Part One - The Road
The year in 1999, the ecology of our biosphere will collapse under the weight of our collective pollution and carelessness. The sea-levels will rise, swamping low-lying cities and countries like New York, Vienna, London, New Orleans. Climatic changes will have catastrophic effects on our weather, a permanent cloud of smog will form over South Asia, the UK will experience seasonal flooding and torrential rain, El Nino will ravage the Americas and constant tornados will batter the Gulf of Mexico. Central America will burn, forest fires and desertification will reduce the central states to barren wastelands. No country will go untouched, no person unharmed.
The ecological disasters will bring social collapse, revolution, poverty and death. Millions will starve in Africa and Asia. Millions more will become sterile or burdened with deformed children. Constant civil war in the South America will tear the countries apart. Supported by the US, Israel will finally crush Palestine and invade the surrounding Arab nations resulting in a chain of nuclear exchanges in the Middle East and knock on effects between Indian, Pakistan and China. Corporate America will take advantage of the chaos, finally completely running the economically and morally bankrupt government, ignoring a desperate and weakening United Nations and taking the worlds final resources for itself, building massive monopolies and military presences in troubled, but oil and coal rich countries.
Finally, scientific disasters and the availability of hi-tech weapons will ensure that even the US undergoes further violent social and environmental upheaval. Millions will be killed in an accidental genetically-modified bio-weapons plague. Depleted uranium ammo will poison what’s left of the central states as armed, homeless and desperate citizens take to the road, travelling from place to place, fighting for food, arms and fuel where they can. The rest of the US will be divided into economic extremes. The police force becomes privatised, fractured into local businesses competing to enforce the law for those who can afford to hire them. The abject poor will be forced to live in violent, diseased slums on the outskirts of hi-tech and fortified cities. Inside these corporate Citadels employees contract their lives away for the security and luxury. Travel is mainly by air for the very rich. Those who take the road must hire a Sanctioned Police company to protect them from the criminals that hunt the road in gangs of cars and bikes.
But the vigilante protected and gang-embattled slums and roads of the outside are also a source of entertainment for the bloodthirsty and frightened rich. TV camera crews follow the gang-fights of the roads and slums in helicopters, providing live battles for the brutalised citizenry to gorge upon and celebrate.
The pollution poisoned and violence shattered minds of the people living out on the road often believe in strange things - world-wide conspiracies, corporate experiments, media lies, apocalyptic Endings. Their cyber-boosted or mutilated bodies may give them the strength to survive, and if luck is with them, get famous on TV, get rich quick...
(excerpt from the forthcoming Dark Future trilogy)
The road looked the same as it did yesterday and all the days before them. Shimmering with heat, grey and dusty under the boiling blue sky. Johnny’s mind was blank as the Desert rolled by. It was best to keep it that way. Howling emptiness against the whine of the engine and judder of the wheels. The Desert was blank. The white noise of death and heat was blurred by the noise of low-flying helicopters. In the distance they looked like Angels to Karl. Flashing white flickers. Karl wondered when the Desert would reach the remaining coastal cities of the USA. Every tire mark, every kill, every inch of wear from his car on the road brought the Desert closer. In his mind the Desert was closer everyday. For Fortune the End was a raised fist, a long shade from the poisoned chimneys, it was the dead plants and skulls building on the engine. Poisoned water. The End was a truth which made her reckless and barren. The speed of her life brought her closer to the future.
The helicopters brought him round to a vague interest. There were a couple of Vultures over-head pointing cameras at them. Johnny looked at the road in surprise, and realisation beat through the dust and heat. A car up-ahead looked familiar as it sped towards them. Only when it started shooting at them did Johnny realise it was a Sanctioned Cop car from TV. It was the well known duo Jack and Jill. Johnny didn’t feel scared. Resignation pulsed through his stomach and limbs. He wasn’t going to be in the gang for very long now. He fired back anyway.
Karl had cheered with delight when he saw the Cop car and the Vultures and he turned up the polka. He’d make it on TV. He’d show those rich kids his hate, that if he saw them again he’d tear them apart. But his new car made him over-confident and the fight didn’t last long....
(excerpt 2 from the forthcoming Dark Future trilogy)
Johnny holds out the pack of cigarettes to the youth sat outside the bar. "Hey, I’ll trade you these for that bottle of beer." The youth lowers his shades and stares at Johnny. He shapes his lips around a word, then starts to grin. This makes Johnny feel nervous and he looks around at the others wondering if he’s broken some rule of etiquette he didn’t know about. Maybe its his well-spoken Maine accent? The other three guys and the beautiful girl with them are looking at him in astonishment, or at each other in confusion. "Yeah sure." The smiling youth says. "Take a seat and drink it with us Johnny." Johnny starts in confusion, then horror. "Hey, man, chill-out. I know who you are. John William Parkinson-Gates. Yeah, you’re all over TV." Johnny stammers and picks up the beer and says "You got the wrong guy."
"Come-on." says the youth. "Sit down. We’re not Sanctioned Cops and we don’t want to turn you in. You’re one of us!" As he says this, he stands up and pulls out a chair for Johnny and gestures for him to sit. None of them are pointing guns, but Johnny can see they’re wearing or cleaning the hottest guns on the market. One of the other youths says "Jesus it is him isn’t it Eric?" and laughs. "Yep" says Eric and holds out his hand to Johnny as he sits with him. "The names Eric Ewing. These are my comrades, the White-Line Anarchists." Johnny starts and almost laughs with relief. "This is Julian Kennedy, my bro Jimmy, Hortence Richardson, and Calvin. You’re a soul-brother Johnny. We sympathise. None of us want to be part of the corp.-political and its capitalist-feudal system of exploitation. Hell no." Johnny stammers "Kennedy, Ewing and Richardson!? You’ve all got prices on your heads. Your parents want you home. I’ve seen you guys on TV. Your mom" Johnny looks at Hortence "is pretty pissed off!"
Eric laughs. "Our parents are politicians, oil-millionaires and fat-cat corporate slave drivers. We don’t want to be part of their sick, fucked-up world. Out on the road, now THIS is real freedom. This is the place where the word will spread. People can’t live like this anymore Johnny. Five states are desert wasteland, the central cities are all empty and abandoned..."
"Apart from the cannibals, freaks, hobos and the diseased and dying." Calvin buts in. "Right. This country is going to hell unless people like us turn it around. There’s potential here Johnny, and people like us, we’re the educated vanguard of the revolution." Except for Julian, the others begin to nod of smile as Eric speaks. Eric is a great orator. "Power is something everyone has Johnny. Power is omnipresent because it comes from social activity, whether its in the office or out of this road. These are the activities of individual people and institutions. Power isn’t "top-down" from the corporations, even if they’ve got the weapons and the media, it’s always in constant flux, struggle and entanglement; all of it’s subject to change Johnny. I believe that because social relations are a form of power, nothing is outside of power, because no one is asocial. Power is not an object, it can’t be acquired, and it is can’t be taken away. Power is not simply an institution, domination or repression, it is the struggle between all people and all institutions who are striving toward their own disparate or united ends. Power always involves the possibility of resistance, reversal and change, the other face of power. Out here on the road, this is where we can achieve our goals. We’ve got media attention on the prime-time Vulture shows, I get to tell the world what we think in my interviews."
Calvin interrupts "Except when they censor or distorted it." But Eric carries on without noticing. "Out here there are groups moving against the global corporations, undermining their moves, watching their plans, assassinating their leaders. You’ve seen the situation: the Police are all hired by the rich after it was devolved and privatised, the poor have to form gangs and vigilante groups, living in shit outside the Citadels, the State is virtually non-existent, a rubber-stamp to give the Corporations the official go-ahead whenever they want to wage a new war out on their Third-World battle-fields or test some new weapon out here in the Desert, or send some rocket into space or lay-off thousands of wage-slaves now that robots can do their jobs. Our government isn’t just corrupt, its decayed and owned. Who’s dealing with the mass shanties and starvation outside the East and West coast cities after the migrations from the Central ghost-cities? Who’s dealing with the environmental pollution, the rising temperature, the spreading desertification, the dirty water, the new diseases, the mass extinctions, fuck! No-one is Johnny because it doesn’t make money. No-one is because people like our parents are living in fortified mansions, surrounded by squalid, lawless hives of burnt-out and condemned wasteland. A place where people make a living off each other, or work like serfs for the comfortable rich and hope they can put enough money together to hire a Sanctioned Cop to get rid of the trouble in their neighbourhood they can’t handle themselves! We help where-ever we can Johnny. We spread our message of resistance. I know you, I can see it in your eyes. You’re one of us." Johnny can’t believe what he’s hearing. Coming from one of the Policed Citadels himself he doesn’t understand why Eric gives a damn. He really doesn’t understand why they left in the first place. Johnny is aching to go back behind the walls. "I know why you killed those brats" Eric continues "It was a protest right? Those rich little brats deserved to be shot, and they you took out of there because the Citadel is claustrophobic, ultra-conformist, censorious and totalitarian!" Eric’s voice rises to a shout as he makes his point and Johnny tries to shrink as heads turn in their direction. "I didn’t kill them." Johnny stammers.
The White Liners all laugh. "We’ve seen the TV story Johnny." Calvin is speaking now. "You killed them all right. Otherwise why would you have run out to here?"
Johnny ignores the question. "Listen Eric, I sympathise with your cause" Johnny’s a good liar "but I need some help."
"Sure you do. You’ve got Sanction Cops on your case and an execution pending." Eric smiles and pats Johnny on the shoulder. "Who’s that your riding with?"
"Uh, a guy called Karl Redman. He calls his gang ‘Host 33’ and thinks the world is going to end in 2000. He’s fucking nuts!"
Eric laughs. "Yeah, he’d have to be. Listen where is this guy?"
Part Two - The Colony and The Kingdom
In the year 2001 on (DATE?) The Apocolypse brings an end to corporate power. Volcano XXXX erupts, sending massive Tsumai rushing from it, to swamp coastal areas of the world. The US Eastern seaboard is swamped by a Tsunmai moving at XXXx and XXXX feet height. Whole cities are swamped and destroyed, and the nuclear power stations near them are compromised by a flood of seawater leading to catatrophic meltdown and chain-reactions. Pollution from these explosions, from the burnings Cities and the nuclear missiles laucched by Polaris against BlueStar result in a decades long nuclear winter. The worlds plants begin to wither and die in the 24 hour night. The animals that feed from the die. Billions of people starve.
But the Buckminster-Gates family that own Polaris have escaped in their space-ship. They set course to a previously discovered, but top-secret, world. The world has been colonised by Polarise employees in preparation for the family's escape and is simple known as The Colony. It is a live-supporting but harsh world, and the colonists must use the technology they have to grow extra food and build their homes.
The escape ship escapes the Sun's gravity after several long and miserable weeks of travel. Outside the solar system, the ship makes a geodesic jump, but something goes wrong, and the ship is destroyed. The hibernating passangers and crew are jettisoned. Some don't make it. Those that do land on a strange world, not the one they had set course for...
It is a world covered in tropical jungle, mountians, grasslands and marshes, inhabited by two alien races, one welcoming, the other hostile. The survivors must learn how to live with their strange host culture, whilst dealing with their grief and disorientation. They also learn that the world is not all it seems to be. The star charts don't make any sense and the laws of physics seems quite malleable. As the years pass and the survivors build families and homes, the strange mystery of the planet is slowly revealed.
Part Three - Down to Earth
XX years after their escape from earth a terrible destructive force of cosmological proportions tears the survivors' new found home apart. Seperated, lost, without weapons, tools or even clothes, many of memebers of the family find themselves back on Earth, XX years after fleeing it. The world is a terrible place where criminal organisations and totalitarian governments control the citizenry and beat down outsiders. Without official identification or money the family must struggle to survive and find each other.
But the power that destroyed their home is coming to earth. It manifests as rents in reality, letting through aliens and "sudden" people. A strange City, its location and size always changing, provides the final answers to the mystery of the families destiny.
Game Info. and Links
Dark Future was published by GamesWorkshop in 1988. About Dark Future Graeme Davis, a Hogshead game designer and ex-game designer with GamesWorkshop tells me: "Jervis Johnson wanted to do a cyberpunk rpg as early as 1986, when he first read Neuromancer. If it had happened, that would have been the first cyberpunk rpg in print. But it didn't. GW was just beginning to work with plastic models, and Bryan wanted to do a Car Wars knock-off to try and launch a new line of models. Adeptus Titanicus was started at about the same time, for about the same reasons. Richard Halliwell did the rules, Marc Gascoigne (who wrote the Fighting Fantasy novels and some of the gamebooks) did the background, and I did the editing and development, and some of the colour text. The game never really took. They put out White Line Fever and were working on a second supplement called Dead Man's Curve when the plug was pulled. DMC was serialised in WD in the end - its biggest addition to the game was the infantry rules. Dark Future was pretty much dead when the novels started coming out, but some people seemed to really like the novels and there was a slight resurgence in interest, but not enough to do anything with."