Steven Kent: The Clone Betrayal

In 2001, I became acquainted with one of the world’s last Renaissance men, an American who speaks Portuguese like a Brazilian, plays the piano like a concert pianist, and knows how to frame his own home. When the retention pond beside his house became choked, he hopped into a Bobcat and dug it out. When I asked him how he learned to operate heavy equipment, he responded, “It really isn’t that hard.” He said the same thing when he finished restoring a classic Austin Healey: “It really wasn’t that hard.”

John Thorpe’s long list of skills goes well beyond carpentry, auto restoration, music, linguistics, landscaping, and driving a backhoe; it also extends to human renewal. I know this for a fact. My entire family has benefited from his talents.

We have a wretched, motley crew in the Fleet. The Marines, the refuse of every regiment, and the seamen, few of them ever wet with salt water.

Following the examples of Chevrolet, Oracle, IBM, and ConAgra Foods, Microsoft moves its headquarters from the United States to Shanghai. Microsoft executives maintain that their company has long been a global corporation and remains dedicated to the United States; but with its burgeoning economy, China has become Microsoft’s most important market.

Even though Toyota and Hyundai increase manufacturing activities in the United States—because of the favorable cheap labor conditions—the U.S. economy becomes dependent on the shipping of raw materials and farm goods.

Bottoming out as the world’s twelfth largest economy behind China, Korea, India, Cuba, the European Economic Community, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Africa, Israel, and Unincorporated France, the United States government focuses on maintaining its position as the world’s only remaining military superpower.

Armadillo Aerospace announces the discovery of broadcast physics, a new technology capable of translating matter into data waves that can be transmitted to any location instantaneously. This opens the way for pangalactic exploration without time dilation and the dangers of light-speed travel.

By the end of 2030, the United States creates the first-ever fleet of self-broadcasting ships, a scientific fleet designed to locate planets for colonization. When initial scouting reports suggest that the rest of the galaxy is uninhabited, politicians fire up public sentiment with talk about “manifest destiny” and spreading humanity across space.

The discovery of broadcast physics leads to the creation of the Broadcast Network—a galactic superhighway consisting of satellite dishes that send and receive ships across the galaxy. The Broadcast Network ushers in the age of galactic expansion.

With the growth of its space-based economy, the United States reclaims its spot as the wealthiest nation on Earth. Russia and Korea become the first nations to sign the IGTA (Intergalactic Trade Accord), a treaty created by the United States that opens the way for nations to become self-governing American territories and enjoy full partnership in the space-based economy.

Hoping to consolidate its position as the sole nation colonizing space, the United States issues an open invitation for all nations to join the IGTA. Several nations, most notably China and Afghanistan, refuse to sign the IGTA, which leads to a minor world war, in which the final holdouts are coerced into signing the treaty.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population is eventually sent to establish colonies throughout the galaxy.

In an effort to demonstrate that the IGTA is a unilateral entity rather than an extension of the United States, the organization changes its name to “The Unified Authority.”

Deemed inadequate for governing the galactic expansion, the U.S. Constitution is replaced by a new manifesto merging principles from the Constitution with concepts from Plato’s Republic . In accordance with Plato’s ideals, society is broken into three strata—citizenry, defense, and governance.

With forty self-sustaining colonies across the galaxy, Earth becomes the political center of the republic. The eastern sea-board of the United States becomes an ever-growing capital city populated by a political class—families appointed to run the government in perpetuity.

Earth also becomes home to the military class. After some experimentation, the Unified Authority adopts an all-clone conscription model to fulfill its growing need for soldiers. Clone farms euphemistically known as “orphanages” are established around Earth. These orphanages produce more than a million cloned recruits per year.

The military does not commission clone officers. Officers are drafted from the ruling class. When the children of politicians are drummed out of school or deemed unsuitable for politics, they are sent to officer-candidate school in Australia.

On October 29, 2452, a date later known as “the new Black Tuesday,” a fleet of scientific exploration ships vanishes in the “galactic eye” region of the Norma Arm.

Fearing an alien attack, the U.A. Senate calls for the creation of the Galactic Central Fleet, a self-broadcasting armada. Work on the Galactic Central Fleet is completed in 2455 and the fleet travels to the Inner Curve, where it vanishes as well.

Having authorized the development of a top secret line of cloned soldiers called “Liberators,” the Linear Committee—the executive branch of the U.A. government—approves sending an invasion force into the Galactic Eye to attack all hostile threats. The Liberators discover a human colony led by Morgan Atkins, a powerful senator who disappeared with the Galactic Central Fleet. The Liberators overthrow the colony, but Atkins and many of his followers escape in G.C. Fleet ships.

Over the next fifty years, a religious cult known as the Morgan Atkins Believers—“Mogats”—spreads across the 180 colonized planets, preaching independence from Unified Authority government.

In 2510, spurred on by the growing Morgan Atkins movement, four of the six galactic arms declare independence from Unified Authority governance.

On March 28, 2512, the combined forces of the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization and the Morgan Atkins Believers defeat the Earth Fleet and destroy the Broadcast Network, effectively cutting the government off from its loyal colonies and Navy.

Believing they have crippled the Unified Authority, the Mogats then turn on their Confederate Arms allies in an attempt to take control of the renovated Galactic Central Fleet. The Confederates manage to hold on to approximately fifty ships and join forces with the Unified Authority, leaving the Mogats with more than four hundred self-broadcasting ships, the most powerful attack force in the galaxy.

Under U.A. leadership, the combined forces stage a counterattack on the Mogat home world destroying the entire Mogat Navy and leaving no survivors on the planet.

At the heart of Morgan Atkins’s doctrine was a claim that aliens he referred to as “Space Angels” planned to invade the Milky Way. The U.A. government, however, dismisses Atkins as a crackpot, ignoring warnings of alien sightings during the invasion of the Mogat home world.