Corporations
Like all imagined futures, they are always more glorious than the reality. Humanity stagnated for years in a perpetual slurry of competition, capitalism, and entitlement. Rather than focus on advancing technology in a meaningful way and reaching for the stars, man battled over profits. It was a slow process, but eventually, corporate interests all but superseded the authority of the world governments. Politicians became lobbyists for corporate interests and no one could hope to get elected without their sponsorship. The world was in trouble.
People clamored for new comfort and old tensions between nations continued with no end in sight. Nothing was changing for the better. It was during this time that the pharmaceutical empire, Gena Corporation (Genacorp) began rapid expansion into other fields. Genacorp started buying controlling stock in everything, such as video games, marital aids, clothing, and fossil fuels. The company’s aggressive expansion brought them legal trouble in the form of monopoly claims. These were merely speed bumps for the mega-corporation because any lawsuits were crushed by their team of lawyers. In the eyes of many, the failed lawsuits were a sign that the world’s most powerful governments had lost control.
In a move to establish further dominance, shortly after the lawsuit era, Genacorp acquired one of the largest private security companies in the world called Red River. Red River was made famous by their brutally efficient contracting with the UK military in the Middle East. The newly acquired security firm was used to protect Genacorp’s interests, effectively giving the company their own military force.
With the success of Genacorp, many of the world’s largest corporations followed their example and began aggressive expansion. Genacorp’s two largest corporate competitors were the internet based QueryWen and the software/hardware conglomerate Microtech. Small businesses and corporations were all but driven out of the market or consumed by the corporate machine. By 2030, most of the world could trace their employment back to three companies: Genacorp, Microtech, and QueryWen. To make matters worse, months after Genacorp began their relationship with Red River, Microtech and QueryWen also acquired private security firms of their own. No one could touch “the big three.”
The Earth governments and corporations started working together in an all out war against the Dromanae menace. While many grudges were still harbored, war amongst humans was all but extinguished. The unifying threat of extinction sparked a call to fight. On August 1st, 2032, a summit was held in Geneva by the UN to establish a plan to fight the alien threat. The UN extended invitations to the world’s most powerful corporate and political entities to also attend. This became the framework for the United Earth Force or UEF.
The UEF was formally established on August 15th, 2032, as a world-wide task force to keep the various militaries and entities unified and organized against the Dromanae. Genacorp, QueryWen, and Microtech financially backed the endeavor and provided private security forces for the battle and science teams for investigation. This also drove the mega-corporations to change their focus to weapons development and defense.
Though the war-like ways of man were focused on the fight against the invaders, greed continued to darken the doorsteps of the corporate giants. During the conflict, dirty politics, theft, corporate spying, and hostile takeovers ran rampant, particularly on the part of Genacorp. With the world distracted and the governing bodies focused on the war effort, like a ravenous giant Genacorp consumed as much of the marketplace as it could before setting its sights higher.
Genacorp, with its newfound assets, began targeting the other big two. In 2038, after a very public dismissing of their CEO for selling company secrets to “unknown sources,” QueryWen experienced a severe stock drop. Investors were troubled by this leak at the highest level and urged the board to sell the company to Genacorp for a generous profit. Though no evidence has surfaced, it is believed Genacorp played a large hand in the destruction of QueryWen.
On July 1st 2038, QueryWen and all its holdings were taken over by Genacorp. Genacorp’s main interest was in QueryWen’s robust robotics division. Genecorp seized all the subsidiaries under their own corporate banner and fired anyone, outside of the robotics department, who worked directly for QueryWen. This allowed Genacorp to push production of the first wave of synthetic humanoid Androids onto the market as obedient workers and disposable soldiers in the summer of 2039.
In January of 2040, Microtech released a breakthrough in the fields of defense and medicine: fully functional cybernetic limb replacements. This breakthrough would, unfortunately, fall to scandal when a “bug” in the operating systems of the cybernetics caused them to cease functioning, resulting in a mass recall of replaced limbs. Genacorp saw its chance with this debacle and started a slander campaign against Microtech. The company wouldn’t survive this campaign and was bought out by Genacorp during April of 2041.
