Jack of Harts

The New England Federation is truly a place where every need is provided for by the government. Every citizen is granted a basic living stipend that covers housing, food, and leisure activities. Their exact stipend is generated by a social credit system that calculates the citizens’ every daily interaction with other citizens. As the Federation strives for security, productivity, and harmony with all, interactions that encapsulate these ideals are rewarded. Higher social credit scores grant them larger stipends. Lower social credit scores generate tips on how to better interact with fellow citizens, or even invitations to find opportunities on other worlds if behavior does not improve. A low enough score grants them free one-way passage to Rikers Planet in the New New York system. This is one way the New England Federation maintains a secure and safe environment for all citizens.

The New England Federation funded and performed much of the early space exploration of our own Solar System, and then the colonization of the stars that followed our development of hyperdrives. Near limitless fusion energy reserves and advanced fabricators allowed them to build anything Earth’s space forces needed, and they harvested the Solar System’s wealth to do exactly that. Their large population was easily able to operate an industrial system that used minimal robotic or AI support, and could also send people to colonize other worlds. And they were happy to give opportunities to those immigrants who came through Ellis Island every day. Most of those opportunities were in the New New York trinary star system, or the many Alliance colonies the Federation supported, but they kept enough immigrants on Earth to maintain a healthy population curve there as well.

The New England Federation provided its people with the best standard of living in the world in a time when other nations were still struggling with the aftermath of the Second Great Depression and the Cybernetic Wars. And then, in one of the defining moments of the century, they reopened Ellis Island as a symbol to the world that America was once again willing and eager to accept migrant workers from all over the world. The tired and the poor, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, all were welcome to come to Ellis Island and find a new future in a Better America. The New England Federation promised them jobs, security, and prosperity if they came to America. It was a new era in America, built by the Great Families that fundamentally transformed it into a better place to live and thrive.