Rural Impressionist Hard/Soft Cyberpunk Transhuman Outlaws

[LoA]

..... Despite the popular image of agricorp goons coming with court orders to torch the fields of small-time farmers who accidentally cross-pollinate with their proprietary crops, the company is not quite so draconian when it comes to enforcing its copyrights – or at least, not openly. While about half the reason for this is to avoid the sort of PR nightmares that ultimately damned their predecessors, another large factor is that biohacking can be a two-way street. Suing every two-bit pharmer who tweaks a few amino sequences would invite scrutiny into just how many of their own designs resemble ones that local engineers have reported stolen in unsolved robberies. However, just because they choose to flex it only occasionally does not mean that the company doesn't have some considerable muscle at its disposal. Their security operations in Central Kentucky are handled by a woman named Firuza "The Hun" Nabiyev. In corporate espionage parlance, she's what's often known as an "international": a foreign expert brought in under the radar who can be quickly relocated when the heat is on – in essence, a corporate outlaw.

Sorry, I forgot to read this part before asking you about gene politics.

[Steerpike]

I'm curious - what's happened to Canada in this future? Has Vancouver fallen into the sea? Been annexed by Hong Kong? Has climate catastrophe led people north?

I'm also quite curious about California, given the amount of agriculture there, and the thought of what Hollywood is doing with forking, uplifts, and other technologies makes my mind race in interesting and disturbing directions.

[Rhamnousia]

I'm recovering from surgery so trying to write anything extensive is something of a chore right now, but I wrote the beginning of a response months ago and never got around to posting it.

Canada has undergone the same pattern of collapsing central authority, regional devolution, and intermittent balkanization that has played out in the United States, with the effects being – if anything – even more dramatic. It surprised no one when Quebec finally achieved formal sovereignty, which included Montreal – where disagreement about secession was at its strongest – adopting the status of autonomous city-state. The general rule is that the further west one goes, the more splintered the country becomes. Alberta and British Columbia were both hit incredibly hard by environmental degradation: city-sized firestorms are still a seasonal occurrence and the oil sands look like something out of Mad Max these days. The feeling of government neglect led large chunks of both provinces to declare independence and form their own – surprisingly-successful – political network. Both Vancouver and Calgary-Edmonton are among the most divided cities in North America, with as little as half their districts fully recognizing the authority of the federal government. Vancouver has not been swallowed up by the sea just yet, though rising sea levels have turned its neighbor Richmond into little more than an archipelago of concrete islands. Then there is also the matter of the more than 600 First Nations bands. See, the Canadian economy is still almost entirely dependent on a handful of transcontinental arteries that the federal government had difficulty securing even at its most powerful – and which tend to run straight through First Nations lands. Holding the rest of the country by the metaphorical balls, many indigenous peoples have either negotiated self-governing provincial status or forced the government into giving them diplomatic recognition as sovereign nations.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Best wishes with post-surgery recovery!

I like the balkanization, Mad Max oil sands, and First Nations choke-holds. I'd like to hear more about the city-states of Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary.