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Space Amos
Government
Earth, formerly locked in it’s tiny solar system, finally invents the technology to escape into the great unknown, not at the hands of the worlds’ many governments, but at the brilliant and distinguished minds at the Ferrero megacorporation. Once known as the second largest chocolate producer and confectionary company in the world, the director set their sights on a broader scale, seeking to break through the confines of the hole they’d dug themselves into. Their amenable takeover of the Italian government and mafia, brought about by copious bribes of Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, and Kinder, along with similarly delicious products, saw their profits skyrocket. With an entire country’s resources under their control, the chocolatier expanded its holdings to encompass several failing tech companies, seeking to pull Italy from its debts and set its sights to broader horizons.
Seeing the rapid growth and success of the former Italian Republic, the United State broke from its republic and sought to bring about a golden age by swinging to a complete corporatocracy. Disappointed with the turn of events, SpaceX merged with NASA to create the Conglomerate for the Exploration of Space (CES), absorbing Boeing and Lockheed in the process. Microsoft joining with Apple prompted the creation of Federated Technologies Limited, inadvertently splitting the western block of the United States from the eastern seaboard. Countries across the world joined in the practice, Maersk joining with the ESA to create the Northern Lights, swallowing most of northern Europe and Canada. Other countries followed until most of the world’s government sat under the thumb of one megacorporation or another.
With the advent of megacorporations came the drive for profits and expansion, but with territory already claimed across the globe, they set their horizons to the vast sky above. This drive led to the development of Artificial Intelligences (AI) to aid in the development processes of conceivable space travel within and beyond the solar system. At this point, much of the solar system has been claimed in one way or another. While territory disputes are constantly ongoing, for the most part, the system is seeing a settling down of this rapid expansion as space begins to run out. Attempting to lay claim to the vastness of space outside of the solar system, Ferrero created the prototype FTL engine and sent its first ship into deep space, set on exploring and returning with new information on the great unknown.
While the megacorporations scramble to space, they continue to engage in capitalistic practices back on Earth, competing with each other for access to prime resources, workforce, and more relaxed laws. Ferrero, in its wake of taking over Italy, has access to a workforce ready to bring the country out of debt but lacks the raw resources for rapid expansion. Similarly, megacorporations without a ready and willing workforce possess raw resources with no way to extract them. Much like the large corporations of the past, deals between them occur to maximize profit while cutting the other’s source, keeping each other at arm’s length unless needed.
With deals for these corporations to expand into space came their expansion into the smaller aspects of life, megacorporations tacking on deals to expand into aspects the primary megacorp couldn’t or didn’t want to handle, with them consuming smaller companies until they owned everything, from the brand of toilet paper, the food people ate, to the brand of media people watched and streaming networks they consumed. Though the already established governments continued to exist, they only continued to remain at the behest of the megacorporations. Politics and governments didn’t matter to them, only to maintain order for them to do business with their peons and bureaucrats filling election seats.
The ship, named The Amos after a subsidiary company and the AI within, reaches the edge of the system, near the dwarf planet Pluto, in just a few minutes. The ship now has headed into deep space towards points of interest identified by Ferrero scientists. Their end goal being an estimated seven years of FTL system hopping away. Three years into their journey, the captain, the AI who is integrated into the ship, now struggles for control of the crew as the different working factions snub his commands in lieu of their own group prerogatives.
Much of this rebellion is because living conditions aboard The Amos have been deteriorating. The Captain made the call to approach a gravity well for research purposes and ended up needing to reroute power to the engines to be able to escape it. In the process, many of the ship’s live plant farms died. The crew must now live on reduced rations until the ship can scavenge more resources from planetary bodies it passes to synthesize into food. This has led to even more anti-robotic rhetoric as some human crew members see this debacle as their AI captain not valuing their lives above its exploration prerogatives.
Other than the food situation, the majority of social services aboard the ship are working as intended. They are just not ever going to be up the same level as the crew enjoyed in the home system. Being the first long journey into deep space, a focus was put on survivability, not comfort. There is enough room on the space for practical living but not so spacious that you can really go for a walk without seeing another person. Their needs are accounted for but after three years aboard, the situation is starting to grate on some of the crew members who long for home.
Social
Aboard the Amos is a crew that consists of those from many different backgrounds and creeds. Depending upon the crew member’s job aboard the ship,their rank and the sort of benefits that are available to them are different. Their positions help create an indirect class system. The main groups on board the ship are scientists, engineers, officers, and soldiers. Those most loyal to Ferrero get preferential treatment, this includes the officers and the soldiers. The scientists are somewhat of the middle class with the engineers being the lowest out of all the groups. The engineers consist primarily of the up and coming race of sentient robots as they are able to perform advanced calculations in an instant necessary for keeping the ship running as smoothly as possible. They are also picked due to the somewhat harsh working conditions involved with being an engineer which include working with heavy equipment or being exposed to materials that would be harmful or toxic to a human. Aside from the mega-corporation Ferrero owning the ship, the captain is the highest rank aboard the Amos.
The majority of the people that were hired to be a part of the research team were Doctors and scientists who were in good health and interested in this type of journey. These personnel were not the top in their fields however as there was a concern that removing the best medical and science professionals from Earth for a risky voyage might have had dire consequences. This decision was made internally at Ferrero and was not told to anyone but the higher ups and the captain of the ship.
Due to the nature of their journey, and the confined quarters among other things, tensions between the different classes of crew members are increasing. This is especially true between the captain, his followers, and the rest of the crew. Many of his associates are blind followers of Ferrero and would rather see the company do well and profit off of this journey instead of finding something that could help the Earth. Compare this to the large number of science personnel who are aboard the Amos to help the betterment of humanity and there are often conflicts of interest between the two. Many of these conflicts and aggressions are built over time from the captains seemingly cut throat and cold decisions made to help keep the ship on course in its journey.
The demographic of the crew members aboard the Amos consists of a mix of both humans and their machine counterparts. The humans aboard the Amos are a good mix of nationalities, a portion of the passengers are from Italy due to Ferroros headquarters being located there. However there are still a large amount of nationalities present from different regions of the planet as Ferrero did not want to be responsible for removing a large portion of Italy’s population. Among the human demographic there is a larger portion of male crew members than female crew members. This imbalance in the gender ratio from the random hiring process forces this unintentional divide between the two.
The Amos is pretty open when it comes to sexual orientation, as they do not discriminate between who they hire. While the human passengers are not discouraged based on their sexual orientation, there is one exception to this rule. With how difficult tensions are between humans and robots, human passengers having sexual relationships with robots and relationships with robots in general is incredibly frowned upon. This has been a rising movement on Earth as some groups of humans recognized the robots' abilities to interact with them almost identically to humans. Many are against this however, seeing the new movement simply as a fad that will quickly fade and one that is unnatural. There are crew members that like to have relationships with their artificial companions but they do their best to keep it a secret to avoid scrutiny from the other crew members. Any of the other robot companions see nothing wrong with this sort of relationship, and many of the science team understand the need for companionship and see nothing wrong with this sort of thing. However many of the upper officers do not wish for this sort of thing to become too widespread as they fear word spreading of this could hurt Ferrero’s reputation upon their eventual return.
Economic
Ferrero, being a megacorporation, is completely interwoven with trade within the solar system. It has branched out from chocolate and encompases just about every possible kind of company it could get its hands on. If you live within what used to be Italy, you are buying everything from Ferrero. However, The Amos is a different story. Being an exploration ship, it does not engage in much trading. It is prepared to deal with possible other FTL-capable ships sent out by other megacorps but that is unlikely to happen very often. At the current time there is no indication that they will run into alien lifeforms capable of communication. So for the most part, the ship will trade with no one. There is some trading going on between crew members. When someone has some small comfort or skill that can be traded, it is possible they will find a buyer. The crew as a whole is living a very non frivolous life given their mission, so little comforts hold a lot of value, the greatest of which is the Famous Amos Cookies.
Albeit a wealth gap does exist between those higher up in the megacorporations and those working for them, there isn’t a wealth gap between the different departments of the ship since everyone on the ship is receiving their predetermined salary for the trip after they land back on Earth. When there is trading amongst crew members, there is mostly a bartering system for it. There isn’t a currency system aboard the ship, and most of the crew are being paid similarly for their service given how dangerous the mission is. Therefore, wealth is decently distributed through the ship and there is not much tension that exists between the crew members based on their wealth.
Agriculture aboard The Amos has taken a turn for the worse after the captain had to reroute power from the growery to ensure the ship would escape a blackhole. The decision made by the captain resulted in a great loss of resources for its human crew members added more tension to the already strained relations that existed between humans and their robot crew members. The crew is currently scraping by and is actively campaigning for something to be done to right the situation and restore their supply of fresh vegetables, though the captain does not want to focus much on restoring the growery.
Culture
While back home the arts have been restricted by the megacorporations due to their ability to distract people from working, this is not the case on the Amos. Being confined to such cramped spaces for a long time started to make people a little stir crazy. To help the passengers not lose morale so quickly, the arts were deemed acceptable as something for the passengers to do in their free time, should they choose. As such, the arts have exploded on the ship with people finding their own unique ways to create their next masterpiece. One of the more popular forms of expression for art on the Amos is graffiti. This can take the place of works of art in crew members living quarters and in certain private areas of the ship. Ferrero do not tolerate any forms of graffiti in public areas. They especially do not appreciate any forms that go against the company. With tensions increasing between the crew and captain due to decreased living conditions, some of the more artistic crew members have been using their skills to express their displeasure. This has spawned a group of graffiti rebels who like to spread their own content to areas that it shouldn't be, all while trying to stay hidden from ship security.
The military aboard the Amos is sponsored directly by Ferrero and is meant to protect the upper members of the crew—especially the captain, and subsequently the rest of the ship. The military consists of a few humans and programmed security robots. The robots on the security team differ from the average robotic passenger as they lack free will. They are programmed specifically to obey and protect the captain. The few human members on the security team are higher up members of Fererro and are there to help make the security detail seem less like it's entirely controlled by machines. These human members, while not programmed to obey the captains every order, are vetted to make sure their loyalty is close enough to a machine’s. The most action any of the soldiers would typically see is a few squabbles with some more rebellious crew members. Occasionally when the Amos reaches a destination that prompts exploration, a detachment will go out on the planet with them for safety purposes. Despite the human faces on the security team, they are recognized as nothing other than the captain's iron fist among the more deviant crew members.
Religion is generally tolerated aboard the Amos. However similar to the megacorporations back home, religion is accepted strictly if it is performed in the privacy of the person's own quarters and on their own time. The team that was picked to fly on the Amos was vetted to make sure there would not be any overly religious passengers whose beliefs would get in the way of the mission. This is only known by the captain of the ship however, as it would be somewhat controversial if the crew members found out about it.
Technology is incredibly prevalent on board the Amos, this is especially true with the captain. A.M.O.S. (automated machine operating system) is the first of its kind AI interface that is meant to pilot the Amos on its maiden voyage. This AI is so advanced that it was able to develop the ships engines and navigations systems that help them travel faster than light and jump to other systems. The AI also happens to take the appearance of the Famous Amos company's original founder, Wallace Amos. He appears through screens, and holograms, and has complete control of the ship should he need it. He can choose to appear either visually or through a speaker anywhere on the ship at any time, he chooses not to do this to not keep people on edge. His personality is meant to reflect that of the original founder, its mannerisms reflected their original founder, warm and inviting. The decisions that the AI makes however, are seen as the exact opposite and tend to be quite cutthroat. When conversing with the various passengers of the Amos, the AI captain knows how to cater to his audience. He will use terminology that the science team is familiar with when discussing their latest breakthroughs and research projects. Then when speaking to the engineers or some of the less educated crew, he knows to not use too many words that they are unfamiliar with. When discussing sensitive material with other crew members A.M.O.S. likes to stretch the truth a bit or lie in order to maintain the facade that everything with the voyage is going well and to not cause panic.
Much of the modern technology has been seen as necessary for the voyage and has helped keep any of the crew members from falling seriously ill or dying during times of need. This includes state of the art medical facilities and advanced food, water, and waste facilities vital to a long voyage such as this one. Other forms of technology include the various cleaning and maintenance drones that perform basic functions. These help keep the ship clean and try to stay out of passengers' way.In terms of security there are the robot drones that are programmed to defend the ship and the captain at any costs. Other mechanical beings aboard the Amos include the sentient robot counterparts to the humans. Many of them were recruited to be a part of the crew to help improve the relations of humans and robots, but also due to their ability to withstand dangerous conditions that many humans could not, especially for jobs such as engineering.
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