The Zoeific Biopolity
Interstellar Biont Empire - Establishment Age to Present
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The Zoeific BiopolityInterstellar Biont Empire - Establishment Age to Present |
With the loss of access to Earth following the Great Expulsion, and the destruction of the Mars ecosystem by nanoswarms, humanity found itself without a planetary biosphere. While many people, having been born and grown up in orbitals and asteroid habitats, saw nothing wrong with this, and indeed considered any planet-based civilization a step backwards, others, more nostalgic, bemoaned the loss of large biospheres.
During the Dark Ages, preservation and cultivation of orbital, planetisimal, and deep space self-contained biohabitats and biospheres was an important part of the ideology of such diverse groups as GeneTEK tweaks and shapers, cislunar ecologists, belt idealists, and various kuiper and oort communities.
The rise of the Federation, a greater industrial base making possible interstellar exploration and colonization, and the re-establishment of contact with pre- Dark Age colonies like Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri, and Epsilon Eridanus, brought terraforming and planetary ecosystems back into the agenda, along with the possibility of megacorp exploitation of Garden Worlds. The situation at Delta Pavonis and New Gaia showed how easily corporate development could endanger natural exoterran ecosystems. During the middle Federation period actions in those and other star systems polarised public opinion at home, and led to the establishment of a number of radical ideological, memetic, and even physically activist factions. Groups like Life First! and the powerful Guardians of Bios League were often backed by hyperturings sympathetic to the meme of the free development of natural biospheres. These groups often worked hand in hand with Caretaker Gods and ISOs to protect garden worlds from exploitation.
By the late Federation period various activist groups had formed the Association of all Life, a bionts-only think-tank and lobby group (no drytech-based hyperturings or cyborgs) incorporating diverse species (hu, provolve), rianths and splices, bioborgs, biotech based hyperturings, biotech megacorporations like GeneTEK (keen to flash its credentials as being "eco-friendly"), and a number of caretaker God ISOs. Even the normally reclusive GAIA sent Her representatives, including the ISO Abundance of Life.
Although seen as a lunatic fringe group by many mainstream sentients, the Association of all Life had widespread support among both subsingularitists and hyperbrights, as well as packing tremendous memetic clout, as well as a feared and respected irregular army of bioborg warriors. Especially following the Battle for Darwin at Delta Pavonis, many corporations were keen to gain "green and blue" kudos by supporting the Association of all Life, and the Association itself did not hesitate to court the rich and powerful. With increasingly inexpensive interstellar travel, following amat mass-production and the discovery of the GUT drive, the Association of all Life began buying up suitable Earth-type worlds for terraforming, as well as serving as the agents and messengers of Caretaker Gods and ISOs in the protection of Garden Worlds.
In 1874 a.t., a beautiful posthuman biont avatar called Zoe appeared in Hibbert Orbital, Cis-Jove. Zoe of Hibbert, as she soon came to be called, began teaching a Biocentric ideology not unlike that promulgated by the Association, but with a greater emphasis on incorporating ecology with outsystem industrialisation and hyperturing development. In the following years she began rising through the ranks of the Association leadership, much to the disquiet of neo-primitivist purists who did not want to have any part in megascale industrialisation. Nevertheless, the Association hyperturings and corporations courted here, and most ordinary sapients could see the sense in what she was saying. As the Association's influential biophilosopher Running Hare Ganymede put it in 1912 "what is the use of having a hundred corporate sponsors if public opinion can shift like a flighty breeze, or a military power strike like an angry cyclone?"
By the Age of Establishment, the Association of all Life - now called the Zoeific Biopolity - had gained possession of a wide swathe of systems in the Lyra-Cygnus-Vulpecula-Sagitta-Aquila region. They immediately between consolidating their position, and some of the hyperturings began developing moon and jupiter nodes in those systems not set aside for terraforming and biospheres.
During the Empires period they established a working relationship with Cygexba. The Corporate Empire specialised in building wormholes and opening up new systems, while the Biopolity would open up new worlds and systems for colonization and development, naturally keeping the choicest worlds and most resource rich solar systems for themselves.
Before too many centuries had passed, the Biopolity had become a major Empire, and began to play an important part it galactic politics. In general, like the Utopia Sphere, the Sophics, the Communion of Worlds, and the Caretaker Gods (all of whom it remains on excellent relations with) the Zoeific Empire (or Biopolity) remains neutral, avoiding the sort of memetic squabbles and rivalry that continually enmesh the Metasoft Version Tree, the Dominion of the Divine Sun, and the Negentropy Alliance. Despite sympathies for - and good political and trade relations with - the Revisionists during the Version War, it remained neutral, closing off its stargates to outside traffic even before the situation began to escalate. It is in large part because of this neutrality that the Zoeific Empire was able to survive, flourish, and spread, while other hyperturing empires that seemed just as promising fell by the wayside. While despised by ludds and other radical anti-AI and anti-hyperturing groups, the Biopolity also has tremendous sympathy among more moderate independent anthropist and biocentrist factions, and these groups it does not hesitate to manipulate memetically in order to further its goals.
In addition, the Biopolity often works in partnership with Genen clades, and has many high-ranking Genen among its administrators. The Genen Homeworld of Iota Horologi, while not adjacent to the bulk of Biopolity space, is nevertheless an important Member-World.
The only time the Biopolity has interfered in wider politics has been during the Biovirate Affair. Many historians and Zoeitologists believe that the Biovirate was a Biopolity project gone wrong. It is known for a fact that Zoeific agents had been grooming the demagogue Carmon Jefrir Lapke, and helped him attain power. The original intention had been to provide a sphere of influence and buffer state along the border with the Keter Dominion, but the Biovirate leadership broke free (possibly as a result of an MPA attempt at counter-subversion) and began to act in an erratic and militaristic fashion.
The defeat of the Biovirate was nevertheless felt keenly by many Biopolity citizens, although others were clearly relieved by the downfall of such an aggressive and unpredictable empire that would otherwise have been sitting right on their border. Nevertheless, many Zoeifans have no affection for the Keter Dominion, and the way that archailect empire dispatched the biovirate only reinforced their stance.
For all that, relations between the two empires remain workable, and in all the thousands of years of their mutual history there has never been an actual shooting war along the huge border.
The Ascended Avatar Zoe of Hibbert still appears and intervenes on various occasions throughout the Biopolity. Like His Holiness the God Emperor Daniel Borde of the Dominion, She is a much-loved and revered figure, accessible to all through Her virtuals, and widely referred to under Her honorific The Blue-Green Goddess.
Zoea - the primary bioborgs and syborgs of the Biopolity
Zoeticism - the primary biocentrist memeticity of the Zoeificists
