Martian Union

The Martian Union is a nation that controls Mars and much of the Solar System’s resources, including the Solar System’s dyson sphere. It is a major political player in the Local Systems and has equally strained and prosperous relations with various other nations. Most of its inhabitants are humans, many of whom are directly descended from humans who emigrated from Earth. This populous holds their once-home in high regard, and much of the culture in the Martian Union springs from appreciation and preservation of natural ecosystems, especially Earth’s.

Territory/inhabitants

The main inhabited territory in the Martian Union is Mars, a terraformed planet from the Solar System. This is where the majority of citizens in the nation live: some three billion people, most of whom are humans, human-alien hybrids, or AI. As well as being a home for all these people, Mars has enough space to produce food and supplies for them, too.

(Pictured: an average Martian man and woman. The man has a cheddan complexion, and is wearing traditional festival wear, like a skirt and symbolic jewellery. The woman has a Harnen complexion, and is wearing a more casual outfit. Compared is the silhouette of a 21st-century Earth man.)

Though they are not permanently home to any citizens of the Martian Union, the MU also has jurisdiction over the planet Earth and its moon, Mun. With its legal control over this territory, the MU can prevent those without clearance from interfering with Earth or Mun. This is important, as it allows the MU to enforce Earth’s status of being a planet-sized protected reserve.

The most important place the MU has jurisdiction over is Sun, the Solar System’s star, and it’s dyson sphere. This dyson sphere produces 99% of the Solar System’s energy and roughly a third of the Local Systems’ energy, making it an important and powerful political tool for the MU. The majority of trade goods brought into the MU are bought with money made from selling Sun’s energy, for example.

Though the Martian Union has more than enough power to buy resources from other nations, it generally prefers to gather them itself, so that other nations have less bargaining power over it. Because of this, the MU has many small outposts located all over the Solar System for the purpose of resource collection, including some on Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, and both asteroid belts.

The MU tends to gather raw resources from these outposts, send them to Mars, and process them there, instead of processing them on site.

Lastly, the Martian Union also has various outposts and research stations set up all across the Local Systems, for the purpose of discovering and protecting alien life. Some of these can be found on Stragul, Pennacerti, and Biomelan.

One notable one is on the planet Aerna, which is outfitted with military technology to defend the planet’s single lifeform if need be.

Politics, crime & justice

Mars has a collective government; that is, it is governed by a hive-mind created by uploading it’s citizens’ minds into a single computer. The collective government of Mars is known as Erdweith.

On Mars, uploading memories into this hive-mind is completely voluntary, and does not require death, unlike in some other collective governments. Thus, the best way to ‘vote’ on Mars is to simply upload some of the memories and experiences that inform your beliefs.

As much as a person changes over time as they learn and experience new things, so too does Erdweith change it’s policies as it receives new memories and beliefs.

Erdweith not only makes important decisions for Mars’ citizens, but is also behind much of the automation involved with making food and resources for Mars. It’s computer brain is stored in a reinforced bunker several kilometres below Mars’ surface.

Though Mars has a low crime rate relative to many other nations in the Local Systems, crime is still present. Criminals deemed a danger to others are kept in prisons away from the rest of the population; though these prisons have conditions roughly equivalent to the living conditions of Mars’ poorest, they are still leaps and bounds ahead of the prisons from pre-space-travel times.

Food/resource production

The majority of food and resource production on Mars is completely automated, with only limited human oversight. This automation allows Martians to live comfortably without having to work for necessities like food or water.

Food on Mars is commonly mass-produced, though Martians do often keep small farms in their gardens. Plants are grown in either stacked intensive farms, or the traditional large land plot.

Protein-rich food on Mars does not come from animals as is the norm, but thanks to low amounts of space and most of Mars’ population being vegan, it instead comes from a strange unicellular organism known as Minimacibum, casually eckale.

This genetically modified lifeform grows in colonies like a bacteria, though it is eukaryotic.

Eckale is farmed in huge colonies, fed with rotting plant material, and regularly harvested by cutting huge chunks off.

It is a versatile food; it comes in a variety of different species characterised by different flavours, can alter its texture and consistency if mixed with certain chemical solutions, and can be turned into milk or butter-like substances.

Though many household items are automatically produced, others are created by hobbyists and artisans.

Basic, function-over-form goods like hygiene products, clothing, kitchenware, electronics, and toys are mass-produced in automated factories and are entirely free.

However, many Martians, free from needing to work for basic necessities, create independent, small, or occasionally large businesses, which also produce goods; unlike those produced by automation, items produced by Martian people place value on art as well as functionality. Sometimes hand-crafted, sometimes designed and then 3D-printed, these commercial goods include artwork, plant pots, kitchenware, clothing, custom electronic devices like PCs, toys & figurines, and much more.

Though some Martians certainly do not work, and instead rely on free, automated goods, an entire economy of monetised hobbies has sprung up, most Martians creating and designing their own goods, artwork, and even entertainment, to sell for those made by others.

Architecture/transport

Most of Mars’ architecture falls under the umbrella of the soilen style, though sprinkled around the planet are remnants of the 21st-23rd century old modern style, known for its white, black, and brown colour scheme and bold, blocky shapes, and the 23rd-25th century mosaic style, known for its elegant shapes and cold coloured highlights on natural browns.

The soilen style, though as diverse as any other architectural movement, is mainly characterised by red-brown walls, flat roofs, and an emphasis on natural scenery like rocks and plants.

The most prominent housing unit is a large, rectangular donut-shaped building that contains five or six entire houses within the walls of the structure, as well as some kind of recreational park in the middle- perhaps an ornamental garden, or a small swimming lake. The roof of the structure is flat, and can be accessed from the houses below. These roof sections are usually fenced off and exclusive to the person or family living below, and act as private gardens separate from the public garden in the centre of the housing unit.

One of the most important aspects of living on Mars is living among an artificial nature. A menagerie of plant species have been bred or modified to grow anywhere and everywhere, and ornamental rocks are synthesised in droves. The buildings have been painted red-brown entirely to resemble soil and rock.

Though trees on roofs, pond-like swimming pools, moss carpets inside houses, or any number of Martian norms might seem bizarre or unhygienic to those living at a different time or place, a great amount of effort has put in place on Mars to make functional buildings resemble natural settings without hindering everyday life.

Many basic functions of life have been tweaked since the pre-space age. For instance, though rooms appear windowless from the outside, they are actually one-way. Though there is no glass set into the wall, there are screens on the inside of the wall that can project a live view from outside the building, among a number of other things. Some might change their video feed to a recorded sunny feed when it is raining, or simply project video from a completely different source, like a jungle. Video and animation loops are often created and sold for these windows.

Another example is beds: on Mars, beds are not hard structures supporting soft mattresses, but a block of soft but sturdy, malleable material that sinks slightly when laid on. The bed itself can be pushed and pulled to form different shapes.

Transport on Mars is very different from what it once was. Cars, once a staple of human transport, have now been entirely replaced. Common vehicles include bike-like vehicles powered by electricity or by the person riding them, though these are not as common as simply walking somewhere.

For further travel, there are trains of all shapes and sizes. For instance, there are bus-like trains that stop very frequently, inter-suburb trains for longer distances, and even trains that travel between major cities for 4-18 hours at a time. Even longer distances are covered by aeroplanes, which usually travel at sonic speeds. Despite the speed of planes, resources are usually still transported around Mars on trains.

Though the citizens of the Martian Union almost all live on Mars, they, as well as resources they require, still need to be transported through space. Small ships seating 10-200 people or carrying a small amount of resources travel to orbit from Mars’ surface, where they are loaded onto larger ships, too big to land, that can house 200-800 people for up to a week. Mars does not act as a functional spaceport for any ships larger than this.

Mars builds, maintains, and launches large ships from the Phobos Space Station, a spaceport built onto Mars’ moon Phobos. Other Martian spaceports are found in mining facilities in the Outer Solar System. Though the Martian Union builds many ships itself, it also buys them from other nations.

Childhood/education

Martian family groups come in a variety of sizes, from one dating pair to several generations of related and unrelated people. When a child is born into a family group, generally all members will help somehow.

Though Martian children do not attend formalised education until five years of age, it is common for Martian parents to take their children to parent groups where both can socialise. Since Mars is a relatively safe place, children are often allowed by their parents to join groups of other kids to play around the neighbourhood; children old enough are even left unsupervised.

At five years of age, Martian children start attending school. The school hours are relatively short, and much of the learning is done at home, with parents or friends. At first, the curriculum focuses on basic language, math, and art skills, then moves to a general overview of many topics, like literature, math, art, sport, history, engineering, and science, and then finally in the last four years of school, students are allowed to specialise and pick their own subjects.

At nineteen years of age, students graduate from school. After this, many take several years off, though some jump right into their next education. For some, this will be taking formalised courses in their chosen subject. For others, this might be learning a skill from their family or a mentor. These different paths are more or less effective depending on the chosen field.

When a Martian reaches the age of twenty-three, they are legally recognised as adults. They are now allowed to responsibly take certain drugs, take certain jobs, and have sex with other adults, among other things.