CREATION OF THE CORE, OR THE FIRST EXPANSION

 

The Human race had made a number of ever larger forays into space, colonising first planets in their own solar system, and then outside the solar system. With the breakdown of nations, corporations, collectives and new worlders led the way into the stars, although admittedly with predominately capitalistic, econo-communist, or third-world emergent ideologies stamped upon the early, tentative steps towards colonisation.

 

A number of factors was to trigger the explosive attempt to colonise other worlds at pace, the First Expansion. It was a combination of technological availability, chiefly in the forms of early hyperspace travel, and aggressive and vastly improved terra-formation abilities. Where terra-forming did not work, genetic manipulation (to advance into bioartificery) was to take preference. Coupled with popular discontent with the corporations themselves as well as the now-collapsing political nation-states, a new sense of adventure, and a desire to escape the early colonial wars and political systems, the human race suddenly began to expand aggressively and rapidly into a vast number of solar systems.

 

The psychological impact of the destruction of much of Earth’s populated centres is often seen by historians as the touch-paper which lit the desire of the human race to seek a new life, on new worlds.

 

The long, great colonial expansion was to take place over decades. With the ability to terra-form a planet or genhance your populace, to have cities established in hours, and to reach those planets in the blink of an eye, rapid expansion was inevitable. The only restriction was population number – which was being accelerated by cloning and simulated humans – and the ability to collect or harvest the now abundant resources and create the material needed.

 

Eventually, over a long period of time – which in itself saw the rise of the Tyrant Ascici – the Core and Outer Core regions of space were settled. In future expansions, it would become known simply as the Core, with some of the Outer Core giving birth to the earthwards (or corewards) Mid-Sectors region we know today.

 

There was a long period of peace, with the exception of what was happening around the Sol System and early colony systems, but it was not to last. As colonists became more desperate, colonising worlds that were not suitable, new viewpoints began to arise and political divisions were created. Humankind sought freedom in escaping to the stars, but inevitably it made sense for distant worlds to be ruled by the person who had set up the colony. Autocracies began to appear once more almost immediately, collective democracies just not working in the often harsh environments of a colony. The Tyrant Ascici who oversaw Earth’s sudden attempt to reclaim many of the colonies, and certainly succeeded to an extent, also succeeded in cementing the autocratic, rule-of-one over a colony.

 

It was the biggest expansion of the three known-to-date, and the fourth which is showing early signs of beginning. It certainly covered a large region of space, and broke new ground. The human race’s approach was never going to be the same.

 

This was the First Expansion.