This is where you'll find all the rules.
So,
You can’t tell a story without injecting some of your world view in it somehow. Since NuWorld is an alternate version of Earth, I had a chance to build everything from scratch with a challenge of building a flawed quasi-utopia.
One of the first things to do was get rid of money.
It took quite a while to figure out Source [still don’t have a symbol for it] but even before i got the idea I knew there couldn’t be money as we understand it in this world. I still needed class division and vice, so I could have some element of crime.
It wasn’t until I got into the idea of 3D printing that Source came into focus. I still needed people to need things and therefore a mechanism by which to get them.
The idea is that everything is fabricated through a macguffin. That thing requires raw material and that material is source. When people work, they earn it. Things like housing and even basic food is completely provided by the government [The Western Alliance], so the amount of source you have determines your aesthetic more than it does your actual circumstances.
Fabricators make everything physical, from clothes to complex software and medical supplies, most source is also adapted as a nano-fiber which means the worlds tech is integrated into just about everything. Imagine going to the hospital and your shirt gives doctors your vitals and you get the idea.
Most Source is kept on site where people live, even if they have more source allotted to them off site, it is typically interacted with from home. Larger source made items like vehicles are fabricated off site and then picked up.
The Cliff
While it’s difficult to fall on hard times, it’s not impossible. Those that do have fallen off a social cliff. It’s considered this way because there is almost no way to come back from such a status. Typically you’ve been convicted of a crime, and had all your valuables seized. Once that happens you lose your home and that’s really it.
Your next stop is the under city, a less developed series of zones where hope of rejoining society is dangled in front of you with menial tasks that no one ever really thinks about. If you’re young, then there is an educational path to life in the city, this is how families are built. But finding yourself in the undercity above the age of 25 typically means that this is how your life will end.
Vice
The pleasant life of most people in the Western Alliance is a bit of a double edged sword. For many pleasant means boredom and there are psychological disadvantages to that as well. That is where various forms of interactive entertainment, parred with sophisticated narcotics can have adverse overall effects.
Going Barren
Going to far into drugs and VR gaming can cause you to allocate so much of your source to your habit that you stop setting up normal food delivery and your nutrition orders. If your performance at work slips, and by this point it is. You could be fired, and immediately in debt to your suppliers. By the time you get booted out of your VR fantasy, you’re also being booted out of your house.
Now, you could end up in the under city, but due to the debts you owe, you are most likely going to end up being conscripted by a pharma group which is essentially organized crime. They basically own you from that point on. Pharma groups are the primary source of crime in the Alliance, the barren are their foot soldiers, and results vary.
Pharma Groups are quasi-legal corporations based on the legitimate contracts they have to use for cover as they wage war with each other over the control of illegal activities like gambling and sex trafficing. A lot of what they do is ignored by the general public as entertainment, so most of the sports they publicly operate are technically illegal.
This gives them a very tight stranglehold on the everyday lives of many people. Official Investigators were developed to investigate the complexities of these organizations and then bring them to justice when they could.
Food
Food is easy because energy is limitless. There are massive farms that are 100% eco friendly. Even the undercity get’s fresh deliveries of high quality yet unprepared food stocks, they are cursed with having to cook it themselves, but they do not go without.
In the city, food is ordered, prepared and delivered from one of many kitchen facilities located throughout any given area depending on population density.
Food is fast, free and available at all times. The cuisine of every culture is meticulously preserved so that anyone can order anything. It is one of the only industries that is mostly human operated.
Energy
Energy was an issue figured out early after the renaissance. However, the desire to control it for profit has existed for just as long. One organization, one that dates all the way back to the beginning has constantly tried to gain control of energy distribution.
Seed Corp has grown as an aspect of The western Alliance as one of the largest tech firms in the World. It’s their legal wrangling that created the loopholes by which pharma groups can exist.
Seed Corp has been trying to gain direct control of energy for reasons unknown to most. Their public motivations have changed as leadership of the company has evolved over the years.
Updated 11/13/2020