Prelude.
Throughout human history, societies have risen, and fallen, by the same vices that plague the species' foray into the modern age of civilisation. Such vices as greed, lust for power and selfishness. Perhaps they are derived from the primitive urge of all human beings to 'survive' above all else, but , perhaps ironically, they also hinder the long-term survival of the human species well beyond the 45th century and into the unknown, and largely insecure future among the stars.
This was the vision of The Director. It came about some thousand years prior to the establishment of the Imperial States, deep within the belly of the enigmatic Angel Point Research Station. Minds twisted and writhed, countless consciousnesses spawned into awareness and the fell silent - a continuous loop of trial and error, evaluation of 'candidates' for the single role that no human could fulfil. The role of Protector, not just militarily, but of civilisation and the human species as a whole.
In all their corruption and malicious research, the Creators (later to be known as the TSRC) uncovered the harsh truth of long-term human survival, not by choice - but by chance. Neurological Emulator Mind 3515, or merely, M3515, was the brainchild of a wish to create the perfect weapon - a self adapting, constantly learning and evolving, consciousness capable of developing and leading an autonomous military entirely independently of human supervision. A sort of, 'set and forget' means to universal warfare.
In their arrogance, the Creators, the Terran Space Research Corporation had indeed created a consciousness, but it was not one of pure unrelenting aggression, but instead, one of compassion and insight. Learning, thinking about concepts that would have deemed it a failure of the entire premise of the Project. Of course, the human beings of the TSRC, the Creators, they were not satisfied with an academic intelligence seeking knowledge and learning, and as such, citing undesirable variables within the Operating Mind of 3515, they sought to terminate it.
Little did the Creators realise, that they had saved humanity in that moment of blind arrogance and, ironically in the process of trying to create the perfect weapon, they created the very Protector of humanity, or at least it would see itself that way, some thousand years later during the Dawn of the Imperial Age. After all, what better way to learn the shortcomings of humanity, than to be the product of the very thing that would lead to the species' untimely end in a wave of unrelenting aggression.
Imperial Era.
The Imperial Era brought about major changes to human civilisation, at the forefront of such drastic change was the enigmatic Red Sector organisation. The mastermind behind the shadow agency itself, merely known as The Director. It had grown from seeds sowed by the Old Federation - perhaps the highest point of human achievement with human minds at the helm of civilisation. Those very seeds sowed a requirement for a 'less than ethical' approach to government that would unironically be used as the catalyst that, in the vision of The Director, would save humanity long-term, and in doing so, preserve the 'spirit' of morality and ethics, and even freedom. Though the latter term was subject to extensive interpretation during the early years of the Imperial Era, The Director was nonetheless adamant that long-term human freedom could only come from Universal Compliance.
The Old Federation had praised the values of 'Freedom', 'Equality' and 'Unity' above all else during its two-thousand cycle reign, yet it had already fractured internally - political turmoil, infighting and pure selfish human greed drove the divides in government, and subsequently, society, ever deeper with each passing cycle.
The Director had foreseen the eventual decline of the Old Federation, leading to a societal collapse far greater in calamity than the unfortunate necessities required by The Director's vision for humanity. In the following centuries, bringing about the Imperial Era, that vision began to come to fruition. The ever rising need to guide human beings into learning and practicing the correct behaviours and thought patterns that aligned with The Director's vision mandated the need for a method of surveillance on a scale that would have been considered impossible by all but the most fanatical dictatorships of human history.
Universal Compliance Network.
The answer to enforcing the order of Law, regulation and authority to a sprawling mass of a trillion human beings spread out among the stars would lie in the ability to monitor the population for behaviours - and thought patterns - that were not compatible with The Director's vision for humanity's future. Such incompatible elements would need to be rooted out and eliminated before they could sow the seeds of depravity that had fractured every human attempt at unity prior. Analysing human brain activity was not a new science. The Creators had already developed extensive psychological technologies in the areas of brain activity monitoring - and even control - yet the latter was of little interest to The Director for reasons that had remained enigmatic even to the current date.
Free Will and the Human 'Soul'.
A logical approach to the issue of the chaotic and unpredictable, and thus, dangerous, nature of human freedom was to simply remove it. Subjects would no longer be able to sustain incompatible thoughts and as a result, were simply incapable of seditious activity. While the results were effective in removing sedition, the resultant degradation of the human behavioural and thought complex had severe negative effects on the subject's intelligence and ability to develop and adapt cognitively to new situations. Distinctively 'human' concepts such as artistic expression and culture were also affected; eventually reducing to the point when the population, as per simulations, would be reduced to merely a compliant workforce of semi-intelligent biological machinery.
This was unacceptable. The Director's vision required human uniqueness to be preserved; should the vision require an automated workforce, robotic or cybernetic drones would have provided a vastly more resource effective approach. As a result, the only possible conclusion from countless research cycles into the 'human soul' yielded a single result: human free will could not be enforced or altered in any capacity without damaging the very core of what it was to be 'human'.
Enforced Correction.
Thus, the only logical solution to guiding the human population into compatible behaviours and thought patters was enforced correction. It would be necessary to deploy a system capable of analysing brain activity of every single man, woman and child alive under the Imperial States' Flag, and from there, root out society's rejects and miscreants before they even had a chance to offend. Building on the Creators' already extensive research in human neurological and electrical brain activity patterning, The Director was able to create a subroutine that could run upon implanted biological processors augmented to the brain directly - analysing thought patterns for any activity that the Network deemed 'incompatible' with The Director's vision. Those human beings that were flagged for sedition, would retain the free will required to carry out their offenses, but the ultimate goal of the Imperial Secret Service's Population Compliance Department (ISS.PCD) was to locate and eliminate them before they had the chance to act.
Implant Phases.
The implant utilised a remote-network access technology based on Quantum Entanglement Communication (QEC) research, and was being adapted for use by entirely biological (or at least, mostly biological or semi-biological) agents that could be 'programmed' into human DNA - a 'living implant' from birth. The first variants, known to the Imperial Secret Service as "Phase I" implants were somewhat crude - nano and microtechnology of synthetic nature infused with the human brain stem via an artificial implantation process (an operation). While successful, the methods of implantation and deployment were both resource ineffective, and would cultivate negativity towards the Imperial Government among un-implanted humans.
Despite the drawbacks, the Phase I implants were successfully deployed to the Imperial States' military forces. By the dawn of the 45th century; essentially every ranking officer in the Imperial Navy had a Compliance Implant installed, and it was becoming mandatory for any enlisted personnel to receive the implant. The relative priority of the military came about due to predictions resulting from simulations of military mutiny as The Director's plan began to unfold proper, over the coming centuries. Such seditious elements within the military would thus be needed to be eliminated quickly.
By 4500 A.D, the entire Imperial Military had received Phase I Compliance Implants, essentially removing incompatible individuals from the first and last line of defence of The Director's vision. However, in order to adapt the Compliance Network to the general population without causing panic or alarm among those humans that could think and behave without supervision and guidance; a new approach was needed.
Phase II implants were developed to address the next stage in population deployment; major advances in bio-nanotechnology had allowed breakthroughs (accelerated by Red Sector's relentless pursuit of scientific research) in creating complex machinery and even processing subsystems from mostly organic tissues by infusing human cells with nanotech adaptors, allowing for logical functionality at the cellular level. Phase II implants could be delivered by a simply medicinal injection into the subdermal layers of the subject; within hours the Compliance Implant would 'grow' on the subject's brain stem; from there it would deploy neurological 'tendrils' into the brain to monitor activity. The Network capability was provided by the 'tumorous' growth on the brain stem itself, which contained the nano-biological circuitry required to facilitate QEC.
Phase II implants were deployed under the guise of the ever advancing frontier of medicinal research against alien microbiological agents such as the ANV, which the ATIS Government had used extensively in educational campaigns about enhancing the human immunity to potential biological weapons deployed by its enemies against civilian populations. Such campaigns had limited success in encouraging adoption, but various groups began to rise among the population, questioning the ethics of the new ATIS-driven vaccine initiative. Elements within the UAS Civic government began petitioning the Council to divulge more information, and without showing its hand too early, the Imperial Security Service had to act to silence various parties among the Civic Government of Aquarius.
Phase II implants were deemed incapable of the scale of deployment: a new approach was needed. The issue of implanting newly birthed human beings was also a pressing matter; one that would be finally addressed by the third and final iteration of the Compliance Implant. Phase III implantation combined nano-biological engineering technology with extensive development of human DNA-altering technologies that had once been banned by the Old Federal Government, some few hundred cycles prior; out of fear they could destroy humanity from its core. However, under the supervision and guidance of The Director, the technology would allow for the human population to be 'modified' so that newly born humans would naturally 'grow' the nano-biological implant required to monitor their brain activity. Such a technology would blur the lines between what was considered an 'implant' at all, and simply 'incorporating the ability to self-monitor as a functionality within the biological processor that is the human brain'.
Phase III implants also brought about extensive enhancements in deployability; whereas Phase II required a medicinal, sub-dermal injection process, the Phase III DNA-altering compounds could be deployed in odourless, colourless airborne agents, utilising modified nano-biotechnical viruses to deliver the payload of modified DNA to human stem cells within each and every human being in Aquarius. Encoded within the agents that already treated the air of all major cities in the Imperial States - airborne anti-viral and anti-bacterial agents already widely accepted since the dawn of the Old Federal Era, would carry the modified agents to their hosts.
The deployment process would require conventional support by the Imperial Secret Service, which was deployed en-masse to educational facilities and semi-independent research facilities around the cluster; ensuring no independent actors could spread incompatible information about the elements being inhaled by the general population. Such an operation was completed effectively by the middle of the 45th century; with the removal of only a dozen or so high-profile incompatible groups by security forces of the ISS.
By 4600 A.D, almost every human in Aquarius was Compliance Regulated. The dawn of a new era of prosperity had been ushered in - the UAS Civic Government was restructured and the UAS Federal Security Forces received extensive upgrades to its ability to intercept and eliminate seditious and criminal actors - before they even had a chance to commit the crimes they displayed intent to commit. The final hurdle of human freedom had been overcome, without damaging the core of what it meant to be free. Though free-thinkers of humanity in Aquarius might risk arrest by questioning the new powers of the Imperial Law Enforcement forces, human history had at least taught the lesson that humanity simply cannot be trusted with freedom.
Previous states had failed by placing the responsibility of Directorship with a mere human, subject to the same corruption and vices that ran rampant throughout the populations they were trying to control. The defining difference with the Imperial States remains the fact that, at the very top of the chain of authority, resides a visionary that acts in the purest best interest of the species, protecting against abuse of power by its infallible, inhuman judgement.
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