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New frontiers or new battlegrounds? |
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Few will deny that 2020 was a year of turmoil and transition. The year started out on a bright, hopeful note when NASA astronauts caried out their official groundbreaking for the Mars Chryse Base (January 28). President Elizabeth Kress called this "the beginning of a new era". Back on Earth, reality quickly settled back in as the World Health Organization identified the bukavu virus as a world threat, as cases were reported in South America as well as Africa (February 12). Just days later, riots in Quito, Ecuador claimed 5,000 lives, leading to a declaration of martial law and harsh sanctions. A small revolution followed; by March, the government was in serious danger. A small force of U.S. cybersoldiers were used to assasinate the leaders of the revolution; this action has been touted as an "example of the new spirit of cooperation between American states", but many criticized it as an American attempt to gain access to South American resources. Regardless, the outcome results in pledges from the government of Ecuador to help control the flow of drugs north. This follows the single largest yearly growth in drug smuggling ever, as the drug cartels decide that the U.S. is unwilling to risk a Third Central American Conflict. The rest of the year sees small joint actions to curtail the drug problem.
Elsewhere in the world, tensions continue to mount on Cyprus, but a threatened European Community embargo of the island brings both sides back to the bargaining table (March 7). Such a threat is ignored two months later in the Czech Republic, as General Skroup led his "People's Army for a New Order" in a coup of the government (May 16). Although the EC descried the revolution, the Kremlin supported it, allowing the government to continue. Reports of powerful corporate backers has not been confirmed. In Asia, Li Chin, the boss of the Wo Shih Wo triad, is killed in Hong Kong. Speculations run high about the identity of the killers. His nephew, Li Pai Shung, seizes control and immediatly contracts with Arasaka security for protection. During this time, intra-Triad strife tears Hong Kong and Los Angeles apart (May 5-May 29). The Aboriginal Party wins a majority in Australia for the first time in June, prompting an immediate corporate protest that the elections were rigged. On August 5, large tracts of corporate land belonging to Petrochem, Orbital Air, and Biotechnica were nationalized as "lands originally reserved by the Bleakly Act of 1929". Despite a wave of corporate protests and lawsuits, the action carries. Threats by Petrochem to stop oil and CHOOH shipments are headed off by a deal reached with Orbital Air for very favorable tax rates on the Cape York spaceport.
On the corporate side, the world economy continued to grow. The new bukavu-1 vaccine, released on June 15, led to an 8% jump in Biotechnica stock, making it the single largest one-day increase of the year for a Top 100 corporation. The stock did slip back 3% in September as the bukavu-2 vaccine proved unstable; the resulting lawsuit marked the first successful suit against Biotechnica on the basis of insufficient testing in eight years. Orbital Air announced in August that the Capetown spaceport would be closed to non-corporate/ non-government traffic due to an outbreak of bukavu-1 on the newly completed Paradise Station (O'Neill 3). The shutdown was prompted by ESA fears that a bukavu-2 outbreak in such close quarters could decimate the station population and then easily spread to other habitats. The shutdown limited the influx of workers who were planned to complete the interior of Paradise Station, as these workers were mostly African. Meanwhile, new bio/ cyberware designs by Hydrosubsidium, Galt, OTEC, CINO, and IHAG promise to make the oceans as fully accessible as the deserts. A thirty-nation consortum signs the Oceanic Treaty Act of 2020, which confirms the twelve-mile limit for territoriality (October 2). The move is protested by several groups, including Greenpeace, as "an act designed to give the seafloors to the corporations". However, the five corporations most involved in ocean development meet in Honolulu, where they pledge to "develop the Earth's oceans in a way to provide the maximum benefit for all her people". (Amanda Russell, CEO, OTEC)(November 20). In December, IHAG's announcement of a new hardshell suit is met by a lawsuit from CINO, who claimed that the design was stolen from their Marseilles lab.
On October 14, a joint Soviet-ESA mission reached Mars and announced their intention to build a permanent base at Utopia Planitia. A month later, equipment failures caused power outages at night for the team, who would have died had American engineers from Chryse not provided sufficient spare parts to repair the equipment. The gesture is hailed as a "return to the days of Euro-American friendship and cooporation". On December 4, NASA pronounced its newest deep-space explorer, the Athena, flight-ready. It is planned to depart for Jupiter on January 14, making it (if successful) the first manned mission to the outer solar system. Its sister ship, the Artemis, is planned to be completed by the end of 2022.
