Sane Science: Dr Dafydd Ross

Known to his colleagues as Daff-Ross, he was born in England to the Welsh and Scottish parents. Born young and healthy in the early 1960s, he was soon recognised as a genius intellect, surpassing many of the most famous scientists in history. However, he was an angry young man and rather than pursue scientific studies, he joined the Army. In the early 80s, he was in Germany when the Hanover Incursion occurred, an rogue East German attempt to conquer West Germany. The Socialist Unity party had been infiltrated by Neo-Nazi entryists, and while the USSR co-operated with NATO in defeating the rogue fascist state, it left large parts of Europe ravaged by war, particularly Poland, Czechoslovakia but especially West Germany and Austria. Daff-Ross was caught in an East German attack on Frankfurt. He was caught in a gas attack, a victim of an experimental nerve gas and mustard gas synthesis. Miraculously, he survived. But his body was ravaged and mutilated. Blinded and crippled, some proposed it may be kinder to kill him. But he fought on and came out the other side. He claimed to have been overcome by a vision. From the first day he awoke, he was a new man.

No longer was Ross a tortured soul. Confined to a bed, all but one of his limbs amputated and his eyes useless, he restarted his studies. Within five years, he was a doctor in medical and engineering fields. He had garnered the attentions of the British government at this point. War was coming. The USSR had been forced to annex the Warsaw Pact to sufficiently oversee reconstruction, and an EEC increasingly dominated by a so-called Latin Alliance, brought Europe to the brink of earth-shattering conflict. They drafted Ross to the new Intelligence Taskforce, a military-scientific division. With a team of highly skilled scientists under him, he oversaw a series of astonishing weapon and medical innovations, which equally killed and saved thousands of people. He continually worked to improve himself. By the end of the 80s, he had replaced most of his failing organs with cybernetic versions (which would later to be replicated in the battlefield), returned his mobility with a form of highly sophisticated wheelchair, and had even returned his sight by hooking a robotic eye directly into the sensory part of his brain. He worked to increase his own intelligence by building computer banks into his mobility device which integrated into his own cerebral cortex, enhancing his own computing capacity.

With new energy, he began his most vital work as war between East and West broke out. His inventions prevented nuclear war from destroying the planet, but tactical weapons left a great deal of the continent as dust. The war continued for decades, biological and chemical weapons were flung with abandon, populations in the warring states withdrew into enormous and impregnable dome fortress-cities, while the area outside became a blasted wasteland. Beyond the Global North, states collapsed into chaos and warlordism.

Daff-Ross continually searched for the war-winning weapon, ruthlessly devoted to his cause. But it came to late. He realised that despite the protections he had erected, the combination of fallout, engineered plagues and mutagens were already starting a runaway mutation in the human race in the vicinity of the warzone. Realising that if he stuck doggedly to the cause of destroying the Communists, then the human race was condemned to either extinction or a squalid existence as barely continent mutants, he performed a coup, using the vast resources accorded to his department to seize control of the British state. He issued a warning to all states in the world. He had designed the dome-fortresses, and he had also designed a weapon to destroy them. He told the nations of Earth that if they could not sit around a table and discuss peace, he would destroy their only safeguard. The Soviets laughed at his threats, so he wiped Leningrad off the map. A retaliatory strike was swatted out of the sky with contempt. When the Americans urged him to use his weapon to destroy the Reds, he destroyed Houston. Both sides begrudgingly sat around the table.

Ross explained his discoveries and showed them the results of test subjects and actual specimens from the supposedly impregnable cities. He warned that the mutation was already too far gone in most of the Northern Hemisphere, and that further war would guarantee its spread. Disgusted and horrified, both sides agreed to a truce. Daff-Ross was put in charge of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, a new operation which at this point was the only really active part of the UN. Here, he sought to build a life-support system for those humans who were mutated, and also on mutagens and treatments which could restrain the worst of their deformities and irregularities.

The result was the birth of a cybernetic race. Thanks to the fortress-cities, entire populations could be converted with ease. He based the life support system on his own, and the biological modifications were largely behavioural. After his death in 2010, about half of the population in the warring region had been converted. Essentially reproduction after that point became more one of cloning and gene-splicing with artificial wombs, than one of sexual reproduction. The UNIT and the Science-Dictatorship of Great Britain became the core of a truly global state, which retained a wide autonomy for member states. In reality, North and South remained divided, but with the South still ruled by baseline humans, and the North responsible for their own mutilation, the World Parliament was swift to implement redistributive programmes.

It is now 2063, one hundred years since Daff-Ross' birth. The World Government's Golden Age of the United Earth ended a couple of decades ago, and new Great Powers extend their control and undermine the World Government. UNIT remains universally respected, and Daff-Ross is pretty much the most universally adulated human being in history. His cyborg creations became ever more sophisticated and are now able to survive without a steely shell between them and the outside world, and while rather reptilian (and occasionally mollusc-ish) in appearance, they are humanoid. Most of their organs are still mechanical and they remain reliant on a wide array of drugs to keep homeostasis, but there are great hopes for the future. But the areas once occupied by their states are pretty much abandoned, too ruined by war for the World Government Reconstruction to ever be effectively be carried out. The cyborgs found new homes, and their modifications have headed in different directions since then. It is partly this lack of universality amongst the 'Daff-ics' which has led to the break down of the World Government. In recent years, the descendants of these refugees have resurrected their old national identities and reconstructed cultures. They even agitate UNIT for more research into the reconstruction of gametes and sexual reproduction. Their 'host governments' have sponsored very monitored recolonisation which is another thing which has worsened international relations, as they are widely seen as deliberate colonialism.

The greatest powers are in Africa and the Middle East. South and East Asia were fairly ravaged and have either suffered what the West and East did or had to undergo considerable reconstruction, or in the case of some more advanced economies were flooded by terrified refugees. Latin America is something of a rising force. Ravaged by conflict for decades, the large American diaspora is returning home, and with them comes great opportunities for Latin America. While the great African states vie for power over the weaker, and the Latin Americans scramble for control of North America, Australia-New Zealand lays claim to most of Europe. Most of the 'clean' Europeans fled to relatively undamaged New Zealand and later Australia, and via these exile communities (and quite a few Daffics) they lay claim to being the rightful successors to a lot of old European governments and claim the attendant territories across the globe. Such Diasporas with hegemonic goals are fairly common nowadays and represents the biggest bone of contention between the clashing governments.

Science is hugely advanced and 'survival protocols' mean a great deal of the Solar System has seen a manned presence. The Moon and Mars are being colonised, under the auspices of the World Government, but increasingly are being undermined by international competition. But despite all these disagreements, peace reigns and continues to reign. Sheer lack of resources has slowed progress and in some fields (such as weaponry) has set it back by some decades).