Thank you for your purchase of the Systome. We notice you live in a remote location according to the USSS, would you like to contract one of our professional Line Runners to deliver your package? You can also elect to provide a premium shipping cost to encourage vessels to take on your parcel! We hope you enjoy your new Systome! Systome, The Epitome of Portable Technology! — Systome Shipping Notification
The Problems
No matter which Banner someone is affiliated with in Ethnis, consumerism is daily part of their lives. Trillions of stores and individuals run businesses to provide everything that could ever be needed by anyone. With the wide-spread connectivity of
Æthernet, Ethnis has become an extremely close-knit economy.
Hedonites can order goods from the Syndicate from halfway across the universe and vice versa. The question then becomes how do goods travel in a universe that is ever increasing and can take several months to get from one side of Ethnis to the other. Not only that, but packages may need to go to remote locations, and creating a fleet agile and large enough to go to every location in Ethnis is an impossible task.
The Tensions Between Banners
Another issue of intergalactic commercialism is the fact that several Banners are not on best terms with each other. Trade skirmishes, tariffs, and commerce laws create an ever more dangerous minefield for smaller carriers to deal with and make a banner specific solution unwieldy. A universal agreed upon standard was required, a system that would incorporate any new trade laws and automatically calculate the requirements to get deliveries from one location to another.
The Solution
The first and only successful system implemented to deal with intergalactic shipping is the Universal Serialized Shipping System (The USSS). It was founded by a council of the minds pulled from all Banners. It was ratified by each Banner as a way to guarantee its citizens their goods. The system required little from each individual Banner, and was designed to be as cheap and as automated as possible to avoid Banners being able to disrupt shipping for each other.
An Automated Civilian Fleet
The largest cost that the USSS saved on was the need for Banners to establish a specific delivery fleet. Instead, ports of trade would implement drone-automated loading and unloading docks for the civilian ships entering port. Any Wayhall-capable ship already was required to establish its travel path at its port of departure, the USSS would take the proposed path and match packages that need to travel to the same destination.
The USSS would then contact the civilian vessel and offer a delivery commission per parcel. Often times for backed up logs, ships can pay for a majority of their fuel cost through the USSS alone.
On-Demand Hiring
The USSS also affords the cost of several different options of shipping. Between major Waypoints such as the junction between the
Jhoutai WayPoint and the
Eden WayPoint there are established freighters. These massive vessels can take several thousand tons of cargo between high-traffic routes to support the trade between the two.
The other option comes from the opposite situation, where packages are needed in worlds extremely remote. In these cases, a buyer can hire a
Line Runner to deliver the package specifically to that world. Often times this is a very expensive venture, but it does allow a package to be anywhere in the universe as soon as technically possible.
This could be a huge breach for terrorists and contraband to exploit. What are the security measures taken by each banner? How do they make sure that the USSS isn't carrying dangerous goods or information to local spies? It's fun though that they had to come up with a system like that. These guys must be damn rich.
Well its simply the problem that packages have to travel in someway. A lot of the security is similar to the United States Postal Service or even UPS. Much of the security comes in the receiving of the package. I think I need to establish these accepting facility and the security around it as part of this article cause a lot of folks have asked me that question.