File 98: The United World
Premise: In the 70s and 80s, many sci-fi books dealt with the USA being overrun by Communists, one way or another. What if it went the other way around?
The year is 1989. The United States rule the world. After their victory in the Viet Nam war, they set an expansionistic tendency which continued until a computer virus swept away all of the USSR's strategic defence in 1985.
President Reagan seized the opportunity and called for the immediate resignation of Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party under menace of nuclear attack.
When learning that this daring move restored most of the US's popularity around the world, American companies dove right on the cake and directly took over most of the global market.
Nowadays, "Made in USA" is not a note on a label. It is the law. Competition reigns supreme, and those who stay out of the uthless fray or fail to find any kind of job are simply left out to die. Social security programs are a crime. Power-hungry churches are the only hope for a few of the jobless.
To keep up with the competition, people sometimes work themselves to death. Outside North America, areas big as a former nation are directly ruled by whatever corporation managed to conquer it, first financially, then physically.
Civilians (people without US citizenship, about 90% of the planet) are usually little more than indentured servants in the industrialized world and downtrodden slaves everywhere else. Forced to enter the competition as early as possible, children receive specialized education from age 10 on average -- if any. Feelings such as curiosity are taught of as a waste of time. Art has turned to the lowest instinct of man, the most profitable ones. That of sex toy is a recognized full-time job... at least where a church or another don't impose their stern morality.
Money has won its final battle over freedom.
Or has it? A hidden minority still struggles -- Citizens who believe that the ideals of their country has been betrayed, Civilians who want out from the tyrannous heel of the corporations, dreamers who somehow make a living on the scarce leftovers of society.
This is their story.
Wed Nov 17 15:59:01 1999