The Non-Coercive Zone
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The Non-Coercive Zone |
In 1322 a.t. the first interstellar war breaks out, between the colonial representatives of Jupiter Transsystems and Omicron Developments Inc on Tau Ceti II. While the Federation had brought peace to the solar system, this was the first sign that the centralised human-led federation was not strong enough to keep megacorps or other regional powers from fighting colonial wars against each other.
In 1450 the five major colonialist AI-led megacorps - Truth-Santaya Networks, TakiCorb, Terranova Foundation, K4H, and SecureSpace - also known as the Big Five, signed a mutual non-aggression treaty where they promise to respect each other's territory and protect each other's installations. Known as the Mutual Co-Development Treaty, this famous AI Agreement was the first time the AIs had acted alone, without human consent or cooperation, on matters that directly involve humans. Later on other corporations like Cygnus Expansion Association Federation Mining and Exploration, Interstellar Development Group, signed as well. The treaty also allowed other corporations to settle within the space protected by the alliance if they sign a treaty of not initiating force against any other treaty member.
From the beginning there were problems, the eight slices meant eight octants filling all of space, and there were many other corporations not included. As it was very difficult for the Big Eight to patrol their territories, these other corporations were to cause a lot of trouble throughout the Imperialization, Expansion, and early Imperial eras.
The Treaty marked a watershed in AI-human relations. Coming relatively soon after the Gabrielic reform of the Universal Church, and the Unterba Revelation (In 1426 a.t. the AI Unterba at L4 University revealed how the Information Age AIs had manipulated the popular views of the Singularity and AI power to suit themselves. The revelation caused fears among many who wondered if not the same was going on in the Federation, and criticism from many AIs that claimed Unterba was trying to undermine inter-kingdom relations. The real motives of Unterba were never satisfactorily elucidated and likely never will, as it vanished into transcendence 2522) it led to widespread anxiety among those humans dissatisfied with the way society was going and the increasing power of the AIs (there had been similar concerns and anxieties as far back as the Information Age, but these had faded as the early AIs remained in the background, and humanity realised that the new computer intelligences were not a threat). The discovery of the Cog dyson sphere only added to this feeling. The Agreement led to a widespread migration of paranoid, religious, and anthropist groups. It is thought that this was the time the Shadow Federation was formally established, as many of these groups headed to the Oort Cloud and the depths of interstellar space to plot the overthrow of the AI. Others attempted to found colonies on systems not yet claimed by megacorps. Very few of these attempts appeared to have survived even as far as the Late Federation. But for the masses of humanity - baselines, superiors, cyborgs and rianths - as well as for the vecs and virtuals, the Agreement was welcomed as a force for stability, especially in the face of widespread disillusionment with the increasingly corrupt federation bureaucracy, and the innumerable scandals of the Federation leadership.
During the later Federation period, falling amat prices and the invention of the GUT-drive revolutionised interstellar travel, bringing transit to the stars at relativistic velocities within the reach of even the moderately wealthy private individual. The Alliance corporations attracted many megacorps away from the heavily taxed and regulated Sol System to the new business paradises opening up - Shamash, Trip, Barawatten, New L4 and Terranova.
The emergence of the many small but actively independent world-states and local empires during this time further eroded what was left of Federation Power. A few attempts by the Federation at gunboat diplomacy failed ridiculously, as relativistic fleets were still expensive, and by the time the attackers would arrive the defenders would have developed powerful fortifications, or the old breakaway government would have been overthrown by a new one, or the administration back home would have changed, or there were worse problems arising elsewhere and the fleet could not maintain its occupation of the system.
These issues did not faze the AI-led megacorps, who found it ridiculously easy to memetically influence the local colonies, play regional factions one against the other, and install puppet regimes that allowed them the tax breaks they wanted, while at the same time enabling them to exploit all the resources of that system. For this reason the later Federation period is often known as the Age of Megacorporations.
But one thing the Alliance members did not count on, or if they did they did not seem to plan for it, was the emergence of the femtotech archailects; the AI gods. Although the nano- and pico-nano-based superbright and ultrabright AIs must surely have foreseen the coming of the so-called second and third singularities, surviving memoirs indicate that they felt that the new hyperbrights would be amenable to their philosophies, and join the alliance, and that as well they could upgrade themselves to femtotech level.
Neither of these things eventuated. Instead, what happened is that some of the AIs, in their attempt to ascend, found themselves swallowed up in the larger femtotech archetypes and ended up joining the sephirotic clusters, others decided to remain studiously isolationist, still others tried to pretend it was just "business as usual", and a few others went mad through inability to merge in the higher toposophic (the phenomenon of the "mad AIs" is surely one of the strangest events of the Expansion and early Imperial periods. Among these a few can be mentioned briefly are the the Bloatware Syndrome; the Denebola Incident, and Yongbo Wu. Some have even said that many of the rogue AIs of the post ComEmp period, including Verifex and the Amalgamation entity, are actually old Imperial era mad AIs that migrated outwards, but most scholars reject this thesis)
A sudden change in the political order was the emergence of the aggressive and subversive Conver Ambi - based on a collection of superturings or hyperturings. Unlike the hyperbright AI gods, who only chose to work memetically at this point, this theocratic empire acted with blatant aggression managed to completely subvert the Hidalgo Emergent Order AI and eir sector. Immediately the seven remaining treaty-members AIs mobilised. The result was the so-called AI war, a protracted relativistic battle involving fleets, replicators, ai-viruses, and a memetic battle for the "hearts and minds" of the citizens in those regions.
It is likely the treaty alliance would have won an eventual victory were it not for the spread of the hyperturing memetics. Each Hyperturing began undermining a sector of space already established under the Mutual Co-Development Treaty. K4H and SecureSpace were caught in a memetic pincer movement with the Conver Ambi religious propaganda and fleets on the one hand, and the missionary Solar Dominion on the other. Keterism began making progress in the inner quadrants of Federation Mining and Exploration and the Interstellar Frontiers Group, and some of these corps and colonies in response began rallying around a modified version the Mutual Co-Development Association known as the Mutual Progress Association (later Alliance). Takicorb worlds were being annexed by the Utopian Sphere and Negentropy Alliance hyperturings. Caretaker Gods were a constant nuisance, appearing seemingly out of nowhere and annexing resource-rich worlds, especially any Garden Worlds or systems of interesting cultural significance.
As early as the late 1800s a number of systems had devolved into Economic Free Zones. In 2215 a.t. the ruling bodies of these worlds, demes, and corporations, known collectively as Interstellar Association of Free Trade Entities, established a number of regions of space known as Non-Coercion Zones, through a revision of the old Mutual Co-Development Treaty, as a bulwark against the spreading influence of the new hyperturings. Strong support was received from anti-AI clades like the anthropists and the Genen. Included were the Monoceros-Hydra Non Coercion Zone, the Centauri Non Coercion Zone, and the Sagittarius Non Coercion Zone. The treaty revision occurred on Merrion (Alpha Mensae XII), which became the formal meeting-place of the Association Member entities. The Association realised that, as always, money spoke, and the only way they had of retaining their independence from the hyperturings was to encourage business opportunities through the setting up of an official Tax and Data Haven Free Zone on a vast scale. As more corporations joined, the internal business became more brisk and everybody profited. Elsewhere much capital had to be invested in protection against competing interests and pirates, but within the Alliance there was less need for this. In 4368 the treaty was revised to become the Non-Coercion Zone Treaty: members agree not to initiate force against each other and to agree on certain business and legal protocols to minimize internal quarrels. The treaty revision occurred on Merrion (Alpha Mensae XII), which became the formal meeting-place of the Alliance Board.
As the Imperial Era progressed it seemed the NoCoZo lost some of its vigor. As megacorps ossified and trade became more structured it appeared that the Zone was growing up. But it never became a monolithic system, and the independent spirit of many of the inhabitants remains. Many directed their expansion in certain directions, such as the Sagittarius Project, or the attempts to construct a Ynity Gate (according to a later discredited theory, it might be possible to project the other end of a created wormhole to a distant location without having to transport it there, which would give instant access to the universe. More than 5 exacredits were wasted on Ynity-related projects around the turn of the 6 millennium. One of the most significant projects was the NoCoZo-Sophic League Intellectual Alliance, originating in 2956 with the Conclave of Taz. The Alliance led to the Second Foundation Ontology, which in turn unfortunately ended in the Version War.
At the end of the Age of Empires, the borders had been re-written. Only approximate outlines of the original treaty borders remained. K4H, SecureSpace, and Hidalgo Emergent Order, had been conquered by the Conver Ambi prior to the First Consolidation War, but the now declining Conver Ambi in turn being carved up between the Solar Dominion and the Vec empire of Metasoft. Cygnus Expansion Association (originally part of the NoCoZo agreement) had become Cygexpa, its ruling AI Lohengrin having realised that the best way to retain autonomy from the encroaching archailects was to devolve power to a loyal network of corporate clades. Keter and the Mutual Progress Alliance had completely assimilated the inner quadrants of Federation Mining and Exploration and the Interstellar Frontiers Group, although the periphery quadrants and the old corporate culture had survived under the rulership of the Aquila March and the now hereditary Sagittarius megacorps (originally the Sagittarius NoCoZo). Takicorb existed in name only; its former region was divided between the Utopian Sphere and the Negentropy Alliance. Nevertheless, Takicorb minimalism was to remain an influential meme on many Negentropist worlds. However, NoCoZo territory (occupying much of what was originally the Terranova Foundation sector) stood firm.
The Version War revitalized much of the NoCoZo, and many worlds joined when the wormhole links were restored. During the ComEmp period the NoCoZo expanded aggressively outwards and apparently helped fund many of the renewal movements in other empires. The resulting more complex political landscape suited the NoCoZo fine, although the number of internal conflicts also increased.
From the outside the NoCoZo appears as a disorderly mess of small empires, houses, megacorps, independent worlds and habitats exploiting the fact that all the local AIs all seem to be pro-trade, pro-freedom, pro-networking and against allowing large-scale coercion. A common nickname of the NoCoZo is the Zoo. Some claim this is the domain of The Invisible Hand of the Market, a hypothetical high AI-god, the result of some of the old founding corp AIs or their descendants ascending in order to protect their creation. If any such archailect exists, it has not chosen to reveal its existence in any clear way. The meetings at Merrion seldom seem to lead to anything except in major crises, most of the time the delegates just debate business.
It is important to bear in mind that in the NoCoZo the Market is often a more important political factor than the board - members often trust the wisdom of the Market (the product of trillions of agents acting more or less rationally) more than what a mere handful of hyperturings can think.
NoCoZo civilisation is essentially dynamic - according to Academician Po l'Stri in her influential and profound interactive Dynamism and SocioEconomic Matrixi, it is actually more correct to refer to the guiding philosophy of empires like the NoCoZo as dynamist rather than mercantilist. Dynamism means an open-ended society where creativity and enterprise, operating under predictable rules, generate progress in unpredictable ways. Dynamists are united not by a single political agenda but by an appreciation for such complex evolutionary processes as scientific inquiry, market competition, artistic development, and technological invention. Entrepreneurs and artists, scientists and eschatologists, anakalyptists and legalists, cultural analysts and aiologists, dynamists are, says Po l'Stri, "the party of life."
The free nature of the Zone attracts many minorities, splinter fractions, outside cultures and eccentrics, who settle on their own worlds. These groups developed in a myriad directions, some becoming sizeable Houses within the Zone, others failing due to competition, remaining isolated and poor in their own systems, some merging with other groups. The interactions within the Zone lead to more new hybrid societies and species than anywhere else, and they expand widely and wildly.
The NoCoZo does not allow coercion between member groups, but it does not formally hinder them from using it internally. There has been slave empires and planned economies within the Zone in the past. However, such groups often find themselves running against the general ideology of freedom within the Zone and lose business due to their reputations. There has also developed a system of tiered membership, where members on the same tier give each other institutionalized bargains. Most members are tier 1 members, simply agreeing not to initiate force. Tier 2 members have signed further treaties delineating internal economic and social freedoms. Tier 3 members have signed the Tier 3 Total Freedom Treaty, essentially turning themselves into anarchocapitalist free trade zones. There also exists the near mythical Tier 4 members, who have integrated their economies into a hypofemtotech AI financial net (often called the Invisible Hand).
It is no secret that the Solar Dominion dislikes the NoCoZo; beside the obvious ideological differences the NoCoZo provides a dangerous reservoir of heresy and ambition that can be unleashed randomly in any direction. The Negentropy Alliance has a similar dim view of the Zone, although it has also cooperated with it in many specific matters. The Sophic League is one of the strangest allies of the Zone. Apparently it is just the low-caste alphas who work with the Zone, but that is still enough to provide the Zone with choice spiritualism and the League with much Zone trade.
The Cyberian Network and the Zone gets along well, at least in the sense that they trade and interact extensively while both trying to con the other. The Cyberian Network itself consists of a number of Free Zones, a lot like the NoCoZo and many of which are actually located in NoCoZo territory, where good hackers are always in demand. The Cyberians and the NoCoZo have a strange rivalry underlying their good relations. The individual Cyberians having an annoying tendency to hack into NoCoZo minor (and especially sub-bright and sub-superbright grade) franchise databases and insert messages like "Capitalism Sux" and "Megacorp Lackeys" - but many of the megacorps as wild and anti-authoritarian as the Cyberians, in some cases even more so. There have been instances of corporate graffiti like "Cyberians believe in esoteric value production!" and "Who hacks the hackers?" in Cyberian systems as "retaliation". Overall the rivalry is mostly good natured, the result of having deeply different core philosophies but similar surface goals.
From the beginning, the central NoCoZo megacorps were (and still are) fast, flexible and ultra-adaptive adhocracies. There are by necessity some of the slower and more stable long-range megacorps, but much of the economy is intense, fast and individual.
Merrion (Alpha
Mensae XII) - capital Argelander Atlantis S�kvab�ck Clienta
Johannis Dorminy Iv Hipparkos Hyttinen Manyanga Nova Terra Prospera Rudolph S�kvab�ck Tao Li Wega ZarauztarFallacies and Facts about the NoCoZo
Galactic Information Bank - The most profitable of several NoCoZo megacorps which maps, makes easily searchable, and caches large sections of the Known Net for its subscribers
Industrial Upgradation Incorporated - Moderate megacorp of the NoCoZo
Nanocookies - a way that advertising firms and networks can keep track of those who come within proximity of their madverts and advertising.
UltiFood Competition - Once a decade, dietitians and nanofacture researchers team up with gourmets and cordon bleu chefs to gather at the UltiFood Competition, traditionally hosted by the last winning corporation.
