Welcome to the world of The 49 - Part 1

Introduction

Forty-nine. The last President inaugurated in the United States.

The span of terrible days after the global communications black out when the world was reshaped.

Forty-nine. The number of Phos—strange, supernatural phenomena—that appear in different geographic locations around the globe.

The critical parallel on what used to be the Canada-US border. Now the key power centre in Corridor West. A point on the map where the world’s future seems to hinge.

Forty-nine.

The world is in a time of major turmoil ever since a suitcase nuke in Paris brought Europe to its knees and reshaped the world and its maps, governments, alliances.

Can a single nuke do that?

It wasn’t just one. A secret organization of terrorists promised to inflict similar violence on major cities around the world. Beijing was next. Governments reeled. Not only to recover from the environmental fallout from Paris and Beijing, but from the economic destruction and social fragmentation. What materialized from the cloud of radioactive fallout was a new state of fear.

And opportunity.

While the relative peace of the last century is gone and the semblance and order, known throughout the 21st century, is a memory, there are some geographic areas where humanity thrives.

As the governments that survive became more authoritarian and the surveillance State becomes even more invasive, strange coalitions emerge. Globalism and economic nationalism collide with social justice warriors and vigilantes as old, tired political alliances fray.

Alliances that worked in the past fail. Identity groups and the new, unknown enemy threatening more attacks both remove and reshape lines of social and political division.

The US, with the help of NATO countries, scrambled to maintain its dominance and protect global assets, especially oil and water reserves which they feared would be the next target after the symbolic destruction of the City of Lights and the Empire that built the first Great Wall.

But it is the world's billionaires that are most ascendant.

Where governments fail due to faltering resourcing and mismanagement, billionaires with their tech companies and data-driven, direct-to-consumer infrastructure fill the gap and oversee entire regions of the globe. Their close relationship with former military, well-run NGOs, and private security companies, forged and tested through crises of the recent past– the Afghanistan withdrawl, Helene, LA’s fires, Paris–demonstrate their unique abilities to help people in need, especially in times of trauma or emergency.

Especially after the population, worldwide, is decimated. High tech fiefdoms become havens for clusters of the world’s remaining population.

With a social fabric so frayed it was inevitable that new territorial zones would emerge. Corridors around the world where those with resources and power make alliances with the citizenry to preserve a way of life. New North with its two Corridors: West and East. The New Soviet Corridor. Afrique. Asia Minor.

Canada, with its close proximity to the United States, becomes a major threat for the next nuclear strike. Rich in natural resources—especially oil, lumber and water—and due to the tech boom of the late 21st century in the Green Belt in Ontario, which was already a key centre of global data storage and digital infrastructure, the northern nation becomes a key political player and a satellite of a key billionaire alliance. Smart money from what used to be known as Silicon Valley.

The New North is a wild experiment—for humanity to survive, society had to be remade. And the off-world project of visionaries in tech and space push us closer to start new projects in the stars.

Can humanity thrive in these newly formed regions as it pushes lawlessness and political turmoil outside the walls of its corridors? Can it transport this new order and vision to colonize the stars?

Welcome to The 49.