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).