from Coup de Companie: How Federal Powers Subverted Corporate Rule
Hanim Ra Finster, Prentice Perennial c. 2594
What is also very interesting to note is how the small flourishes of the crippled Federal government expressed the attitude of the times. Up until and even beyond the decades of divestiture that sprang from the constant magical and ecological disaster that was the 21st century, the old federal government kept its official motto as E Pluribus Unum; “From many, one.” The flood and the rampage of the Mad Magician completely destroyed the eastern power centers of the old world, and what little remained soon was swallowed up in the Great Western Forests. This left a habitable but thoroughly irrelevant band on the west coast, whose ascendant coastlines and mountainous geography minimized the impact of the great floods. In many cases, western cities were rebuilt and relocated within less than five miles of older city centers.
Reeling with its loss, the old American government set about commemorating all the places that were. The great western cities that were displaced were not renamed. The vast sprawl of Los Angeles was not completely innundated. Consequently, the federal government moved its capitol there and declared the land the Archepelago of Los Angeles. The new national motto was changed to the motto of one of the overgrown states - Luctor et Emergo; “I struggle and arise.” This kind of stubborn nostalgia seemed to do even more to give the rest of the world the opinion that the Federal government of America was a kind of throwback. A cute living artifact kept alive by the good graces of a few charitable megacorporations.
A look at how quickly and how thoroughly the corporations lost power after the PicoGen/ViaCode war shows how wrong that opinion was. Having learned an important lesson of history, the Federal government spent nearly a hundred years planning for an eventual coup. When the two companies went to war, the government made barely any attempt to intervene. Knowing the budgets and the mercenary contracts at stake; knowing the sheer destructive potential the two companies and their subsidiaries could bring to bear, the Federal government decided instead to wait and watch.
Blocks of New Washington burned. New Philadelphia's elegant planned communities were reduced to rubble. The Chicago Reclaimation Project ended in atomic fire.
MercNet raiding parties took to the seas around Los Angeles, the naval battle was allowed to continue for a full two weeks before the Federal government issued the Pasadena Ultimatum. Through it all, NSA and black ops agents poured money into corporate lobbyists who convinced other companies to take sides. An agreement was even struck to join several corporate and government task forces together in order to destroy political organizations like Cry Freedom Industries. With communication so patchy between LA and New Washington, barely anyone even noticed that the Pasadena Ultimatum succeeded because the MercNet flagship and its Shadowflame Elite Captain were quietly obliterated. All news feeds were suppressed to the Archepelago only. No one outside LA knew what had really happened until much later.
It was at this time that the unofficial motto of the Federal agencies had become Omnes hore vulnerant, ultima hore necat; “Every passing hour wounds; the last hour kills."
When the fog of war cleared, the Federal government made sure every satellite that still worked carried images of a continent ravaged to every city that had a working receiver. People from New Washington to Seattle cringed at the terror that the corporations had wrought. They demanded someone or something to be held responsible. Why begin with the Shadowflames? Why the mercenaries? When the mercenary trade was made illegal and when Guardian led squads of special forces soldiers set about destroying any non-compliant mercenary bodies the message to the corporations was clear: you may no longer have an army. The only way to keep some measure of autonomy, being attacked on all sides by sweeping new laws and public opinion, was to sue for peace. At the Treaty of Capitol, several corporate entities secured their rights in the Fedeal Government of America's new age. In exchange they helped to almost completely destroy or dismantle most dissident groups and organizations. Law had returned, and it demanded a lot of bodies.
And how would it be secured? How to keep it for a long time? Netowrks. Satellites. Communication and binding. The next fifty years saw an infrastructure push not seen since the days of the floods. The new eastern cities were Reunified and soon America was broadcasting the hypnotic dazzle of New Washington to every corner of the world. City of legends and magic the likes of which the world could not match. A place of such decadent allure that within a single generation, people in Sanctuary and Beijing were using Washingtonian slang and following the lives of every one of its celebreties.
America had gotten a brief taste of this stardom just before the snowfall. The Federal government never drops an idea that works, no matter how old.
And now that it is back in the center of the world's spotlight, the new motto of the Federal Government of America is Per aspera ad astra; “Through adversity to the stars."