions, such as walking or eating, leaving the Enhanced to think about other things. For example, one could set one’s body to autopilot when walking across a city, and spend the time watching a stream instead.
• Communication - any Enhanced can communicate with any other Enhanced, to an almost telepathic degree, over great distances (assuming they are in range of the appropriate comms relays!)
• Full immersion VR - The Opti can project onto all senses, allowing “deep dive” simulation for replaying memories, or entirely crafted experiences.
• Crime bprevention - the Opti will log any crimes the Enhanced commits. This has led to those who have enhancements being seem as inherently more trustworthy - though, of course, this restriction is easy enough to hack out if you know the right people.
• The psYber filter - a visual filter which causes the Enhanced to view everything through an ‘artistic’ lens, to an almost psychedelic degree. It also comes with a number of pop-ups, generally talking about the artistic merits of the thing the Enhanced is viewing, though sometimes displaying random works of art or, occasionally, adverts.

Although officially an intended feature of Enhancement, many suspect that psYber is actually a piece of malware placed in the software at its creation. PsYber is enabled by default on all enhancements, and can only be turned off for a fee. However, numerous hacks exist which enable anyone with sufficient technological awareness to have it turned off for far less than the original fee. Of course, there are also plenty of people who enjoy the effect, and leave it on intentionally! Largely, those who pay the fee are businesspeople who have a mistrust of hackers.

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 enhancements. 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.