A Dangerous World

Dangerous Days is a tech noir adventure, drawing on influences from noir film and fiction, Science Fiction and real world science. The setting is a dystopic future, shattered by an economic and social apocalypse which precipitated a die-off of information and communication leading to a new Dark Age. People call it The Fall.

The Fall's economic wipe-out caused a loss of technical knowledge as information and communications systems failed or were shut down by various attacks, both physical and electronic. The continent was plunged into chaos and decay. Much of modern technology was lost or destroyed. As Dangerous Days begins, parts of the continent are well on the road to recovering, people are rebuilding technology, knowledge, and commerce, but by a new plan and down roads often different from the ones we took.

Between The Fall and story's "present," the continent has been ravaged by anarchy and disease. More than two thirds of the original population succumbed to warfare, violence, insanity, or simple sicknesses for which there was no longer an easy cure only a few blocks away. Large tracts of land, sometimes the size of small countries or more, were abandoned or made unlivable by unrestrained war, exploitation, disease, drought, fire, and flood.

Three generations later, a few, scattered cities have survived or rebuilt across the vast, sometimes poisoned, continent. Each city has become a commercial mecca for its surrounding area. They operate as independent city-states and are the choke-points for trade, travel, and communications. Each city is run by a principal business interest, or socio-political group, and each is unique in its politics, trade, and approach.

The action in Dangerous Days takes place in Lago Sucio--a small city with a single Draconian corporation in charge--and Port Ombria, one of the most powerful of commercial cities, a perverted phoenix of commerce, risen in a world of ashes on the bones of ruined cities that came before her, a city of towering mega-buildings and massive, monolithic business.

But Port Ombria and her sister cities are not Bartertown shanties. With the collapse or loss of information, many technologies were re-built from new ideas or in new directions from the old, resulting in amazing advances in some areas, while others remain no further ahead than they were at the time of The Fall.

Genetics, biological research, and nanotechnology have blossomed into new materials and machines which improve life immeasurably for most people in the cities and some of the Agricultural Prefectures.

Human life span has increased--a mere 300 years has elapsed since The Fall, but only three generations have passed. General health has improved dramatically and most people can expect to live 100 years in excellent health. Most of them have never heard of dental cavities or ulcers. Computer technology and communications has become more pervasive and integrated into daily life. Most people take these things for granted.

What hasn't changed is greed and Human nature.

With the rise of the commercial cities and independent city-states run by corporations, most workers have become contractual "property" of their employers. Commercial competition can be fierce and proprietary knowledge is jealously guarded, even when it resides in a man's head.

This is the world of Nathon Gunn, who is charged with finding and returning a missing scientist to his corporate masters.