INHUMAN Case File 03: Panopticorp Broadcasting
Pt 1
Pt 2
Pt 3
The internet was a mistake. This is the consensus of the media companies that came to inhabit Mars. Losing control of the flow of information was a death spiral for the old media giants of Earth, who clawed their way like damned souls at the edges of Hades' pit onto power and relevance until the abyssal tides finally drew them in.
This time would be different. New companies tried to establish themselves upon Mars, creating an infrastructure utterly hostile to anyone attempting to create some kind of internet on Mars, adding to that the electromagnetic quirks of the Red Planet providing another barrier against people with a lot of money setting up any kind of communications system. These corporations, didn't have long to live, however, as a titan stepped foot on Mars with every inclination to use this overcrowded planet as the perfect grounds for their greater goals.
Panopticorp Broadcasting
Panopticorp Broadcasting bought out all other media companies in a frenzy. Competition evaporated practically overnight and Panopticorp immediately took over the building of media infrastructure and a special Panopticorp brand television was in every home in a matter of months.
The wide-open eye of the corporation looks into every home, literally. Their tvs are constantly watching, listening, monitoring all reactions as close as possible for everything the customer sees on the screen.
They watch everything and this is technically allowed under Martian law as the collection of "user-reactive metadata," a term entirely made up by Panopticorp to cover for their obvious surveillance overreach.
Their corporate ghettos are full of people attached to 360 screens, every nerve hooked up to monitoring screens, not just seeing how they react to advertising but what fundamentally constitutes humanity itself and whether it could be changed...
Do You Wanna Kill a Dictator?
One of the most popular shows broadcasted by the Panopticorp network. They grow clones of dictators and other villains of history from genetic data from the New Genevan Library. A mock trial is held and the villain is summarily executed in a creative, ironic, and tortuous fashion.
These clones are little better than newborns, holding none of the memory from their genetic source. The visceral nature of this program makes it the most popular on Mars.
The Johnny Splort Show
A Splort Cola advertisement series where the titular Johnny Splort resolves his problem of the week with the cool, refreshing taste of Splort Cola. He fights with the evil Coka Cobra and the wicked Dr. Pepper! This is a favorite program amongst children. The writers, hating their task, can actually manage to produce interesting shows out of spite for their corporate overlords.
Ghosts of Mars
A ghost hunting shows in the tunnels below Colony Alpha. After a series of episodes where the crew actually came very close to encountering any one of the horrible things lying in wait int he City Below, most of the episodes use entirely constructed sets.
The News
Panopticorp's main weapon against anything that threatens their hegemony over the flow of information. News anchors have been on an endless tirade against the up and coming Undernet that has begun to take shape as tech enthusiasts from Earth have begun to craft their own kind of internet in spite of Panopticorp's efforts to stop just that. News anchors babble on about the health benefits of Splort Cola and all the new wonderful things happening in the Panopticorp corporate ghettos. Little news of any importance reaches the people and that might be for the best. If people were constantly made aware of the war that rages beneath their feet every moment, things might be much worse than they already are.
The Undernet
Ancient History
Panopticorp didn't start to take advantage of the Martian exodus. Indeed, they have existed since before Christ in one form or another, the cultist of ancient, savage gods. After Christ, their opponents, the Templars and Masons, that would become the Mars Force rose against them, and centuries of secret warfare ensued over deep philosophical differences that still define their conflict to this day.
The Masons are often implicated in the New World Order Conspiracies like the Illuminati but it has always been Panopticorp. They have always been present at big shifts in history: the American Revolution, both World Wars, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Big Gulp Wars of 2159.
Fundamentally, the question at stake is what does it mean to be human? Perhaps, it might be more appropriately stated: "What does it mean to be INHUMAN?"
Pt 2
Pt 3
The internet was a mistake. This is the consensus of the media companies that came to inhabit Mars. Losing control of the flow of information was a death spiral for the old media giants of Earth, who clawed their way like damned souls at the edges of Hades' pit onto power and relevance until the abyssal tides finally drew them in.
This time would be different. New companies tried to establish themselves upon Mars, creating an infrastructure utterly hostile to anyone attempting to create some kind of internet on Mars, adding to that the electromagnetic quirks of the Red Planet providing another barrier against people with a lot of money setting up any kind of communications system. These corporations, didn't have long to live, however, as a titan stepped foot on Mars with every inclination to use this overcrowded planet as the perfect grounds for their greater goals.
Panopticorp Broadcasting
Panopticorp Broadcasting bought out all other media companies in a frenzy. Competition evaporated practically overnight and Panopticorp immediately took over the building of media infrastructure and a special Panopticorp brand television was in every home in a matter of months.
The wide-open eye of the corporation looks into every home, literally. Their tvs are constantly watching, listening, monitoring all reactions as close as possible for everything the customer sees on the screen.
They watch everything and this is technically allowed under Martian law as the collection of "user-reactive metadata," a term entirely made up by Panopticorp to cover for their obvious surveillance overreach.
Their corporate ghettos are full of people attached to 360 screens, every nerve hooked up to monitoring screens, not just seeing how they react to advertising but what fundamentally constitutes humanity itself and whether it could be changed...
Do You Wanna Kill a Dictator?
One of the most popular shows broadcasted by the Panopticorp network. They grow clones of dictators and other villains of history from genetic data from the New Genevan Library. A mock trial is held and the villain is summarily executed in a creative, ironic, and tortuous fashion.
These clones are little better than newborns, holding none of the memory from their genetic source. The visceral nature of this program makes it the most popular on Mars.
The Johnny Splort Show
A Splort Cola advertisement series where the titular Johnny Splort resolves his problem of the week with the cool, refreshing taste of Splort Cola. He fights with the evil Coka Cobra and the wicked Dr. Pepper! This is a favorite program amongst children. The writers, hating their task, can actually manage to produce interesting shows out of spite for their corporate overlords.
Ghosts of Mars
A ghost hunting shows in the tunnels below Colony Alpha. After a series of episodes where the crew actually came very close to encountering any one of the horrible things lying in wait int he City Below, most of the episodes use entirely constructed sets.
The News
Panopticorp's main weapon against anything that threatens their hegemony over the flow of information. News anchors have been on an endless tirade against the up and coming Undernet that has begun to take shape as tech enthusiasts from Earth have begun to craft their own kind of internet in spite of Panopticorp's efforts to stop just that. News anchors babble on about the health benefits of Splort Cola and all the new wonderful things happening in the Panopticorp corporate ghettos. Little news of any importance reaches the people and that might be for the best. If people were constantly made aware of the war that rages beneath their feet every moment, things might be much worse than they already are.
The Undernet
From Netrunner
Internet enthusiasts that made their way to Mars took no time in assembling to mee the challenges of the corps and of Mars' own electromagnetic irregularities. It was a problem that stumped them for a long time, unable to communicate except in person, due to the omniscient eye of Panopticorp.
Finally, one Jay Adams began proliferating his strange devices around to the entire community. He was not a name any of them recognized and nothing more has been heard from him. These devices showed that Mars' anomalous EM distortion was truly the interference caused by new systems bumping into already existent infrastructure buried into the planet's EM field. Enthusiasts began to replicate the devices, although never quite knowing how they worked and began building the Undernet. It was more of a wild west than the original internet ever was everyone mostly guessing how the whole thing worked. The Undernet came with strange rules that few could master though many tried to understand.
Many theorized that this Undernet was built by covert governments, creating bases on Mars before it was ever thought possible and using this network to communicate. Life on Mars remains tightly guarded information but many took it as proof of ancient life on Mars. Neither truly had any way of knowing until Catacombs came around.
This low rez game looked a lot like Doom but in a weird ancient temples and tombs kind of way. It was made to base its procedural generated levels off the network itself. This was just a short simple way of assuring strangely laid out levels for the creator but it seems that he tapped into something deeper as assets appeared in the game that existed nowhere in the base files. Tablets written in alien languages, figures appearing in game, speaking directly to the player, monstrous distortions that wouldn't just kill your game but fry your computer.
This was a mystery far too juicy to be left alone.
Indeed, Catacombs became the main way of exploring this infrastructure built by the ancient Martians, infected by Mother Below, and uncovered for the first time by humans long before Colony Alpha was ever established. It seems that both parties were right after all.
Ancient History
Panopticorp didn't start to take advantage of the Martian exodus. Indeed, they have existed since before Christ in one form or another, the cultist of ancient, savage gods. After Christ, their opponents, the Templars and Masons, that would become the Mars Force rose against them, and centuries of secret warfare ensued over deep philosophical differences that still define their conflict to this day.
The Masons are often implicated in the New World Order Conspiracies like the Illuminati but it has always been Panopticorp. They have always been present at big shifts in history: the American Revolution, both World Wars, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Big Gulp Wars of 2159.
Fundamentally, the question at stake is what does it mean to be human? Perhaps, it might be more appropriately stated: "What does it mean to be INHUMAN?"
Each post of this setting so far has been excellent, I'm really enjoying seeing this develop. I think you've got an interesting, quintessentially 90's (in the best way) setting here. I especially liked post 2, meant to comment on it earlier with more specifics :/. The whole pizza delivery wars thing is so Snow Crash and 90's (post?-)cyberpunk, and you've come up with a really clever way to play with appropriation and some of the more unfortunate / less conscientious aspects of the genre at that time.
ReplyDeleteI also like what you've got here with Panopticorp, really playing with that Apple commercial take on 1984, and I've actually been thinking about a sort of internet-less "punk" setting as well, was tentatively going to call it CRT-punk or something like that.
Yeah the internet throws kind of a weird wrench into the usual ideas about science fiction. It always feels like something that takes me out of settings just because the media that I feel like I grew up with never really depicted the internet as it is. So limiting the internet as I have here feels like a nice way of really integrating an "internet" into a setting in a way that makes it really a different animal than how we currently interact with it and therefore interesting rather than feeling like a joke.
DeleteAlso thanks so much for your kind words!
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