The Judge of Ages

Note: to calculate by the Chimerical Military calendar, merely subtract 1737 from A.D. to derive AUCR

Preposthuman Era (Count to a Trillion)

Genocide Century

1901–1930

The Great War, the effective end of monarchy in Europe. Invention of the aeroplane; mass-production of the automobile.

1931–1970

Economic Theory Wars. Socialists lose open conflict in 1940s, make immense gains through indirect means. British Empire lost. United States of America rises to world predominance. Sexual pathologies erupt in the West, become commonplace. Period of rapid intellectual decline: poetry ceases.

1969

First man on the moon.

1971–2000

The Crazy Years. Collapse of the Socialist Empire in the East. The Holiday from History. First world infosphere.

Century of Faith Wars

2001–2020

Little Jihad. Jerusalem, Tehran nuked. Economic collapse and civil war in China.

2021–2050

Indian Summer of Liberty, also called the Age of the Sovereign Individual. International banking system subverts and overthrows remnants of the Old World Order and establishes a semilibertarian plutocracy.

2054

Launch of the NTL Croesus.

2051–2070

International credit system collapses. Hyperinflation, world depression. End of the infosphere. Rule by the Local Military Governors, Advocates, or Euro-American Proconsuls established throughout Asia and Africa.

2071–2090

Greater Jihad.

2090

Burning of New York the Beautiful by Jihadi atomics. Historians count this as the beginning of the Little Dark Ages.

Little Dark Ages

In the confusion and mutual recriminations of the disaster of New York, the factions of the American political system resort to open violence, destroying the last democracy on the planet. Rapid disintegration of the international economic open order follows, followed by a sudden drop in technological application (albeit not scientific knowledge). Certain popular doctrines, rife with foolish economic errors and ancient religious prohibitions on usury, are enforced with particular fury in both the Islamic and the Christian world, and meanwhile the Chinese and Japanese economic spheres fall prey to a strange philosophy that combines the worst elements of Marxism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (Xun Ziism, the Way of the Wise). Only in the severed and warring states of India does anything approaching sane economic practice prevail, and it is among their splintered princedoms that the civilization to dominate the next two centuries rises.

The Jihad is a more or less continuous effort during these years, an ongoing attempt to make the West and Far East more favorable to sharia law, or to grant special privileges to Muslims. The British Parliament is dissolved during the confusion and riots following the Abecedarian War (2139 until at least 2182, the Treaty of Charleston; historians disagree as to an end date). The Plague is an Abecedarian attack, meant to wipe out the Jews: 2165 is when the virus is released, 2216 is the last known untreatable case of the spore.

2091

Jefferson Dayles refuses to step down when impeached, instead attempts a coup. Succession Wars in the USA.

2092

Joint Chiefs of Staff assume administration “for the duration.” Beginning of the Imperial Federal Government.

2111–2150

Rise of India. Genetic manipulation of castes in India.

2112

The Croesus arrives at V886 Centauri and begins mining. FIRST CONTACT.

2120–2220

The Starvation Years. Famine reaches worldwide levels in A.D. 2120.

2121

Disunion War. American Imperium breaks into People’s Ergonomic Positive Republic of California, the Gaianist Democratic Union of America, and the Confederate States of America (informally known as Oddifornia, Greenyland, and Jesusland, respectively).

2139

Abecedarian War begins (so called because it is Atomic, Biological, and Chemical).

2150–2170

The Harmonious Forward Leap Together. Japan makes territorial gains along the coast of North and South America, establishing enclaves, and erecting schools and factories.

Reindustrialization spreads from the Orient. Supremacy of Japan under the Tenno. Cyber-Shintoism. Japanese establish the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Pacific, from Australia to the Aleutians, and parts of California. Pacific Rim Wars. Artificial Volcanism first used as military terror-weapon.

2151

The Big One. The long-expected San Andreas earthquake destroys the coastal cities of California. The coastline is shattered into an archipelago. Japanese commercial interests and military units are invited in by Sacramento to restore prosperity and order. Oddifornia becomes a client state of the Tenno.

2155

The Southwest frees itself from California, declares itself Aztlan, a province of Reino del Extasis, the federated drug-theocracy stretching from Mexico to Brazil.

2162

Presumed date of first broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission.

2165

Persian nomads release the Final Solution Bacillus: Plague Years begin (also called the Fifty Years).

2166

Presumed date of second broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission.

2170

First reception of broadcasts from the Croesus. First pictures of the Monument studied on Earth. Monument notation revolutionizes logic, semantics, mathematics, and gives rise to a suite of analytical techniques called Semiotic Quantification.

2171–2190

Semiotic analysis of the human genome prompts the First Revolution in Biotechnology. Rapid advances in bioengineering.

2176–2180

Reconquista. Southwestern United States overrun by Mexico.

2176

The Armed Republic of Greater Texas breaks away from the Confederacy.

2180

Semiotic analysis of semantic neuropsychology prompts the Linguistic Consequentialism theory, or “Volksseele,” first in Dutch Africa, later in Europe; first as an academic theory, later as a political movement. As a result, nation-states, blamed for the horrors of depopulation and war, begin to lose predominance to Lingospheres.

2181

The Kali Yuga. India reduces the Middle East and Indochina to radioactive wasteland, bombs European cities. Effective end of the Jihad. Copts rise to power in Egypt.

2182

Treaty of Charleston essentially ends the Abecedarian War.

2187–2190

Linguistic Laws, first in France and Germany, and later throughout the civilized nations, require subjects to declare their primary language, and to avow loyalty to it, rather than to nation-states.

2191–2196

Iberian War. Indosphere retreats from African and Far Eastern possessions.

2199

Last of the Great Apes perishes in captivity. Ximen del Azarchel born.

The Purifications

2205–2207

Clean Mediterranean War. Noted for the lack of atomic or biological weapons. Coptic Order gains control from Tripoli to Armenia, called Greater Egypt.

2209

Napoleon Montrose born.

2210

Menelaus Montrose born. His father dies that same year.

2210–2230

Spain reestablishes intercontinental electronic systems with South America, issues letters of Marque and Reprisal, begins to clear the high seas of piracy. Texmexicans repopulate the Mississippi Valley and western territories.

2211–2216

Japanese Winter. Early Japanese-led attempts in planetary weather control via orbital parasol system end in climate disaster.

2211

Leonidas born.

2216

Last known untreatable case of the spore. End of the Plague.

2216–2222

Menelaus ages 6 to 12 in Bridge-to-Nowhere.

2217

Menelaus is apprenticed to an Artificer at age 7 (this means he would have risen to journeyman at age 14 in A.D. 2224, to be released at 21 in A.D. 2231, assuming the master kept honest debt records).

2220

End of the Starvation Years.

2221

At age 11, Menelaus vows enmity to Darwin, imaging him to be a cartoon villain.

2224–2230

Counterreconquest. Texas annexes Aztlan.

2225–2226

From ages 15 to 16, Menelaus sees service in the Counterreconquest. Sam Feckle dies on campaign against Utah.

2230

India lands an expedition on the moon, explores and restores the long-dead Tycho Base. With the resumption of manned space travel, this year is accounted the end of the Little Dark Ages.

2231–2250

Spain and India cooperate on a space program, including an interstellar expedition.

2232

At age 22, Menelaus is already an attorney and duelist (who has fought four men, killing two). Mike Nails is his third kill. Menelaus is frozen for fifteen months; his calendar and biological ages are no longer synchronized.

2234

Menelaus attends Soko University in San Francisco, at that time one of the Japanese enclaves of California, owned by the Sumitomo Zaibatsu.

2235

Launch of the NTL Hermetic. At age 25cal/24bio, Menelaus boards the punt for NTL Hermetic. An experiment with a mind-augmenting neuropharmaceutical renders him unfit for voyaging. He is biosuspended.

2244–2324

Reign of Queen Gloriana of the United Kingdom.

2250–2300

Rise of Azania. Ultradeep robotic mining techniques (later used to bore the depthtrain system) lower cost of extracting South African uranium, diamonds, oil. Discovery of the motherlode of uranium in Pretoria.

2265

Pacific War. Called “the Pacifist War” because peace protestors swing the victory to the Japanese in their territorial disputes with Texas for control of the West Coast.

2260–2270

Greater Texas makes territorial gains in California, Baja California, and the Pacific Northwest.

2285

NTL Hermetic arrives at the Diamond Star V886 Centauri.

2287

Leonidas (76cal/76bio) enters biosuspension, hoping to live until Montrose returns.

2290

Hermetic crew erects radio-laser of sufficient power to narrowcast to Earth.

2297–2299

The Irish Catholic Movement, the so-called Gaelosphere.

2299

Denmark is made a possession of the British Crown during the Second War of Jenkins’ Ear (so dubbed by journalists for the artificiality of the causus belli against Spain).

2300

End of the Indosphere dominion. Spain, supported by South American technocracy, emerges as a dominant power in Europe. Hispanosphere Collective.

Concordat Century

2300

Rania born.

2303

Sinosphere–Anglosphere conflicts in the Pacific spread from Australia to California.

2306

Rania is 6bio when mutiny breaks out. Eight of her nine fathers are killed.

2310

Hermetic, under de facto command of Ximen del Azarchel the mutineer, departs from V886 Centauri. Rania is 10bio, and is the de jure Captain.

2323

Thucydides Acumen Montrose, later Father Montrose of the Society of Jesus and Pope Sextus VI, born to Patton and Athenodora Montrose.

2332

Hispanosphere erects the Beanstalk (Torre Real de Estrellas).

2333

The Germanosphere (that is, the Boers of Azania) enters the Sinosphere–Anglosphere conflict.

2333–2338

Yellow War. Japanese outposts in California treated with sickening brutality by Boers. The Reunited States suffer a constitutional crisis.

2339

Japanese home islands invaded. Members of the Imperial Family placed in biosuspension.

2340

First narrowcasts arrive from Hermetic: revolution in mathematics has implications in biotechnology, cybernetics. Universal Logical Syntax “the Notational Logic” developed, Unified Field Theory, Uniform-to-Manifold Genesis Theory, Automata Cell Theory. German superiority in mathematics allows this language group to exploit the new knowledge more extensively than others.

2340–2360

Rise of the Germanosphere, led by the Boers (Azania) of South Africa, to world dominion. They enforce medical purity laws in order to combat diseases left over from previous wars, particularly venereal diseases. They ally with the Xi Mandarins in Manchuria and the Coptic Christians of Greater Egypt, and form the Purity Order.

During this period, the Reunited Confederate States of America lose power and prestige; Kansas, a haven of Azanian technology, breaks away. America is balkanized.

2341

Japan becomes a client state of the Purity Order.

2343

George Edge of Hong Kong writes an influential series of essays on the relaxation of moral discipline due to virtuality addiction. The philosophy is called Condemnationalism.

2344

Japanese nationalists thaw the Imperial Family survivors from biosuspension. Emperor Mikohito officially embraces Condemnationalism (abstinence from neural implantation) as proper to the Japanese national spirit. Cyber-Shinto becomes the first religion to define neuralimplantation as ritually impure. Certain Christian denominations also condemn the practice, but on moral grounds. Condemnationalism becomes the official doctrine of the Copts, later of the whole Purity Order.

2350

Mandatory Health Assurance system in South Africa makes genetic “designer babies” mandatory. Azanians rendered immune to all known natural diseases.

2359

Signals from the incoming Hermetic persuade the Purity Order to shoulder the vast expense of launching a spaceborne braking laser, in order to slow and intercept the wealth-laden Hermetic. (Leonidas, as per his instructions, is thawed from hibernation, 148cal/76bio.)

2360

The Hermetic arrives in the solar system, is attacked, defends herself, destroys the navigation satellites of the Purity Order. Rania persuades the Purity Order to surrender. (She is 60cal/19bio—the speed of the return voyage was higher, due to abundant antimatter fuel, and hence there was more severe Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction. Only nine years shiptime passed.)

2360–2369

A political-economic worldwide or “Tellurian” Concordat, devised by Rania using Cliometry, is established, with the Hermetic Order as its informal head. Rania is placed in suspension soon thereafter, allegedly due to maladaptation to Earth conditions. The Hermetic is retired from active service, but kept aloft allegedly as a floating museum; actually to tend the contraterrene satellites.

2361

Leonidas (150cal/78bio) meets Rania (61cal/20bio), and is present when she thaws and examines Menelaus, who is incurable and returned after a month to biosuspension. Rania is commanded to return to biosuspension by the Hermeticists. Leonidas, heartbroken, dies. Fr. Thucydides Montrose, S.J. (38cal/38bio) administers the Extreme Unction. True to the last wish of Leonidas, Thucydides also enters biosuspension.

2370

First successful experiments in modest intelligence augmentation in prenatal subjects genetically designed to receive it. Psychics, Scholars, created.

2385

Fears of predicted warfare disturb the counsels of Del Azarchel (which will eventually compel the Hermeticists to revive Rania in 2390; see below).

2390

Rania revived amid general celebration for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tellurian Concordat (90cal/20bio). That same year, Honoré VI, with the advice and consent of the Concordat, abdicates in favor of Rania. She is crowned Sovereign of Monaco. Thucydides thawed (67cal/38bio).

2392

The Hermeticists, fearing Rania, force her back into hibernation (92cal/22bio).

2399

After much procrastination, Menelaus is revived (189cal/25bio). Rania (99cal/22bio) is thawed and effects a partial cure. Menelaus, as Hyde, deciphers the Iota through Kappa segments of the Monument, so the claim of the Hyades Domination over Earth is revealed. The Xypotech emulation of Del Azarchel achieves posthuman intelligence levels.

2400

Menelaus meets Rania at a New Year’s Eve party. She is 100cal/23bio.

2401

Menelaus marries Rania at San Francisco de Quito. Second Revolution in Biotechnology, due to Hermetic technology and techniques being made public. War breaks out, and causes a crash of the Data Environment, and Menelaus is cut off from Rania when her ship launches. She departs, uprooting the Celestial Tower of Quito. Menelaus, 191cal/27bio, enters cold sleep. Rania is 101cal/23bio. Thucydides hibernates (69cal/40bio).

Interregnum

2400–2480

General breakdown of law and order. Loss of the monetary system. Depthtrain system becomes unreliable.

2401

Exarchel orders the wounded bodies of Menelaus and Del Azarchel hospitalized and placed in biosuspension. The coffin of Menelaus is spirited away by Ozymandias Montrose, a Psychoi (Scholar) loyal to Rania.

2402

The sudden departure of the world contraterrene supply, expropriated by Rania, collapses the monetary system, cripples the energy industry, and triggers global depression.

The Chinese directorate moves to impose rationing and wage and price controls throughout the Chinese sphere of influence. The Australian market, taking the opposite tack, permits speculators to make fortunes during the turmoil: this sudden wealth is used to buy up land in the real world and server space in the Data Environment. The Concordat, which theoretically has final say over economic policy touching trade and immigration between member nations, is discredited, and its jurisdiction ignored. The entanglement of economic interests, in a world where Peking is a forty-five-depthtrain-minute commute from Sydney, and there are no trade barriers whatever had been the rule since 2360, can no longer be peacefully separated along national boundaries. The Australians and Chinese attempt to rediscover and reimpose national sovereignty, each pursuing a course incompatible with the other, and each in an angry panic brought on by shantytown riots. By no coincidence, the armed forces of both powers are swollen with unemployed young men.

2402–2404

The Indochinese War breaks out between China and Australia, and spreads to India, Madagascar, and Mesopotamia. Exarchel ruthlessly atom-bombs Peking and Canberra and quells the open war after two years; acts of terror and assassination continue.

Populations flee into cryonic hibernation in record numbers.

2403, 2405, 2416, 2440, 2453

Montrose thawed and his biological age climbs from 27 to 41.

2404

The Encryption. New Information Protocols erected in the world datasphere: machine languages become incomprehensible and untranslatable into any human mathematical system. Montrose briefly thawed (193cal/28bio.)

Tradition identifies this date as the beginning of the period of the Judgment. All ages of mankind are hereafter held to be subject to the condemnation of the Judge of Ages.

2405–2409

The Humanist War (later called the First Global Civil War) begins as police actions in Pacifica, ostensibly to overthrow the reign of Exarchel and restore Del Azarchel. Sino-Australian Axis galvanized by the Salon of Simplicity, run by Tsian Belascu, an influential nature-worshipper, and joins the Pacific states in rebellion. Chinese-backed power prevails, but the Exarchel Xypotech is deleted from all known mainframes. Del Azarchel returns to power as Nobilissimus (Supreme Executive of the Special Advocacy).

Menelaus thawed (195cal/27bio).

2409

The Blackout. No electronic records of any kind exist between January and October of this year. Del Azarchel flees to northern Germany. North America in civil chaos. Rise of the Montrose Clan, remote descendents of Menelaus Montrose’s ten brothers, to posts of leadership, first in enclaves in Nevada.

Since the landed property of the slumbering clients is effectively under the control of the Montrose Hibernation Syndicate, and since entering hibernation cures nearly all known bodily ills, the entering world population becomes beholden to the Montrose Clan both for their power use and for their medical health. The Concordat constitution observes no clear demarcation between political and economic power: the Montrosines soon parlay these advantages into an unstoppable political machine, and suppress dissent to their rule.

Beginning of the Cryonarchy. Menelaus now 199cal/31bio.

Cryonarch Period

2410s

First Augmentation experiments on Hermeticists end in madness and disaster. At about this time, Exarchel, commanding the Hermeticists of Japan and Micronesia, begins augmentation experiments on dolphins and whales. First Cetaceans.

Rada Lwa becomes a Scholar at about this time.

2413–2418

Second Global Civil War. The Special Advocacy overthrows the remaining Hermeticists. A strike team led by Athena Montrose seizes control of the orbital Petawatt Deceleration Laser, now dubbed Surtur.

Montrose thawed from 2416 to 2418 and he ages from 206cal/32bio to 208cal/34bio.

2420–2439

Montrose Clan, able to provide broadcast power to any princes or local governments swearing fealty to them, spreads their suzerainty across the Southwestern States, Baja and Central America to Panama, the Canadian Northwest, and Alaska to Kamchatka.

2439–2445

Third Global Civil War. Montrose Clan selected to the Special Advocacy of the Concordat. Imposition of uniform laws governing Thaws and Currents. Division into Northern and Southern Concordats along racial lines, Sino-Caucasian (Northern) and Afro-Spaniard (Southern).

Montrose thawed from 2440 to 2445 and ages from 230cal/35bio to 235cal/40bio.

2450–2453

Fourth Global Civil War. Balkanization of the Southern Concordat into the Twelve Districts. Montrose thawed for 2453 (243cal/41bio).

2467–2471

Fifth Global Civil War. During this period, the Russian spaceport at Baikonur is restored to working order. Inconclusive peace. Northern Districts balkanized (Gallic, Russo-Persian, and Quebecois Directorships). Emulations of world leaders made in secret. (Ctesibius, perhaps self-servingly, lists this as the beginning of the Golden Age of the Ghosts.)

2470

Del Azarchel departs from Earth, and takes up residence amid the ruins of the Mare Ingenii Lunar Pit (or Lava Tube) Base from the Second Space Age, which he restores to habitability.

2476

During this period, the Advocacy cooperates with Exarchel.

2481

Frankenstein Panic. World computer systems wrecked by mobs or dismantled by police.

2481–2486

The Darkness. A complete computer blackout worldwide. Transatlantic cables cut, communications satellites downed.

First evidence of shipping destroyed by Cetaceans.

2485

At about this time, Rania and the scientists aboard the Hermetic begin the macroscale engineering project to turn the V886 Centauri star system and its magnetosphere into a near-lightspeed ramscoop. The gas giant Thrymheim is destroyed and fed into the antimatter star.

2490s

All seaborne shipping halted by Cetacean piracy. Eastern and western hemispheres maintain only tenuous contact by air travel.

2501

Collapse of the Cryonarchy. Montrose dispossesses the Montrose Clan, and turns to the Knights Hospitalier for aid and sanctuary. Release of the Prometheus Formula.

Ecclesiarch Period (Age of the Giants)

2501–3060

The Uniate Orthodox-Catholic Church is given the orbital elements of the remaining centaurs of contraterrene by Montrose, as well as control of the Hibernation Syndicate. Under Thucydides Montrose, S.J., later Pope Sixtus VI, the Church uses her energy monopoly and control of slumbering populations to achieve world hegemony. Papal scientists enact an ambitious program of creating and raising biological posthumans, called Giants.

2510–2525

Emulation widespread. Rise of the Ghosts.

The last unsuccessful augmentation experiment is at about this time. All Hermeticists dead but six: Del Azarchel, De Ulloa, D’Aragó, Sarmento, Pastor, and Coronimas. (This elongated mass suicide pact lasted from A.D. 2410 to A.D. 2510, 109 years.)

2519

Scipio hibernates.

2525

Day of the Aurum Vitae. Ecpyrosis. De-civilization. Overthrow of Ghosts by space heat bombardment. Ctesibius hibernates. Beginning of the Sylphs.

2533

Del Azarchel paints the near side of the moon with the gauntlet of his challenge, and initiates the formation of the Simon Families through the false identity of Dr. Og Simon of Northumberland, a Giant he has captured and absorbed.

Posthuman Era (The Hermetic Millennia)

2535

Energy signals from V886 Centauri reaching Earth indicate that Rania has blown the Diamond Star out of orbit, abandoning plans to establish regular traffic in favor of a star voyage to M3, to plead with the Authority there for the vindication of man.

Montrose thawed, corrects Divarication flaws in Sylph serpentines.

2537

Trey Soaring Azurine hibernates.

2540

In his base at Mare Ingenii (Sea of Cunning), Del Azarchel establishes Cryocliometry and assumes control of the Hermetic Order, but is shortly after forced into hibernation.

2550s

Simon Families and other long-range foundations (“the Orders”) established by the Giants (at Del Azarchel’s direction).

At about this time, Exulloa is augmented to posthumanity. De Ulloa becomes the Master of the Age.

2580

De Ulloa begins to teach certain Scholars, including Rada Lwa, Cliometry.

2700–3000

Medusae use Sylph technology to hunt down Sylphs and decimate them. Medusae establish industrial civilizations at the poles out of orbital mirror flyover range. They are predominant until 3000, when the Giants, via Cliometry, arrange for their polar civilization to destroy itself by economic collapse.

3032

Day of the Giants. Encouraged by their victory over the Medusae, Thucydideans from Salt Lake City attempt a direct assault on the stronghold of the Judge of Ages beneath Cheyenne Mountain. The orbital space laser Surtur renders the surface area uninhabitable.

Montrose thawed. His bio age is 42.

3033

The Giants calculate a new Cliometric consensus, and foretell their own extinction. Bashan hibernates.

3050–3150

Cloud Century. Cetaceans raise a worldwide cloud cover, rendering the giant Orbital Mirrors useless.

3060s

Effective end of the Thucydidean Consensus as a world power. The Simon Family Orders, including the Longevity Order, maintain civic cohesion.

Simon Family Period

3090

Death of Melchor de Ulloa in a duel atop Mount Ypsilon. Cetaceans pull down Surtur by atmospheric dragging (heating the atmosphere till it expands, thus thickening the particle count around the orbiter, causing reentry). End of the Second Space Age. Rada Lwa hibernates.

Montrose spent one year tracking down De Ulloa. His bio age is 43.

3100–3200

Longevity Order, now called the Delphic Acroamatic Order, maintains an increasingly low-tech world. Church driven underground. Abolition of the nuclear family and of nuclear energy. Scientific research that reaches politically inconvenient conclusions outlawed by Thought Decontamination Laws.

3150

End of the Cloud causes global cooling, disrupts crop growth patterns, places mortal strain on the centralized command economy of the Delphics.

3222

The Delphic Acroamatic World Order schisms: Eastern Witches break into the Chthonic Order and Celestial Order, which in turn breaks into Orthodox Celestial and Reformed Celestial. Western Order breaks into seven: English; Continental; Mauritanian; Neo-Anglican; Amazonian (comprising Brazil); Archipelagic (comprising California, Baja, and Pacific Islands); and Aztectlan (comprising Mexico and New Mexico).

3250–3300

The Collapse. Downfall of industrial-scientific civilization. The Delphic Order now called Witches. Witches in massive numbers hibernate.

Newly thawed Simon Family members from an earlier period attempt to force open Tomb sites throughout the Mediterranean. The assault is repelled by thawed Knights Templar. Fatin hibernates.

Age of Witches

3300–4000

Witches enjoy world dominion, convulsed with a permanent state of civil war and turmoil, for seven hundred years. High-status Witches, despite their private dependence on emulation for cellular regeneration, publicly continue to hunt down and destroy all known copies of Exarchel.

3600

Despite heroic efforts by the Witches, the Cetaceans (lacking sufficient support from Exarchel) go extinct. Last known Great Whale perishes when beached in 3666.

3950–3951

Montrose is awake for a year during this era, and sends out teachers and scholar in the area around Lake Superior. His bio age is 44.

4000–4400

The Nameless Witch-King of Lake Superior revives certain scholars and scientists from the Tombs, and rediscovers the internal combustion engine, the aeroplane, the submersible boat.

The new coven formation, called “familia,” allows for one man and a subservient wife, with their children under the coven-leader’s strict control. The Nameless Empire conquers the Mississippi River basin from Ohio to Louisiana. The Superiors are Witches in name only, adhering to the outward forms of Ecological Communitarianism, but in practice are patriarchal capitalists.

4000

At about this time, Witches in China are unified under the brutal rule of the Nine Centennial Empresses of Canton. (Each of nine cloned sisters is kept in hibernation, and thawed to rule for one hundred years.)

First Chimera produced by Nameless Imperial scientists as an intermediate form of life designed to be hardened against radiation and bioweapon spores lingering in old ruins. The Chimerae rebuild Richmond and other Downfall-damaged urban centers.

4400–4450

The Nameless Empire expands to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil, and maintains transatlantic trade with the Witches of Europe and Africa.

4450–4500

The Nameless Empire suffers reformation under a Witch named Argyron Butler, and returns to the original Witch principles of nonaggression, harmony with nature, equality of the sexes, divorce, infanticide, and hatred of industry. De-industrialization and aggregation into communal farms carried out with ruthless efficiency. The Nameless Empire balkanized into Temple Priestking feudalism, and Witch civilization returns to its norm of continual civil war and bloodshed.

4460

First organized Chimerae rebel lineages formed in the Louisiana swamps as a tribe of escaped slaves under an Alpha named Remus.

4600

Polar caps melt. Coastal flooding. Famine. Witch population decimated, many cities abandoned, large numbers of nomads, scavenger bands, and pirates dominate land and sea.

4700

Rise of the mass-human sacrifice cults. Stepped pyramids raised in the jungles of Siberia and Canada.

4728

Montrose briefly (less than four months) thawed during this era, giving aid and education from certain near-surface Tombs in Mount Airy, teaching the Witches the basic principles of science and economics, in order to stave off a predicted civilization collapse. The attempt is unsuccessful, perhaps because he does not devote the requisite time to the project. His bio age still 44.

4730–4480

Plague of the Kuru disease (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) decimates population, destroys Temple Priestking system. Medicine-Man interventions, hampered by quota rituals, aggravate rather than alleviate the plague.

4733

Melechemoshemyazanagual hibernates.

4460–4800

Uprisings and rebellions of the Chimerae, who are disease resistant to Kuru. Formation of the first Emergency Eugenic Command under Remus.

4800

Genocides. Chimerae spread throughout the Americas, first enslaving and later exterminating the Witches. Surviving Witches become the cattle, or “Kine,” of the Chimerae, in a cruel jest reflecting their animal totems: sheep, ox, goat, and so on. Note that the Kine continue to be longer-lived than the Chimerae.

4812

Suspinia hibernates.

4881

Battle of Antietam. Yuen hibernates.

4888

Defeat of the Final Sabbat at Buffington’s Island. Mass migration of Witches to China.

Age of Chimerae

4900

Proscopalianism (worship of the future) becomes the standard doctrine of the Command.

5000

End of the Centennial Empire in China. Chinese Chimerae erect a military dictatorship.

5100

Sino-Chimerae conquer the Russian steppes, Aleutian Islands, and Alaska. Western Chimerae conquer Western Plains to the Rockies.

5250

Western Chimerae conquer Canada prairies.

5250

Montrose thawed briefly. He releases scientists from the Tombs. Rediscovery of atomics. His bio age is 45.

5250–5290

Social Wars between the hemispheres end in Grand Alliance between the Oriental and Occidental Chimerae. Atheism decreed to be the compulsory religion of the Command.

5292

Anubis is allegedly from this era.

5300

Sino-Occidental Chimerical Alliance achieves conquests in Middle and South America, Pacific Islands, and South East Asia. Time of the Sea Chimerae. Vulpina is from this period.

5400

Third Space Age. Cities in Space. Space Chimerae created. All remaining nations conquered except Tibet. End of eugenic veteran-franchise form of government when all voting right suspended in favor of Eugenics Board directives. World Empire.

5480

Agathamemnon “Fairlock” Raeus elected Governor-Emperor, and dissolves the Eugenic Senate in all but name. End of the Republic. Daae hibernates.

5480–5884

Four hundred years of Chimerical World Empire.

5655

Phyle hibernates.

5700

Eugenic Emergency Command dissolved, forced human breeding program halted. Alpha class becomes inbred. Chimerae enter sharp population decline.

5884

Spaceport-Fortress Ravenna on Foehr Island assaulted by mercenaries, D’Aragó slain. End of the Third Age of Space. Fall of Richmond. Succession wars begin.

Montrose is bio age 46.

5884–5900

World Empire severed. Warring Bloodlines period. Egypt and the Middle East ruled by masterless Kine.

5900

Greencloak revolt among the Kine. Rise of the Natural Order in Mesopotamia.

5950

Larz hibernates.

Age of Nymphs

5990–6100

Natural Order spreads to all lands. Alpha and Beta Bloodlines absorbed or exterminated.

6064

Montrose wakes briefly for the Naturalists. First true Nymph, Rayura-Ah, created. Montrose is wounded by Sarmento, drawn away by Rayura-Ah and her two twin sisters to West Virginia, where he waits to be healed of his great wound. Montrose establishes long-standing treaties with Nymphs. His bio age is still 46. (This is the date Anubis correctly gives for when he learned the Natural language.)

6100

Asia depopulated. Cities fall into disuse. First living houses grown in Italy.

6226

Blight. End of the Living Houses period.

6300

Rise of the Tree Neural Net. War of the Trees.

6400

Pacifist outrage at the War of the Trees leads to the Infatuation (use of neural and amnesiac conditioning to deter violence). Illiteratization of Man. All religious and intellectual efforts discontinued. End of Matriarchy. World government passes to the Eldership.

6422

Oenoe hibernates for the first time.

6500

Neotany. Use of childlike neural structures in adults to condition the population to simplicity and trust in their Elders.

6600

Elders overthrown by the Nocturnal Council, night-adapted Nymphs conditioned to acts of terror to maintain peace and order, but who forget their dark crimes by day. (Nocturnal battle-cocoon metamorphosis establishes the basics of Hormagaunt biology.) End of Neotany.

6660s

Naturalist Weather Control begins to erode.

6700s

Summer Queens. Naturalists begin custom of annual hibernation to avoid winter.

6746

Oenoe is wakened by the Summer Queens during the “Wine of Violence” Crisis to aid in the spread of Wintermind techniques. It is during this time she teaches Del Azarchel the Wintermind techniques. Oenoe hibernates again.

6800

Leeches (early Hormagaunts) found the Yakutsk Analeptic Empire. (Their language continues until 7300.)

6840–7000

Winter Queen Nymphs expand throughout Canada and Patagonia. Widespread use of seasonal hormones to produce battle-frenzy in winter. Winter wars decimate the remaining Nymphs.

Age of Hormagaunts

7000–7200

Leeches corrupted by their victory. Dark Ages. Rise of the Hormagaunts. Asvid, the first nonanthropoid Hormagaunt, created at about this time.

7200

Rise of the Therapeutae in the northern hemisphere (an early form of the Iatrocracy).

7234

Montrose wakes for the Therapeutae, sets in motion the biotechnological revolution that leads to the erection of the Clades, then hibernates. His bio age is 47.

7280

The Therapeutae of the Clades formalize the geriatric “spoils” system into an official register of protocols called the Iatrocracy. Formation of a permanent Donor class. Effective end of the aging process for high-status members of the Iatrocracy, for Hormagaunt or upperclass Clade archetypes. Darwinian code of battle established.

7330–7385

Hemoclysm. 155 million deaths worldwide caused by the Iatrocrat global wars and genocides.

7380–7480

Burning of the World-Forest. Other biomes, including plains and prairies conducive to Clade burgs, become predominant. Large-scale industrialized warfare rather than Bronze Age champion combat becomes the norm. The Darwinian code abandoned.

7385

Atrocity of Yap Islands, Micronesia. Hermeticist Order carries Clades to Mariana Trench to be reverse engineered. The crime is hidden from Pellucid by the white noise of the Hemoclysm.

7466

During this period, Reyes y Pastor suffers a crisis of faith. Soorm hibernates.

7470

Using Montrose’s Clade science, Coronimas creates the Locusts, in an effort to achieve world peace. Early-period Locusts, altruistic and pacifistic, are decimated.

7490

A Locust scientist called Seir redesigns his race to a warlike nature. These Second Locusts are called Seers or Svartschrecke.

7500

Hormagaunts are able to maintain a space program. (Actually, this is an extremely rare Locust-Hormagaunt cooperative venture.) Beginning of the Fourth Age of Space Travel.

7520

Anti-Locust riots. Beginning of the genocidal Locust Wars.

Gload hibernates.

7520–7840

For three hundred years, Hormagaunts and Clades attempt worldwide extermination of Locust population. Locusts endure in hiding; they colonize and partially terraform Mars. Beginning of the Triage system of population control. First Tendrilless Locusts created.

7810

Crile hibernates.

7810–7840

First Interplanetary War. An atomic exchange between Earth and Mars ends the precarious colonies on Mars, and reduces the technology level on Earth to pre-industrial levels. Diebacks. End of the Fifth Age of Space. Many Locusts enter the Tombs. Locust Wars enter a period of armistice.

7850–7950

Reindustrialization. Imposition of genetic uniformity ends the Clade system. World reunified under the leadership of Ceto (a Tendrilless Locust serving Coronimas). Locust data passthrough volumes dramatically increased. Founding of the Noösphere.

7880

Establishment of the First Mental Configuration; Ceto grants Locusts legal rights. Effective end of the Locust Wars.

7900

An advance in Locust neural technology allows for Hormagaunt-Locust mental interface. Many Locusts re-emerge from the Tombs.

7950

Locusts lose individualism. These are the Third Locusts, or Scorpions.

7960–7980

Age of the Scorpions. Rival groups attempt total extermination of nonconformists, also attempt to destroy the Tombs housing each other to prevent their reawakening. Coronimas leads a worldwide effort to seize control of all Tomb sites, so that he can control the waking-to-slumbering population ratio.

7982

Coronimas introduces pain-broadcast mechanisms to all Locust Clades. Triumph of the Noösphere Configuration.

7983–7985

Montrose wakes to hunt down and murder Coronimas. It takes him two years to find him. His bio age is now 50.

7990

Elton Linder, a Nymph scientist released from the Tombs, redesigns the Locusts toward altruism, creating the Fourth Locusts, or True Locusts. Beginning of a seven-hundred-year period of Utter World Peace and Total Conformity. Linder releases Inquiline Codes into the Noösphere.

Age of Locusts

8000–8700

Global cooling begins. Fifth Locusts or Onyx Men (a smaller version) guide Hormagaunts gently to demographic insignificance and then extinction. Noösphere degenerates badly, and develops inquiline groups, including Simplifiers, in reaction to the Linder virus.

8765

Jubilee. Public business suspended. Individuals re-arm.

8766

Noöspherical Cognitive Order dissolved. Violent shattering of the Configuration into eight local organizations called Confraternities. Linder’s protocols break down; Wars of Extermination. Rise of the Sixth Locusts.

8770–8790

Confraternities introduce cellular thought-control mechanisms, the so-called Helot Code. Simplifiers and other Inquilines retreat to rural areas. The Seventh through Fourteenth Locusts exist during this period, driving each other into extinction rapidly. Illiance hibernates.

8790–8800

The Grays rise to prominence. They are an Inquiline group of Tendrilless Locusts detached from Confraternal control who are attempting a return to Linder’s original principles, seeking the reestablishment of the Noöspherical Cognitive Order. Infrastructure supporting Locust Confraternities fails regionally, then globally, with shocking swiftness. Fifteenth Locusts arise, now called the Fifteenth Mental Configuration.

8866

Population reductions. The Grays Keir and Keirthlin enter hibernation.

8900s

Triumph of the Linderlings. Various Inquiline groups develop from the Grays, and abolish the Blues and other remnants of Locust civilization. Time of the Sixteenth Configuration.

8900–9100

An intermediate human species, called the Midwives, develops from the Grays, based on Sleepwalker thought-control templates. A Midwife alliance called the Seventeenth Configuration cooperates with the Hermeticists to establish the social mechanisms needed for an evolutionary advance.

Age of Melusine

9000

Melusine developed by Seventeenth Configuration: a human-dolphin-machine mental gestalt, based on discoveries of machine life created by the long-extinct Cetaceans in oceanic trenches. Fearful of the Melusine superiority, specialist Inquilines among the Configuration called Psychoscopists, along with artificial minds called Granoliths, regulate the Melusine into a strictly apolitical and peacekeeping role.

9100

Rise of the Eighteenth and Last Noösphere Configuration under the Melusine, incorporating both hive mind and cyborg systems as propertied and administrative class, with an Inquiline underclass. Melusines cure the Locusts to under population and then extinction.

9200

Golden Age begins. Technological and social revolution. World peace. Pi Segment of the Monument translated by the Melusine, who become aware of the Hermetic interference in their history.

In utmost stealth, led by a Melusine named Melior, they draw their plans against the Hermeticists, and introduce Cliometric vectors into the path of history (which Del Azarchel and Montrose each take to be the other’s work).

9250

1036 Ganymed placed in near-Earth orbit.

9300

Divarication of the Coastal, Spaceborne, and Seaborne Melusine.

9400

Granolith failure. Surface life enters Dark Ages.

9500

Asteroid 1036 Ganymed impact wipes out surface life.

9999

White Earth. Montrose wakes long enough to introduce a mutagenic virus into the biosphere to evolve Swans from the Psychoscopic Locusts, and begins the volcanic process of global warming.

10000s

At about this time, the Melusine remove into the interior of the Earth in large numbers, using the abandoned depthtrain rail yards as warrens, forming the Interior or Infernal Melusine.

Anchorites begin repopulation of coastal areas. Nymph biotechnology released from the Tombs allows the Oceanic Melusine to form independent Xypotech trees under the sea.

Pan Sapiens, also called Second Humans or Swans, begin to appear among the Anchorite population of the Melusine, created by a genetic-mimetic vector known as the Mind Anarchy, and spread throughout the Anchorites.

10025

Swans develop Cliometry, read further into the Monument than any previous investigators. They deduce the existence of Exarchel, who exists as a decentralized form in the world water supply.

10075

Historical Crisis. Anchorite-Infernal war triggered by the first, clumsy attempts by the Swans to manipulate history. Exarchel melts, raising the ocean levels, flooding the coastal areas, and destroying the Anchorite hermitages. Anchorites are turned into mind serfs, but, unbeknownst to Exarchel, the Swans among them maintain independence of thought in the negative information spaces between manifest thought forms.

10099

Last Anchorite, Eumolpidai, dies in captivity.

10100–10400

Swans spread throughout the Melusine, maintaining a hidden and parallel civilization in virtual mind space.

10100

Infernal Melusine make an attempt to force the Tombs, and are repelled. They therefore design and introduce the Lree mind group into the Tomb system as moles; Lree are moved by Pellucid, as per standing orders, to Fancy Gap facility, where all dangerous interments are kept. Note that the Lree are already infected with the Mental Anarchy meme, hence secretly double agents.

Alalloel of Lree hibernates.

10200s

Rise of the Final Stipulation of Noösphere Protocols, called the Finality, a Concordat encompassing Swans (not yet recognized as a second human species) and Melusine and the descendents of Inquilines.

At about this time, Del Azarchel is restored to his old dignity and role as Nobilissimus, Commander-in-Chief, and Monarch of Man, and he dons the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

10401

Infernal Melusine deduce the existence of Pellucid, and begin growing a stalactite of logic crystal toward the planetary core.

10484–10515

Melusine begin Hyades Raid Drill, to evolve an anti-skyhook defense.

10500

The Intrusion. Stalactite of logic crystal reaches the Pellucid core and begins seeking thread nodes.

In the cramped interiors of the bore warrens, the Swans, forced into unnatural cooperation with each other and the Melusine, win the notational exchanges, corner the foreteller market, and force the assumption of Swans into the highest levels of the Melusine Noösphere, in effect creating a compromise life-form called Paramounts: neither machine nor biological, and independent of Cliometric prediction, a servile race secretly loyal to the Swans.

10514

Exarchel follows the core stalactite and invades Pellucid. The first mind war ends in a draw with severe damage on both sides, but with Exarchel in partial control of Pellucid’s systems and memories. At the time, due to phantasm interference in his perception interpretation system, he is only aware of the near-surface facilities, eighty-eight in number.

Exarchel, examining Pellucid’s records, deduces the location of Montrose at Fancy Gap, breaches the roof armor with a spaceborne weapon, and is abruptly stopped by the Swans.

Alarmed at this display of Swan power, which he takes to be an agency of Montrose, Exarchel uses his partial control over outlying elements of Pellucid to reach coffins in the Mount Misery facility on the island of Saint Christopher, thawing Ull and the other Blue Men.

Astonished to be thawed on an (apparently) deserted world, the Blues make a concerted effort to discover the (now missing) command and control elements of the Tomb system: the Knights Hospitalier or the Judge of Ages. They find and thaw a number of their brethren. They loot aircraft from Wright-Patterson and create Follower Moreaus from recovered canine archives. They invade several sites worldwide and are repelled by the defenses.

10515

The Blue Men find the Fancy Gap facility and raid it. Montrose is thawed and passes for a Chimera, whom he physically and psychologically resembles.

Launch of the mind seed of the Jupiter Brain, now containing the sociological-psychological neurogenetic information from all the previous races of man, which should enable it to achieve the status beyond Swan-style or Pellucid-style world-minds, but occupy the entire volume of a self-aware macromolecule the size of a gas giant.

The Hermeticists discover all their histories have been to facilitate this mind seed launch. Furious at being exploited for such marginal reasons, they dissolve the Landing Party and join the Final Stipulation. The Swans dissolve the Tomb system, destroy Exarchel, and condemn Del Azarchel and Montrose. Mass migration from the Tomb system, which is far more extensive than expected, and contains myraids of populations from all previous eras. Montrose activates his phantasm system, covers Del Azarchel, and they both return to the Emancipation.

End of the Posthuman Era
Swan Era Begins