by Max Barry

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The Dominion of
Inoffensive Centrist Democracy

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4

The Saucer Fleet- National Overview

The Air Domain/The Ethereal Domain


Flag Seal


Motto: Equality and Fraternity




Inaccurate depiction of a habitat by an Earth artist.

Population: 260 billion
-Density: N/A


Largest Habitat: Bodhisattva Maximilien Engels


Race: Human
Major Ethnicity: Ahnu


Government Type: Federated (?) One-Party Socialist (?) State


Government Branches
- Executive: Executive Office
- Legislative: All-Domain Bureau for Political and Societal Wellbeing
- Judicial: All-Domain Bureau of Meta-Legislation
- Economic: All-Domain Advisory Board for Planning


Currency: N/A

The Flying Civilization

The Air Domain (or Ethereal/Void Domain depending on the translation), known more commonly as the Fleet, is a sovereign State renowned for having a considerable area of influence (the Sol-3 Star System) despite being an entity without any real defined permanent borders in the traditional sense. The civilization that makes up the Air Domain is instead, that of a migrant fleet of space habitats and other support ships which travel between resource extraction sites. The inhabitants of the Air Dominion are colloquially referred to as the "Saucer Pilots" or the "Saucer People" by the US Department of Defense, or a faction of it, which retrieved a crashed spacecraft in the 4th of July, 1947...an act which started secret diplomatic relationships between the Saucer Pilots and the DoD splinter faction which would later be known by its codename, Majestic.

The origins of the Saucer Pilots is a strange one, if their testimony given to the US authorities can be believed. The citizens of the Air Dominion are terrestrial in nature, or rather, their ancestors were from a climate-devestated Earth in a remote past: that is, their past and an Earth's future. The Saucer Pilots themselves gave mathematical hints that there were "parallel realms", that is to say, alternate realities or timelines . So, this effectively makes them both biologically human but also interdimensional extraterrestrials, at once. As it turns out, the Ahnu also revealed one of the most horrifying things in astronomy was proven to be correct: the development of sentient species across the stars was a relatively uncommon occurrence in the timespan of a few billions of years. That or the Ahnu or their descendants made the known universe barren for humanity, which is just as horrifying, albeit for different reasons.

Furthermore, The Saucer People claimed to Majestic that they entered a "passage" or "wormhole" that led into a point in the past that belonged to the reality this Earth is a part of. Their representatives claimed that though they have the technological means to manipulate the so-called Basic Forces of Nature, they didn't create the tunnel, a pre-existing gape in space-time, they willingly went through it instead to live in another dimension knowing that there was no return. So it appears that entirely controlled time-travel is beyond their abilities. Once they crossed the tunnel, they claimed to have trekked for "many years" in deep space until dogmatically reaching the vicinity of their ancestral home: the the Sol System and the little blue planet.

Most alarmingly to the Americans' shadow government, the Saucer People would make any Soviet theorist or science fiction writer happy: their civilization has seemingly confirmed the assumption that a society needs to master the control of its recourses in conjunction with all social sectors' collective goals to have conquered space...though the more pessimistic answer is that the Saucer Pilots didn't have much of a choice as social engineering and resource planning in space habitats is necessary. In terms of background, silly exonym aside, the Saucer Pilots call themselves the Ahnu. If they are humans from a far-future whose ancestors were Earthlings, their exact ethnic background(s) is uncertain. Suffice to say that they're very short, thin, sickly pale and generally narrow-eyed. But enough fear-mongering over the Red Asiatic Hordes; more frighteningly, they also like eating snails and playing accordion music.

Also, this should have been mentioned earlier, but the Ahnu sex ratio is 1:4 in favor of women as their Y chromosome was purportedly damaged by cosmic radiation or genomic warfare ages ago. So, they've come to Earth in order to fix that through genetic sampling, while also killing two birds by artificially propping up jobs and industries to suit that intent, because, why make things easy when they can get hard? In a world where reality is stranger than fiction, it makes the Ahnu responsible for the UFO sightings and alien abductions reported down on Earth...though prudence be advised, as both the Ahnu and their American "partners"-by-convenience have spread much disinformation.

Social Views and Cultural Norms



Unsurprisingly, highly authoritarian relations were the social arrangement molded by moving among the stars as there were no alternatives to a life off-board. Its not that liberty were scorned, rather that there was little luxury to have such freedom of action in an enviornment where everything had to be rationed and where imprudence could kill everyone onboard. And also, more simply, because total surveillance onboard space habitats, rigid schedules in day-to-day life's duties and the ethos of being part of a crew all came secondary to individualism...at least while on the job.

Furthermore, centuries worth of social engineering passed of as childhood education or training and even purportedly genetic tampering —having to do with dopamine receptors' effects on boredom— have molded the citizens of the Air Dominion to focus most of their in-group ethos on harmonious interaction, achieved through workaholism. It's rumored the Ahnu have the technology to live in fully-automated luxury, but as their ancestors supposedly nearly doomed themselves with societal breakdown when both a sense of purpose were lost and when virtual heavens led to social isolation, things went to the other extreme with 9-to-4 jobs and 5 day work-weeks under planned obsolescence in conjunction with artificial job-making.

A US attaché has noted that what they perceived as light hazing, circular groupthink and even an occasional lack of initiative have spurred from this seemingly inflexible culture, but they have also noted that cohesive relationships, good work ethic and near-instant communications systems make up for a lot of shortcomings; citing the Air Fleet as having all the formidable dedication of the Red Army's best "A Class" units with technology that is at least 1,000 years more advanced, if the Red Army were made of workaholic clerks. Though ironically, Americans regard the Saucer People as remarkable for their almost childish sense of curiosity off-hours, seen as a treat and a pastime for those who normally live under rigid routine, as measured novelty is one of the luxuries that higher-ups often tended to grant their subordinates.

Most Anhu can be described as irreligious, "agnostic" at best, as they doubt there is a way to prove or disprove the existence of God or gods. As some people may actually find comfort in believing in a protective higher power or divine beings —as is the case of a noticeable minority which apparently practices an estranged offshoot of Mahayana Buddhism— the State does not rob individuals or associations of their little mantra of safety. In any case, the general thought that reality is rudderless (without human action) and that even suffering is meaningless is quietly accepted as either a painful and horrifying truth to overcome or as a liberating assurance that there are not much things to worry about so long as problems in this physical reality can be evaded or fixed. Or as an Ahnu phrase goes: "There is no point in worrying if there is no solution anyways."

Economic Activities



The economy of the Dominion of the Air can best be described as a command economy: allocation, resource extraction, fixed production of consumer goods, heavy machinery and other sensitive technology as well as the strategic use of energy are all overseen by anywhere from 200 to 350 ministries and departments dedicated to industrial and consumer pursuits. The All-Domain Advisory Board for Planning sets guidelines to streamline the production of machinery and other goods so that all fleets can use them interchangeably among supply nodes, though production itself is left to the ministries within individual habitat fleets and their support/factory ships. Collective work is the base for economic activity in the form of corvée labor or military duty: production sectors and maintenance work are sustained by their designated workers, the very masses that compromise the Air Fleet. Specialized bureaucratic work is handled by a mesh of overseen AI units as well as individuals who are screened out through testing and psych exams as ideal civil servants prior to being locally elected as administrative delegates to higher levels of their departments' organization.

The reasoning behind this form of centralized planning derives from something the Domain calls Systems Sciences, which is more or less Linksociocybernetics with a materialist spin. That is, it can be defined as the empirical study of interactions between complex interconnected systems/institutions and groups to better the application of administrative and management decisions; that is to say, minding both the logistics and workplace cultures. Systems Sciences also preoccupies itself well with meta-studies over the methodology and theory of values behind it. So, it should come to no surprise that the Ahnu leadership ideologically perceive "rational" [centally-planned] economies as a multifaceted information-coordination problem. Depending on the availability of resources in extraction sites, Systems Sciences tolerates specific fleets' temporary expansion into free markets at times, though it expects those settings contract to ideally homeostatic levels once productive forces settle in and said Fleet(s) open up to the greater Domain raw-supply network chain...a major reason why FTL-communication is needed to prevent cultural or political drift.

Income inequality is mostly limited in the Fleet, mostly because everyone's basic needs and desires are met if they work (which they're all legally required to do so anyways) and even those who are granted greater privilege in the form of more creature comforts, more spacious housing and higher quality rations aren't exuberantly better off than their subordinates. Enforced protocol partly guided by AI arbiters and their rotating human halves, monitoring of consumption and internal investigation departments enforce that that public servants shouldn't live too detached from their civil juniors as it tarnishes the esprit de corps and the ability to connect with them or to lead by example. Rank and status, or even individual pride and accomplishment, are flaunted in the form of a myriad of badges and pins related to exemplary civil, labor and military participation not too dissimilar to Socialist Emulation at a first glance.

Funnily enough, the Air Dominion's Political Bureau and it's laypeople may be entirely oblivious to the goals or ideals of Earth's ideologues and their Socialism, for them, all these procedures and norms that enforce a certain degree of equity may have originated merely the product of social engineering designed to keep life going on harmoniously in Outer Space, or rather, the figurative sardine cans they reside in. They certainly have no desire to eliminate the slightly hierarchal functions of their efficient State that guarantees their safety and survival, and if anything, most Ahnu may feel slight mistrust over disturbing the status quo. Needless to say, a handful of undisclosed sources -likely American diplomats in Area 51- have created the general view of the Ahnu as a nation of indoctrinated and socially engineered workaholics in boiler suits, dearth of high culture who spent their existence in labor out of the sheer soothing pleasure of not thinking about things other than what they considered to be “fun” leisure time and vacuous honors when departing from work. One xeno-anthropologist even called the Domain a “Gamified Soviet Union set in Space”, albeit this individual's view is biased and built upon previous experiences.

Political Organization and Ideology



The All-Domain Bureau for Political and Societal Wellbeing, or Political Bureau in short, is the law-making and administrative body of the Air Domain; its ministers are chosen by a mix of workers' votes from councils and are filtered to represent their habitat-cylinder through a selection pool of demarchic qualification scores. Finally, these delegates make it to the All-Domain Bureau, the State's maximum legislature. The Bureau itself can scrutinize the cabinet of the nation's Executive Office, whose headed by a Premier appointed by the Bureau. Though not elected by the legislative Bureau, the Premier tenure can be prematurely revoked based on how satisfactory their leadership is, or it can be extended. Undemocratic in the classical liberal sense, the Bureau nonetheless thrives on indirect participation as it often needs to screen it's plans through lower-level habitat admins, which in turn, are often quite participative from the feedback of their workers, or at least willing to report their occasional concerns to the higher-ups through the Committee for Political Consultations.

To balance the legislature, there exists the All-Domain Meta-Legislature Bureau, which is a rather fancy name for saying it is a Judiciary organ...as meta-legislature, or the study of legislature, is the foundation of the Rule of Law under the parameters of the Domain's Constitution. And while the Domain's Constitution is not always as accommodating to civil liberties compared to many counterparts on Earth, it is nonetheless guided by offshoots of an ideology that sees reason as the upholder of basic human dignity (human rights) and an inalienable civil contract. And in that sense, the Domain is no less a snowballed child of the Enlightenment than bourgeoisie democracies or socialist states down on Earth are. The Meta-Legislature Bureau also reviews the actions of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Domain's domestic intelligence and security service which has law enforcement capacities.

All government branches are guided by the The Mission of Survival, held as the ultimate axiom to guide humanity in space and it is upheld by the vaguely utilitarian Preservation Party, the nation's sole political party and its banner of ; everything the State and it's components do, individuals and institutions, is in benefit of thriving in the cold darkness of space and uninhabitable worlds. "Serving others to serve yourself" and "Do you like to live?" are other unofficial slogans meant to hammer down the thought that one can be self-serving while selflessly carrying on with the mission to better the odds of self-preservation, under a wide variety of work environments. From defending and patrolling the expanses of the solar system to designing a comfy chair, the simple tit-for-tat philosophy behind such a system can be reduced to the statement "I want you to be better so you make my life better". Contradictorily, it can be confirmed that the Saucer People could easily have more comfortable lifestyles but planned obsolescence and some manual occupations are kept around to stimulate the closed economy.

Foreign Relations



The Air Domain is a class of its own among human civilizations, the only known intelligent species (or self-proclaimed as such) in the known universe; though the reasons behind this are heavily contested. If it wanted to, the Domain could readily subjugate Earth through sheer brute force and some of its technologies are many generations more advanced than their counterparts on Earth. However, despite all this, or maybe because of it, the Air Domain sees no interest in intervening in the affairs of Earth. There are far more numerous resources out in the celestial bodies across the vast expanse of space and it would be barbaric to destroy the cultural diversity of Earth's nations and peoples. Be it idealism that respects others' sovereignty or isolationism that wants an Other to juxtapose Ahnu normalcy with —and the Domain certainly has a strong current of both lines of thought— the Domain is simply uninterested in reaching out to Earth, for the time being.

For many, intervening in other lands for self gain would be seen as a dirty and dishonest act; this especially considering that the Domain's planned economy prides itself in being free of exploitation, or it perceives itself as such. For many, outright and blatant imperialism is little more than theft and its perpetrators are nothing but swindlers with bloody hands whom hide behind pompous words and fancy symbols. But regrettably, the Domain's leaders want secrecy on Earth and so does Majestic, purportedly to not cause a panic down on Earth. So, fair and open trade is currently off the table and the Ahnu have to resort to breaches in other nations' territories and the temporary (2 to 5 hour) kidnapping of Earthlings to obtain genetic samples to mitigate problems with their infertility and the national replacement rate. But more likely than not, a day will eventually come when the Domain will repay its debts.

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