10-100 YFN
The foreseeable future where corporate and state power increases while power and water resources dwindle. This is the time of the Brown-out, the collapse of the American Empire, the first true AI’s, and the first serious attempts at global government.
With emerging world-wide markets, the demand for power quickly outstrips the available fossil fuels. The resulting economic collapse is called the Brown-out. It was felt particularly hard in China, southern Asia and the United States. India fought the civil war that would settle its future for centuries beyond. China, as is her habit, turned inward to restructure. In the US, this led to the Six Hour War, and all the chaos that followed. Much of this chaos is commonly conflated into the Brown-out, but it was really a combination of other problems aggravated by the energy shortage.
During this time, much of the original World Wide Web was lost, so later historians would refer to the earlier 21st century as the Lesser Dark Ages, as much of the historical documentation from this time was electronic – and therefore lost.
As the US descended into chaos, and China turned inward, Multi-national corporations filled the vacuum of international law and order, and then they quickly came to blows. In the space of a few years this went from teams of specialized paramilitary agents, to open warfare with troops and tanks and bombardments.
This is the first appearance of Anthro-tanks and practical power armor.
Accidental but unequivocal contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligence brought a rare moment of clarity to human affairs. The Thoquari were refugees, and no threat to humanity of themselves, but powers they ran from would eventually follow them out here.
The Corporate Wars quickly came to a cease-fire, and a world government was established upon the previously ceremonial infrastructure of the United Nations. This was never called the Earth Federation by contemporaries, but future historians often use the shorthand First Fed to describe this government.
The UN saw to the rehabilitation of the US and south Asia, the rise of Africa as a regional power, and most importantly, the construction of the Planex Program – interstellar exploration ships.
After the launch of the Planex ships, there was little to hold the parties together, and the corporate wars began with renewed vigor.
This was the first war to extend definitively out into space, and the first to use alterant clones and armed autonomous robots. The Second Corporate Wars, or War of Mergers dwarfed the First Corporate Wars in both size and savagery. Most of what would become the six Corporations of the Hex would be formed during or immediately after this war.