"Is big tech a billion-dollar business? Of course it is! But the question above all is: Who is trading our data? Who is editing our identities and changing our past as we speak? Who is providing votes - and who is actually voting for whom?"

Stefan Boucher

 

Brief Introduction:

In the fast-paced world of high-tech and financial investors, former game developer Rico is a poster boy for innovation and progress. He is also respected as a lecturer on game metrics. His latest development is garnering worldwide attention because recorded data traces from users can be used to generate virtual likenesses of people. Investors bid staggering sums, ignoring protests against a technology that analyzes people more comprehensively than ever before. The growing criticism motivates Rico's student Liz to boldly venture into the deep shadows of his past.

Category: Near-Future Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Thriller, Action

Key words: Games, Retro Gaming, Cold Case, Big Tech, Critical Media, Identity theft, Atari

 

Synopsis

1999: While the German capital is preparing for the year 2000 and the public is discussing the dangers of Y2K, school friends Melanie Bieler and Rico Darburg have programmed The Colonists - the most successful computer game of the 90s. Companies from Russia, England, and France are vying for the publishing rights of the small Berlin development studio. A dispute breaks out between Rico and Melanie over the question of which partner to sign contracts with. On the trip to London to an English publisher, Melanie disappears without a trace. Rico is now able to get his way and gives the rights to France. But Melanie's fears come true:

No sooner is the game on the market than Rico is ousted and replaced by the in-house developers in Paris. Police investigating Melanie's disappearance are unsuccessful, and Melanie's family falls apart. Rico, meanwhile, never gives up the search for Melanie ... even though some rumors won't go away.

More than 20 years later. Present: Rico Darburg is a lecturer in game metrics and head of development at Tribitium Designs, a Berlin start-up that is constructing the bridge from today's Web 4.0 standard to Web 6.0. Connecting brains to technology and real-world linkage through emotion and analysis is his passion and a billion-dollar business. The presentation of a new generation of computer chips, which for the first time can process technical and biological signals simultaneously and operate with unprecedented speed and computational depth, succeeds brilliantly. Investment commitments multiply and new partners emerge: more potent, more powerful, and more unscrupulous than their previous main investor, Triple-17.

As a star of the capital's developer scene, Rico therefore not only attracts the interest of business and politics, but also arouses opposition: a pandemic-fighting app developed on behalf of the federal government illegally accessed millions of data records. Due to the government's intervention, this scandal did not reach the wider public. However, new chip technology from Tribitium Designs now promises to break down the barriers between technology and biology. People are fearful of implants that provide biological Internet connectivity. The press smells headlines with which it can increase its declining circulation. International investors entice him with money and promises. The sudden malfunction of the NeurE-motion, a headband designed to analyze and store brainwaves, damages Rico's brain, causing visions that allow him to relive past situations in detail. Each new test run of the device is fraught with great danger, which Rico nevertheless takes on.

His student Liz wants to analyze the Colonists' old program code for her thesis. Rico denies her access, but Liz hacks into the code. Behind elaborately hidden protective systems, she suddenly finds messages that Melanie left there shortly before she disappeared. Messages that today put Rico in need of explanation and Liz herself in mortal danger. And they force him to deal with himself, with people from the past, and above all with his own memories, which his invention flushes back to the surface ...

Two years after the war against the Dar'y, Brit and Len live a life between adaptation and self-realization. The colony was able to stabilize once more. But drug trafficking, energy theft, and radical clerics of the Aristo cult of the Dar'y cause ever new problems in their capital and provinces, which Brit Darburg, who is now working for the Propaganda Unit of the Ministry of Interior, and the young militia officer Len Kakaia are trying to get under control.

Their friend Dars Poole has been missing since the war, as well as the Dary'an Warlord Sard Mamarter. New political anger threatens as the Dar'y claim that the colony deprives them of contractually guaranteed energy supplies. At the same time, resistance is forming in the colony: Former war hero and dissident Thom Domjuk is suspected of supporting resistance groups who are attacking government institutions. Governor Adam remains inactive, but he entrusts important responsibilities to Vas Kandiris, the commander of his elite troops.

"Blood and Steel" unites, separates and guides the figures now established in their reality of life with their abysses and intentions back together to the different places of an intercultural crime thriller.

Almost forty years after the last contact with the Mother Planet Earth, the human colony on Tranthal, under the leadership of Governor Seth Adam, is holding fast to the colonial treaties that were signed two hundred years ago. These treaties insure the residents protection and technology transfer, in return for which raw materials, energy and rare chemical compounds for the earth are mined, produced and stored. Despite the broken contact and no support, Governor Adam refuses to suspend the contracts. While the standard of living declines and the colony is more despised than respected by the other peoples of the planet even after two hundred years of existence, societal and economic development is stagnant. The decades-long promised democracy would have taken place if the peoples of Dar'y, Isaris or Sin-Dar'y were kept at a distance, but instead it degraded into a gentle form of totalitarianism.

In order to fulfill the old colonial obligations, raw materials are stored near the spaceport, which are missing everywhere in the colony itself. While even their own space program must be stopped due to lack of energy and raw materials, the huge warehouses are expanded and equipped with goods that have not been collected by earth for a long time.

In a climate of stagnation, domestic pressure and a new war with the neighboring Dar'y, three young recruits are finishing their training at the prestigious military academy of the colonial capital Hallwa: Brit Darburg, daughter of the influential colonial officer Frid Darburg and a student at the Propaganda Department , Dars Poole, a dissident and extremely talented young astrophysicist, and Len Kakaia, scion of a dynasty of farmers who studies criminology and longs for the city's street canyons. Both of them love Brit, in their own unique ways. However, Brit, who has a direct lineage back to the Earth on her mother's side, loves the state and the colony, and she firmly believes in Governor Adam.

Together, they start their journey into the world after graduation. A world that is not only determined by politics and religion, but also marked by a powerful military-political complex and sacrosanct hierarchies, intercultural conflicts and economic disputes, at the end of which not only life, as they know, but also their very personal Ideals, hopes and fears are put to the test. A world where politicians, religious leaders and serious criminals are pulling the strings and many will lose far more than their faith in the colony.

Steel Dunes, an international large-scale prison on the south coast, serves as a joint project for the colony and the Dar'y and Isaris peoples to stop the burgeoning crime. However, Vas Kandiris, commander of the powerful government guards, is increasingly abusing it to arrest political opponents of the governor there after the terrible failure of the newly launched space program. Kat-Ya Kon Wardi, daughter of the late High Priest of the Aristo cult of the Dar'y, is also forced to act against increasingly radical forces within the clans. Sard Mamarter and Dars Poole, a former friend of Brit Darburg and Len Kakaia, are among the prominent inmates who are gradually taking control of the "steel dunes".

As resistance to governor Adam grows and even the most brutal measures of the units of Vas Kandiris couldn’t cause the people to calm down, the government settles in the hoped-for safe fortress. There, criminals, radical believers and political extremists gather with the units of the fled government. Brit Darburg received the post of transitional governor. Together with Len Kakaia, Brigadier General of the Political Police, she forms the resistance and unites troops of the army and the Dar'y.

“Blood and Rust” symbolizes creeping decay and coercion that binds people to other people as well as ideals and ideologies and does not protect them against their own and other manipulations - a political thriller in which glitter and delusion, hopes, fears, love and hate belong together and at the end a humanitarian catastrophe is waiting.

Almost forty years after the last contact with the Mother Planet Earth, the human colony on Tranthal, under the leadership of Governor Seth Adam, is holding fast to the colonial treaties that were signed two hundred years ago. These treaties insure the residents protection and technology transfer, in return for which raw materials, energy and rare chemical compounds for the earth are mined, produced and stored. Despite the broken contact and no support, Governor Adam refuses to suspend the contracts. While the standard of living declines and the colony is more despised than respected by the other peoples of the planet even after two hundred years of existence, societal and economic development is stagnant. The decades-long promised democracy would have taken place if the peoples of Dar'y, Isaris or Sin-Dar'y were kept at a distance, but instead it degraded into a gentle form of totalitarianism.

In order to fulfill the old colonial obligations, raw materials are stored near the spaceport, which are missing everywhere in the colony itself. While even their own space program must be stopped due to lack of energy and raw materials, the huge warehouses are expanded and equipped with goods that have not been collected by earth for a long time.

In a climate of stagnation, domestic pressure and a new war with the neighboring Dar'y, three young recruits are finishing their training at the prestigious military academy of the colonial capital Hallwa: Brit Darburg, daughter of the influential colonial officer Frid Darburg and a student at the Propaganda Department , Dars Poole, a dissident and extremely talented young astrophysicist, and Len Kakaia, scion of a dynasty of farmers who studies criminology and longs for the city's street canyons. Both of them love Brit, in their own unique ways. However, Brit, who has a direct lineage back to the Earth on her mother's side, loves the state and the colony, and she firmly believes in Governor Adam.

Together, they start their journey into the world after graduation. A world that is not only determined by politics and religion, but also marked by a powerful military-political complex and sacrosanct hierarchies, intercultural conflicts and economic disputes, at the end of which not only life, as they know, but also their very personal Ideals, hopes and fears are put to the test. A world where politicians, religious leaders and serious criminals are pulling the strings and many will lose far more than their faith in the colony.

Not even two hundred years after its founding the earthly colony on Tranthal is only a shadow of its former self. Instead of bringing democracy and prosperity to the peoples of the planet, it sinks into agony and political intrigue. Governor Seth Adam is spreading false hopes, even though the contact with the Earth has been broken for forty years. As before, raw materials are produced and hoarded at the spaceport that the population lacks. More and more people are wondering why nothing is done against the perceptible decline. Taking advantage of a moment of weakness, Dar'y's neighboring tribes are venturing a massive assault on the colonial territory as the recruit of the new military year celebrates its completion in Hallwa, its capital.

Brit Darburg, daughter of one of the highest government officials, believes in her own propaganda and volunteers for war with her friends Len Kakaia and Dars Poole, against her father’s warning. Soon they face a dreaded and despised culture, which, however, does not appear as foreign as initially thought.

"Blood and Ore" shows the vitality and close emotional ties between many of the still unpolished figures of this war drama as they set out into the world.

Almost forty years after the last contact with the Mother Planet Earth, the human colony on Tranthal, under the leadership of Governor Seth Adam, is holding fast to the colonial treaties that were signed two hundred years ago. These treaties insure the residents protection and technology transfer, in return for which raw materials, energy and rare chemical compounds for the earth are mined, produced and stored. Despite the broken contact and no support, Governor Adam refuses to suspend the contracts. While the standard of living declines and the colony is more despised than respected by the other peoples of the planet even after two hundred years of existence, societal and economic development is stagnant. The decades-long promised democracy would have taken place if the peoples of Dar'y, Isaris or Sin-Dar'y were kept at a distance, but instead it degraded into a gentle form of totalitarianism.

In order to fulfill the old colonial obligations, raw materials are stored near the spaceport, which are missing everywhere in the colony itself. While even their own space program must be stopped due to lack of energy and raw materials, the huge warehouses are expanded and equipped with goods that have not been collected by earth for a long time.

In a climate of stagnation, domestic pressure and a new war with the neighboring Dar'y, three young recruits are finishing their training at the prestigious military academy of the colonial capital Hallwa: Brit Darburg, daughter of the influential colonial officer Frid Darburg and a student at the Propaganda Department , Dars Poole, a dissident and extremely talented young astrophysicist, and Len Kakaia, scion of a dynasty of farmers who studies criminology and longs for the city's street canyons. Both of them love Brit, in their own unique ways. However, Brit, who has a direct lineage back to the Earth on her mother's side, loves the state and the colony, and she firmly believes in Governor Adam.

Together, they start their journey into the world after graduation. A world that is not only determined by politics and religion, but also marked by a powerful military-political complex and sacrosanct hierarchies, intercultural conflicts and economic disputes, at the end of which not only life, as they know, but also their very personal Ideals, hopes and fears are put to the test. A world where politicians, religious leaders and serious criminals are pulling the strings and many will lose far more than their faith in the colony.