3024 Nova Arcis A 3
The Gardener and the Titan
The final words of Darius Voss’s biography echoed in the golden light of the broadcast garden, a poignant and deeply personal testament from a man who saw himself not as a titan of industry, but as a desperate gardener trying to cultivate a future. As his story faded from the 3D-media-stream, the display in the studio shifted. The interlocking portraits of Varna and Voss remained, but a third, sharp-edged image resolved beside them, creating a stark, ideological triangle. It was the face of a young Mego Reveers - confident, ambitious, and radiating an almost predatory charisma.
LYRA.ai let the three portraits hang in the silence, a visual representation of the three great, competing philosophies that would define the 21st century. Her marvellous voice was tinged with a note of deep respect. “A powerful alliance,” she commented, referring to Varna and Voss. “The visionary and the pragmatist. A symbiotic relationship that, as we’ve seen, was built on a foundation of deep trust and a shared, desperate hope for humanity’s survival.”
Cokas Bluna nodded, his gaze fixed on the new, third portrait. “But their shared vision of a healed, connected Earth, LYRA, wasn’t the only dream of the future being sold at the time. Theirs was a quiet, complex, almost philosophical project. There was another path being offered. A louder, simpler, and, for a time, far more seductive one.”
He gestured to the image of Reveers. “Mego Reveers. The Titan of Mars. While Darius Voss was quietly building a financial and legal fortress around Amara Varna, Mego Reveers was building a cult of personality around the old, heroic dream of fire, rocketry, and conquest. It was a dream that would ultimately poison the very world he sought to create.”
“Before we delve into the story of Reveers himself,” Cokas continued, shifting in his seat, “it’s crucial to understand the world that made a figure like him possible. The invention of ITT didn’t just change travel, LYRA; it fundamentally broke the power structure of the 21st century.”
This was the in-between story, the great, unwritten chapter that explained the shift from the world of the “three presidents” to the world of corporate titans.
“Precisely, Cokas,” LYRA affirmed. The main display behind them dissolved the portraits, replacing them with a complex, flowing data-visualization of global economic and political power, starting around 2025. “Prior to ITT, global power was consolidated in the hands of a few major nation-states. Their power was derived from control over physical territory, military force, and traditional economic markets.”
The visualization showed solid, color-coded blocks representing the old powers: the US, China, Russia, the EU, the African Union.
“Then,” LYRA narrated, as the timeline on the display began to move forward, “ITT was introduced. And the very concept of a border became… porous. A corporation, StellarLink, could now move a ton of refined platinum from a mine in the Congo to a fabricator in Hamburg in less than a second, bypassing all traditional shipping lanes, naval checkpoints, and national tariffs. It was a logistical earthquake.”
“It was more than that,” Cokas interjected. “It was a declaration of independence from geography itself. Suddenly, a small, nimble nation with a single ITT hub, like Iceland, could have the same logistical importance as a massive continental power. Markets shifted away from the old, lumbering governments and towards the entities—corporations, consortiums, even smaller, forward-thinking nations—that could move at the speed of light.”
The data-visualization reflected their words. The solid blocks of the old nation-states began to fracture and shrink. In their place, new, dynamic, and interconnected nodes began to appear, labelled with corporate logos: StellarLink, Jade Horizon Energy, and, of course, the stark, aggressive logo of Ares Dynamics.
“The old powers tried to react, of course,” Cokas explained. “They tried to regulate ITT, to classify it as a strategic weapon, as we saw in the last segment. But it was too late. The economic power had already shifted. For the first time in human history, a private corporation, StellarLink, had a logistical capability that surpassed that of any single government. Darius Voss didn’t just build a company; he inadvertently built the world’s first true corporate superpower.”
“This created a new geopolitical landscape,” LYRA continued, the map now showing a complex web of corporate and state actors, all competing and cooperating. “It was an age of unprecedented economic growth, but also of unprecedented instability. And it was in this chaotic new world, this new ecosystem of power, that Mego Reveers thrived. He was a product of his time. He understood, perhaps better than anyone, that in an age where corporations could rival nations, a single, charismatic individual with a powerful story could build an empire.”
Cokas nodded grimly. “And what a story he told. He didn’t offer a complex philosophy like Varna’s Perceptionism or a difficult, long-term plan like Voss’s. He offered a simple, heroic myth that resonated with a humanity still reeling from the climate crisis and the Airpocalypse. He offered them Mars.”
The display shifted again, now showing the iconic, dramatic images of early Ares Dynamics propaganda: heroic figures in gleaming suits planting a flag on a red world, massive rockets tearing through the sky, a vision of manifest destiny reborn for the space age.
“He was selling the past as the future,” Cokas said, a note of sadness in his voice. “He was selling the old, familiar story of conquest, of taming a frontier, of man against the wilderness. It was a narrative that was a thousand years out of date, but it was simple, powerful, and deeply, deeply seductive.”
LYRA brought the point home. “While Varna and Voss were engaged in a quiet, complex, and often misunderstood project to heal Earth and guide humanity’s evolution, Mego Reveers was shouting a much simpler message from the rooftops: ‘Forget the old world. Let’s go conquer a new one.’ And in the chaos of the mid-21st century, it was a message that millions were desperate to hear.”
The portraits of Varna, Voss, and Reveers resolved on the screen one last time, a perfect visual summary of the great ideological war that defined their century. Cokas gave a final, sombre nod to the camera. “And so, the stage was set for the great race to Mars, a race that would shape not only the future of another planet, but the very soul of our own.”