To the middle of the XXI century the human civilisation has reached the apogee of its development. Wide spacious steppes, evergreen forests and picturesque valleys were replaced by large megapolises with constantly rising amount of citizens in them. Over these cities and outside them tower huge manufacturing buildings of thousands of companies. There are mining, processing and production factories for producing energy carriers, resources and manufactures of all kinds. All enterprises work to feed, warm, dress and shoe the multi-billion population of the Earth, to provide them with all possible benefits of the modern world.
Scientists and the ecologists, many years convincing the public in the necessity to stop so consumer use of planet resources and ignoring the problems of environmental pollution, have not achieved any results. Carelessness and craving for wealth, cynicism and thirst for profit have blinded people, made them indifferent to ecology problems.
The consequences of such carelessness turned out to be catastrophic. The greenhouse effect created by the gases thrown out in the upper atmosphere has caused the global warming, the threat of which was not taking seriously by many people. Eternal polar ices have thawed, having released enormous volumes of water. Unprecedented hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis have fallen on the continents that were so carefully, during many centuries rendered habitable by people. And as a result, within the several years, all megapolises with their infrastructure, culture and the population became buried under kilometer thickness of waters of the World Ocean.
Birth of Arkon
Fortunately, tens of thousands of the cleverest, perspicacious and business men, foreseen the consequences of this disaster and have managed to be prepared for it. They stock up on all necessary, find the refuge on the unique remained not flooded piece of the land, which was the top of a chain of a high-mountainous plateaus. So the rests of a human civilisation concentrate on the unique remained continent in a huge city-state which they called Arkon (from English “ark”).
The first years of its existence Arkon reminded the camp of refugees where the order and law reigned. All efforts of arkonians have been directed to the fastest creation of normal life conditions. Eventually the life in Arkon is improving. The skyscrapers are erected, the transport system, developed automated infrastructure covering extraction of energy, resources and manufacture of the goods and services are appeared. Educational and medical institutions are established. The scientific, technical and economic development of a megapolis begins.
The population of Arkon refuses to use government institutions of the past. A number of the Corporations differing in branches of their activity are based. These Corporations are ruled by the scientific, economic and political elite of a megapolis, and the Council of Corporations has become the government in Arkon. Corporations start to control, dominate and rule actually each scope of activity in Arkon.
Safety of Arkon is provided by the Automated Systems of Law Security (ASLS) established by Corporations (people called these systems "the dogs"). Their aim is to control, secure and protect objects and industrial facilities of Corporations, and also the areas of the megapolis with law-abiding citizens.
Alongside with it there are areas that are beyond the “dogs” control and they are called the "holes". There a riff raff of the society live – the criminal elements of Arkon which are engaged in illegal traffic of weapon, drugs, people and human bodies, a pimping and contraband, buying up stolen things. Rioters and criminals of all kinds are expelled in here. They can’t get back to the other regions of a megapolis – any attempt to do this is stopped by the "dogs" that control movement between regions.
Gift of Ancestors
Many generations of ancestors of the people living nowadays in Arkon, lived in the densely populated megapolises stretched over all planet. Breathing polluted air, leading a sedentary lifestyle, eating genetically modified and artificial food, going through daily stresses, their genetic codes have started to change. Year after year more and more patients with serious, often incurable diseases began to appear among the inhabitants of Arkon. Children, as a rule, were born with inborn pathological deviations, often dead. People of Arkon – last representatives of a human civilisation on the Earth, were threatened with the imminent extinction.
The community starts to sound the alarm and the scientists of the most different branches start to search a solution of a dangerous situation.
As a result of the long researches the group of genetics, under the supervision of Antoine Chevalier, invents the substance named "vita-plasma". Its uniqueness is when getting into human body cells it restores the damaged fragments of DNA, strengthening them and adding them a number of features, helping to survive in the technogenic environment. The vita-technology allowed curing the incurables, to rejuvenate old men, and the main thing - to create genetically perfect people.
However, the use of vita-plasma is extremely expensive and resource-intensive procedure, therefore its wide use is impossible. The Council of Corporations has worked out the program of "social selection" which selects the best and most worthy representatives of human race. According to this program, the primary task of the mankind – is survival in the technogenic environment and preservation of genetic pureness of the human race. The process of vita-modification is available only to decent citizens of Arkon who have made the cut at this program. The program is unavailable for outlaws and inhabitants of "holes".
Within the next several years the quantity of vita-modified people of arkon has grown. They are looking younger, strong and healthy people cleared out of centuries-old genetic "garbage". They consider themselves to be the new evolutionary cycle of a mankind, and proudly called themselves the Neovitals.
At the same time, the searching of more available remedies proceeded, for the majority of arkonians it was not possible to become vita-modified, they suffered, were ill and died. Neovitals have not been strongly disturbed by this fact – they have taken a great interest in creation of a new society of the ideal people – neovitals, based on the perfection of a human body, spirit and mind.
At last, on the vita-plasma basis, applying the nanotechnology, the substance called the “nanovitan” is invented. It has allowed replacing human organs and parts of a body with electro-mechanical, without causing the rejection in the patient’s cells. The nanoprocessors in it transformed the impulses given by a brain to the signals understood by the implanted device. Being many times cheaper than vita-plasma, nanovitan gives the chance to millions of people to substitute their sick organs for artificial, and, thereby, to recover.
In spite of the fact that nanovitan was created for the law abiding citizens who hasn’t been vita-modificated, the outlaws and the criminal elements of the "holes" start using it. They buy special nano-implants increasing their combat capabilities and psi abilities. It has essentially raised their chances not only to survive in the severe streets of the "holes", but also to dominate there. Those who changed their body by replacement of organs with fighting implants were called the Implanters.
Hunger for Ksylenium
Neovitals, having lost any interest to other inhabitants of Arkon, were fenced off from them by walls of the enormous sizes of a bastion under the name "Arciss". At the heart of their society is the person idealization as the Lord planned it – without genetic deviations, mutations and a bad heredity.
Neovitals are physically strong and possess high intellect. Their children pass the special preparatory program and they grow ingenious scientists, artists, doctors, engineers and other experts. In the Arciss laboratories they develop new, unique technologies which, however, they won’t give to anybody.
Neovitals are convinced of their pure-blood and are very proud of it. They dislike other inhabitants of Arkon, and clearly despise implanters.
Implanters are settled in the western areas of Arkon, many of them occupy the "holes" territories. Among them there are a lot of members of the criminal groupings which have essentially strengthened the soldiers by powerful combat implants. For a long time implanters don’t have the common ideology, they are at war with each other and with the Corporations for spheres of influence in Arkon.
However, among the implanters there were also intelligent, clever and strong-willed people. Simon Morrary – the charismatic person of average years with the loud, well set voice, possessing brilliant oratorical gift was one of such people. He became the founder of a large and very powerful implanters’ organization "Techno Palm". The main aim of this organization was to unite, support and control implanters of Arkon for achievement the common goals and domination in it.
Simon Morrary has inspired his followers with the idea of the transhumanism, as a true direction of the further human evolution. It is based on the thought that initially the human body is far from perfect – it is weak, fragile and short-lived and only by technogenic modifications the person can rise on a new step of an evolutionary ladder. This thought has pleased many implanters, and they have easily followed the new leader.
There was no initially open aggression between implanters and neovitals. Certainly, because of the ideology and physiology distinctions they had a mutual hostility, but they don’t have an overt conflict.
In 2135 the astronomers have opened a new comet which should pass too close from the Earth. It was named it X/2135 D1. The comet has promptly enough crossed an earth orbit, and all the inhabitants of Arkon saw this. A coma and a comet tail have entered into the earth atmosphere, profusely having saturated it with its dust and the gases brought here from the unknown corners of the Universe.
The comet has continued its further movement to the open space, having left the terrestrials a terrible gift – the unknown virus which, having affected the person, slowly, but uncontrollably destroy its body and mind, leading to the painful death.
The searches of a cure from the virus did not make any results for a long time – any existent substances did not help. Then on the Council of Corporations the assumption is made – if the virus has an extraterrestrial origin the antivirus also should be extraterrestrial.
Scientists carefully study the various space objects which have fallen in the form of meteorites on the Earth surface. At last the experts of the Corporation "Ksylenta" discover the substance named “ksylenium”. On its basis the medicine temporarily stopping the virus progress and canceling its influence on a human body is created. However, with time it splits and the virus starts to attack the infected organism again.
There is a lot of ksylenium in a terrestrial ground. During millions of years in the form of a dust or other space bodies it got from Space and stored up there. "Ksylenta" establish well protected enterprises for extraction, processing and sales of ksylenium.
The possibility to receive ksylenium in necessary quantities becomes the most important task for each inhabitant of Arkon as without this medicine they have to face the long and painful death. The implanters and neovitals are in the similar conditions, each of them is convinced in their superiority, ready to battle for the right to exist and dominate in Arkon.
The overt conflict between them should soon detonate…
