New Columbus - 2067-70
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Regulation
When Horace Ecleates turned eighteen he immediately joined the rebellion in the Third American Civil War. It wasn’t out of any sense of moral duty, but instead out of pure spite for his father, Doctor Heiram Ecleates, an NNAA researcher who had been in the pocket of the United New States’ Internal Defense Agency for years. When the NNAA headquarters was immolated just before a planned rebel strike on the complex, Horace hadn’t felt even a twinge of sadness or remorse knowing his father had perished within.
After the dust finally settled from the war and the sixty days of fire and the static, he and many former rebel soldiers took public jobs within the newly forming United Federation of New American States. He did a few months as a security officer in the temporary Capitol complex before a new opportunity piqued his interest: the Nodal Administration for a new era of nodes was starting up—the Coronation Organization and Regulation Commission. The Commission would be absorbing the remaining assets of the UNSA’s NNAA, including its research facilities and archives. Access to those archives was Horace’s main drive to join CORC, as he felt compelled to learn the full truth of his father’s misdeeds. Ironically, with the nature of the NNAA’s late stage experiments having been largely covered up and obscured by the confusion of the times, his father’s status as a high clearance researcher was largely why Horace had even been offered a position in CORC.
Horace had barely completed compulsory education before joining the rebellion, but throughout his life his father had pressured him to follow in his footsteps, forcing him to take advanced nodal science, math, and physics courses throughout middle and high school. Having been relevant to the nature of the war, Horace had kept this information fresh in his mind, and was able to interview well into a mid-level research position right in the foundational days of the CORC.
Horace quickly found himself climbing the ranks of CORC, his natural talent for nodal science and his personal drive to uncover the truth about his father's work serving him well. It helped too that the organization was being built around him: when he started, the whole Commission (a dedicated department of the new federal government) was barely three dozen strong— three months later, there were over 3,000 CORC agents nationwide.
As he delved deeper into the NNAA archives, Horace discovered evidence that his father had been specifically involved in the creation of the Entity Once Known as Agatha Jones. It was shocking to him, as he had always believed his father's work had been more benign. But the evidence was clear: project logs, lab notes, and even video recordings of his father discussing the project with other researchers.
Horace was torn between his own ambitions for a secure future and his disgust with his proximity to his father’s terrible work. He knew that the inception of the EOKAJ had caused untold destruction and suffering, and he couldn't ignore the fact that his father had been a part of it. As he continued to uncover more evidence, he struggled with what to do with it. Should he bring it to the attention of his superiors at CORC, or even to the public media? or should he keep harboring the guilt and shame of the knowledge alone?
Despite the personal turmoil, Horace's work at CORC continued to flourish. He quickly became one of the organization's most valuable assets, and was eventually promoted to lead his own research team. This group of researchers, under his direction, would go on to create some of the most important early augmentative technology of the Coronation era. Adapting the concepts behind the Nodal Field regulating bulbs of the previous era, the CORC Developmental Research Team created first Crown Enhancing bulbs, and shortly thereafter Crown Suppressing bulbs. The former could increase the range and fidelity of thought transfers across empty space (bringing such transfers to par with those that could pass along the crowns of others in populous areas), and the latter could reduce or eliminate the ability to thought-transfer altogether within certain areas, which would be useful for institutional settings such as schools and hospitals.
It was during those early CORC days when Horace befriended Jude Sherman. The young man was a frequently contacted consultant of the burgeoning organization, and as the head of a major research team it was often Horace’s pleasure to meet with him. Jude was clearly harrowed by the Node Crisis, though for very different reasons than Horace; nonetheless it was an empathetic touchstone between them. Jude was time and again offered positions at CORC, even Horace having held a spot open on his own team weeks longer than necessary in the hopes his friend would finally cave, but it seemed he was determined to keep his hands clean of any formal node business after the crisis. Nevertheless, he and Horace settled into homes on the same block in an outer neighborhood of New Columbus.
One familiar with both men might make a strong case that it was through their friendship and especially through Jude’s advice as Horace’ confidant that the latter was able to find himself the Director of Research for the entire Commission by the end of its second year. Just as Horace was receiving this promotion —which entailed a perhaps excessive degree of pomp and circumstance as so many government role changes did in the new society of the United Federation of New American States— he reconnected with his old childhood sweetheart who was visiting the city for an exhibition and happened to see his name in the paper.
As the new era progressed, Horace became increasingly optimistic about the future of coronated society. With the help of his colleagues and friends, he was confident that they could continue to build a brighter, more equitable future for all, and finally bury the horrors and damages of his father's generation.
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Through it all, Horace remained close friends with Jude Sherman. Even though Jude never joined CORC, he continued to provide valuable insights and advice to Horace as the organization grew and evolved. Horace and Moriah even once promised to name their first child after him.
Horace and Moriah fell right back in love as though they had never been apart and were soon married in a sweet but subdued ceremony with their closest friends and relatives, held in a former Node Theater. Horace continued to lead CORC's research efforts, leading the organization in developing more advanced nodal technologies that would revolutionize the lives of the entire nation.
With his focus at last shifted to his own work and starting his own family, Horace found himself in a time of mental and emotional peace and stability which would last only until his work brought his attention right back to the legacy he was determined to escape.
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The entirety of the actions taken by the entity once known as Agatha Jones from the morning of June sixth to the evening of August fifth 2067 would not even begin to come into focus until the establishment of an international organization, and the completion of its year-long initial probe. The “Nodal Crisis Damage Assessment” taskforce, which worked with standing governments, local citizens, and thousands of field agents on the ground to establish a scope of damage done to the planet and/or to global society, was formed by former UN participants as well as Liberated Nations Coalition members and budgeted for an initial year-long summary investigation followed by up to five years of thorough data collection and record-keeping work. Though the findings of the full study are largely comprised of minutiae important only to the governments and institutions who request such intimate records, the summary investigation would go on to act as the singular textbook account of the so-called “sixty days of fire.”
After apparently constituting herself with the energy of the Nodal Collapse (in which all known nodes on Earth vanished and node-related energy signatures and radio footprints all converged on a single point), Agatha Jones destroyed the National Nodal Array Administration headquarters as well as much of the surrounding city of Columbus. This effectively cleared the way for rebel victory in the third American Civil war, which would come amidst the chaos of the following two months. Agatha vanished from known land or airspace after the razing of Columbus, and based on telecommunications records and data from various national space institutes, she apparently appeared in some capacity in upper orbits around earth, and seemingly completely vaporized several satellites. Even with the longer study, it is unclear if there was any rhyme or reason to which satellites were removed. After the momentary stint in orbit, Agatha was next visually witnessed in South America, along the edges of the Amazon rainforest. From June ninth to eleventh Agatha used beams of nodal light to restore developed landscape to a naturalized state. Thousands upon thousands of square miles of terrain were converted, regardless of contents. During this time military groups attempted to stop Agatha, but none were successful in damaging her in any material way, and most were turned into plants. After that, Agatha conducted a veritable rapture, created new aquatic life adapted to the iron-saturated Atlantic waters, and was finally defeated by a boy named Jude Sherman, and his mysterious “guardian angel.”
A dear friend of Jude, Horace Ecleates found himself reflecting once again on matters of family legacy after reading the NCDA report as a duty of his position at the Coronation Organization and Regulation Commission. His father, Heiram, had been a researcher at the predecessor to CORC, the National Nodal Array Administration of the United New States of America. It was that very organization that was at the epicenter of the Node Crisis, and the lesser known truth was that their experimentation surrounding the Nodal Dust Origin is likely the exact cause of the manifestation of the Entity Once Known as Agatha Jones. The primary research team in the organization had been working for years towards the singular goal of reconstituting Agatha Jones and weaponizing her against enemies of the state, and Horace knew his father had been one of the lead researchers on that team.
Bribery and some classic politicking had allowed the transitional government between the UNSA and the United Federation of New American States to get the NCDA to omit the nature of the leadup to the incident, instead calling it an accident, and the NNAA researchers were memorialized as patriots. In fact, in the lobby of the very building in which Horace worked, there was a 15-foot-high marble and granite statue of those very researchers, leaving him to daily pass under the lifeless gaze of the colorless facsimile of his own father.
For the past two and a half years, Horace had worked to undo the dark legacy of his father and those other twisted researchers, and had largely made peace with himself about that closed chapter in the history of humankind and their relationship with nodes. Now though, he had a child on the way: his wife Moriah was pregnant with a son, to be named Herod Judas Ecleates. Confronted with the idea of leaving a legacy for his own son, Horace suddenly found himself lacking that certainty and confidence in the future which he had worked towards for so long.
To compound matters further, Jude was also expecting a child, as was Moriah’s best friend, acclaimed novelist Plutora Horn, who was in fact moving to their neighborhood in the next few weeks so that they might all raise their children together. Horace was finding himself terrified that they would only find themselves next in a long line of generations leaving the planet in a worse state for those that followed them. Horace’ father's generation had left the world with the damages of the node Crisis, including an entire ocean devoid of natural life, and Heiram’s father's generation before that had left the world with the damages of nodal warfare and the still unresolved climate damage done by the generations before them. Would Horace and Moriah, and Jude and Plutora and their partners and friends be able to leave a brighter legacy for their children than their parents had for them?
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