User blog:JERealize/2050's Society

Warning: I may have switched points of view when writing this story. I'll ffix it soon.

Prologue
Our origin was introduced at circumstances we haven't really preferred. Back in the days of the Roman Empire, the inevitable ransacking of our fair civilization had citizens concerned. One of our folks had set up a meeting to demand solutions to counteract our decline. That fateful meeting resulted in us forming what is called in English, the Society of the Future. As the weeks passed, we've determined that, with the collapse of civilization as we know it, whatever we have must be preserved.

We've formed in 408 CE in an effort to preserve what would eventually remain of the Roman Empire. However, within 50 years, Rome was far from saving. We had to do what we could, though, so we've formed an isolated valley in the Swiss Alps. We had no choice but to adapt to the harsh wilderness we found, and form a self-sustaining civilization, separate from the unbearable reality of the feudal system. Everyone contributed, but at the time, we formed a Senate of 12 people, and added 132 Elite Guards, while the other 1584 documented citizens (most joining once our efforts were seen by the few (only 84 of the 1728 were original Society attendees) had a job assigned to them, predetermined by their own interests, but influenced by our necessities.

We send out scouts through the years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, gathering news of what had happened in the former lands. Religion had stagnated and, in some cases, reversed, the trend of advancement, so we decided to use what we had to advance ourselves, so what was lost was not in vain. Over 500 years had passed since that time, and you would see what would be considered by the modern viewer as a proto-Renaissance civilization.

Sadly, we were not without conflict. When scouts set out to explore outside civilization in 1121, they were captured by outsiders of an unknown kingdom, and the civilization itself had to force out the kingdom with gunpowder weaponry. Our population, as dictated by the Census, fell from 2132 to 1595. We then had to arm our scouts the way we armed our Elite Guards, and enforce immigration security.

Another conflict well-noted wasn't caused by human folly as much as it was by unreadiness for the unexpected. Within the 14th Century, the Black Death era struck our scouts without them knowing, and once they arrived, we immediately felt the effects. Over forty percent of our population perished under this strife, and due to the outside causing damage on the inside so easily, we were more reluctant to show our scouts the outside world.

In 1515, we deployed our scouts again. Before then, we had dispelled many myths, including the much-ensured one saying that the Earth is the center of the universe. We studied known symptoms of the Plague and determined that more diseases from the outside had to be studied, and ultimately, prevented. New measures ensured that scouts would be studied and sterilized before returning home. Our technologies were around those of the early 1700s.

Upon the scouts return, reports came that an undiscovered continent loomed beyond the seas, so that sparked interest. However, we were strangers to the outside, so we questioned our potential actions. It had to be done, though, so to ensure our survival against suspicious folks and diseases like smallpox, we had to migrate en mass, but in separate flocks, towards the Iberian Mountains, where vessels would be built to sail the seas. That decision, though seeming like the only option, resulted in the Tragic Migrations.

Our population, at the start of the migration, was only 1172, when we split into twelve teams. Each team would have one Senate member and 12 Elite Guards keeping the groups away from looming danger. It took four months to get there, having to blend in with the populace and gather enough food and supplies to continue forward. Our plan was to meet at a certain point by winter. Despite this, only seven teams came through, causing massive reordering measures once we reunited.

We only had 680 people when winter came. Starting a colony there by scratch proved to be difficult, and though we didn't lose our advancement measures, we lost 355 people to the cold.

Once winter died down in 1516, we started building the vessels, but it proved tough with little population. We managed to finish up three vessels by May, and began to sail.

The three vessels were bunched together for safety, but then pirates, as they were called, came at us, thinking we carried treasures. We fought them back, but one of our vessels sank, and we lost 36 citizens while we gathered the remainder.

We found land in August, and marched through the wilderness for about five miles until we found an isolated section of the forest to rebuild civilization. Only one citizen suffered a fatal incident, leaving only 288 people left once the next Census arose.

Though the Society had few fatalities through the rest of the year, the population was dangerously low. Three-fourths of the former population were now dead. A new stock population had to be found, so scouts went off to find other settlements, not boding any success except for a few daring adventurers, who understood by contract that they can never go back.

A new method of colonization had indeed formed, as the colony had to move west each number of years to avoid detection. However, the population had problems to face, as almost half of the population was either from the Senate or serving as an Elite Guard. Thus, the Elite Guard membership was reduced to 60, and the rest worked diligently to advance our technologies. But, the low population, combined with consistent migration to the West, caused barely enough sustenance for the populance and a lower technological advancement than normally expected previously.

Among the 1700s, though, an opportunity came for the remainder of the civilization. Despite being low in number, the populace heard from the scouts that Africans were being sent into the slave trade, and the Society had to gain new recruits, and quickly. The Society had to interact with the outside world more to earn enough to purchase African slaves. These specimen were hardly treated as slaves; though they couldn't leave the Society, they were welcome in as free members of society, on the same level as everyone else.

About a few hundred slaves were purchased and semi-freed before, in the Conference of 1750, the Senate members and some citizens have agreed upon two things:

One, with what is equivalent to the Society' Industrial Revolution settling in, the Society had to find a place to settle permanently without being persecuted. Thus, they found an isolated place in the Appalachian mountains to set up their factories and their homes.

Two, the current name of the Society was under dispute, as the name should represent what the Society is. A new goal had to be formed, saying that the Society should stay about 50 years ahead of the technology of the outside world. They decided to change the name to the 1800s Society, agreeing to add another 50 years once they reach the approaching year.

With that, the new factories started up the African Goods Grab. Part of the population worked on producing goods in factories (while minimizing injuries), while the other half worked on finding higher technologies. Eventually, the goods produced would buy more and more Africans until the Slave Trade Act of 1807 came into place, ensuring the total of the then-1850s Society population, according to the Census, to be 3257, with only 155 people in it originating from a purely non-African descent. (Note that the Three-Fifths Rule does not apply, as no slavery was in place.)

With this African over-influence, though, the Conference of 1806 had to discuss what the worst-case scenario, an African overthrow or abandonment, would do to cripple the efforts of the Society. Though no African had strongly desired to leave, the Conference had one decision formed:

The Society had to 1) reinforce laws saying that no one can leave the Society on penalty of persecution and death, and 2) sail to Europe to find others who would believe in the Society and contribute to it.

Within 1810, about 257 of the population were now non-African in ancestry. However, there were some espionage agents caught in the trade, and they had to be executed. This had people rethink that idea to hire Europeans. If anyone outside the Society found out about their technology (by now equivalent to that of Lincoln's presidency), that would decimate their efforts. Despite the overall goal by now being to reintroduce advanced technology to a tech-absent world, people are more concerned of keeping their existence secret at all costs.

Thus had to be decided: In the Conference of 1811, a new law was added, saying that the Society can only collect citizens if those citizens were currently dealing with strife. In practice, though, the strife caused by the War of 1812 was considered, but not acted upon, as Great Britain and its former Colonists were battling, and are highly advanced compared to the world average, but Mexico's War of Independence had convinced the Society to convince some of its most suffering citizens to join the Society.

When oil was more widely implemented in the mid-century, the Society was more often based on the equivalent of a Steam-punk civilization, despite mastering electricity and developing the smallpox vaccine. Oil had to be considered in the long run, so oil drilling started up around then, thanks to the new procedures allowed in the Conferences of 1857.

Once the American Civil War struck, the Census reported a record high population of 6481, with forty percent of the citizens of non-African descent. Many members of the now-1900s Society were gathered up by now, with some from Ireland, some from Latin America, and some from East Asia. However, alarm bells were ringing as they expanded, since some people were discovering the Society, often resulting in them being part of the Society, or raising conspiracies about something now called the Steel Titans, a group of people developing a civilization that would cover the United States by the end of the century. With that revelation, the civilization now built was now christened the City of Daedalus.

People no longer could stand living so close to the now-fenced in city. The Conference of 1863 had decided that the Society must migrate to another area, this time a more remote location. Australia was only discovered last century, and most of it was unsettled. With that, more interest was brought up to settle there. However, people would still notice an abandoned city bristling with tall buildings and automobiles. Thus, the conference proposed construction of the base with 1200 members, then transferring more and more in there as it was built. Luckily, not many people were lost compared to the Tragic Migrations, and by 1866, the population had successfully moved in, with Daedalus blown up in that same year, the year before Alfred Nobel patented dynamite.

Now living in Icarus in Australia, the Society had more peace of mind in not being found in the Outback, and the Conference of 1877 had decided to implement a closed-borders policy until further notice.

Within the next few decades, the Society's races started meshing together, as the mix of Roman, African, Mexican, Asian, and Irish races had a heavy influence on its culture. Automobiles powered by oil came into play, and penicillin (called Mediphor #1) was recognized as the first of its antibiotics. Aviation was possible, but was restricted to experimental stages, as prolonged flight could raise the chances of discovery by many outsiders.

Outsiders were still there to discover Icarus, though. They were usually those stranded, and relieved to find a city. However, they had to accept the choice of being a part of their city over staying in the Outback, fending for his life.

Nothing much happened through then, besides the new advancements being developed. The 1900s Society became the 1950s Society in 1900. The Society's level of technology, despite being roughly 50 years advanced, had discovered that some inventions from the outside world are nonexistent in the Society, so work had to come into those sectors before the Society loses their edge.

One incident probing the minds of many was caused on errors made by the Society. In 1947, a Low-Earth Orbit satellite fell to Earth partly due to a mathematical error upon launch, thus crashing near Roswell. Thankfully, the American government, now far from its British roots, had dismissed the event, but the public insisted that the event had extraterrestrial importance. That had forced a new isolation perspective, as no world country had deployed satellites into space yet.

Once the 1950s Society became the 2000s Society, the Conferences of 1950 began. The concern of worldwide mobility was now an issue, as people are expanding their claims across the globe. Some people had wanted to inform the Commonwealth about their problem, though the want for a revelation was out of the question. Others proposed moving to Antarctica, but the realization that CO2 was a greenhouse gas had informed the public that moving to Antarctica would put the Earth as a biosphere in jeopardy.

With a curious world on the horizon, though, they really had no choice but to get help from some sort of government. Thus, one of its Senate members had a visit with the Prime Minister of Australia, and they came to an agreement. Everything within 80 kilometers of Icarus would be designated as federal property. Also, according to a new ordinance, new areas shall be reserved in different parts of the Commonwealth, upon agreement by those countries.

Later, other countries learned about this, too, in the strictest of quarters. The United States had formed an "Indian reservation" to allow a settlement there. Separate lands were offered by Argentina and Chile in the Andes. Solar power created by the Society also allowed settlement of the Sahara Desert.

However, the Society became a Cold War issue quickly, as China and the Soviet Union wanted in on the deals. This only intensified the war effort to the point where Cuba's nuclear missiles were set up to assault America's reservation. Luckily, the assault was prevented, and the Society, now growing as a hidden power, was allowed peace in the 1990s.

As 2000 allowed the creation of the 2050s Society, the mass implementation of cold fusion allowed what was called the Retreat to Singularity, in which all Society claims were abandoned, according to the result of the Conferences of 2001, to no longer be a hidden global issue. A new civilization was built upon a universally agreed-upon area in Nunavut. The world governments could not see past this masquerade, as they thought the Society was wiped out. The last remnant of the pre-Millennium settlements was officially wiped out, as the North American Society embassy, located in 7 World Trade Center, was destroyed by a terrorist attack after convincing al Qaeda that the World Trade Center was more valuable than the Empire State Building.

As of 2012, the 2050s Society still exists in Nunavut, at a current Census population of 15,272. The closed-borders policy now came with a doggy-door clause, saying that anyone who independently found out about the Society had a choice to either enter the Society or leave it be. The Senate was expanded to 144 members, and the Elite Guard system was long gone, as robotic and remote-controlled soldiers guard the gates. Everyone still had a task assigned to them, but more and more robots and AI were helping out for the time being.

Some people are also entered as Remote Citizens. These people work abroad and closer to outside civilization to provide anything that the Society may be missing, and improve on what has been done. Expert professionals like Markin Elaise and Diao Hakiodo were renowned in their work, although the Remote Citizenship Program had fell apart for part of 2012. However, the Society has yet to reveal its existence on the world stage, but they've figured out the best way to do that...