circa. 2000: Race begins involvement in terrestrial affairs.
1999-2005: Worldwide breakthroughs in genetic engineering. Start
of the biological revolution.
2008-2011: War for Korean unification; despite the South's technical
advantage, the North overwhelms it with Chinese assistance. The UN is bogged
down in nationalist conflicts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics.
The United States begins its policy of "diplomatic nonintervention."
2008: The first moreau is engineered in a South Korean lab. It's
a large dog breed with an increased cranial capacity. It is the first species
so engineered that breeds true. Even though the war is short-lived, an
intensive breeding program results in nearly ten thousand of these smart
dogs slipping north to plant explosives and otherwise harass the enemy.
2011-2015: The aftermath of the Korean war begins an international
debate on the military uses of genetic engineering. The debate culminates
in United Nations resolutions banning genetically-engineered disease organisms
and any genetic engineering of the Human genome. The UN deadlocks on banning
the engineering of sapient animals-- by the time it reaches a vote, four
out of every five nations with a substantial military have their own "Korean
Dog" projects.
2017: On a tide of public opinion fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment
(by 2017 the Japanese have the most high-profile genetic program, notably
ignoring the UN restrictions), there's a constitutional convention to draft
the 29th amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment bans any genetic
engineering on a macroscopic scale and, in an effort to prevent any possible
atrocities like the ones in Korea, gives the sapient results of genetic
engineering of animals the protection of the Bill of Rights.
2019-2023: Iranian terrorists slaughter the Saudi royal family,
sparking the Third Gulf War. The war eventually envelops all the Arab states
and marks the beginning of substantial nonhuman immigration into the United
States.
2023: The Gulf War ends with the formation of the Islamic Axis.
The Axis is a fundamentalist pan-Arab union that stops short of bridging
the Suez. The price of oil triples even over wartime levels. A small company
in Costa Rica, Jerboa Electrics, begins production of the Jerboa-- a small,
cheap, electric convertible that now costs less than half to run as the
most efficient gas vehicle.
2024: Start of the Pan-Asian War. It begins around a Pakistan-India
border dispute and snowballs almost instantly. By the end of the year it
involves the Islamic-Axis, most of the former Soviet republics, and China
on one side, India, Japan, Russia, and most of North Africa on the other.
The United States continues its hands-off foreign policy.
2025: The Ford Motor Company buys Jerboa Electrics to avoid an
international lawsuit over Ford's wholesale swiping of the electric-car
design. Ford proceeds to sue GM and Chrysler for doing the same thing.
BMW is producing its own electric design.
2027: United American Bio-Technologies is indicted for breaking
the ban on macro genetic engineering. They've been producing moreaus for
the Asian war effort (both sides) and, worse, they've been working on human
genetics as well-- thought there's no evidence that they ever went beyond
the computer-simulation stage on their human project. The federal government
seizes all of UABT's assets in an unprecedented move against a corporate
criminal. Rumors persist that the intelligence community wanted UABT's
nationwide facilities for its own uses.
2027: New Delhi is nuked as the Indian national defense crumbles.
Mass desertions are rampant and whole divisions lay down their arms and
surrender. From the Afghan frontier, an entire company of moreau tigers
from the Indian special forces seize control of a cargo plane and fly to
the Untied States. It is called the Rajastahn airlift, for the strain of
tiger involved. The airlift is a media event, the officers of the company
become celebrities, especially Datia Rajastahn, the officer in charge of
the airlift. He's eloquent, charismatic, and the first major voice for
the moreaus-- not only in the United States, but internationally.
2029: The American space program reaches its apex. NASA has an
orbiting space station, a temporary lunar base, an orbiting radio telescope
that may be picking up alien signals from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri.
The peak is reached when appropriations for NASA's deep-probe project are
approved. The deep-probe project is to involve a half-dozen unmanned nuclear
rockets to fly by the nearest star systems.
2030: The Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, conducts a
raid into Jordan and captures a secret training base for Jordanian franks.
The Mossad, with domestic restrictions on a par with the American bans
on macroscopic genetic engineering, destroys the Jordanian base, but takes
the immature franks (100 girls from Hiashu Biological ranging from 3 to
16 years in age) and secretly trains them as Israeli agents.
2030: The last Indian national defenders fail. The subcontinent
falls to a Pakistani/Afghani invasion force.
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