I love the Core Worlds, the worlds colonized before Contact. People who lived without gravtech built them, and many are still alive today thanks to the Peloran Treatments. That gives many of them an amazing sense of community, but they are very much colonies of Old Earth. They are Earth In Space if you will, having far more in common with Earth than the Outer Colonies that came after them. They’re old. They’re comfortable. They’re powerful. And they’re stagnant.
Did you know that the vast majority of humanity lives on the same world they were born on? There are not enough starships in all the worlds to carry even a tithe of humanity. Yes, ten percent of Americans served during The War, but the majority never traveled outside their star system. Few people leave home. Those who do are very rare. The closest most people are to interstellar travel is watching it in movies. This is life in the 24th century.
Over two percent of the population of America died in the Civil War. Yes, many of them were the young and helpless or the old and infirm, but the losses amongst the healthy young men were horrible. Fully ten percent of young Northern men died in the long war. But thirty percent of young Southern men never came home. An entire generation of our best and brightest was decimated or worse. They say that Lincoln wept when he saw the dead. I understand why.
Uplifted dogs are as fanatically loyal to their pack and their pack leader as normal dogs. The gengineers did not change that. All dogs crave the sense of community and order that the military is built around, but uplifted dogs are just a lot better at defending it. A growl and a bite work in some situations, but give a dog a sniper rifle and he’ll shoot the tic of a cat’s back at a hundred meters. Or whoever the threat is. He’ll just be happier if it’s a cat.
Children have always led the way into the future. They are the ones who see possibilities and come up with the innovations that change our worlds. People start most new business ventures in their teens or twenties. Extended life spans have done nothing to change that trend. The boundless imagination of youth drives us forward, while old dogs truly do not learn new tricks. Metaphorically speaking of course. Old worlds stratify, while young worlds bloom.
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