Lone Star City: An Epic Fictional Universe by NG Murphy
In 2008, I decided to create an adult comic book or comic-like saga, but its roots were already there, lying dormant.
1995 is my favorite year of films: The Usual Suspects, Heat, Braveheart, and Casino all graced the big screen. Joining them on the big screen, but certainly not gracing it, was Judge Dredd with Silvester Stallone as the titular character. Entertaining enough but far from good, I was still intrigued by the world. I loved the idea of a post-apocalyptic World where people were packed into “megacities” with large stretches of nothing between them, as if Earth was turned into a solar system and cities to planets. The notion of a “street judge” was interesting as is the uniformity inherent to the “Dredd-Verse,” with “megablocks” housing every “sector” of the megacites, policed only by street judges. The comic is hit or miss--I’ve read some stuff I like, others I don’t. Too often, it’s a goofy mix of superhero action and Kurt Vonnegut with no more wisdom than you’d expect from the first.
The Star Wars universe and the Terminator-verse were also desired influences. Like the Dredd-verse, however, their techs’ are not bottomed on an expounded science, which was something I wanted. Retrofuturism, or the endowment of a future setting with historical themes, is a staple of epic world-building fiction—but not from the Enlightenment, my own favorite era of history. And the history and science of a fictional universe are always more entertaining if they’re shrouded in conspiracy and obscurantism.
Thus, my work was cut out for me. The following is the foundation of that work.
Excerpt from The Epic of Lone Star City, Act One, Episode One: The Crucible of War
A famous writer once said that “Lone Star City is something that should never have happened, yet destiny found a way to make sure that it did.”
However great some men may be, I’ve never believed in the “great men” view of history. To me, the World is mostly self-organized, its heroes and villains little more than catalysts, snowballs triggering occasional avalanches. But sometimes, divergences appear along the road of history, divergences as simple in their explanations as they are astronomical in their consequences.
Every schoolchild in Lone Star learns of the native who, in 1687, appeared from the brush to provision a group of starving French explorers, ultimately leading to the birth of LaSalle colony, later to become Lone Star City. Another was when Benedict Arnold, while revisiting the battlefield of Saratoga Springs, was approached by a stranger and recruited into the LaSallian Republicans, a brotherhood Arnold would lead to victory in the LaSalle Revolution fourteen years later.
These events were not accidental; though separated by one hundred years, they were perpetrated by the same being as part of a centuries-long quest for dominion over the planet Earth and beyond.
This is the story of those who oppose him.
Commander Wilson T. Smith, Fort Resistance, 2109 AD
Lone Star, 2104
By the late twenty first century, humanity’s success had become its downfall. The World’s population exceeded 10 billion. Machines had all but antiquated human labor, forcing many to crime. As technological progress continued its inexorable march, anti-industrial sentiments spread across the Globe.
On 15 December 2092, a thirteen-hour nuclear, chemical, and antimatter crisis ravaged the United States, the Republic of China, and most of their respective allies, including the World superpowers of the Republic of Russia and the Socialist States of Eurasia. Debate over the conflict’s origin rages on to this very day. Autonomy was supposed to be the silver-lining in America’s demise, but Texas has limped on ever since. All cross the city, people are starving. The food trade is Lone Star’s most lucrative industry. Only half of the populace is legally employed. Crime and dissent are everywhere.
The National Gendarmerie, completely overwhelmed by the task of policing the city’s “enclaves,” have begun outsourcing cases to bounty hunters.
Best-selling author and demagogue Glenn Burgoyne has become the overlord of Lone Star’s extralegal industries. In the last eighteen months, Burgoyne’s Syndicate has transformed from an illicit business consortium into a decentralized guerrilla force that threatens to overthrow the country’s tenuous government.
As the government remains complacent, the Syndicate prepares feverishly for war. But Burgoyne and his allies aren’t the government’s only enemies. Secret forces are at work throughout Lone Star and the World.
****
Lone Star is a polis, or city-state, centered in Lone Star City, Texas; appended to the capital is a hinterland extending throughout the former American states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Since the mysterious holocaust of 2092 and the resulting dissolutions of North America’s major governments, Lone Star has been a member of the North American Union (NAU), a loose confederation of autonomous poleis. It includes: Hawkeye City, Iowa; Dakota City, Dakota; Pacific City, American West Coast; New England Center at Boston, New England; Tyco, Appalachia; Panama City, Panama; Maple City, Eastern Canada; Southwest City, New Mexico-Arizona; Gigapolis, Mexico; and Megapolis, Hispaniola.
North America is now considering whether the continent’s city-states should federate into the United Poleis of North America, a proposed parliamentary government that would operate from a domed federal enclave in Ohio.
Since the 1600’s, humanity have been victim to the insidious machinations of an immortal human from a parallel Earth named Dr. Radical, a being bent on creating a galactic order where the use of technology would be regulated by a secret society under his control. In time, he hopes mankind will colonize vast regions of space and establish agrarian outposts.
It began when Dr. Radical crossed the space-time boundary between the two dimensions, destroying the universe from whence he came. Radical spent a full generation making connections with natives all around East Texas. In 1687, within one hundred miles of what is now Lone Star, the French explorer LaSalle was moments away from being killed by his malnourished subordinates over food rations. Radical, in the guise of a native, interceded by bringing sustenance to the starving Frenchmen. The World would never be the same.
By the late 18th century, thanks to agricultural techniques indirectly supplied by Dr. Radical as well as the “discovery” of a few gold mines, France’s LaSalle City boasted one of the World’s largest populations. In 1790, inspired by the revolution in their mother country and guided by the intrigues of Dr. Radical, Republican citizens broke out in revolt, led by the LaSallian Republicans and a soldier of fortune named Benedict Arnold. A full decade of urban and rural warfare among numerous factions followed, ultimately claiming the lives of thousands of men, woman, and children. In the end, victory would go to the LaSallian Republicans, owing to Arnold’s heroics at the Fourth Battle of Xaveriantown, where the redeemed marshal sacrificed his life to defeat the Xaverian Imperials.
During the World Slave Wars that broke out sixty years later, when the blood of all races of men flushed the surfaces of five continents, Texas and LaSalle abolitionists allied with the American Union to defeat the Confederate States of America and their Old World allies, putting an end to the legal enslavement of human beings. Left in shambles after the war, LaSalle and the rest of Texas agreed to be annexed to The United States.
In 1895, LaSalle City, determined to find livable housing for immigrants and impoverished citizens, annexed surrounding cites to oversee the development of public tenements. As an appeasement, the city allowed local governments to retain the bulk of their autonomy. Over the next forty years, LaSalle, renamed Lone Star City, assimilated 24 municipalities, culminating in the largest municipal expansion in human history. These localities remained so culturally distinct they became known as “enclaves.” Over the subsequent generations, the populous would soar to over fifty million souls.
Though Radical envisioned a Luddite utopia with regulated industrialization and technology, he was committed to progress in the fields of medicine and scientific theory, if only to serve his own ends. Radical realized he needed humanity to assent to his leadership by its own volition and without learning the means with which he achieved it. And he knew that he had to stay his hand until the time was just right. He remained in the shadows for generations, wielding great power from behind the scenes, allowing science to progress and guiding it along the way, waiting for the opportunity to bring his plan to its ultimate culmination.
To create a utopia, he and his secret society slowly cultivated a global dystopia filled with crime, poverty, overpopulation, and technological excess. Once a sufficient distaste for anarchy and technophilia had built and the World’s population was sufficiently reduced, he and his minions would become the vanguard of a space-faring global empire.
Though a rival secret organization emerged to oppose Radical’s agenda, his plan proceeded more or less as expected. By the final decade of the twenty-first century, Radical’s scientific agents perfected a Russian reproductive engineering program that began producing over 150 specimen’s a year with IQs over 200 and natural predilections for science, predominately of Russian ethnicity. While some of these specimens were raised outside of Russia--including a clone of Radical, Steve Magnus, who was raised in America--the program allowed Russia to become a World superpower once again.
Scientific progress skyrocketed around 2020, especially in Russia. Many suspected a conspiracy was at work, but most of the World was too in-awe to care.
Toward the end of the century, just as Radical had intended, people began realizing that radically advanced technology came with a cost: the obsolescence of human beings. Unemployment had ascended to unprecedented heights, which helped sow the seeds for the degenerate, crime infested society that the World had become. Government relations, both national and international, proved just as vulnerable to the trends. Military and economic warfare were widespread. As the Chinese-American Cold War and the civil war between Eastern and Western Russia heated up and drew in other World powers, Global annihilation appeared inevitable.
Several major countries, including the four major powers, created quantum-atomic computer defense networks bottomed on the earlier work of Nobel Laureate Steve Magnus. The systems were supposed to be inerrant, invulnerable to malfunctions and security breeches. They weren’t.
On 15 December 2092, at least six countries engaged in a 13-hour nuclear, anti-matter, and chemical war that put three-quarters of the World in the grave.
Technophobia was ascendant; the population was sufficiently low and would remain so due to an extremely low fertility rate caused by the ubiquity of nuclear radiation, noxious chemicals, and the byproducts of the machines employed to fight them, the denoxers. Thus, North America and the World had been fertilized for Radical’s ascent. Radical made haste to put one of his cronies at the head of the Lone Star-Texas government until his takeover could be secured, but various setbacks and miscalculations delayed his plans. Still just as powerful and with countless government executives’ under the organization’s control, it wasn’t long until he contrived a new plan for a drawn-out coup.
Radical recognized the potential of Commandant Nathaniel Greene; his wife and minister of law, Devon Greene; and the bounty hunter Wilson T. Smith. The plan is simple: Let the Syndicate, led by demagogue Glenn Burgoyne, kill off Chief Magistrate Simpson and most of the government and start an insurrection, allowing marshal law to put the Greenes in charge; following their victory and rise to glory, let the Greene’s facilitate the federation of the Polies, creating the United Polies of North America; make Devon Greene executive and Rian Connor, CEO of Dakota Foods and member of Radical’s society, vice executive; assassinate the Greenes months later; blame their murders on Smith; and let Connor rise to executive.
Syndicate leader, Glenn Burgoyne, like Radical, realizes that a military takeover is an infeasible long-term solution without the approbation of the people. As he sees it, the Insurrection is not so much a war, but a campaign, a literal and figurative battlefield to show the people that he can do what the standing regime cannot. If they can solve the Food Crisis and develop new industries and revenues, the Syndicate hopes the people of Texas will eventually realize that Glenn Burgoyne holds the key to the polis’s salvation. He then intends to be elected chief magistrate.
Shortly after the Apocalypse, Burgoyne learned from Russian scientists and engineers that Western Russia had made substantial progress in the development of Scalar wave technology, a viable means of developing “free energy,” antigravity, and artificial sentience.
In 2091, a group of geologists and glaciologists from the University of Moscow had stumbled upon a hydrocarbon substance during an expedition in Antarctica. When they brought back samples to the capital, preliminary tests quickly established it as a viable energy source. Further analysis showed that it could be refined into a marketable fuel that could replace or supplement Rannis batteries, which were quasi-toxic to the environment (and even more to the post-Apocalyptic environment).
A second and much larger expedition made additional discoveries: the deposits of a second mysterious oil that could be used to produce currents of high-energy plasma bolts and the frozen remains of a pair of ancient animals of an unknown species. They were brought back to Russia, and shocking results were obtained. Radiometric dating revealed the animals to be an upward of 1.2 billion years old, far older than even the simplest animal-like organism ever found. But there was more. Their genetic material did not possess nucleic acids, the building blocks of DNA and RNA, but short chains of a silicon-carbon polymer. Though assumed to be native to Earth, they were members of a separate evolutionary tree. Both expeditions were classified.
Burgoyne’s syndicate and their supporters invested millions of credits into the cultivation of these resources. Due to the Jurisdictional Continuity Compact of 2093, the NAU will retain full possession of the F-GO (First Generation Oil) found in these areas. Burgoyne, allied with Rebel leader Asiento Martinez of Columbia, is also in possession of several food production plants in South America that are producing large quantities of quality sustenance at almost double the rate and less than half the cost of the leading sustenance companies.
But Burgoyne has another reason for wanting to harvest all this energy. Knowing that post-apocalyptic LoneStarians and extrapolis governments have little faith in the value of currency, his new economy will run be bottomed on the “energy standard,” where every credit will be matched by a standardized value of energy, measured in inch-pounds. This will include protein pellets, batteries, and F-GO oil.
Though many suspect Burgoyne and the Syndicate are preparing for war, the gendarmerie can’t make a viable case against him or its leaders. Burgoyne publishes his manifesto My Quest for a LoneStarian Utopia. Though the book makes no specific mention of an insurrection, playing into Burgoyne’s plan, the government passes the “Sedition Edict” to obtain a warrant for his arrest. This unconstitutional act gives Burgoyne the excuse he needs to proceed.
While Chief Magistrate Simpson delivers his state of the polis address to the Lone Star-Texas Assembly, an invisible death ray bombardment from orbit kills the entire assemblage. Simultaneously, a three-prong attack is executed on the gendarmerie headquarters in LaSalle. Led by Burgoyne and his plasma-throwing war droid, IX-21, the Syndicate delivers another crushing defeat to the government, resulting in the deaths of 300 gendarmes, including Marshal Lang.
Marshal Law is declared; Nathaniel and Devon Greene become marshal and chief magistrate of Lone Star-Texas; Jesse Chalander assumes the role of Seneschal Marshal, making him Greene’s apparent successor. After the Battle, Greene and his wife take shelter at the hidden compound of the (Epic of Lone Star City) universe’s protagonist and bounty hunter, Agent Wilson T. Smith. Several new government agencies and departments are created, including the Starian Guard led by Lord Guardsman, Wilson T. Smith.
After Burgoyne allies with Maple City and the quasi-city-state of Bearstown-Maine succeeds from Boston-New England to become a protectorate of Maple, Lone Star and Boston-New England form the Federalist League, comprised of proponents of federalizing the Polies into a democratic republic. Their enemies become the Republicist Alliance, opponents of the federation united by Burgoynian republicanism. Shortly, thereafter, both factions go to war.
This is the basis for The Epic of Lone Star City: Act One, Episode One, The Crucible of War.
The next episode will see the federation of the Polies, a domestic conflict following prison breakouts throughout the continent, a war with East Russia and Dragon City, China (which was harboring a far greater post-apocalyptic population than believed), the Greenes assassinations, and Radical’s takeover. In the aftermath, Smith and his sapient droid are framed for the assassinations and captured. They’re freed by Burgoyne’s daughter, Terra, and his twin brother, Donald (who’s death had been faked almost thirty-five years prior) and escape to a base at the bottom of the ocean. The four travel to an extrasolar planet where relativistic effects age them slowly relative to Earth so they can lead a resistance over a half century later, when the United Polies has numerous space colonies. Act Two is when they take back the World.
I’m still not done with the first episode, so there’s plenty of time for suggestions.
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