Hinterlands Backstory
A cyber-noir film.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clark

“Dark Tech doesn't’t kill people - people kill people” Common saying in the Casbah.

A Brief History of The Near Future.

On an otherwise normal, sunny day, the plague came. An extremely contagious bird flu virus erupts in SE Asia. 65% mortality rate, 2 out of every 3 dead. Governenments seal their borders to no avail. Regions, then states, then communities prevent infection by barricading themselves away from outsiders - who are shot on sight.

With travel impossible, the economic system collapses, and federal and state governments wither away.

Power reverts back to the locals who choose their own rules and government - or lack thereof. De-facto City-States arise,  "Forts" (from Fort-ified Quarantine Zones,) many of which are corrupt urban fiefdoms ruled by the local political machine. Isolated communities, the "Outlands," are left on their own, some becoming ethical and civilized mecca’s, others descend into religious or political madness. Some towns, usually just outside the city-sates law enforcement reach, become "Casbahs;" Vegas-with-no-rules. In between, the landscape empties out, because it can be dangerous out there with the Federal Rangers stretched few and far between.

A cure is found. But the Bosses of the new city states decide they don't need no state or federal bureaucrats taxing them and ordering them around. Its a new age of "weak central government." Anything goes, and it does, out in the hinterlands...

Plague victims have left the survivors a vast inheritance of free-for-the-taking housing, cars, cloths, jewelry, manufactured goods, etc. The consumer society freeze frames. The post-plague world looks allot like a pre-plague flea market.

Yet technological innovation continues to accelerate. AI’s (Artificial Intelligence's) are created, with some emancipating themselves and fleeing into the cloud servers of the ultranet. Pirate networking sites allow the newly “freed from establishment control” artist, scientist, engineer, and AI outsiders to find one another and cooperate on tech projects. Abandoned advanced technology provides the tools, and formally restricted research provides the "forbidden knowledge." The result, extremely high technology, Dark Tech, produced not in the controlled establishment lab, but in the Hinterlands, by an outlaw, with his own agenda…

Its the new wild, wild west.

Backstory

Kurtz is a prominent, very liberal scientist - psychologist - genius who is developing White Tech, nicknamed The Buzz. The Buzz will “save mankind” by allowing people to program their own wetware (brains). His research group is unorthodox, liberal and based in the Federal University in Denver.

He receives startup funding from Ash House Inc, part of the corrupt establishment running Denver.

Kurtz becomes increasingly “unsound” and Ash House orders him turn over The Buzz so it can be commondified and profitized. Kurtz and his team burn down their lab and flee with the Buzz into the near-by Boulder free university - artistic underground, so they can “save mankind.”

Geeks all, they are not prepared for the sex, drugs, and no limits environment.

Six months later. Ash House starts getting weird rants from Kurtz. Kurtz, his team, and his new “followers” are using The Buzz and evolving into a type of religious new-age cult. Kurtz needs hard cash to “expand his church” and offers to sell a copy of the Buzz to Ash House.

Ash House is panicked by the liability and publicity issues, but is greedy for the tech. It decides to play it safe by hiring untraceable expendable freelancers to do the buy. Marlow, a freelance hacker gets the gig. He is kept ignorant of all details.

Unknown to Kurtz or Ash House, the Fat Man, an evil venture capitalist specializing in Dark Tech, has learned of the Buzz and see’s vast profit potential in the third world. The Fat Man decides to steal the Buzz at the exchange, but only knows the time - not the location. Fat Man unleashes his Dogz Pack to follow Marlow, seize the Buzz, and collar or kill everyone.

So on one side is The Dogz and Catz, the other is the Buzz, and in the middle is Marlow, who doesn't’t know shit…

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