Moreau Series Timeline

circa. 2000: Race begins involvement in terrestrial affairs. ^

1999-2005: Worldwide breakthroughs in genetic engineering. Start of the biological revolution. ^

2008-2011: War for Korean unification; despite the South’s technical advantage, the North overwhelms it with Chinese assistance. The UN is bogged down in nationalist conflicts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. The United States begins its policy of “diplomatic nonintervention.” ^

2008: The first moreau is engineered in a South Korean lab. It’s a large dog breed with an increased cranial capacity. It is the first species so engineered that breeds true. Even though the war is short-lived, an intensive breeding program results in nearly ten thousand of these smart dogs slipping north to plant explosives and otherwise harass the enemy. ^

2011-2015: The aftermath of the Korean war begins an international debate on the military uses of genetic engineering. The debate culminates in United Nations resolutions banning genetically-engineered disease organisms and any genetic engineering of the Human genome. The UN deadlocks on banning the engineering of sapient animals– by the time it reaches a vote, four out of every five nations with a substantial military have their own “Korean Dog” projects. ^

2017: On a tide of public opinion fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment (by 2017 the Japanese have the most high-profile genetic program, notably ignoring the UN restrictions), there’s a constitutional convention to draft the 29th amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment bans any genetic engineering on a macroscopic scale and, in an effort to prevent any possible atrocities like the ones in Korea, gives the sapient results of genetic engineering of animals the protection of the Bill of Rights. ^

2019-2023: Iranian terrorists slaughter the Saudi royal family, sparking the Third Gulf War. The war eventually envelops all the Arab states and marks the beginning of substantial nonhuman immigration into the United States. ^

2023: The Gulf War ends with the formation of the Islamic Axis. The Axis is a fundamentalist pan-Arab union that stops short of bridging the Suez. The price of oil triples even over wartime levels. A small company in Costa Rica, Jerboa Electrics, begins production of the Jerboa– a small, cheap, electric convertible that now costs less than half to run as the most efficient gas vehicle. ^

2024: Start of the Pan-Asian War. It begins around a Pakistan-India border dispute and snowballs almost instantly. By the end of the year it involves the Islamic-Axis, most of the former Soviet republics, and China on one side, India, Japan, Russia, and most of North Africa on the other. The United States continues its hands-off foreign policy. ^

2025: The Ford Motor Company buys Jerboa Electrics to avoid an international lawsuit over Ford’s wholesale swiping of the electric-car design. Ford proceeds to sue GM and Chrysler for doing the same thing. BMW is producing its own electric design. ^

2027: United American Bio-Technologies is indicted for breaking the ban on macro genetic engineering. They’ve been producing moreaus for the Asian war effort (both sides) and, worse, they’ve been working on human genetics as well– thought there’s no evidence that they ever went beyond the computer-simulation stage on their human project. The federal government seizes all of UABT’s assets in an unprecedented move against a corporate criminal. Rumors persist that the intelligence community wanted UABT’s nationwide facilities for its own uses. ^

2027: New Delhi is nuked as the Indian national defense crumbles. Mass desertions are rampant and whole divisions lay down their arms and surrender. From the Afghan frontier, an entire company of moreau tigers from the Indian special forces seize control of a cargo plane and fly to the Untied States. It is called the Rajastahn airlift, for the strain of tiger involved. The airlift is a media event, the officers of the company become celebrities, especially Datia Rajastahn, the officer in charge of the airlift. He’s eloquent, charismatic, and the first major voice for the moreaus– not only in the United States, but internationally. ^

2029: The American space program reaches its apex. NASA has an orbiting space station, a temporary lunar base, an orbiting radio telescope that may be picking up alien signals from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The peak is reached when appropriations for NASA’s deep-probe project are approved. The deep-probe project is to involve a half-dozen unmanned nuclear rockets to fly by the nearest star systems. ^

2030: The Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, conducts a raid into Jordan and captures a secret training base for Jordanian franks. The Mossad, with domestic restrictions on a par with the American bans on macroscopic genetic engineering, destroys the Jordanian base, but takes the immature franks (100 girls from Hiashu Biological ranging from 3 to 16 years in age) and secretly trains them as Israeli agents. ^

2030: The last Indian national defenders fail. The subcontinent falls to a Pakistani/Afghani invasion force. ^

2032-2044: The African pandemic, genetically-engineered viruses, race across the continent in waves that resemble the Black Death that swept Europe in the Middle Ages. Entire villages are wiped out in weeks, governments collapse, and the entire continent is under virtual quarantine. The worst is over in three years, but it takes nearly a decade for a central government, the United African States, to repair the damage to the African economy. The rebuilding of the continent is due, in large part, to a husbanding of the indigenous genetic diversity Africa is home to. By 2044, the U.A.S. genetic programs rival any on the globe and are a multi-billion dollar industry. ^

January 8, 2034: The “big one” hits California. The quake is 9.5 and centers about 30 miles south of San Francisco. Aftershocks in the 5-7 range echo up and down the coast as far as Los Angeles. The urban landscape of California is altered forever. ^

2034-2041: The last Arab-Israeli war. (According to the Axis, the War of Palestinian Liberation. According to the Israelis, the Second Holocaust.) Israel fights for six years against the entire Islamic Axis. Eventually Israel loses as the conflict goes nuclear. Tel Aviv is nuked, and despite retaliatory nuclear strikes against the Axis that kill nearly five million Arabs, Israel is overrun. There is an Israeli government-in-exile in Geneva. ^

April, 2035: Tokyo is nuked as part of the Chinese invasion of Japan. Most of the Japanese technical base is either destroyed in the attack, or destroyed by the Japanese defenders to deny it to the Chinese. Countless technological achievements by the Japanese are lost in the final days. This marks the official end of the Pan-Asian war. ^

2037: U.S. moreau population reaches an estimated 10 million. Most of the moreau population in the States are war refugees from the Pan-Asian War. A substantial minority consists of rats and rabbits coming across the border from Central America. ^

2038: Pope Leo XIV surprises the entire Christian world by issuing a decree that, though genetic engineering is a mortal sin, moreaus still have souls. The political pressure of this causes the European Economic Community to cease moreau production. In Central America, this causes a virtual civil war, as massive moreau armies rise against their masters. Latin American immigration into the U.S. quadruples. ^

2039: NASA begins to experience setbacks in Congress as the country becomes more and more concerned about the exploding moreau population. In the first of a number of cost-cutting moves, NASA’s orbital radio telescope– the Orbital Ear– is shut down. ^

2042: The “Dark August” riots occur, all across the U.S. They’re a summer-long eruption of urban violence that most humans blame on the rhetoric of Datia Rajastahn, the first and most influential moreau leader. Datia has become more and more radicalized as time progressed, until he led an national moreau para-military organization. The Moreau Defense League was said to be defensive in nature, but the Federal Government viewed it as a terrorist group. Datia is eventually corner of a burning building in Cleveland’s Moreytown and shot down by police and National Guardsmen. Datia becomes a martyr and a political icon for moreau activists. ^

2043: Congress halts NASA’s deep-probe appropriations, the four completed probes are mothballed. As a result of the riots, there is a moratorium placed on moreau immigration. Anti-moreau sentiment reaches an apex as there are public debates about mass deportations, mandatory nonhuman sterilization, and moreau “reservations.” Fortunately for the nonhuman population, none of the extreme measures are popular enough to become law. However, legislation is passed banning a moreau from possessing a firearm, and it becomes silent federal policy to isolate concentrations of moreau population from the neighboring human population. The most visible signs of this are the semi-permanent traffic barricades that block the roads into most Moreytowns. ^

2045: A South African coup led by a group of franks. It’s revealed that the South African government had a rampant human-engineering program. By the time of the coup, there are close to a million franks indigenous to South Africa. The coup marks the first time any country allows franks full citizenship. (In the U.S. there is a debate concerning the wording of the 29th amendment, so while moreaus are tolerated as second-class citizens, the franks are treated as if they have no rights at all.) ^

2053: Congress scuttles NASA’s deep-probe project. Rumors persist that the project was taken over by one of the government’s black agencies. The EEC eliminates internal moreau travel restrictions. ^

2054: The Supreme Court hears the frank civil rights case and rules 7-2 that the 29th amendment applies to genetically-engineered humans, as well as animals. It orders a halt to government internment and summary deportation of franks. Suddenly, a large number of franks begin to appear “officially” on the government payroll– primarily in the intelligence services. ^

2059: With the discovery of a Race warren under the Nyogi tower in Manhattan, the alien threat is made public. Federal troops and the National Guard invade the Bronx to root out entrenched Moreau Defense League armor. The move sparks a nationwide increase in moreau violence. ^

2060: Sylvia Harper wins the U.S. presidential election. ^