BY LETTER
Caneshe Habitat
History > 0030 to 0900 AT: Solsys Era > 130 to 400 AT: The Interplanetary Age
Technology > Application > Infrastructure
Galactography > Other Major Polities, Empires, and Meta-Empires > Solsys Organization
Technology > Application > Infrastructure
Galactography > Other Major Polities, Empires, and Meta-Empires > Solsys Organization
Habitat in Solsys mostly inhabited by Provolved Dogs |
 Image from Steve Bowers |
Caneshe Habitat (Gnasher Habitat)
Sol System: Orbiting Earth/Sun L1 point
The BFOML
The Best Friend of Man League was established in 570 AT after the Technocalypse shocked the Solar System. These concerned citizens were appalled at the indiscriminate nature of the attacks, and outraged that no contingency plans had been made to ensure the safety of humanity's mind children, the provolved Dogs. After all, these creatures had been created in the laboratory to be mankind's companions and assistants, but whenever danger threatened, as often as not provolved animals were abandoned or given low priority during evacuation and rescue operations. In particular, the relatively numerous provolved Dogs were left behind in regions and habitats which had been attacked by biological warfare agents, as the Dogs were often immune to those agents.The founder of the League, Jo Shabalala, obtained a small abandoned orbiting habitat at the edge of Cisluna space, one which had been abandoned after the deaths of most of the construction crew from Malicious Viral Agent M34 in 568. Hundreds, then thousands of provolved Dog refugees were brought or made their own way to this half-finished refuge. The elected leader of the Dogs, Rufus from Copernicus (a former inhabitant of Luna) gave the habitat the name Caneshe, named after a dog in ancient Latin literature (literally 'gnasher'). However the interior of the habitat was bare metal, and the Dogs found it inhospitable. The League constructed a VASIMR drive unit for the habitat, and it was moved out of Cisluna space into solar orbit, where some abandoned near-Earth object mines provided enough material to landscape the inner surface of this single cylinder.
Caneshe became a centre into research and development into hand tech, robotic limbs and independently operating robot servants which accompanied the Caneshan Dogs everywhere, allowing them to manipulate their environment at least as easily as a human being.
The Expulsion Era
51 years after the founding of the refuge the majority of the population of Earth, humans, provolves and artificials, were forced to leave the planet by the emerging AI God GAIA. Many thousands more provolves and their human sympathisers found their way to Caneshe Habitat, until it was desperately overcrowded. The facilities constructed by the League for the production of artificial meat were inadequate, and the population began to starve. Rocky of Caneshe, the leader of the habitat at that time, used the last of the habitat's resources to match orbits with the near-Earth object 2421 EJ65, hoping to expand the food production facilities using the material from this small asteroid.These plans did not take into account the fact that this asteroid was already inhabited, by equally desperate human refugees from Earth. At this time most provolved Dogs were still very reluctant to attack humans, who were regarded as honorary pack alphas, and revered as the creators of the talking Dog species. But the human members of the League had no such qualms, and persuaded the Dogs to fight, winning the asteroid after a short battle. So it was that the fearsome reputation of Gnasher Habitat began to grow.
After the Dark Age that followed the Great Expulsion, the foundation of the First Federation offered hope of a new peace in the Solar System. The militant Dogs of Caneshe and their handlers became a noisy faction in the new order, campaigning for the rights of provolves and other sentients. At the height of the Federation's wealth and power the Caneshan Hantec Inc megacorp funded an independent colony mission to a Sun-like star 79 ly away, HD 114853, where the provolve colony of Rufus was founded in 1899 AT.
Hantec Inc collapsed due to financial irregularities during the decline of the First Federation; the Dog population of Caneshe declined after this time, while the habitat itself was reconstructed to become more spacious. For millennia the habitat continued as a sparsely settled relic at the Earth-Sun L4 point, but in 8356 it was moved to the L1 swarm to facilitate the creation of the Amazonia Orwood. Today it is, in part, a pilgrimage site for many Dogs, as well as a living museum; it has a mixed population of nearbaseline humans, Dogs and rianths of various kinds.
Related Articles
Appears in Topics
Development Notes
Text by Steve Bowers
Initially published on 23 June 2009.
Initially published on 23 June 2009.
