BANRAI

VOICEOVER:

The Date is November 4th, 2059. The Global Corporatocracy Contingent has a put a stranglehold on our world's rapidly dwindling resources. In the wake of widespread economic collapse, many once proud sovereign nations have seen their governments collapse into utter ruin. Anarchy followed in the wake of the Cloud Collapse of 2025, when all of the worlds collective knowledge was inexblicably deleted. To this day no one knows how it happened or who was truly responsible. Soonafter the internet as many of us knew it was reformatted to serve the corporate oligarchs who plague us still. Every word, every action, and some say even your thoughts were recorded and put to use in service to the GCC.

The Great Wake of 2027 saw the death of over 70% of our ocean's wildlife as they washed up on every shore by the tainted millions. Fishing was globally banned and punishable by death. Those that remained were farmed and fished by the sole legal shareholders of the oceans with the resources to enforce them : The GCC. Then came the Agro Blight of 2029, when a viral fungus sterilized the Earth's soil. A controlled famine soon followed, with the starving masses swearing allegiance to their corporate overlords as their only means of survival.

It's been 30 long years since then. With 4 billion dead and the remaining 4 billion bitter slaves to the GCC. They live, crammed in 9 Megacities across the 3 remaining continents capable of supporting a much dimmed form of existence on our dying world. All who speak (think?) ill of the new regime are exiled to the wasteland, where nothing but savage half starved predators survive on the dregs of what became known as the Nine Towers, so named for the monoliths that occupy the center of each Megacity and house the Corporate Elite, and as a reminder to the millions below that they only matter as long as those they serve say they do.

Pockets of resistance cling to life in the Wastes, though how cannot be said, as all forms of game in the Wastes are toxic to humans and all bodies of water remain fenced off by the GCCs pride and joy: the Global Defense Grid.

The GDG was the brainchild of Doctor Herman Schwartz, who believed the only way to save the human race was the ability to erect a wall of energy anywhere onn the globe or in the atmosphere, to protect the Earth and all of its inhabitants from war, disease, and ultimately extinction from any threat from within or without. With Democracy's fall, the GCC seized Doctor Schwartz' creation for themselves, with the Doctor's family held as "Heroes of Humanity" to ensure his compliance to close off all fresh and salt water sources across the globe. Hope has become a forgotten word on a planet where a cross breath carries a death sentence.

But now there are whispers.

Whispers of an aging sun growing more and more violent

Whispers of a new world where a select number can flee to escape our dying one

Whispers of a New Weapon that will finally purge the last pockets of resistance to the GCCs totalitarian regime

Whispers of a Name

BANRAI

Concept

B.A.N.R.A.I. [Biogenic Antimatter Negating Revolving Access Inducer]also banrai, coincidentally, means "business" in Japanese.

Designed to intercept store and redirect energy through the GDG.

The device enables the GDG to funnel energy from outside impacts into the Towers power cores, as well as a directed beam capable of vaporizing anything you point it at.

They sold the idea by correctly claiming this would power the entire planet for generations to come.

But what they didn't incude in their sales pitch was that it was only a stop-gap measure, to give them time to finish fueling the Towers for their escape from what they call the Final Flare. Final in the sense that it will overload the GDG, and obliterate the atmosphere, leading to the instant end of those remaining.

They began a program designed to ensure "safety and rapid response" by affixing transmitters in the friendly form of heart-shaped lockets to every citizen once they reached puberty. The designers' pitch was being able to locate every citizen everywhere in case of accident, injury, and even life threatening situations, with the ability to activate nanomachines to maintain vitals and even perform emergency defibrilation. With the phasing-out of hard currency following the Great Plague of 2019 they were also designed to function as a digital wallet, comm system, etc.; they were touted as having "limitless upgrade potential". But with the advent of social media came the illusory power of the masses to determine the followers from the outcasts, and so the lockets were upgraded with +/- buttons to be pressed by any member of society, complete with a readout of their current social status. All with good ratings were rebranded by the GCC as "Abba's". Those in the margins with a low rating were rebranded as "Zabba's".

Abbas get all the perks, Zabbas are exiled to the Wastes.

But the lockets are lies, the project's enshrined nobility false. The enduring upgrades have made every citizen a fan of the perks, but with the integration of BANRAI, they will see how well and truly enslaved they are, as those determined to be Zabba will no longer be exiled to cause trouble for the GCC later, but executed anywhere at anytime, quickly or slowly, depending on how many Abbas rated you an unproductive member of the society.

Arch-Villain [Name TBD}what's in a name] Megalomaniac in 'vintage' Ray Ban shades (sponsor?) worked his way to the top through artful deception and surgical force, turning his competitors against one another, offering aid to both sides to broker a peace. So great was their faith in him(her?) that not one member abstained from the meeting. Some believed they could use TBD to their own ends by negotiating a cease-fire and launching coordinated strikes against their enemies; others believed they could assassinate their opponents as they left the meeting. But all their plans were for naught, as TBD had already bribed/threatened her opponents' agents into planting a remote prototype of the BANRAI device in the meeting room.

So sophisticated the device was that it synchronized with the GDG, surrounding TBD with it's atomic tangerine glow, allowing her to watch, unharmed, as every member of the Global Commission slowly vaporized before her, their eyes darting apart as they felt every atom in their body being seared away one by one. TBD could have dissolved them in a flash, but many of them had slighted her in one form or another long ago, before any of them found their way to the top of the still-formed corporate ladder. Back when they were members of the lowly Worker[PR came up with a friendlier sounding term: Abbas(Unity and Abba Zabba for all;sponsor?)] class, they all ostracized her for her dead parents being members of the Zabba Resistance. Time passed and they all met again as junior executives of the newly formed GCC, and together (largely with TBDs guidance) they literally took the entire world by storm, creating the Corporate Dystopia of the present.

But she never forgave, and she never forgot. Now here, at her competitors end, she didn't bother to refresh their memories of her suffering at their hands. She was long past explanation. So it comes as no surprise by the end that she stayed and committed every second of their ignominious ends to memory. Her enemies never saw it coming.

So complete was their faith, either in her or their ability to manipulate her, that every single member also left clear instructions that their shares be transferred to hers entirely in the event of their deaths at their "enemies" hands. And so the world looked on in wonder as TBD became the sole shareholder of the GCC and the de facto ruler of Earth 2039.

Driven by grief and rage, many said, she used her consolidated power to declare all out extermination of all Resistance anywhere[the patsy in the media publicized "attempted assassination of the GCC Executive Class"]. So believeable was the narrative that even present-day many believe TBD and the GCC are acting for the good of all mankind.

*The Ray Bans were an aesthetic by-product of me trying to come up with a name for the device....originally the device was called Ray Ban(obvious copyright issues), then Ban Ray, then BANRAI, which is Japanese for 'business'....and then I thought "how poetic would it be for a corporate dictatorship to be defeated by its own device that's name means 'business'?"*

Tower Purpose: The Towers drive the GCC by serving as power plants, control points for the GDG, and are secretly capable of launching from their bases and connecting into one enormous colony ship in the upper atmosphere. With enough security and Zabba housing, the fleeing oligarchs would have all they need to begin again in Alpha Centauri, leaving the remnants of the Earth to perish in the Final Flare.

Think Elysium level poverty and Final Fantasy VII Tower power centralization.

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