GenCorps

The entirety of the world’s electrical power is now created solely on the treadmills of GenPower. For shifts of up to 14 hours per day workers walk the giant treadmill generators known as the Gennies. When their toil is over they are ferried back to their utilitarian apartment blocks by maglev monorails whilst the same network of vehicles carries in the next wave of labourers. A shift’s wages are enough electric for three hours’ light, a hot meal from the food synthesiser and a few Wattcredits for use on the rickety, low-resolution printers that supply the household goods.

If they manage to put aside any credits the workers can visit one of the myriad arcades and drinking holes which cluster around the bases of the tenements. Rarely can anyone save or win enough credits to become so inebriated they miss work, and even fewer can afford to do so. GenPower tolerates these luxuries as necessary diversions from the reality of life in the GenCities.

All around the streets of the cities, broadcast on the transport systems and constantly fed into the halls of the Gennies themselves is the roar of the corporate news station. GenTV blares from speakers and screens, pummelling all with its message of total obedience and submission to the greater power, pride in work, toil for the survival of humanity and dreams of the day the world will be set right again through the power of technology. Vivid colours illuminate the daily grind of all GenPower’s workers. The families of the GenCities live, breed and die under the watchful eye and firm grip of the propaganda machine.

Power Gennies are absolutely essential to the functioning of Inworld and command considerable political influence for GenPower’s management. To protect their position from acts of sabotage and vandalism they maintain elite security forces. These 'Gencorps' officers are well equipped, well trained and fearsome adversaries. Mostly their purpose is to protect the Gennies and the settlements serving them and they are rarely found away from these sites. Occasionally, however, a Gencorps squad will be dispatched to deal with troublesome insurrectionists and meddling ReFrat groups. Very, very occasionally a Gencorps officer will be tempted into the service of the ReFrat or a very affluent Trash Runner outift, where they command a high price for their services. These rogue officers know altogether too much about the workings and security of the Gennie settlements and are ruthlessly hunted down to prevent such information falling into dangerous hands

In the hazardous climate of the outworld wastelands the GenCorps officers rely upon an intricate piece of technology, the Ohmic Tactical Suit. Complex electronic systems are woven throughout the mesh of the suit and connected to a heavy-duty power pack. Combinations of these systems can be activated and deactivated as required by the wearer, boosting their physical capabilities and powering weapons and shielding. The suits operate in tandem with the other standard piece of GenCorps kit, the Coffey Bow. This crossbow-style weapon fires small bolts at great speed by switching the polarity of electromagnetic fields. The bolts themselves, though small, can carry an electric charge in excess of 1MV which is drawn from a power supply attached to the weapon. This makes them excellent weapons for stunning subjects for later interrogation.

Within the GenCities the tasks of the GenCorps are largely routine security and keeping continual watch for any unrest among the workers. Despite the efforts of GenTV there are occasionally instances of rioting in the Genny halls, which must be supressed as quickly as possible to prevent any loss of power output. Crack GenCorps riot teams equipped with stun batons are kept on standby ready to lock down any disturbances. They wear large, heavy coats with concealed padding to protect them from the rudimentary weapons of the rioters. Their faces are shielded beneath large helmets and perforated steel visors. For added protection and crowd control the riot officers carry thick shields which they use as much as a bludgeoning weapon as to form a screen against the mob. The purpose of the riot squads are to put down any insurrection as fast and as brutally as possible. By extreme example they demonstrate that any dissention against the corporation will not be tolerated. Any participants, real or suspected, in the instigation of riotous behaviour are fair game for officer brutality or are dragged behind the squad lines and disappear.

Recruits for the GenCorps are drawn from the classes of corporation-sponsored schools which are the daily activity of all children under 15 in GenCities. At the end of their schooling the majority of children join their parents walking the Gennies but a select few are hand-picked for enrolment in the GenCorps Academy. These are the children who have most conformed to the philosophy of GenPower, are least questioning and most obedient. Quiet, shy children are regularly singled-out whilst, at the other end of the spectrum, those who dominate and bully their classmates are also earmarked for the Corps. Training is a 5-year period, during which recruits will be split into areas of specialism. Most male recruits end up in the riot control and supervisory roles whilst most female recruits become field officers and take up positions of leadership. GenCorps recruits are forbidden from having any contact with their parents and families after they are enlisted. If parents decide to withdraw their children from the corporation schools they are treated with suspicion and may disappear for questioning, leaving the children to be moved to corporation orphanages and residential schools. Here their indoctrination is stepped up and the majority of recruits for the GenCorps come from these children of ‘traitors’.

GenPower has powerful enemies, many Inworld politicians are resentful of its monopoly on electricity. Outworld, where the noisy, smelly GenCities are based, GenPower competes with the other big supply organisation, the Recycling Fraternity. The Gennies and CycCentres glare at one another across the wasteland, reluctantly acknowledging their reliance upon one another and hating that knowledge of dependency. Michaela Vaughan, the CEO of GenPower, is a hardened veteran of the negotiating table and rules both her organisation and much of Inworld’s puppet government with an iron grip. Nevertheless, the greatest threat to GenPower is not the ReFrat or jealous Inworld bureaucrats. Their biggest enemy is a small but growing grass-roots revolutionary movement calling themselves the Luddites.