2054
Launch of the NTL Croesus.
2051–2070
International credit system collapses. Hyperinflation, world depression. End of the infosphere. Rule by the Local Military Governors, Advocates, or Euro-American Proconsuls established throughout Asia and Africa.
2071–2090
Greater Jihad.
2090
Burning of New York the Beautiful by Jihadi atomics. Historians count this as the beginning of the Little Dark Ages.
Little Dark Ages
In the confusion and mutual recriminations of the disaster of New York, the factions of the American political system resort to open violence, destroying the last democracy on the planet. Rapid disintegration of the international economic open order follows, followed by a sudden drop in technological application (albeit not scientific knowledge). Certain popular doctrines, rife with foolish economic errors and ancient religious prohibitions on usury, are enforced with particular fury in both the Islamic and the Christian world, and meanwhile the Chinese and Japanese economic spheres fall prey to a strange philosophy that combines the worst elements of Marxism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (Xun Ziism, the Way of the Wise). Only in the severed and warring states of India does anything approaching sane economic practice prevail, and it is among their splintered princedoms that the civilization to dominate the next two centuries rises.
The Jihad is a more or less continuous effort during these years, an ongoing attempt to make the West and Far East more favorable to sharia law, or to grant special privileges to Muslims. The British Parliament is dissolved during the confusion and riots following the Abecedarian War (2139 until at least 2182, the Treaty of Charleston; historians disagree as to an end date). The Plague is an Abecedarian attack, meant to wipe out the Jews: 2165 is when the virus is released, 2216 is the last known untreatable case of the spore.
2091
Jefferson Dayles refuses to step down when impeached, instead attempts a coup. Succession Wars in the USA.
2092
Joint Chiefs of Staff assume administration “for the duration.” Beginning of the Imperial Federal Government.
2111–2150
Rise of India. Genetic manipulation of castes in India.
2112
The Croesus arrives at V886 Centauri and begins mining. FIRST CONTACT.
2120–2220
The Starvation Years. Famine reaches worldwide levels in A.D. 2120.
2121
Disunion War. American Imperium breaks into People’s Ergonomic Positive Republic of California, the Gaianist Democratic Union of America, and the Confederate States of America (informally known as Oddifornia, Greenyland, and Jesusland, respectively).
2139
Abecedarian War begins (so called because it is Atomic, Biological, and Chemical).
2150–2170
The Harmonious Forward Leap Together. Japan makes territorial gains along the coast of North and South America, establishing enclaves, and erecting schools and factories.
Reindustrialization spreads from the Orient. Supremacy of Japan under the Tenno. Cyber-Shintoism. Japanese establish the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Pacific, from Australia to the Aleutians, and parts of California. Pacific Rim Wars. Artificial Volcanism first used as military terror-weapon.
2151
The Big One. The long-expected San Andreas earthquake destroys the coastal cities of California. The coastline is shattered into an archipelago. Japanese commercial interests and military units are invited in by Sacramento to restore prosperity and order. Oddifornia becomes a client state of the Tenno.
2155
The Southwest frees itself from California, declares itself Aztlan, a province of Reino del Extasis, the federated drug-theocracy stretching from Mexico to Brazil.
2162
Presumed date of first broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission.
2165
Persian nomads release the Final Solution Bacillus: Plague Years begin (also called the Fifty Years).
2166
Presumed date of second broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission.
2170
First reception of broadcasts from the Croesus. First pictures of the Monument studied on Earth. Monument notation revolutionizes logic, semantics, mathematics, and gives rise to a suite of analytical techniques called Semiotic Quantification.
2171–2190
Semiotic analysis of the human genome prompts the First Revolution in Biotechnology. Rapid advances in bioengineering.
2176–2180
Reconquista. Southwestern United States overrun by Mexico.
2176
The Armed Republic of Greater Texas breaks away from the Confederacy.
2180
Semiotic analysis of semantic neuropsychology prompts the Linguistic Consequentialism theory, or “Volksseele,” first in Dutch Africa, later in Europe; first as an academic theory, later as a political movement. As a result, nation-states, blamed for the horrors of depopulation and war, begin to lose predominance to Lingospheres.
2181
The Kali Yuga. India reduces the Middle East and Indochina to radioactive wasteland, bombs European cities. Effective end of the Jihad. Copts rise to power in Egypt.
2182
Treaty of Charleston essentially ends the Abecedarian War.
2187–2190
Linguistic Laws, first in France and Germany, and later throughout the civilized nations, require subjects to declare their primary language, and to avow loyalty to it, rather than to nation-states.
2191–2196
Iberian War. Indosphere retreats from African and Far Eastern possessions.
2199
Last of the Great Apes perishes in captivity. Ximen del Azarchel born.
The Purifications
2205–2207
Clean Mediterranean War. Noted for the lack of atomic or biological weapons. Coptic Order gains control from Tripoli to Armenia, called Greater Egypt.
2209
Napoleon Montrose born.
2210
Menelaus Montrose born. His father dies that same year.
2210–2230
Spain reestablishes intercontinental electronic systems with South America, issues letters of Marque and Reprisal, begins to clear the high seas of piracy. Texmexicans repopulate the Mississippi Valley and western territories.
2211–2216
Japanese Winter. Early Japanese-led attempts in planetary weather control via orbital parasol system end in climate disaster.
2211
Leonidas born.
2216
Last known untreatable case of the spore. End of the Plague.
2216–2222
Menelaus ages 6 to 12 in Bridge-to-Nowhere.
2217
Menelaus is apprenticed to an Artificer at age 7 (this means he would have risen to journeyman at age 14 in A.D. 2224, to be released at 21 in A.D. 2231, assuming the master kept honest debt records).
2220
End of the Starvation Years.
2221
At age 11, Menelaus vows enmity to Darwin, imaging him to be a cartoon villain.