2220

End of the Starvation Years.

2221

At age 11, Menelaus vows enmity to Darwin, imaging him to be a cartoon villain.

2224–2230

Counterreconquest. Texas annexes Aztlan.

2225–2226

From ages 15 to 16, Menelaus sees service in the Counterreconquest. Sam Feckle dies on campaign against Utah.

2230

India lands an expedition on the moon, explores and restores the long-dead Tycho Base. With the resumption of manned space travel, this year is accounted the end of the Little Dark Ages.

2231–2250

Spain and India cooperate on a space program, including an interstellar expedition.

2232

At age 22, Menelaus is already an attorney and duelist (who has fought four men, killing two). Mike Nails is his third kill. Menelaus is frozen for fifteen months; his calendar and biological ages are no longer synchronized.

2234

Menelaus attends Soko University in San Francisco, at that time one of the Japanese enclaves of California, owned by the Sumitomo Zaibatsu.

2235

Launch of the NTL Hermetic. At age 25cal/24bio, Menelaus boards the punt for NTL Hermetic. An experiment with a mind-augmenting neuropharmaceutical renders him unfit for voyaging. He is biosuspended.

2244–2324

Reign of Queen Gloriana of the United Kingdom.

2250–2300

Rise of Azania. Ultradeep robotic mining techniques (later used to bore the depthtrain system) lower cost of extracting South African uranium, diamonds, oil. Discovery of the motherlode of uranium in Pretoria.

2265

Pacific War. Called “the Pacifist War” because peace protestors swing the victory to the Japanese in their territorial disputes with Texas for control of the West Coast.

2260–2270

Greater Texas makes territorial gains in California, Baja California, and the Pacific Northwest.

2285

NTL Hermetic arrives at the Diamond Star V886 Centauri.

2287

Leonidas (76cal/76bio) enters biosuspension, hoping to live until Montrose returns.

2290

Hermetic crew erects radio-laser of sufficient power to narrowcast to Earth.

2297–2299

The Irish Catholic Movement, the so-called Gaelosphere.

2299

Denmark is made a possession of the British Crown during the Second War of Jenkins’ Ear (so dubbed by journalists for the artificiality of the causus belli against Spain).

2300

End of the Indosphere dominion. Spain, supported by South American technocracy, emerges as a dominant power in Europe. Hispanosphere Collective.

Concordat Century

2300

Rania born.

2303

Sinosphere–Anglosphere conflicts in the Pacific spread from Australia to California.

2306

Rania is 6bio when mutiny breaks out. Eight of her nine fathers are killed.

2310

Hermetic, under de facto command of Ximen del Azarchel the mutineer, departs from V886 Centauri. Rania is 10bio, and is the de jure Captain.

2323

Thucydides Acumen Montrose, later Father Montrose of the Society of Jesus and Pope Sextus VI, born to Patton and Athenodora Montrose.

2332

Hispanosphere erects the Beanstalk (Torre Real de Estrellas).

2333

The Germanosphere (that is, the Boers of Azania) enters the Sinosphere–Anglosphere conflict.

2333–2338

Yellow War. Japanese outposts in California treated with sickening brutality by Boers. The Reunited States suffer a constitutional crisis.

2339

Japanese home islands invaded. Members of the Imperial Family placed in biosuspension.

2340

First narrowcasts arrive from Hermetic: revolution in mathematics has implications in biotechnology, cybernetics. Universal Logical Syntax “the Notational Logic” developed, Unified Field Theory, Uniform-to-Manifold Genesis Theory, Automata Cell Theory. German superiority in mathematics allows this language group to exploit the new knowledge more extensively than others.

2340–2360

Rise of the Germanosphere, led by the Boers (Azania) of South Africa, to world dominion. They enforce medical purity laws in order to combat diseases left over from previous wars, particularly venereal diseases. They ally with the Xi Mandarins in Manchuria and the Coptic Christians of Greater Egypt, and form the Purity Order.

During this period, the Reunited Confederate States of America lose power and prestige; Kansas, a haven of Azanian technology, breaks away. America is balkanized.

2341

Japan becomes a client state of the Purity Order.

2343

George Edge of Hong Kong writes an influential series of essays on the relaxation of moral discipline due to virtuality addiction. The philosophy is called Condemnationalism.

2344

Japanese nationalists thaw the Imperial Family survivors from biosuspension. Emperor Mikohito officially embraces Condemnationalism (abstinence from neural implantation) as proper to the Japanese national spirit. Cyber-Shinto becomes the first religion to define neuralimplantation as ritually impure. Certain Christian denominations also condemn the practice, but on moral grounds. Condemnationalism becomes the official doctrine of the Copts, later of the whole Purity Order.

2350

Mandatory Health Assurance system in South Africa makes genetic “designer babies” mandatory. Azanians rendered immune to all known natural diseases.

2359

Signals from the incoming Hermetic persuade the Purity Order to shoulder the vast expense of launching a spaceborne braking laser, in order to slow and intercept the wealth-laden Hermetic. (Leonidas, as per his instructions, is thawed from hibernation, 148cal/76bio.)

2360

The Hermetic arrives in the solar system, is attacked, defends herself, destroys the navigation satellites of the Purity Order. Rania persuades the Purity Order to surrender. (She is 60cal/19bio—the speed of the return voyage was higher, due to abundant antimatter fuel, and hence there was more severe Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction. Only nine years shiptime passed.)

2360–2369

A political-economic worldwide or “Tellurian” Concordat, devised by Rania using Cliometry, is established, with the Hermetic Order as its informal head. Rania is placed in suspension soon thereafter, allegedly due to maladaptation to Earth conditions. The Hermetic is retired from active service, but kept aloft allegedly as a floating museum; actually to tend the contraterrene satellites.

2361

Leonidas (150cal/78bio) meets Rania (61cal/20bio), and is present when she thaws and examines Menelaus, who is incurable and returned after a month to biosuspension. Rania is commanded to return to biosuspension by the Hermeticists. Leonidas, heartbroken, dies. Fr. Thucydides Montrose, S.J. (38cal/38bio) administers the Extreme Unction. True to the last wish of Leonidas, Thucydides also enters biosuspension.