Back to Part 5 of the Timeline.
Advances in psionic science lead to the development of a faster than light drive concept. Tests of the new drive fail catastrophically, the psionic backlash killing several hundred researchers working on the experimental starship the 'Leap of Faith'.
Psion observatories give the first evidence of alien life elsewhere in space. However, no information can be gained on the type of life, or whether it is sentient. As time passes psion sources are found to spread evenly over the sky, apparently at all astronomical distances.
Techniques stolen from the Chilean Empire by industrial espionage become available to the general public. These allow people to have themselves genetically modified with the super-powers of their choice, and also to change their sex almost at will. This set of techniques become known as the Rodriguez Process after their inventor, El Libertador himself. Like the Blank Process before it, modifications tend to require government approval with subsidies for poor but deserving applicants. This technique can also be used to render people unaging, but like the Blank Process before it this aspect of the process is quietly rendered illegal. In the Chilean Empire the Rodriguez Process is used to finish the task (begun with the Blank Process) of making the whole Chilean ruling elite into superhumans.
With this innovation and the fact that the genetic modifications breed true (although with the occasional unexpected result when people with differing powers crossbreed) humanity starts to raise itself towards what is seen as its ultimate goal of total superhumanity. It allows the colonisation by superhumans of areas previously considered too dangerous or expensive to be colonised by normal humans, such the inner and outer planets and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. It also allows the creation of military forces which need almost no equipment.
The Rodriguez Process also leads to the creation of several societies peopled by humans who have voluntarily transformed themselves into mythical beings (dragons, centaurs, satyrs, faeries and the like) created by genetic engineering (although some are not exactly like their mythical counterparts for practical reasons - for example the centaurs are somewhat more cat-like, allowing them to reach all parts of their bodies). It also leads to the virtual obsolescence of bioware, as it is just as easy (although initially somewhat more expensive) for a person to have themselves engineered as to obtain bioware.
A group led by the superterrorist known as the Annihilist (now at least 120 years old) take the Borneo orbital tower hostage. They threaten to topple the tower onto the Earth, killing all life, if their demands are not met, and the world given into his absolute control. As the Annihilists deadline draws closer, only a hastily assembled Interpol/UN task force fighting high over the Earth stop the Annihilist, killing him in the fighting. Even so, thousands of people (mainly living on the tower) are killed as debris falls to Earth.
The colonisation of the gas giant planets begins, using genetically engineered organisms or all kinds (including humans and, with their permission, cetaceans). Many of these colonies are centred around vast floating grav-supported 'trees'.
The linking of Earths orbital towers into a geosynchronous ring begins. This includes many of the geosynchronous satellites, settlements and asteroid which have been moved to that orbit over the years. It is never completed.
The Black Buccaneer vanishes from the public eye; he is never captured and his true identity remains a mystery.
The spreading of the Rodriguez Process leads to some rich groups having themselves constantly changed for reasons of fashion alone.
The headquarters of the United Nations is moved from New York to StarHolme, in part in order to recognise the UN's wider concerns in the Solar System as a whole and in part over political differences with the UMNA government. At the same time, for similar reasons, a new UN flag which represents the whole Solar System rather than just the Earth is introduced.
Technologies (in part using nano-machines) are developed which allow the almost complete manipulation of human personality and memory. These techniques are used in the treatment of the small fraction of mental disorders and criminals which are untreatable by more normal psychological techniques. They are also used by more repressive regimes in brainwashing and to provide, for example, reversible lobotomies.
The fifth cloning of Lady Blue occurs.
The total off-Earth population of the Solar System exceeds five billion people. These are divided among more than a thousand independent nations existing throughout the Solar System.
The first airborne grav-cities are built on Earth; for safety reasons few nations will allow them over populated areas, and everywhere on Earth is now populated to some extent, so they tend to end up restricted to flying over the oceans.
A second orbital tower is constructed on Mars.
A religious/philosophical/terrorist group calling themselves the Soldiers of Love appears for the first time. They use 'love bombs' derived from personality manipulation technology to 'bomb' people into a state a permanent transcendent joy. This is reversible, but not all who are affected want it reversed. They never become more than a nuisance movement.
Advances in anti-matter production technology mean that anti-matter can be produced as it is needed rather than having to be stored in large, dangerous, masses.
Large scale colonisation of the Solar Systems cometary halo (Oort cloud) begins, mainly by people who have had themselves engineered for this purpose, in very long range, long duration vessels of various types. Because of its remoteness the Halo attracts many of the Solar Systems diminishing number of misfits. The halo's colonisation is aided by various types of genetically engineered organism, including 'sun oaks', trees engineered to be living fusion-powered light, heat and power generators using cometary matter for fuel.
From the first the cometary halo is the new frontier, with a reputation for being hard and tough, but free, often months of communication time away from the planets. Each settlement is basically a nation in its own right, being far too isolated for any central government to rule, though some do form loose coalitions, linked by common interests.
As civilisation expands further and further into the Solar System, the more extreme or dystopian settlements generally migrate out into the halo (including a number of genetic engineering-enhanced matriarchal and patriarchal societies). It becomes a place where the strange and persecuted go to live their lives as they wish, and where occasional skirmishes and mini-wars occur.
Most nations introduce laws allowing groups of citizens to secede and form their own nations (often with conditions attached, such as how far away they have to go and who they can ally with). This is really a legal recognition of what people are doing anyway.
From the study of several superhumans scientists finally discover a physical mechanism behind the ability to become insubstantial. This soon leads to the introduction of devices giving this ability to vehicles and other items as a means of passive defence.
The use of insubstantiability generators leads to a new era of planetology as insubstantial vehicles probe the interiors of all the worlds of the Solar System.
Scientists begin to become concerned about the effects of the inevitable waste heat generated by the huge civilisation on Earth.
The techniques of personality manipulation begin to be used, under strict control, for recreational purposes, allowing people to actually become someone else for a time, often in some kind of adventure setting. Several settlements are set up exclusively to provide these settings in one form or another.
A drastically new physics is developed by a Starholme physics team, linking space, time, psionics, matter, energy, chaos and order into an elegant and coherent whole, in a theory far more unified than the Grand Unified Theory of 1955, and more revolutionary than quantum theory.
The Solar Systems superhuman population exceeds one billion people.
The new physics leads to the development of technology which can damp fusion and fission reactions at range.
A new concept for a faster than light starship drive is developed from the new physics. It proves to based on a fallacy.
The Gestalt Society is founded on the Kuiper Belt object Chiron. They begin attempting to evolve themselves into a single collective consciousness, a path they consider to be the future of humanity.
The first industrial teleportation systems are developed by scientists from the Ashpool Corporation, based on the new physics of 2190. Although useful, they are incapable of transporting living or other complex matter, as it is too scrambled to safely survive the process. However, it is impossible to produce teleport systems which can reach orbit or work at interplanetary ranges, and the system requires both a transmitting and receiving device. Over the next year or so, several other companies market similar systems.
The first public teleport booth system capable of transporting living and other complex matter is developed by scientists from the 101 robot society, based on extensions of the industrial teleportation systems introduced in 2196. It is introduced on an experimental basis in Japan, and proves a great success in the movement of people and goods, leading to the introduction of similar systems in the rest of the world and the larger space settlements.
Probes explore the Solar Systems cometary halo in detail.
Hang-gliding holidays on Saturn become popular.
The UN finally declares the DEMON organisation a thing of the past after years without any sign of them.
The new physics of 2190 leads to the ability to construct self-sustaining 'standing wave' force fields and other energy constructs. These lead to a whole new generation of entirely energy-based vehicles and AI forms.
The Solar Systems AI population exceeds one billion entities. The majority of these exist off-Earth, either in the various AI societies or living alongside humanity either as robots or within a settlements systems.
A megalomaniac superhuman tries to set himself up as 'Lord of the Outer Dark' in a relatively close 'swirl' of halo objects far from the Sun. A war breaks out as the inhabitants resist him, ending with he and his forces fleeing into the depths of space before word even reaches the Earth.
Total conversion power supplies, turning matter into energy directly, without the need for anti-matter, are perfected, derived from the new physics of 2190.
A project to produce an artificial ecosystem, similar to that on Titan, is set up on Pluto.
Gravitics technology produces fields strong enough to generate small quantities of neutronium (neutron star material). However, it always reverts to normal matter when the fields are turned off.
The sixth cloning of Lady Blue takes place.
A massive underwater landslide off the Hawaiian islands causes tsunami hundreds of metres high to race across the Pacific. Their effects are dissipated with difficulty before more than a few thousand die (mainly in floating cities), but the side effects of doing so take more than a decade to undo.
An experimental industrial-scale transmutation facility is constructed on an asteroid orbiting beyond Pluto using techniques derived from the new physics and studies of several natural (i.e. not genetically engineered) superhumans with some form of transmutation powers. It soon proves capable of transmuting any sort of matter to energy and back to any single pure element. Because of its success several larger-scale plants are constructed elsewhere in the cometary halo, although all are kept well away from any inhabited area and surrounded by a large exclusion zone, as, given the huge energies involved in the transmutation process, any accident could be devastating. Some use matter derived from the solar wind as raw materials; others use asteroids and the like.
With the start of industrial transmutation, several unusual deep-space neutrino sources are discovered to have the same neutrino emission signatures as it, providing the first evidence of non-human sentient technological life elsewhere in the universe. All the Solar System is stunned by this revelation, though no contact with any of these other civilisations is likely soon - the closest is over thirty thousand light years away.
Plans for colonisation of bodies detected to have collected at the Suns Lagrange point, about three light years from the Sun, begin to be developed.