The success of the new world order is nearing its apogee. Using global themes of international terrorism, pandemic response and climate change, finally all national identities and laws are subsumed beneath the will of a technocratic world government.
The World Council sits in session, in Geneva, Switzerland, a country that hosts the central supercomputer where all data from the planet's Global Identification handsets is processed and stored. Nicknamed 'The Beast,' it is managed by the sophisticated GooglePlanet Artificial Intelligence Network. The system is as unsinkable as the Titanic.
But far from basking in the careful control of the new Utopia, there appears to be a conflict of interest between the twin pillars of the World the banks and the military. As is to be expected, the struggle is to balance the old money plus violence equals power.
The banks are consolidating control of the world's assets through the new Bank Of Babylon, controlling a registry of the world's land surface and its exploitable resources, that are exchanged for Carbon Credits. The Science Executive ensure a plentiful supply of Carbon in their reporting, and share prices rise to the same stratospheric heights. Until, that is, the oligarchs are discovered trading in something other than virtue.
The MI are chasing smugglers through illegal crypto Exchanges run from clandestine company servers and, now they have a dedicated operation called Dead Man's Switch, they can focus on arresting every worker with a Binar account. For all their successes, one Exchange eludes them. Quantumhead.
Nature seems to love balance, and the glorious order of the corporation city states is matched only by the chaos and unpredictability of the nominated Wilderness Zones in re-wooded England.
Bomber gets some criticism for his driving, Bug is fed up with being kept in the dark and makes a flashlight, and the boys hack a Patent Centre in Dortmund, turning up astonishing revelations about the transhuman project.
The_Gnome is focused on completing a year long project with the help of a roving trader called The Maküus, but in all the excitement, no one is watching Stan after he's been allowed onto the darknet for the first time.