A Guide to Caribe 2300

Caribe in Brief

By the dawn of the 21^st century, most of the English speaking territories of the Caribbean Sea were independent. Most were tiny sovereign states, each on its own too small to have more than a negligible influence on the world at large. The region was, for the most part, not wealthy but not poor, and stable. In 1983, the United States demonstrated in Grenada the lengths it would go to ensure local stability. Although not appreciated for its historical import until dispassionate analysis decades later, Grenada played a pivotal role in the Cold War. Grenada was the high water mark- the last nation to fall under communism’s yoke and the first nation from which that yoke was lifted. On this tropical isle, the tide turned, and within a decade, humanity’s fear of an all consuming conflagration between the powers of East and West had dissipated. Although the small island nations, especially Dominica, had been the strongest advocates of the military operation on Grenada, this was perceived (Correctly) as an American affair. The American guarantee of local sovereignty, a tradition of liberal British administration, and the small island populations, kept the Caribbean nations free from undue political stress. Their economies were limited by the lack of resources as well as capitol, and especially by long, idle decades as colonies, during which time support from their mother countries worked against the development of local economic strength. At the turn of the 21^st century, most were still dependent on cash crops and the tourist trade, two economic sectors that, while providing income to an under-educated populace, doom a nation’s economy to be a mere sideshow, helplessly linked to the markets of the major powers. Several factors were to come into play during the next century to change all that.

First, there was the slow, steady move towards regionalism. Even in the 20^th century there had been some moves toward greater regional unity, such as the short-lived Federation of the West Indies, and numerous local organizations. Problems such as the Banana War (strictly an economic matter resolved without a shot fired, but another highly consequential event unappreciated at its time) at the close of the 20^th century showed the Caribbean people the economic weakness implicit in their political disunity. In military operations in both Grenada and Haiti the Caribbean nations fielded joint military forces, albeit as tokens in political support of the United States. But such were the seeds that were planted, and throughout the 21^st century the citizens of these tiny nations came to think of themselves more as Caribbean and less as Jamaicans, Bahamanians, or Grenadians. Second, there was the deprivation of the Twilight years. Tourism dwindled and the markets for sugar cane and bananas dwindled. The rising sea level encroached upon land, a commodity already in short supply. It became apparent that the future would be bleak unless the cooperated much more closely than they ever had before. The Caribbean Federation went from a paper dream to a reality, with most of the local nations signing in 2023. Within a few decades there was talk of unification into a single country. There were strong economic gains to be made from such a move, not the least of which would be the coordination of government services, and the major downside appeared to be the loss of a large number of mostly ignored seats in the now largely defunct United Nations.

There was a moderate amount of popular resistance to such a move, and the Mexican government made a strategic blunder in thinking it could capitalize on such feelings to invade Jamaica in 2056. The official Mexican line was that the invasion was necessary to preserve Jamaica as a sovereign nation by preventing its impending annexation by the Caribbean Federation. The move backfired. The Mexicans were defeated by the Caribbean Federation, which enjoyed a tidal wave of popular support, as well as assistance from the United States, Texas, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The war was a bloody one, and crystallized the future of the Caribbean Federation. In 2063 the Caribbean Federation was dissolved, and in its place was the new nation of Caribe. Caribe eventually incorporated all the English and Dutch speaking islands of the Caribbean, as well as Haiti. The United States had already abandoned its Caribbean territories and the United Kingdom and the Netherlands ceded theirs in 2072 as acts of goodwill. Only France maintained its possessions, and although this has always been a thorn in the side of French-Caribe relations, there has been strong regional cooperation, especially evident in the completion of the Trans-Caribbean Causeway.

The Caribe population is now estimated at over 15 million. It remains a member of the Commonwealth, as many of the pre-unification island nations were, although upon the signing of the document establishing Caribe all but one of the assorted Governors-General were summarily given the pink slip as a way of demonstrating the new nations strong view of self sovereignty. The standard of living is lower than in the more developed nations, but the people of Caribe define standard of living a bit differently. An office worker in Osaka, Strassbourg, or Milwaukee certainly has far more purchasing power than the typical Caribe citizen, but the latter can look forward to lying back on a beach after a short and relatively low stress workday, enjoying the tropical climate. The majority live on Earth, but Caribe has three off planet settlements, to the endless amazement of the true spacegoing powers. None are up to colony status, nor will they be in the foreseeable future. All three have been placed on small islands. Not only does it give the Caribbeans a familiar setting, but the settlements are placed on non-controversial, uncontested land. The oldest was placed in 2256, on Tirane, with American and British help. In homage to their island homes, many of which were named after saints, and in the traditional of the Caribbean people never taking themselves too seriously, the new settlement was named Saint Tyraine. The Vatican duly complained that there was no such saint. The Caribbeans didn’t care, the name stuck. The second settlement was on Chengdu, near Shaoguan. Again, this was placed on an offshore island, this time with Canadian assistance. This settlement appears to have been placed without much planning, and everyone but the Caribbeans now consider it a failure. The third is an element of the Life Colony on Austins’s World. The Life Foundation’s colony was placed on an island archipelago, and the Caribbean people are very experienced at archipelago living. That led to a successful natural cooperation with the Life Foundation. The Foundation, for its part, is interested in expanding the human civilization in space. It made sense to them to work with a nation which would not otherwise be able to get off world, rather than those powers already capable of establishing colonies.

Caribe is not a front running power and never will be, but the national will to make themselves known goes back a long way. They have an optimistic spirit that leads them, since prior to unification, to field teams in the Winter Olympics- a highly unusual enterprise for a tropical nation of limited wealth. The outgoing and unconventional spirit is visible in the colorful, gaudy designs favored by the people on houses, clothing, and almost everything else, and the lively traditional music of the region. The adversity of the Twilight only served to energize the region, and the economy is no longer dependent on foreign markets, although cash corps and tourists still bring in enough money to be important sectors. On the other hand, the relaxed tropical island attitudes haven’t died. Limin’ (taking life easy) is the national philosophy, and the people of Caribe are content to do things a little slower than folk elsewhere, provided they have a good time at it. Competency and professionalism are respected, but formality and pettiness aren’t. Caribe lacks the vicious "anything for a Livre" corporate culture that seems so prevalent elsewhere in the Core. It’s hard to give in to unbridled ambition when you already live in Paradise. "Get the Spirit", as the locals say.

Visitor’s Information

Customs: One of the fundaments of Caribe society is that government shouldn’t hassle the private citizen any more than it has to. Consequently, Carribeans are free to import or export anything without restrictions. Foreigners, however, are not Caribbean citizens, and the "No Hassle, No Problem" philosophy doesn’t apply to them. Visitors should expect to pay duties on most of what they bring in, and some of what they bring out. Weapons of any kind are generally prohibited, unless they bearer has received a license in advance. Licenses are hard to come by. There are no game hunting areas in the islands, and hardly any target shooting areas, so there aren’t many legitimate reasons for owning a weapon other than a sidearm for self-defense. Luxuries are looked at carefully, and there are quotas about how much of what you can bring into the country. Exceed the quota on an item and the Caribe customs officials will assume you’ve brought it here to sell it, and you want to make some money off the citizens. In that case, the Caribe government wants its cut, and it wants it paid up front upon entry. They’ll get you on the way out, too. Again, exceeding the quota indicates that you intend to sell the excess, regardless of how many friends and family members you claim. In this case, they assume you’re competing with legitimate exporters. Obviously, the best way to move large amounts of material out of the country is with an exporter’s license. Fortunately, thanks to the local dislike of bureaucracy, this is not hard to come by. Each major island has an office that will issue license for just about anything, and each local license is respected everywhere in Caribe.

Weather: Caribe has a near perfect tropical climate, except when it doesn’t. Most of the year, the weather is fairly peaceful and precipitation low to moderate. Most of the islands are mountainous, and the highlands tend to be cooler than the lowlands. Even along the coast, though, the mitigating effect of the ocean and the strong trade winds tends to offset the worst of the tropical heat. During late summer and autumn the area is prone to tropical storms and hurricanes. Computer prediction of these storms reached its maximum capability in the 21^st century, with chaotic effects making further advancement impossible. As a result, any vacation plans can go astray during this time of year. Plan accordingly. The locals do.

Assistance: Tourism faltered during the Twilight. It never regained its position as the foundation of the national economy, but it has been on the upswing for the past century. Although it’s a major economic sector again, the people and government like to pretend it isn’t. The government strongly promotes tourism, but has largely left the function of providing visitor’s services to the privately owned resorts and other businesses with a vested interest in tourism. Visitors have much the same rights and obligations as the rest of the populace and no special government agencies exist to help them.

Money: The Caribbean Dollar is the local currency and the medium of exchange used in all official transactions. With an eye towards tourists, merchants in areas frequented by tourists accept American Dollars, French Livres, and other major currencies. Resorts accept anything- charges are converted to the currency of the guests’ choice instantaneously at time of the transaction, at the central bank exchange rate, usually with a slight service charge. Visitors are advised to change some currency, though, in the event they need to purchase goods or services from vendors with no exchange capability.

Government

Caribe is a representative democracy. The constitution was patterned after that of the United States, following the same reasoning that drove the founders of the United States. The Senate, with two representatives per state, ensures that the small member states will not be politically marginalized. The House of Representatives, with its membership apportioned by population, and the Presidency, elected by popular vote, give more power to the larger states. Statehood was granted to any constituent nation with that had been, previously, a sovereign nation, or if it had more than a hundred thousand people. Remaining territories were incorporated into existing states, or lumped together. The current states of Caribe are: Jamaica, Haiti, The Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, The Dutch Antilles, the Leewards, Saint Vincent, and Saint Lucia. The Cayman Islands are maintained as a separate, national territory, as are a few of the smaller islands. Caribe has left itself open to acquiring further member states. The French islands in the Caribbean use this as leverage. They grumble about joining, and France sends them more money.

Although based on the American system, the Caribe government is not a carbon copy. The Caribbean constitution gives the Federal government much less power than did the original United States constitution. Also, there were numerous trans-national organizations active in the Caribbean prior to unification. Many of these organizations remained after the founding of Caribe and still performed their existing functions under the new government, however, they maintained organizations of the states and not the Federal government. Hence, functions such as the regulation of communications and the support of research and development are conducted by organizations that are somewhere between the levels of State and National government.

The capitol of Caribe is in Bridgetown, Barbados, with the government center on the northern outskirts of the city. . This island was chosen for its reasonably high standard of education and good communications and transportation infrastructure prior to unification, as well as the activism of Barbados in regionalist causes. Barbados is also the easternmost state in Caribe, and is positioned safely far away from Mexico, the only nation that has been openly hostile towards Caribe since its unification. Although the Grand Trans-Caribbean causeway doesn’t reach Barbados, regular marine and air ferries keep the capitol well linked with the rest of the islands. The government apparatus is relatively small and efficient, another benefit of the state and multi-state organizations which conduct most of the nation’s business. The entire Caribe federal office complex is contained within a few seaside corporate towers. Dress is very informal for a government center, and its not unusual for high level meetings to be conducted on the nearby beach.

There are few issues that spark real controversy in the Caribe government, and most of them revolve around Haiti. The island nation was the last country incorporated into Caribe, after it had floundered around for over a century with no effective government. (Haiti, as students of history will recall, entered the Twilight era in the 1970’s, well before the rest of the region.) With a large population and as much land as the rest of Caribe, the incorporation of Haiti was looked upon with the same mixed emotions as one would expect upon receiving a trained elephant as a gift. To make matter worse the Haitians spoke a language that had evolved, by their own isolation, into a language unintelligible to speakers of French, the closest linguistic relative to Haitian Creole. However, by the close of the 21^st century, with Mexico agitating the impoverished population, and Mexican control of the Dominican Republic, it became clear that Haiti would eventually belong to either Mexico or Caribe. France had no desire to extend its responsibility to such a basket case of a country, no matter how great the need. Caribe was determined not to let the opportunity slip by. Two centuries later, Haiti has about a quarter of Caribe’s population and most of its social problems. Haitians have demanded, and won, large slices of the government pie in an effort to raise their state up to the standards of the rest of Caribe. Occasionally, they have raised the issue of seceding from Caribe. The constitution doesn’t forbid it, and in facts explicitly states that the union is a voluntary one. The threat of Mexico, though, keeps Haiti in line.

The Federal and State governments enjoy general popular support, although political parties do not last long in Caribe. The national anti-authoritarian ethos causes any party than wins too often to be resented, and support will drop off rapidly. Generally, the people’s favor will turn to a new party that has captured their imaginations. The new party will rise quickly, and soon find itself in the unwelcome role of the Establishment, whereupon the cycle will repeat. Currently the party falling from grace is the People’s Progress Party. The Alliance for Prosperity is on the upswing, and the New Green and Moderate Union parties are waiting in the wings.

Diplomatic Representation and Foreign Policy

Most nations have normal diplomatic relations with Caribe, and embassies are located in the capitol city of Bridgetown, Barbados. Being appointed Ambassador to Caribe is one of the choicest assignments available in the diplomatic world. Due to the general shortage of space on Barbados, most embassies are not permitted to maintain sizeable compounds, so the more important embassies are placed in tall multi-function buildings. Many smaller embassies share quarters. Caribe is open to dialogue even with countries with which it has considerable enmity, and has full relations with Mexico despite the bad blood between the two nations.

America, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Texas and The Netherlands have very close relations with Caribe. The United Kingdom has strong historical ties, and Caribe is a member of the Commonwealth. Canada also has Commonwealth ties as well as a sizeable population of Caribbean descent. The Texas has a strong relationship based on mutual mistrust of Mexico. America has a defense relationship as well, and also a large Caribbean population. The United Kingdom , The Netherlands, and America maintain consulates other than their embassies in Bridgeton. The United States has consulates in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and Kingston, Jamaica. The United Kingdom has a consulate in Kingston, and The Netherlands maintains a consulate on Aruba. The Dutch-owned islands of the Caribbean transferred their allegiance to Caribe voluntarily and peacefully, while the Netherlands was in a state of social and financial chaos during the late stages of the Twilight. Most of the Dutch citizens remained, and although their descendants today are Carib citizens, the Dutch language is still common and there are still strong cultural ties to their ancestral nation. France, of course, is a close neighbor, with a number of islands interspersed amongst Caribe’s Lesser Antilles.

Caribe has a few unique elements to its outlook on world affairs. Foremost is the fact that many of the nations of the 24^th century have histories of failed alliances, or are products of either the social breakup of nations (Manchuria and Canton, America and Texas, for example) or of domination or annexation of smaller powers by a larger nation (Mexico, the French Empire). Caribe, on the other hand, is one of the few nations built upon a history of voluntary and peaceful cooperation and unification. Consequently, the people of Caribe lack the suspicious eye other nationals have towards alliances. Caribe governments have been steadfast advocates of international cooperation.

It seems almost contradictory to say, then, that there are some serious bones of contention between Caribe and even its closest allies. First amongst these is Caribe’s policy towards drugs. Not the medicinal kind, the kind that most nations make illegal. Caribe doesn’t. Naturally, they are blamed for being a major drug smuggling center, and most of the criticism is correct, despite the fact that very obvious signs in seaports and airports that while drugs may be legal in Caribe, exporting them without approval isn’t. Carfibe has also been involved in disputes over certain types of copyrights and patents.

The only major rival to Caribe is Mexico. Their control of half of the island of Hispaniola (the half that used to be the nation of The Dominican Republic) and the danger posed towards Jamaica and the Cayman Islands is the only real military threat Caribe faces. The Argentines are friendly towards Caribe. This unusual chink in Mexican-Argentine relations stems from the bad public reaction engendered amongst Argentines as a result of threatening a small, friendly nation. There have been territorial disputes with France, Venezuela, and the Inca Republic. In the first two cases, peaceful solutions were arrived at. In the last, the situation is still unresolved, as neither nation is willing to push too much over tiny, barely habited islets.

Major Transport Links

Caribe is has more marine frontage per capita than any other nation of its size or larger on earth. The majority of import and export cargo travels by sea, coming and going through one of the nation’s many ports. There are harbors of every size and type scattered across Caribe. The largest are at Kingston/Port Royal and Montego Bay in Jamaica, Chaguanas in Trinidad, Bridgetown in Barbados, Cap Haitien and Les Cayes in Haiti, Willemstad on Curacao. Generally, in order to effect some control over shipping, enforce safety and customs regulations, and reduce the endemic smuggling, commercial sea traffic is limited to the major ports.

Airports are likewise distributed amongst the islands, with principal airports in Jamaica, Haiti, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad, Curacao, and the Bahamas. Miami, in America, is actually the principal regional air transport node. Smaller airfields are disappearing from the islands as VTOL aircraft and hovercraft make them obsolete. This is a welcome trend: a hectare used as a runway is viewed as a hectare wasted. Passenger and cargo LTA aircraft are almost never used in the Caribbean due the strong prevailing winds, although a few are used by the government as surveillance platforms. .

Rail service is extremely limited to a few commuter lines on the larger islands, and specialized freight lines. There has been talk of adding a rail line to the Grand Trans-Caribbean Causeway, but the cost would be high and the islands are already well served by sea. Highways are also very limited, with the longest highway being the one on the causeway.

Starship Operations

By all rights, Caribe should not have a space fleet. It has none of the qualities that have enabled more economically endowed and powerful nations to reach the stars. By all rights, Caribe should not be fielding winter sports teams, or have settlements on three other worlds. Nevertheless, Caribe has starships and ice skaters. Not surprisingly, they don’t win medals at the winter Olympics, and their government’s small flotilla of old, desperately renovated starships wouldn’t get through French safety inspections, but the fact that that they’re there at all is a source of great national pride. From the Caribbean point of view, owning a few starships is a necessary part of reality. How can some starships be owned by private companies and even individuals, when a nation of 15 million people has none? Non-Caribbeans rarely travel aboard Caribe’s ships. When they do, they are usually taken aback by the heady scents of Caribbean cooking wafting out of the galley and the bizarre presence of animals on the starship. It has become something of a tradition that each Caribe ship carries a few pets. Visitors aboard Caribbean ships are often surprised to see a fluttering parrot or a befuddled monkey working its way around the zero-gee sections of the ship.

Caribe’s starships (excluding civilian owned ships of Caribe registry, which really aren’t under Caribe control, and so shouldn’t be counted with the government fleet) consists of a few elderly freighters and couriers. They are used primarily to create a tenuous line of communications between Caribe and its three settlements. Not that Caribe has ever had problems getting access (Indeed, more reliable access!) to its settlements by leasing space on the ships of other nations, of course, but something about national pride demands that the Caribbeans be able to reach their settlements themselves. This goal is complicated, of course, by the fact that none of their settlements have any interface capability whatsoever, meaning that passengers and cargos need to be transferred to the surface through another country’s facilities.

The same situation exists on Earth, of course. The bulk of Caribe’s outbound extraterrestrial cargo is shipped across the Atlantic to Africa and sent into orbit via the Beanstalk. Almost no cargo is brought down the Beanstalk with the intention of shipping to Caribe. Caribe’s market is simply to small to support such imports. Rather, firms wishing to distribute extraterrestrial materials to Caribe on Earth generally forward fractions of cargoes shipped to larger markets.

The four STOL capable couriers operated by the Caribe government can and do set down in Caribe, at the Salinas Airport in Grenada, the only facility in Caribe that can service them. Actually, in this case, "service them" is too weak a phrase. "Perform the maintenance miracles necessary to somehow lob the dilapidated craft back into orbit" better describes the situation.) Several times, the Caribbean Space Service has found it easier to disassemble the vessel, haul it back up via the Beanstalk, and rebuild the thing in orbit. The ships also visit the Caribbean settlements, but only when the crews are really sure the ship can leave again. Sometimes it can’t, and the unfortunate vessel is grounded until appropriate tools and parts can arrive. One Caribbean ship spent seven months on Tirane. The wing element it needed hadn’t been produced in eighteen years, no parts were left in existing stocks, and the original manufacturer couldn’t find the specifications. A result of a similar incident, The "Bimmy Greene" has sat at Salinas for nine years now, being put to use by the Caribbean Space Service as a museum.

Caribbean Space Service starships, known for their colorful and bizarre paint jobs as well as their aromatic atmospheres, are greeted at orbital terminals with a mixture of curiosity and fear. Often considered accident prone, other spacers are wary of the possibility of parts coming loose and striking other vessels. Caribbean spacers point out that this has only happened five times in their entire history of space operations, tactfully avoiding the fact that their small number of ships and brief history in space makes this figure disturbingly large.

Curiously, the sole encounter between a Caribbean ship and a hostile vessel, a renegade Japanese vessel long suspected of piracy, ended with the Caribbean spacers taking possession of the pirate ship, even though their own vessel was completely unarmed. The Caribe government has been shy about explaining how this happened, other than mentioning the overly glorified history of piracy in the Caribbean during the early colonial era, and implying that somehow this provides Caribbeans with special insight in dealing with pirates. Just to drive the point home, the ship was added to the Caribbean fleet and renamed the "Henry Morgan". Japan issued the obligatory but duly ignored diplomatic protest.

Overheard exchange between a British and a Caribbean spacer:

"That’s not so much a starship as it is an assortment of spare parts flying in tight formation."

"Yeah, mon, and sometimes da formation is not so tight. But she fly!"

Security and Intelligence Services, and Judicial System

The Caribe police forces exist at the national and state level only. There are no local police forces, although there are local detachments of state forces. Small detachments also exist in the three extra-solar settlements. The Caribe police forces, State and National together, number 24,000 and include numerous boat and helicopter sections. Caribe closely cooperates with America, Canada, and Texas in law enforcement and has been trying to achieve better working relationships with South American nations. Most of the State police forces maintain small hovercraft for shore patrols. There is no Coast Guard service, but National Police officers often travel aboard Navy patrol craft to enforce the law at sea.

The Caribe Security Agency is the nation’s intelligence and counter-espionage service. This agency has even stronger links than the police do their counterparts in allied nations. The United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom even maintain field stations on various islands with the support and cooperation of the Caribbeans. The largest and most important of these is located on Grand Cayman Island. It is a multinational facility that monitors activity in Mexico, and, according to Mexican accusations, supports covert activities there.

The CSA is small, poorly equipped, and generally operates only in the Caribbean region. Caribe has a diverse population. Although most are descended from Africans brought to the islands as slaves, there are representatives from many other ethnic groups, including a surprisingly large oriental population in Trinidad. From these ethnic minorities Caribe has recruited field agents for foreign operations. Due to the nation’s small size, though, they have occasionally resorted to hiring free lance agents for specific assignments.

Caribe’s judicial system is based on English law, using a system of judgments and precedents stretching back in time to English Common Law. Most of the Caribe system is identical to law elsewhere in the Commonwealth, with a few local modifications in effect. There is a hierarchy of local, State, and National Courts. The National Court of Caribe, located in Antigua (The government of Caribe does not believe in centralizing its functions in the capitol.) is the highest court and final court of appeal. There have been attempts, generally failed ones, on the part of other members of the Commonwealth to talk the Caribbeans into conforming more closely to their legal structure. This, the Caribbeans have resisted, although they do find silly wigs to be lots of fun in the courtroom. Recently, judges in Carib have begun to wear even stranger wigs and more exotic costumes than the British do. No one is sure why this trend has emerged, or what kind of message they’re trying to send.

Crime in Caribe is still a problem. There are urban street toughs in Jamaica, Haiti, Barbados, and other well populated areas. There is organized crime in Haiti, and to a lesser extent in Jamaica. Organized crime in Haiti appears linked to remaining practitioners of the Voodoo religion, which went underground in the early 23^rd century, being looked down upon by followers of the other religions of Caribe.

Medical Services

Caribe does not offer medical services as advanced as those in other nations. However, Caribe has a long tradition of offering inexpensive medical services. This isn’t due to government subsidy. Almost all medical services in Caribe are privately owned. Several factors work together to keep medical expenses down.

Culturally, the people of Caribe dislike legalisms and bureaucracy. Medical services are streamlined and efficient, and there is a high general practitioner to specialist ratio. Also, the Caribbeans don’t seem to accept a medical career as one to get rich on. Doctors are paid at rates comparable to mid level managers. The region has a long tradition of alternative, inexpensive medical schools. One of the oldest is on Grenada, which sets the standards for medical training throughout the nation. These schools give much more weight to medicine as a practical art than as an academic subject, and keep a steady supply of young doctors streaming into the Caribe medical community.

Caribe also has a problem with the idea of patents for lifesaving medical devices and drugs. It is against the law here to withhold medical assistance for lack of money. Caribbean courts have extended this statute to include the withholding of medical knowledge. Therefore, if a patient needs a valuable drug which he or she cannot afford, it is perfectly legal for the hospital to synthesize it any way they can, and provide it. Naturally, when hospitals have to do this, they have the drug synthesized in quantity, for use when further indigent cases appear. Medical devices are treated the same way. There are a number of small specialist manufacturers in Caribe that provide copies of patent protected devices to hospitals, for patients who cannot afford the cost of the original manufacturer’s unit.

This does create some frictions with other nations, but the Caribbean hospitals leave that for the diplomats to handle.

Almost all ambulance services in Caribe are private as well, and all associated with or belonging to a particular hospital. Hovercraft ambulances are popular, as are flying ambulances, which can easily cope with calls from small island settlements. The larger islands tend to have conventional wheeled ambulances, with the occasional hovercraft available to reach outlying islets.

Caribe’s Military

Prior to the twilight years, the island nations that now make up Caribe had no military forces at, for the most part. Jamaica fielded a small force, and Haitis’s military was more often a collection of brigands in uniform. Most of the rest had only coast guards and police forces. The militarization of Mexico changed that. Several armed conflicts later, the Caribe has developed a small but competent force. It might still be dwarfed by Mexico’s strength, but Caribbean doctrine assumes that in any war with Mexico, they wouldn’t be fighting alone.

Caribe has a voluntary, professional force. Equipment tends to be hand-me-downs from the United Kingdom and America. Close relationships are maintained with those countries and with Texas. Some discussion has been concerning the preparation of a fighting force, probably in battalion strength, for deployment against the Kafers. It is assumed that such a force would fight alongside one or more of Caribe’s traditional allies, or as part of a multi-national force assembled by minor nations. Caribe’s military works better with Texas than with any other nation, including the United Kingdom. Every time a joint operation with the United Kingdom is planned, the British present a command structure proposal showing Caribe’s forces serving under a British headquarters. This doesn’t fly with the Caribbean officers, who generally respond by drafting their own plan showing the British forces operating under the Carribean command structure. In the end, to the two nations agree to clumsily liaisoned joint venture. Only the Texans seem eager to work with Caribe as an equal partner, and the Caribbeans appreciate this.

The Jamaican Rifles and the Haitian Rifles are light infantry brigade groups, with attached artillery and other support, committed to defending their respective States. Both are trained to take full advantage of the restrictive, defensible terrain available. Both are manned primarily by local recruits.

The Trinidad Regiment is smaller but more rounded, and included a light armored company and other specialized units. The Cayman Defense Battalion is a heavy infantry formation, accompanied by anti-air and anti-ahip batteries, that would presumably defend the Cayman islands against invasion. For reasons not entirely clear, the air defense battery on Jamaica is under the command of this unit as well. The 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd Mobile Squadrons are scattered out amongst the smaller islands. All are battalion sized units with hover and helicopter troops. Hovercraft and helicopters complement each other in Caribbean tactical thinking. Hovercraft can move over the expanses of water between islands with ease, even over the coral reefs that would hazard conventional vessels. They are stymied, however, but the steep inlands of the islands. Helicopters are very exposed over the former terrain types, but come into their own in the latter. These units are equipped to a higher standard than the infantry units.

The Hurricane Knights is a company sized, parachute capable special forces unit. Their seaborne colleagues, the Midnight Crocodiles, is a company sized unit including combat divers and other sea deployed special forces.

Caribe maintains a Navy suited to the needs and capability of a lesser nation scattered across an island archipelago, one composed of small craft of various types. Small naval stations are scattered throughout the nation, and with American help, Caribe maintains a network of undersea listening posts. The Caribbean Navy has 6 hydrofoil corvettes and 28 hydrofoil and conventional patrol craft. They also have over a dozen patrol hovercraft, a similar number of small mine warfare vessels, 18 cargo hovercraft also suitable for landing ground troops, and 6 support vessels.

The Caribe Air Force maintains a squadron of surveillance airships, which deploys in various fringe areas around the nation to monitor marine and air traffic. There are 29 assorted tactical aircraft, roughly evenly split between interceptors and close support aircraft. Caribe has a large force of support aircraft, mostly transport, utility, and liaison types, that link the various military bases. There is a major airbase on Grand Cayman Island, which Caribe also shares with America and the United Kingdom, although the latter maintains only a token presence there. Headquarters for the Air Force is on Greanada, site of the nation’s longest runway at Salinas. Caribe has an Air Force School, but combat pilot training and much of the their other technical training is conducted in friendly nations, usually Texas. The Texans don’t ask money in return. They get the traditional "thank you" crate of Barbados rum after each pilot graduates, but mostly they’re happy to teach other pilots to shoot down Mexicans.

Space Forces:

All of Caribe’s nationally owned starships are considered civil in nature. The Henry Morgan might still carry a light armament, but Caribe lists all its vessels as unarmed. No space military force exists.

Inter Island Transportation

The single greatest engineering achievement of Caribe is the Grand Trans-Carribean causeway, a system of causeways and bridges linking the Lesser Antilles Islands between the Virgin Islands and Trinidad. It was completed, with French assistance, in 2246, after nineteen years of effort. It includes hundreds of kilometers of elevated highway, rising in places to 50 meters above the sea to allow ships to pass beneath, and a number of artificial islands. The whole affair was engineered with an eye towards hurricane resistance. Most of the structure was built with fairly ordinary methods and materials, consuming the bulk of the nation’s concrete production over the course of two decades. Some of the sections of the causeway were used by the French as a testbed for engineering advancements that would later be put to use in the Beanstalk. It is currently used for vehicle traffic, although there are ideas to add an air film track. More probable are the plans to extend the causeway, and it seems likely that at some point during the next century it will be possible to drive from Florida to Venezuela.

Where the causeway does not reach, air and sea links connect the islands. Almost every island has a harbor, although the prevalence of VTOL aircraft and hovercraft has all but eliminated the smaller airports. Owning an amphibious aircraft, however, is very much in vogue in the islands, especially since such aircraft are usually cheaper and easier to maintain than the VTOL’s. Boat ownership is very common, and there are numerous regular ferry routes.

The preferred sea vehicle is the hovercraft, as it can be brought on shore, and skims over the top of the water, avoiding contact with the dangerous but fragile coral reefs. This last feature is considered so important by the ecology-minded people of Caribe that the government actively subsidizes hovercraft by subjecting them to much lower licensing and registration costs.

Private aircraft and watercraft are available for use throughout Caribe- but don’t expect to rent one. For some odd reason, the Carribean owners do not like seeing their vehicles- typically brightly painted and personalized- handled by anyone but themselves. They develop very strong emotional attachments to their machines. So, instead of renting them, they charter them. When you rent a hoveracft, you get the driver too, and with the driver comes the constant reminder of whose hovercraft you’re riding in. When you finally reach you’re destination, you will no doubt have been treated to at least one monologue explaining why that particular hovercraft is the best of its kind on the Caribbean Sea.

Privately owned vehicles, vessels, and aircraft are very welcome in Caribe, and registration tends to be a quick and painless affair, usually accomplished over the net. Marinas abound, as it has always been popular for visitors to arrive in their own boats.

The larger islands (Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad) have local busses and commuter rail lines. The medium sized islands have busses. All of the smaller have private transportation only, and sometimes none.

Education and Research

Caribe has several well regarded institutes of higher learning, such as the Unversity of the West Indies, headquartered in Kingston, the Caribbean University for the Marine Sciences, headquartered in Barbados, and the colleges of the Associated Medical Schools of the West Indies, headquartered in Trinidad. Most Caribbean institutes maintain multiple campuses dispersed throughout the country. There is no parallel to the American system of state universities. The differences between institutions in Caribe have more to do with their academic focus than their regional affiliation. Higher education isn’t free, but it’s fairly inexpensive. Much local education is funded by foreigners, who send their students to Caribbean schools for a semester or two, usually at the demands of the college age children. These students are charged much higher tuitions than are locals. Despite the high quality of some of them, many schools in Caribe have reputations as "party schools" where foreign students come more to spend a year socializing on the beach than to apply themselves seriously to studies. The local students tend to be more serious. After all, they have the rest of their lives to socialize on the beach.

Research in Caribe tends to center around subjects important to the locals: Marine biology, materials science, ecological science, and climatology are popualr field for Caribbean scientists. Although dolphins and cetaceans in general have long been established as intellectually inferior to humans on a broad scale and never capable of full sentience, there are a number of Caribbean projects focussing on them, and their psychological processes. Several Caribbean scientists believe that although less advanced than human minds, the dolphin mind is sentient, and alien, and by studying them humanity may have an advantage in dealing with any alien marine intelligence it encounters, such as the Pentapods. Thus far, there seems to be absolutely no connection between Dolphin psychology and Pentapod psychology, other than the fact that both species swim. The scientists persist in their efforts, though.

Communications and Media

Caribe is fully connected into the Earth’s communications net. Almost all communications is wireless, a distinct advantage on an archipelago. There are cable links to most of the inhabited islands. These are considered backup systems to be used when hurricanes threaten the islands. Many antennas on Caribe, even those adorning private homes, are designed to be easily dismantled or retracted during bad weather. During these times, broadcasters switch over to the cable systems. News and entertainment is generally broadcast as data, and may be received by properly programmed and equipped Portacomps as well as more conventional home and portable entertainment systems. Because most data is transmitted electromagnetically, rather than cable delivered, Caribe still supports stations and networks that broadcast rather than netcast. Netcasting is gaining in popularity as improved technology offers ways to transmit more and more data in given frequency range, but observers doubt that broadcasting will ever die out in Caribe as it has elsewhere. The Caribbean audiences seem to find a sense of unity in knowing that they are listening to a live deejay or news anchor, and in knowing that their neighbors are listening to the same thing. They realize the flexibility, freedom, and potential offered by netcasting, but maintain that if everybody listened to something different, there would be nothing for neighbors to talk about.

In addition to be able to access the rest of the world’s media (The Caribbeans haven’t turned away from netcasting completely!) there are several local networks and agencies of note. All are concerned primarily with local news and culture. The Caribbean networks aren’t quite ready to compete with the big boys. The West Indies News Collective, though, does maintain offices in foreign cities with a large population of Caribbean descent, such as New York City , Miami, and London. WINC keeps the elements of the "Caribbean Diaspora" connected to the islands of their ancestors, and vice versa. Thus, the Caribbean population, much like the Jewish population, maintains a common identity even when dispersed over great distances.

Agriculture

Before its inception, the island states of Caribe relied upon a few cash crops for a significant portion of their income. With such market dependance, swings in the price of sugar or another major crop would regularly upset the islands’ economies. The Banana Crisis of 1999 taught them a valuable lesson- reliance on a few cash crops put the agricultural sector in a vulnerable position. The answer was in diversification.

Today, Caribe still exports traditional tropical crops like sugar, bananas, coconuts, coffee, cacao, and fruit. They also export large quantities of spices, such as nutmeg, allspice, pepper and ginger. The fishing industry is strong, and relies on occasional deep sea fishing of free ranging species in addition to the commercial sea farming that provides the bulk of Caribe’s production. Caribe exports fresh fish around the world. The rum industry has also survived the passing of centuries.

Livestock is grown mostly for domestic consumption. The Caribbeans have established herds of goats on two of their tiny extraterrestrial settlements. These animals are as hardy and stubborn as the islanders, and are very undiscriminating about their diet. This last trait makes them ideal as meat animals for young colonies. Goat meat and dairy products are gaining in popularity in the rest of the Life Foundation Colony on Austin’s World. Attempts to raise them on Chengu, of course, have failed. In addition to goats, pigs, sheep, cattle and fowl are popualr, as are Caimans. These reptiles are raised for meat as well as their skins. (Tastes like chicken!) The trapping of wild Caimans is illegal and anti-poaching laws are strongly enforced, due to the ecological Caribe mindset.

Most importantly, Caribe has made the transition from an exporter of raw food, (although this is still a very strong component of the economy) to an exporter of processed and prepared food. One of the areas in which they have had unusual good fortune has been in the provision of prepared meals for starship crews. In freefall, the human sense of taste is severely impaired. When a passengers or crew rely on the mainstream market meals, they often spice them up with whatever is on hand. Even so, in zero gravity conditions, those Four Star Beef and Potatos Dinners get very tiresome, quickly. Carribean food, on the other hand, is known for its intense spiciness. This makes it very much appreciated in space. When Four Star’s uninspired but serviceable cuisine has to compete with offerings from Caribe based companies, with dishes like Curried Lamb Roti, Goat Water (actually a spicey goat based stew), or Jerked Orange Roughey, it isn’t hard to predict the winner. Caribbean food also enjoys growing appreciation on the frontier, where it relieves the monotony of local cooking. The number of starship operators and off world distributors making prepared food from Caribe available as in-flight meals is growing steadily. If trends continue, more Caribbean meals may one day be eaten offworld than on Earth.

Caribe is still a net importer of food, mostly grain from North and South America, but the balance is close.

Contrary to popular belief, Jamaican Pepper Sauce is not used as starship fuel. It is much too volatile.

Miscellaneous Government Services

Social welfare is considered a more laudable goal in Caribe than it is in many other nations. The perception here is that society has the responsibility to ensure that everybody has a place in life. The work ethic doesn’t have the pull here that is does in other countries. If a person wants to fish, or just bang on his drums all day, he or she still deserves to live. Not that this person deserves to live with any kind of style or substance, of course. The material life still has to be earned. But the Caribbean Community Social Support Office sees to it that everyone has food to eat and a roof over their head. This is one of those agencies that is operated as an inter-state organization, and not a national level agency.

The Indigenous People’s Association maintains the rights and culture of descendants of the populations that were native to the West Indies at the time of the arrival of the Europeans and Africans. Most of the region’s Arawaks have long since assimilated into mainstream Caribe culture. The Caribs themselves, their last holdout in the islands destroyed in the 2120 volcanic eruption on Dominica, have effectively vanished but for those Carribeans who claim a few as their anscestors. The Taino and others have also effectively disappeared. The IPA, therefore, is not in the position of having to maintain a living culture. Rather, it maintains historic sites, keeps some cultural events alive, and supports various improvement efforts in towns with a large number of descendants of indigenous people. The IPA has also championed the legal causes of these people, in particular in the field of real estate.

The Carribean Conservation Agency monitors and supports the health of the nation’s ecosystems. The Caribbean people have a strong view towards ecology. Negative effects build up very quickly on a small island and there’s little room to place trash. Recycling has been an important part of life for a long time. The CCA maintains much of the park system, including the off shore parks. CCA officers often travel aboard naval patrol craft, looking for fishing violators, and polluters. Both are considered criminal, not civil offenses in Caribe, and having his ship impounded is the least of an offending captain’s worries. The CCA also monitors pollution on land. Since the conversion from petrochemicals to hydrogen power, the exhaust from vehicles and powerplants is no longer a major pollutant, but there are still ozone emissions and industrial wastes, as well as mine tailings, that present environmental problems.

Finance and Commerce

The Caribbean dollar is the national currency. During much of the nation’s history, various means were attempted of stabilizing the currency, including pegging the Caribbean dollar to the United States dollar. For several decades in the early 23^rd century it was allowed to float. As economic models advanced the unsecured monetary unit was eventually seen to be a strong factor in the rise and collapse cycle that precipitated the great financial collapses prevalent during the early period of the Twilight. Caribe, along with most advanced nations, sought out a solid specie based currency. Many nations eventually favored Tantalum as a currency base, which had come into its own as a rare mineral of particular importance to humanity’s economy. Having none, and not wishing to return to an era of dependence on foreign markets, Caribe sought a different solution. Eventually, the Caribe Dollar was anchored to energy, with the central bank determining the current value on a quarterly basis, depending on the nation’s current energy production and the efficiency thereof.

The CARICOM Bank, a descendent of the financial arm of the original Caribbean Community and Common Market, itself one of the predecessor foundations which paved the way for Caribbean unification, has been the central bank of Caribe since 2122. The CARICOM bank has a very non-interventionist policy towards the economy. Other than keeping the money supply stable, they are unconcerned by quarterly fluctuations. Caribe has experienced rapid changes in its financial environment as a result, and is currently in a period of high inflation, but CARICOM looks at the cure as being worse than the disease.

Commerce in Caribe faces a few mutual contradictions. First is the fact that while the population is dispersed, Caribbeans dislike making deals over the net. The common perception here is that to trust someone, you have to see him or her eye to eye. This has made the travelling salesman a common feature of local businesses. Depending on the market, the sales force will travel island meeting with individual consumers, buyers for firms, homeowners., perceptive vehicle buyers, whatever. Entertaining and dining with clients is common, even in cases where the product being sold is a low cost household item. The thinking is if you’re going to spend money on an advertising budget, don’t waste it on the net, or on signs, or on crude gimmicks. Spend it meeting people face to face, and develop a word of mouth campaign.

Industry and Mining

Caribe is lacking in mineral reserves. The nation produces some aluminum, and a small amount of petroleum, used primarily in chemical processes, not as fuel. Some rare earth metals, which are exported for the electronics industries of other nations, are extracted through seabed mining operations. Local necessity, however, has led to the growth of a number of small industries.

Towards the end of the 20^th century, the State of Florida in the United States of America presented a revised building code in response to a number of deaths and injuries during hurricanes. A particularly stringent section of the new code required windows to resist the impact of a piece of lumber travelling at 50 miles per hour. Oddly, this requirement did not exist for walls- just windows. Normal glass proved unable to meet the challenge, and the change provoked growth in the transparent synthetics (then referred to mostly as plastics) industry. From early acrylics and polyacrylates the technology progressed to the extremely advanced materials in use today. Caribe, experiencing the same lethal storms as Florida- even more so, gradually came to adopt the new materials as well. During the middle to late years of the Twilight Era, much of the industrial capacity was transferred from Florida to Caribe, first in search of better economic conditions (cheaper labor) and then in search of drier land (Florida was hard hit by the rise in sea level.).

Caribe today is a major supplier of transparent structural synthetics. The industry isn’t big enough to compete with the industrial powerhouses elsewhere, but that has left the smaller Caribbean firms more flexible and faster reacting to serve a different clientele. They produce custom shaped transparent synthetic units, often as sub-sub-contractors for the space industry, often for the construction industry, sometimes for marine engineering and defense firms.

The precast architectural concrete industry is strong in Caribe, although it has suffered in recent years as the use of concrete elements by the construction industry has dropped in favor of synthetics. Concrete remains a popular construction commodity on the Frontier, where it is cheap and easy to make, and many Caribe natives have taken jobs with concrete plants scattered across humanity’s planets.

Caribe has several well-known firms producing in the Private and Sport Watercraft market, such as Doyle-Atlantic, and Sea-Pup. Other industries also capitalize on Caribe’s association with tropical sea sports and leisure. Caribe is an exporter of personal undersea equipment. To protect their sales of underwater breathing equipment, they have mounted an intense advertising campaign against the Pentapod Water Breather. Taken from an advertisement series in which an opinionated little girl steadfastly refuses to don the Water Breather her parents offer, the slogan, "Oh, Daddy, It’s Icky!", entered the general vocabulary, and is in the midst of a current trend-wave, being heard in schoolyards throughout human space. Most likely, it will fade and vanish soon, as advertising slogans are prone to. The Pentapods, for they’re part, seem unable to translate the word "Icky" and have avoided comment, at least to humans. The sad irony is that if the Pentapods were to one day establish an enclave on Earth, the obvious location would be in Caribe.

The islands’ stock of useful tropical plants is put to use in another strong local industry. Caribe exports, lotions, soaps, fragrances, body oils and sunscreens. Their marketing for these products emphasizes the natural wholesomeness of the ingredients used, the exotic tropical oils and fragrances, and the long local history developing products of this kind. High value to weigh ratio makes these products good candidates for off world export, but thus far the manufacturers, mostly small firms with "Mom and Pop" labels, haven’t made the push necessary to establish themselves away from Earth. Consequently, starship operators seeking a speculative profit often purchase shipments of these materials. Markets for skin care products and sunscreen are especially strong on worlds where stellar radiation is more intense than on Earth. In most of these cases, local botanical knowledge hasn’t progressed to the point where equivalents could be produced on the colony from "natural sources". Synthetic products are common, but they face a distinct marketing disadvantage compared to the Caribbean products. At the moment, it’s a seller’s market, primarily because while consumer demand is high, most governments haven’t considered Skin Care Products to be a sector of the economy worth much attention, and consequently the industry has been slow to develop in the colonies.

One small and very specialized firm, Adele Aquatics, on Saint Lucia, manufactures underwater aquatic devices. The company was founded to serve the sea floor mining market, but has since branched off into other directions. In addition to mining, salvage, survey, and search and rescue devices, Adele manufactures the Barracuda series of naval mine countermeasures robots. This is Caribe’s only armaments manufacturer. Adele exports these, as well as its civilian oriented products (quite a few of which also have military applications) to buyers around the world and offworld. The company is small and production low, so they are little known outside their specialized field.

Caribe also exports clothing, especially light, colorful summer wear and beachwear. Caribbean manufacturer’s rely on their nations’ s association with tropical recreation from sales, otherwise, with the exception of the bright Caribbean styles, there is essentially no difference between the quality of clothing produced in Caribe and that produced anywhere else.

Entertainment and the Arts

The entertainment world of Caribe is focussed on music. Per capita, this region has contributed more towards humanity’s musical heritage than any other culture, with the possible exception of the Irish. Traditional music in Caribe is preserved as national treasures, and bands still play Reggae, Calypso, Ska, and other ancient forms. More modern Caribbean derivatives, like Riff, Iron, and Onzi, have, in the spirit of styles of old, achieved worldwide followings. Live music is everywhere and is a constant feature of public life. Sporting events are usually preceded by an hour or two of music, and it’s not unusual for even a political rally to feature a band or two. Indeed, accompaniment by a popular band is as good a way as any of achieving success (brief success, but still success) in the chaotic world of Caribbean politics.

Music is also featured in festivals, from the traditional Mas in the spring, to various Carnivals held throughout the islands, to the enormous Music Festival held every year in Jamaica. This last event is centered on the Bob Marley Center for Great Performances, but it has grown and now uses up nearly every public space on the island.. Jamaican hotels can accommodate only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who arrive at the annual "Hajj of Caribbean Music". Tent cities spring up everywhere, people camp out under the stars along beaches, and cruise liners anchor off shore and take on the role of floating hotels. It takes the Jamaicans about six weeks to clean up after the three week affair. It takes the most avid attendees even longer to regain their hearing.

When the giant domed stadium (roofed with transparent structural synthetic panels, naturally) at the core of Bob Marley Center isn’t in use by musicians, it’s home to the Montego Maximums, the local soccer team. The Mongooses, the cricket team, prefers a nearby outdoor facility. Sporting events here and throughout Caribe resemble huge public parties. Fans show up in outrageous costumes, the game is preceded by hours of music and often wild dancing, and Tortugan Rum Cakes are consumed by the thousands, as if the fans weren’t soaking up enough alcohol already through more conventional means. Games against foreign teams are common, as the population is too small to provide full sized leagues. Caribbean teams take on opponents from Latin America, America, and Africa in soccer (football, to non-Americans) and teams from throughout the old Commonwealth in cricket. Typically, the home team loses such matches. Caribe simply offers too small a recruiting ground and the teams have too small budgets to compete with teams from other nations. The locals don’t seem to mind. After hours of drinking, dancing, and "getting the spirit", most can’t read the scoreboard anyway. Besides, the purpose of coming to the game, to the Caribbean fan, is have fun, and they do, usually more fun than the fans of the winning team.

Recreation

During the heady prideful years following unification, Caribe experienced a national reaction against tourism. Tourists had dwindled to a trickle during the Twilight, but the reaction against the industry was one of two factors preventing its revival following unification. Sociologists attributed this phenomenon to the positions of personal servitude occupied by Hotel and Restaurant industry workers, in a culture that never regarded service as an art form in itself. The other sharp blow was the rising sea level, which swamped the coastal areas the resorts were built on. Later, of course, Caribbean pragmatism prevailed, and it was realized that one money making asset the nation could depend on was its beautiful natural environment and pleasant climate. As the resort industry returned, though, it was in the form of Caribbean and not foreign owned ventures. The profits stayed in the nation, and the money was able to jump-start other elements of the economy.

The resort industry today has lost the stigma of servitude, due in part to the increased confidence of the nation and in part to the local ownership. The coast has been recovered, and in many areas beaches have even expanded since the 21^st century (the result of enhanced coral reef growth, see below). Resorts have sprung up in most of the areas they used to be, and many places they never were. The draws are the same as they’ve always been; beautiful tropical surroundings and an exotic culture. Popular pastimes include all manner of aquatic activities. Visitors dive, fish, boat, swim, and relax on beaches. Most resorts make personal watercraft available. There are tours of undersea reefs led by marine biologists, sometimes using transparent hulled boats or even submersibles.

There are a number of national parks and wilderness areas on the islands, although many more undersea parks. Mostly, the former exist in terrain too difficult or too dangerous for development or agriculture. These include the Cockpit Country Preserve in Jamaica, home to a number of battlefield monuments commemorating local armed resistance against both the British and the Mexicans. Haiti’s mountains, denuded during the Twilight in one of mankind’s most pitiful moments of ecological mismanagement, have largely recovered, especially in the east near the border with the Dominican Republic. The Bahamas include many islands abandoned as the sea rose and later recovered, and many of these have been preserved as parks. Many of the other islands have beautiful parks, and those on Dominica, St. Lucia, and Montserrat include active volcanoes. These last have erupted several times during the last three centuries, on one occasion, in Dominica, with little warning and great loss of life. That was the 2120 eruption, and since then Caribe has installed a seismic sensor network to better predict future volcanic outbursts. Le Soufriere on Saint Lucia coughed a few times during the past century, prompting evacuations and causing limited destruction. In all cases, odds of sudden cataclysmic eruption are considered low, and people are evacuated when portents are ominous.

Mark 500

Mark 500 is an entirely artificial island, actually the largest built in support of the construction of the Grand Trans-Caribbean Causeway. It lies about halfway between Montserrat and the French island of Martinique. (The Causeway was built with considerable French assistance, which only made sense as it links several French islands as well as many Caribe ones.) It is located at the northern end of one of the sea-lanes, passes through the causeway where the causeway is elevated high enough for ship traffic to pass beneath. Despite its name, Mark 500 is not at the 500-kilometer mark from the causeway’s northern terminus. The engineers decided that the "rounded" sounded better than the exact location, so they rounded to the nearest 100 kilometer mark, and the name stuck. During the construction of Mark 500, which was originally going to be just an engineering support depot, unusually rich mineral deposits were found beneath the seabed. A mining company, Meadows Extraction, Ltd, bought the rights to the seabed in exchange for the completion of the work at Mark 500. The built the artificial island bigger than originally planned, as it was now expected to house a permanent under sea mining operation. Meadows Extraction prospered and eventually located its headquarters at Mark 500 after all of their other holdings were depleted. Mark 500 grew into a sizeable community of 60,000 people, progressing beyond being a mere company town, although Meadows Extraction is still the largest employer. It is now an important waystation along the causeway, and a destination in its own right, with the Hotel 500 located completely underwater in facilities originally built for mining. Food pellets released into the water at strategic moments insure guests, and especially diners in the restaurant, that the views of colorful tropical reef fish will surpass any aquarium.

Coral Seeding

Australian and Caribbean researchers during the later years of the Twilight developed methods of artificially accelerating the growth of coral reefs. They found they could also direct the shape of specific coral growths. The original goal of this research was to repair the damaged coral reef ecosystems throughout the world. Later, more surprising uses were found for this new ability.

The elevated world temperature during the Twilight Era, although only 2 degrees above the 2000AD datum, and the increase in seal level, which achieved a maximum during this time of 11 meters above the 2000AD Datum greatly expanded the available habitat for coral, which requires warm and shallow water. As coral seeding efforts in the Pacific and in the Caribbean sea progressed, ways were found not only to greatly speed growth, but to induce coral to grow at deeper depths as well. Coral seeding, as well as the coral’s expansion into its increased habitat, and the reduction in marine pollution during this time, rapidly increased the world’s total coral biomass.

This led to a far greater increase in the inert mass of the coral reefs themselves. This, in turn, absorbed a substantial amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and eventually was one of the factors in reversing the climate trend of the Twilight Era, cooling the planet, and lowering the sea level, towards, but not quite to, the pre-Twilight datum. Despite the enormous Australian contribution to coral seeding and despite the fact that there many other factors involved in restoring the Earth’s ecological balance, the Caribe people took full credit for saving the planet.

After this, the coral seeders found new applications for there work. Coral reefs were expanded to increase the general abundance of Caribe’s offshore ecosystems, (Hectare for Hectare, coral reefs support many times the biomass of open ocean.), to enhance tourism (tourists like to dive into lush, colorful reefs) and to channelize shipping, for regulation as well as security. There was some outcry from environmentalists, but ecologists eventually, after considerable research into the effects of expanded coral reef systems, sided with the coral seeders.

Finally, in a few areas, coral was adapted and engineered to be a harvestable commodity- for the construction industry. Corals can be grown to specific shapes, removed from the water (after a decade or two of growth) and infused with advanced polymers to make them watertight. They are then usable as building materials. It’s not yet a large market, but coral’s use is growing, especially in Caribe, where the flowing, natural lines of coral based architecture is in vogue.

Saint Tyraine

Located 220 Km from the mainland off Tirania, this obscure settlement of 160,000 persons is generally overlooked on maps of the planet. Economically, it is almost irrelevant, and about a quarter of the population gets by at the substance level. It is one of the poorest regions of Tirane, but many Caribbeans dream of resettling there, if only for the room and freedom available. The economy is largely agricultural, as the settlers chose an island that approximated, as best they could, the climate of home. During Grand Summer the population drops dramatically, as those that can leave do so, and those that can’t, endure. Some families maintain property on Earth, expressly for that purpose.

The settlements sprawled over the 23,000 square kilometer island group are haphazard in appearance, with the principal town and local capitol of Beauregarde having the airport, harbor, communications facilities, and everything else of importance. Most of the people live in small precast concrete and wood homes. The settlement is working hard to establish all the trappings on Caribbean life here, including farming, fishing, and culture, but results have been mixed.

One local economic sector doing surprisingly well is the "Tea nut" business. The Tea nut tree is a native Tiranian plant that established in island habitats, and deposits its seeds in large, long-lived floating pods, to be carried by wind and water to other islands. In this and in no other way it resembles Earth’s coconut, and such was originally called "Tiranian Coconut", a name later shortened to "T-nut". Caribbean immigrants mistook the name to mean "Tea Nut" and decided this meant one could boil the meat of the nut in water to make an acceptable tea. By bizarre coincidence, they were absolutely correct.

Wildlife

Caribe’s wildlife, for the most part, is its sea life. Few wild terrestrial animals remain, although the protected forests have parrots, monkeys, and small creatures. Sea creatures are a strong part of the tourist draw, and the ecosystems are vigilantly guarded. For these reasons they are given prominence in the selection of Caribbean wildlife below:

Atlantic Bottlenosed Dolphin

Chaser. No. Appearing: 3D6 Initiative: 7 Melee Hit Chance: Routine, Size: 200Kg Speed 125* Armor 0, Consciousness: 6 Life: 14 WPM –4 DPV .4 Signature –2

Extremely intelligent animals capable of domestication. Dolphins travel in groups and hunt with the aid of extremely advanced passive and active sonar. (Increase the signature of anything in the water by 5 with respect to searches by dolphins.) They communicate with each other and with other They learn, adapt, and modify their behaviors readily to meet changing conditions and can be trained easily by humans. Dolphins are not instinctive hunters, they are taught by their elders and they invent their own tactics. An individual dolphin will have a "skill" of from 1-4 in Melee, and 1-4 in Hunting. The dolphin can add its Melee skill to attack rolls. Dolphins almost never attack humans. They are capable of prolonged swimming at 30 kph, (twice the listed movement) and even faster bursts.

Great White Shark

Killer. No. Appearing: 1 Initiative: 4 Melee Hit Chance: Easy, Size: 1000 Kg Speed 100 Armor .2, Consciousness: 11 Life: 20 WPM +1 DPV 2.0 Signature +1

These are the statistics for a typical Great White; they get much larger. This is the creature that gives fish a bad name. The are swift vicious killers, and their sensory organs are superb. The Great White Shark senses trace chemicals in the water (a sense combining what humans would consider taste and smell) minute pressure changes which distinguish between the steady movement of a fish’s tail and the erratic movement of a wounded creature kilometers away, and even changes in the local electromagnetic field. All detection attempts made by Great Whites are made with four added to the signature of the target, 6 if it is bleeding. Despite their size and strength, they rarely classify humans as prey, and will attack a healthy, non-panicking human only on a 1-2 on a D10. Tiger sharks and Hammerheads are much more likely to attack.

Hammerhead Shark

Killer. No. Appearing: 1 (50%) 1D6 x 1D6 (50%) Initiative: 10 Melee Hit Chance: Easy, Size: 500 Kg Speed 100 Armor 0, Consciousness: 10 Life: 18 WPM 0 DPV 1 Signature +1

Found singly or in schools, the Hammerhead, smaller and more common than the Great White, is more likely to attack (1-4 on a D10). Senses are similar to a Great White, but not as advanced, with bonuses of 3 and 5, as above. These statistics are also usable for the Tiger shark, and the Mako shark, both aggressive species. (although the Mako is less so, use the Great White’s chances for attacks) These sharks are also less likely to school. Numerous smaller species of shark exist, and with the excepting of the Blue shark, most are less aggressive towards humans. The two largest species of shark, the Basking shark and the Whale shark, are completely unaggressive grazers.

Caiman

Pouncer/Killer. No. Appearing: 1D10 Initiative: 5 Melee Hit Chance: Easy, Size: 60 Kg Speed 80 Swimming/40 Walking Armor 0.2, Consciousness: 2 Life: 6 WPM –1 DPV .3 Signature 1, -1 in water.

The Caiman (or Cayman) is a smaller relative of the Alligator and the Crocodile. The latter have all but disappeared from the wild- a few crocs survive in zoos and in the preserve in Haiti. The smaller Caiman is still found in substantial wild populations. It is also farmed, for its meat as well as its thick leathery hide. All prefer to approach their prey (usually fish, a Caiman will only attack a human on a 1 on a D10 unless disturbed) stealthily, in the water.

Flamingo

Grazer. No. Appearing: From small groups to thousands. Initiative: 2 Melee Hit Chance: Impossible, Size: 5 Kg Speed 30 Walking/ 130 in flight Armor 0, Consciousness: 1 Life: 2 WPM –4 DPV .001 Signature 0

The West Indies subspecies of Flamingo (Phoenicopterus Ruber Ruber)is the largest in the world, and known for its vivid red color, whereas its relatives tend to be pink. (Locals will tell you the bird has the Carib spirit) The Flamingo is a tall, noisy, graceful and utterly harmless bird that eats small organisms and vegetable matter filtered from mud in its specialized beak.