I wanted to give a bit more context to our Culture. So I thought this humorous story about the first, and only, war since the Immortal era began (in full) would help.
Then I realized, that from your perspective this story will probably be quite horrifying. Well, it is only funny in hindsight I guess. Probably won't be funny for a few thousand years.
Also, was way longer than I expected. I had forgotten details until I started writing. (stupid normal brain with no implants or genetic improvements.)
As you know, there are five major Allied regions. For simplicity, I used the continents that each of them were on, but this was not 100% accurate. There are also ten smaller Trading Alliances that occasionally work together, not often though, and are not as wealthy or were not willing to invest in going to space. There standard of living is just as high, but they just focused on other areas of interest.
Each Alliance works slightly differently, but most (not all) operate more like an
Idealized version of the USA or maybe the EU. Each individual Nation makes their own goals and agendas, while the organization above them (similar to your federal government) ensures that each nation interacts fairly with other nations in the trading alliance. They also run and maintain the regional infrastructures (rail, ports, etc) and negotiate larger trade deals with other regions. But almost no authority to tell each Nation what they can or can not do.
Like I mentioned before, most people drifted to locations that best fit their personal philosophy and beliefs. The nations then made Alliances with nations that have similar
TRADE/ECONOMIC policies,
but not necessarily the same political or philosophical beliefs.
It usually works out well in a "you stay out of our yard, we stay out of your yard" kind-of way. So you could have an Ultra-Conservative Nation near an Ultra-Liberal one and never have any trouble because they rarely cross the boarder. There are also strict regulations from the Alliance prohibiting Nations from interfering in elections. Even campaign contributions result in large fines.
Most Nations are a balance of moderate positions though, as everyone still campaigns to attract new citizens. But after this long, most people have settled into their new norm and are not moving.
"International" news works differently as well. Most people only care about their own Nation so 80%+ of news is just that. Then 15% might be important events from other Nations in the Alliance. With the remaining small margin about major stories like natural disasters and world changing technological advances (that the African Alliance probably won't share for another 500 years, haha).
You can read news from other places but...... why would you? The only reason most non-Americans follow American news is because it is the best reality show on television. (
yes, that was a joke. An observational joke that is also true, but still a joke.)
With most of the important cultural stuff said lets get to it. I have changed all the names of the Nations involved. Here are the main players.
First Texanada, the Trade Alliance that had to deal with this mess. Not much to say about them, yet.
The first Nation........ Let's call them Albert, the Albertson's of Albert.
Almost everyone is a clone, but there are a few places that hold tight that "Natural Birth" is the best way to go. (the technology for "Soul" capture is still the same. The "Soul" is just implanted a lot earlier.) There is still a few clone bays for emergencies, and they still edit out genetic defects and diseases. Everything else though is all natural.
They are also......... Highly Conservative, with everyone still holding onto "gender roles" of what men and women should do. They believe in many strange things..... Remember,
everyone, and I do mean every single person who lives in Albert, all want to live like this. They chose to be Albertson's.
Albertson women are required to give birth a minimum of two times per body-life-cycle to preserve the population rate, and strongly are encourage to give more. There were certain things that were "too dangourous" for women (until they hit menopause) that men were required to do. But they are more like the
Women of Sparta from your ancient history books than an oppress people.
Then there was the Nation of Calidonia. They were the exact opposite in almost every way (except trade policy).
Albertson's are a quiet people, they don't care about what other's think about them, while the Calidonian's are loud and obnoxious. For the most part, the regular citizens only annoyed one another.
Remember that I mentioned how one of the very few 'federal' responsibilities of the Trade Alliance was to prevent Nations from interfering with one another's politics. The people of Calidonia were notorious for brazenly violating that rule. While Albert was their favorite target, they enjoyed protesting everyone, anyone, and anything they could, openly defying the Trade Alliance. There were dozens of arrests every year, but they just would not stop. Rumor even had it that 5% of Texanada's budget came from fining the Calidonian's. (Not entirely true, but it was still a very significant sum.)
The final player in all this did not even want to be a player, Zizerland. Yes, that is a play on the name
Switzerland because the Zize are neutral in all this. The Zize are not even in the Texanada Alliance, but a nearby one.
Their national boarders are even stranger. Here is a picture of
Oman. Not a perfect comparison (because they are not completely surrounded) but you get the idea. Also, they have a pan-handle section that is about 100 miles wide, similar to the Oklahoma pan-handle. They have the misfortune of siting in-between these two nations.
Everything was relatively quite for around 200 years prior. The Calidionan's would rage against Albert for "gender discrimination", Albert would file complaints about Calidonia meddling in their affairs, Calidiona would be rebuked (even other Nations who agreed with them thought they were going overboard), rinse and repeat.
But a group calling themselves the "People's Liberation Front" (PLF) decided to take more direct action. They (illegally) bought "Soul Capture Batteries", "Soul detectors/identifiers", a basic Cloning facility, and then started trying to capture the "Souls" of the Albertson women. They were unsuccessful at first.
You see, the "Soul" does not promptly leave the immediate area. It will usually hang around the area for a few weeks to a few years before heading to the "Ethereal Plane". This is a well known phenomenon to anyone in the medical community......... the PLF did not even have a Nurse around.
Also, there just was not all that many "uncontrolled" deaths. Most people die and rebirth on schedule. Accidents happen, but a rare, and usually the person lives long enough to get to the hospital. So their is almost always a Doctor or Nurse nearby, with all the equipment needed to capture the "Soul".
So, several questions about the above three paragraphs. How did the buy this stuff that was so heavily regulated? How did they plan on Cloning a human being without any training? How were they funding this stupid madness?
They bribed a company to give them the equipment for 'educational' purposes.
They believed that what you learned in General Anatomy and Health class was enough. (equivalent to your High School level education)
They told their donors that they were going to use the money to protest against Albert........... They never said how.
When they realized how much more difficult it would be; they formed a new plan, even stupider, plan.
1) Smuggle the "Batteries, Detectors/Identifiers" into Albert. (boarders are not officially as 'open' as the EU, but crime had not been an issue for centuries. There was very little in the way of boarder guards.)
2) Build a bomb with a remote trigger. They did not want to get caught in the explosion and get "Soul Captured" by the local authorities. (Reason: "Gee, I wonder why this Calidonian, who is in the country illegally, was near an explosion that killed a bunch of people.
Let's ask them.)
3) Attack a women's luncheon.
4) Capture as many women's "Souls" as they can during the chaos. (Remember, there has not been an attack for almost a millennia at this point. No one knew what to do, the local police were in disarray, it was chaos.)
5) Smugly Smuggle the "Soul Batteries" out.
6) Be worshiped as heroes....... (This did not happen.)
It actually worked, the attack went off without a hitch and the escaped back over into Calidonia, and they got to work cloning,
badly.
The Nation of Albert was in panic. This had never happened before, and there was no sign of 43 "Souls". They were not in the "Ethereal Plane", not in "Paradise", not even in "Punishment".
They saw this as an attack, but could not figure out who. Could someone have really figured out how to destroy the "Immortal Soul"? And then why attack them?
They immediately contacted Texanada for help, they sent a team immediately to investigate. They tried to keep it quiet, didn't want to cause a panic but......
Within a week, everyone in Albert knew that 43 "Souls" were missing after the explosion. Two weeks, everyone in Texanada knew. They decided to make an announcement and statement to the world to hopefully avoid a worldwide panic and arms build-up. This could lead to a war that might actually kill everyone,
They already knew that normal "Souls" were going through the usual process. People die every day, the "Soul Transfer" process was still working. They asked for help from all Alliances and Nations. For once, every Alliance agreed and wanted to help. We are Immortal, no one was wanting to lose that.
I still like to talk some smack on the Major African Alliance, they are very snooty with a superiority complex to match. But, they were the first to arrive to Albert after the announcement, and they brought everything. Their best scientists, best investigators, best equipment, they even shared everything they thought would be useful. No expense was spared.
Most other Alliances sent support was well, a few experts and a lot of money.
The attack site was still in-tacked, samples were taken but no one knew what to do with the rest. The investigators scanned every last square inch of the site, then studied everything that could possibly be related to "Souls" wandering or getting stuck even.
Video surveillance systems are almost unheard of. Almost no one commits a crime, and when someone does our memory is nearly perfect. In some serious cases, like this, they can hook-up directly to the Brain and get direct access to the memories of a "Soul". This is extremely expensive, and only 'safe-ish' at best. Not dangerous for the "Soul", but can lead to damaging the link between the "Mind" and "Soul". This would cause the person to need to recover in "Paradise" for a few years.
I did mention that no expense was spared, and Africa did bring along their best equipment specifically built just for this. But the process is still a long one, it would take months.
About 10 months after the explosion, they announced that they were unable to identify the attackers, but that the "Souls" were captured in "Batteries". A small relief, but it left so many questions.
The rest of the world was on edge for the next several months, waiting for every update. People started to actually freak out a bit.
As the investigation dragged on, updates were becoming fewer and fewer.
Albert suspected Calidonia, but had no proof. Calidonia denied involvement trying to shift the blame elsewhere. Tensions were rising.
Back with the PLF. They were hiding in a basement of one of their members.
They really had no idea what they were doing. The first clone didn't have a working liver, and the second was worse. Their genetic editing skills were non-existent.
The third cloned body, somehow, was barely functional. They transferred the first of the kidnapped "Souls" into it.
Confused, the Albertson woman tried to figure out what was going on, and insisted that she get back to her husband.
"It's OK, your in Calidonia. We freed you." The PLF 'medic' said.
Of course, the Calidonian's have a bit of a reputation for their excessive criticisms of everyone. Thinking quickly the Albertson woman pretended to thank them profusely, even though she was in great pain. A 'birth defect' caused the body to develop oversensitive nerve-endings. Every light touch on her body was agony.
She bided her time, and listened to their conspiracy theories. The usual about how Albert prevented women from moving out of the nation by force and how Texanada was aiding them. Both impossible, because the head of Texanada was in fact a woman as well, and half of the representatives were also women. Heck, even Albert had a woman representing them in the Alliance at the time (a post-menopausal woman, because women of child-bearing ability needed to stay close by in-case of an emergency need for children).
They gave her monitored 'Internet' access. She realized that no one would find them anytime soon unless she took drastic action. She was able to find a map online and asked the "therapy" guard where they were. Yes, the guard told her. Why? Because almost no one had kidnapped someone in almost a thousand years, and honestly thought she was converting to the PLF cause.
Eventually, the "therapy" guard was taken off as they thought she was now on their side. They were getting ready to finish clone number 6 and were hopeful (clones 4-10 were all useless, only one clone 'survived').
In the middle of the night, after being gone for just over a year, she escaped. With incredible determination, she managed to make it to the Zizerland boarder and found a small city.
Around 18 months after the first explosion, another explosion happened. This time, it was an explosion of rage and emotion as the Albertson woman gave the investigators her testimony and they documented how bad the cloned body really was.
Albert demanded the immediate arrest of the terrorists. Calidonia (whose government did not originally know about what the PLF was doing) refused saying that "it was their duty to liberate people under oppression."
They would later admitted that was just political grandstanding. Trying to get support and sympathy. It failed, badly.
The world had been in a near panic for almost a year. Months more worrying about the hostages, only to find out that it was Calidonia being worse than their usual self's. News stories about Calidonia past grandstanding, fines, and political interference suddenly became world wide news. Something unheard of in my era.
Then, something unbelievable happened. Texanada actually kicked Calidonia out of the Trade Alliance. Something that has never happened before or since in any region of the world.
Was it legal for them to do that? Legal scholars have since said 'technically no', but that a unanimous vote (not counting Calidonia) kind also means 'yes'.
Twenty months after the initial explosion. Calidonia was trying to grandstand, 42 of the women were still missing, and the people of Albert was done being the "quiet old man standing in the corner".
Calidonia was no longer a part of Texanada, Calidonia was stalling for time while the "Daughters of Albert" were in danger. The everyone was losing their patience.
The Prime Minister of Albert, stood on stage next to the brave woman who had escaped captivity two months earlier, and gave this simple speech.
For the sake of our friends and family.
For the sake of our liberty and freedom.
For the sake of our right to live free of fear.
We, the people of the Nation of Albert, do hereby declare war.
(translated of course)
