Today, March 29, 2029, the Santeau Group (NYSE: SVE) is acknowledged as the largest transnational in the world with an employee base of over 5 million people worldwide (110 countries), and an economy larger than most countries. Their interests range from agriculture to environmental services, but mostly they specialize in infrastructure development and resource management. This giant, however, was born from humbler beginnings.
Santeau was formed in France in the early 1970’s as a waste management company. They barely kept their head above water with small garbage collection contracts and construction projects. In the late 1970’s Santeau won a contract to partially rebuild the crumbling Paris sewer system, despite grumblings of bid under-cutting. More controversy followed. Union concerns questioned their use of cheap immigrant labor, while rumors of cheap materials swirled through the media. The project was a success, though, and the company parlayed its earnings into a number of water treatment and supply contracts throughout France and neighboring countries. The contracts proved to be quite lucrative.
Growth
Santeau’s initial successes allowed them to quickly grow into an international company. Their early strategy for growth and a prosperous future was the acquisition of land—great swaths of cheap land in various countries around the world. Useless land, it was thought. Land in the middle of nowhere. However, much of the acreage was lying atop fresh water aquifers.
By the early 2000’s, Santeau Water was the major water treatment and supply conglomerate on the globe and controlled much of the planet’s fresh water. The Water Wars were already won before they had ever begun.
For the next 25 years Santeau Environmental acquired smaller companies and influence. Their expansion was meteoric and their rise funded many fortunes. When the dart’s population boomed beyond the 10 billion mark, Santeau was in position to take advantage. They diversified. Agriculture was the new game and they had thousands of acres of land ready to be cultivated.
Their water distribution infrastructure already in place, Santeau effectively became the world leader in food production and distribution virtually overnight. The Santeau Group was formed.
Future Vision
By the 2020’s The Santeau Group had become an all-encompassing multi-national with holdings the world over. Their most lucrative decision was to expand their interest into infrastructure construction and civil engineering, specializing in post-conflict areas and war-torn nations.
Santeau helped rebuild and rehabilitate critical human infrastructure in the Middle East after the Pan-Arab invasion of Israel. They are helping Australia attempt to recover from the civil war that has ravaged that country. However, those projects pale in comparison to the work being done by Santeau in the wake of the Aug Incident.
Their worldwide network was perfectly placed to deal with the global catastrophe and, according to most economics pundits, The Santeau Group has grown more in the last two years than in its first 50 years—this despite the controversial decision to keep and even increase their augmented workforce.
It remains to be seen what the future holds for a megacorporation whose revenues, if converted to GDP, would rank it as the 3rd richest nation in the world.
The Inconvenient Aug
By Talos Rucker
Chapter 2: Hope and Uplift – Potential Unealized
At the time when Hugh Darrow and his team were perfecting the PEDOT technology, en route to redefining the very face of Humanity as we knew it, a fundamental mistake was committed, with only the most noblest of intentions, which, as we came to understand the ramifications of this new technology, proved to be the very exemplar of ‘damning by definition’: They called the resulting prosthetics ‘Augmentations’.
In a very short while, this weighted term became the discussion: embraced by those who sought out this technology for their own purposes, and rejected with equal passion by those who opposed it.
In the process, the social discourse lost all perspective of the myriad uses of augmentation technology in medicine, the awe-inspiring depth and breadth of what we could accomplish, if the governments, societies, and medical communities of the world would only capitalise on Augmentation technology’s staggering possibilities.
Chapter 5: Ignorance and Misattribution
During the Incident, I became convinced that those around me were ghosts, the angry spirits of the dead, returning to this plane to drag me into the afterlife with them. I remember hiding myself, helplessly cowering and whimpering.
Every first-hand account from that day describes an underlying paranoid delusion. But cognitive dissociation is inconsistent with the prevailing model of bioelectric synaptic override that forms the basis of the overwhelming majority of theories as to the cause of the tragedy. It was not our bodies that were taken over: It was our minds.
Our endocrine systems were afflicted, subsequently poisoning our perceptions, and leading to the actions that were taken. There is no existing theory which acknowledges this, and therefore all speculation as to the Incident’s origin begins in the wrong place, and can only go further afield from there. For some reason, the accounts of the Augmented are universally ignored.
Chapter 12: The Illusion of Technological Solutions
Many of the propositions put before the United Nations to resolve the Augmentation Divide involve the application of new or pre-existing technology. The most prominent and popular of these ‘solutions’ is the Limited Chip, a mandatory microchip implanted into every Augmented person which would be capable of deactivating the person’s augmentations in the event of ‘disruptive behaviour’.
The potential for abuse inherent in such a situation is staggering. Who will define what constitutes ‘disruptive behaviour’? Then, how will that definition be applied? And by whom? One of the most sacred tenets of all Humanity is that every person’s body is his or her own: Giving anyone the ability to paralyze someone else with little more than a thought is antithetical to the very notion of Freedom itself!
The answer lies not with technology, which divides us, but in our Humanity, which unites us.
Chapter 17: One Future For All Humanity
In the nanotechnological future discussed in previous chapters lies a lesson for all of us, in that nanotechnology will enhance human capability, tapping into our limitless and magnificent potential.
The human mind is the greatest computational device the world has ever experienced, not only in the impressive reach of our rational and deductive abilities, but also in our capacity for less-empirical concepts such as love. Love is infinite. Hope is infinite. And Understanding is also infinite.
When we apply to the problem of the Augmentation Divide our boundless capacity for empathy with our fellow Human Beings, the seemingly-insurmountable intricacies of the situation cannot help but be revealed for the minuscule challenges they are, with solutions both simple and obvious. We have but to open our minds – and our hearts – and all will be made manifest.
Hi, this is a comment.
To get started with moderating, editing, and deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard.
Commenter avatars come from Gravatar.