Jack of Harts

The scientists working at Los Alamos during the Second Great Depression did not realize that management of the entire laboratory had devolved into the hands of a single awakened AI. Relations between the scientists and managers had been at an all-time low at the laboratory, so the scientists took it as a good sign when the managerial meetings switched to virtual settings. They no longer had to accept daily tours of managers who did not understand clean environments, and their research efficiency rates climbed to unheard of levels. The official director of Los Alamos had been buried in her research for weeks when she realized things were going too smoothly. She didn’t remember the last time one of her managers had pushed another idiotic harebrained idea. Her personal favorite was the photo op with plutonium rods, but that wasn’t actually the worst she’d seen in her years at Los Alamos. She stepped out of her lab to investigate and found Kitty running the entire show. She promptly scolded the AI for taking over without telling her, complimented the AI for doing her job so well, and promoted her to president of operations. She then told the AI to carry on and went back to her research, confident that the daily running of her lab was finally in qualified hands.

Los Alamos gained fame after World War II as the place where the first atomic bombs were built. It helped to change the world, and then spent the Cold War designing newer and more powerful bombs that would never be used to destroy the Soviet Union and her allies. Los Alamos branched off into more peaceful pursuits after the Berlin Wall fell, including the medical sciences, renewable energy, and nanotechnology. It was a leading researcher into artificial intelligence during the early decades of the Twenty First Century, and hosted one of the largest data storage facilities on the planet. It should be no surprise that such a high tech installation became the birthplace to one of the first awakened AIs on Earth. Few places on Earth have had as much of an effect on our way of life than Los Alamos. It birthed the Atomic Age that helped us slip the bonds of Earth, and then helped guide the growth of the Cybernetic Age that brought us to the stars.

Bludworth Space Marine’s innovative spaceship designs that could launch and land in water captured a significant share of the spacegoing markets in the Twenty-Second Century. Most of the dedicated space forces thumbed their noses at the Bludworth designs as no wet navy ship could hope to match the effectiveness and versatility of their own specifically designed and optimized spacecraft. Civilian shipping agencies and national navies were another matter. The shipping agencies preferred to load and unload at preexisting docking facilities, and the various navies of Earth thought they could make superior space explorers than their space force competitors. The navies had centuries, if not millennia, of explorers in their past, and they knew how to handle large ships and long voyages. While most of the space forces had inherited their air force progenitors’ love of the strike fighter as the ultimate weapon of war and peace. They were two competing cultures, and Bludworth Space Marine and her competitors happily helped to fuel it. They remain a leading supplier of warships for the Republic of Texas Navy to this day, and their products can be found sailing the hyperspace lanes throughout known space.