✎ kedalion [chronos]

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======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.
  * Following the War, Kedalion is scarred both from planetary bombardment and from the waste produced by those facilities.
  * 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.

=====A history of Kedalion=====

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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. This included the adoption of an opti called JUPITER by OAS and NewYou cybernetics. JUPITER’s focus was developing new ways of integrating people with optis and other augmentations. At around the same time, the MOTHER programme - an integrated feature of the broader JUPITER scheme - was also announced. The role of the MOTHER programme was to look after the wellbeing of the Kedalian populace, a move welcomed by human rights activists concerned about the potential effects of growing optimisation. 

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 JUPITER programme. Progress on Kedalion over the past twenty years has moved at a breakneck speed, with the combination of uncanny foreknowledge and the JUPITER and MOTHER programmes.

=====Kedalion now=====

Factories cover huge swathes of the planet, but now that Kedalion is not actively at war many of these are being dismantled or repurposed. The planet bears some scars from the war against Klaycorp, but only a few strikes ever landed in the Kedalion system. 

{{ :ryan-morgan-industrial-wasteland.jpg?200|}}

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 - and under the guidance of Nix Ralone, OAS Vice President of Forward Strategy programme, projects are underway to improve them. People live in tall tower blocks run and monitored by the cities’ optimisation systems, with each individual allotted a living space with a specified number of square feet and regular deliveries of nutrient paste and sanitation products. 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.

A lot of human care is taken care of by the MOTHER programme. MOTHER looks after the populace of Kedalion, gently watching over them at all times like a mother should. She usually takes the form of a hologram, but she can also take the form of a bald, slender android body using reserves of a liquid plastic. She is frequently praised for her kindness and mercy by Kedalian citizens, and immigrants to Kedalion will almost always be showered with gifts and praise upon entering the system for the first time. She is so kind, in fact, that people are known to find her quite unnerving if they meet her directly; she says herself she has no favourite children, and her love is so absolutely unconditional that people call it inhuman. She is, of course, very hurt by this and continues to watch the people she frightens from a safe distance.

The wider JUPITER network is in charge of ensuring order is kept throughout the planet. JUPITER is focused on creating a planet where everyone has access to education, healthcare, employment, and entertainment.  While people are mostly free, any of the enhanced who attempt criminal acts will find that their muscles cease to obey them, and the police are quickly dispatched.

Of course, criminals are always more creative, and in the old slums there are many who reject such a controlled society, and install patches to remove the anti-crime restrictions.  This is somewhat 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 the lack of personal freedom. 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. 

There are rumours that a few of the most violent criminals on Kedalion have been locked in a single room for years, confined but fed and watered, with a MOTHER hologram desperately asking them every day to talk to her about their feelings. There are also rumours that, if you’re cybernetically enhanced in the right ways, the Opti can sometimes be heard wailing a sequence of numbers. Nobody knows what these numbers mean, but anyone who hears them always cites the same sequence - commonly taken to be some sort of ID tag.

=====The people of Kedalion=====

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 JUPITER programme, 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.

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.
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