CyberRogue

It’s “The Future”… Your father told you this would be a glo­ri­ous age, bright skies, life-simplifying tech­nol­ogy, robots every­where to help you go about your every­day work, every­body happy with the world.

Instead, the sky is black from the crap the Mega­Corps churn out of their fac­to­ries, the “helpers of tomor­row” never mate­ri­alised, and life is cheap. Every­body keeps them­selves to them­selves in the ratrace that is life of the 21^st century.

Early on, the gov­ern­ments man­aged the fuel cri­sis — it wasn’t a prob­lem, cor­po­ra­tions raised the prices ever so slowly, squeez­ing money out of those who could least afford it. Food got more expen­sive, mak­ing liv­ing a lux­ury some couldn’t afford. Small com­pa­nies went out of busi­ness, merged with each other, or were sim­ply absorbed by the large corporations.

Even­tu­ally, the gov­ern­ments were over­whelmed by the size of the cor­po­ra­tions. It had crept up on them so slowly that nobody noticed — Mega­Corps, as they became called, had more power and money than even the largest state of old. One by one they fell, ced­ing power to the likes of Cyber­Fuchi in Asia, Siber­ian Oil in the old USSR, MExxon in Amer­ica, Core­Mob in Europe… There were many more around the world, but the Big Four held sway over the old superpowers.

Once they had their way, they no longer cared for the peo­ple. Indus­try became a global econ­omy, and if you weren’t a cor­po­rate stooge, you were noth­ing. Crime rates rose around the world, and the under-manned, under-payed and under-powered police were over-powered. Some looked the other way, for a price, oth­ers were bru­tally mur­dered just because they stood up to a gan­glord. The Mega­Corps pro­tected their own, 10 foot tall walls enclos­ing brightly lit sub-urban envi­ron­ments with their own heav­ily armed and armoured secu­rity became the norm for the cor­po­rate man­age­ment, mas­sive apart­ment build­ings sur­rounded by barbed-wire fences for those lower down the echelon.

Every­body on the out­side fights for the same scraps. There’s no fuel, but that’s alright because you’ll be lucky to find an old junker that still runs on gaso­line. It might be ille­gal to steal some­one else’s elec­tric­ity, but that’s the only way to run your vehi­cle and tools. Just your trusty guns and armoured trench­coat to keep you alive then.

Wel­come to “The Future”… Wel­come to hell…