Galactic Cybersystems Corporation

Galactic Cybersystems was a fictional megacorporation in "The History of the Galaxy" series of novels by Russian science fiction writer Andrey Livadny.

At the height of its power, Galactic Cybersystems exerted and almost-exclusive control over the markets of half of the known worlds, developing everything from combat servo-machines (i.e. mechs) for the Confederacy of Suns military to household appliances to bio-robots. Its income was measured in trillions of credits (confederate currency). No one knew what brought about the sudden end of the corporation.

The beginning

Erlik Saint-Ivo founded Galactic Cybersystems, making it a centralized enterprise from the start. He purchased a desolate world called Hermes, deemed uncolonizable due to neverending violent sand-storms covering the entire planet, and secretly built there the headquarters of the corporation - the Tower. The Tower was not only a fully-automated factory; it was also the main (and only) R&D location for Galactic Cybersystems and the home for the Saint-Ivo line, who saw themselves as nothing less than royalty. Massive defense systems were built into the Tower to allow it to fight entire fleets if need be.

The Saint-Ivo line

To preserve the secrets of the company, Erlik married his cousin Liza, and they decided not to allow any outsiders come to Hermes - their new home. So, their two children, Heinrich and Alma, were genetically modified to allow them to procreate without any ill effects for their own children.

This trick worked for nearly two generations. When André Saint-Ivo was born, his father immediately noticed his son's low intelligence level. Realizing that an "infusion" of new blood was necessary to save the family line, he refused to have a second child. Instead, André found a wife for himself on another world - Theia Mitchell. She gave André two healthy and smart sons - Aramant and John. Since Aramant was the oldest, he was groomed to become the next head of Galactic Cybersystems since early childhood. John became his mother's favorite.

While they were growing up, the company was, essentially, run by Theia Mitchell, as André Saint-Ivo was not nearly intelligent enough to be a businessman. His jealosy culminated into an attempt on her life during a visit to another planet. Declaring her dead, he secretly took her to the planet Zoroaster, where a team of genetic engineers and neurosurgeons turned her into bio-doll, who would do everything he wished. In between using her body, André kept her in stasis in a secret room in the Tower.

No Saint-Ivo family member died since Erlik - whenever their time came, they went to a top-of-the-line cryo-chamber, where their vital functions were maintained. The top priority for every active family member was to seek an eternal life for the line.

The fall

During the reign of Aramant Saint-Ivo, John spent most of his time living the life of a rich playboy, as he wanted nothing to do with Galactic Cybersystems. He even changed his name to John Mitchell Saint-Ivo to signify that he had more of his mother in him than his father. At the height of the company's power, Aramant called his brother back to the Tower and reawakened the consciousnesses of his ancestors from their slumber. He declared that, while the corporation was doing exceedingly well, they were nearing a collapse because they reached the limit of development on everything allowed by confederate law and society's morals. Aramant's plan was to give some top-secret Galactic Cybersystems technology to several dozen rival companies and then disappear from the galactic view. Those companies would pursue the lines of research and development forbidden by the society, causing both legal and armed conflicts between the Confederacy and the corporations. Eventually, he believed, the Confederacy would concede and change its stance on these fields. Then, Galactic Cybersystems would resurface and take back everything they owned to continue their reign.

While the ancestors agreed, each of them decided to eliminate any skeletons they had in each of their closets (figuratively speaking). The first of these was attempted by André Saint-Ivo's consciousness, which travelled to Theia Mitchell's secret stasis room in order to kill her. Aramant, monitoring his ancestors' activities, noticed this and stopped his father's "phantom". Horrified to learn what was done to his mother, he started the revival sequence, not knowing that Theia managed to overcome the mental safeguards imposed on her by the Zoroastran neurosurgeons. By a stroke of luck, Aramant looked exactly like his father at that age, and, not knowing how much time has passed, Theia Mitchell assumed it was André before her and killed him. Realizing what she'd done, Theia took the reserve fleet of Galactic Cybersystems and left on a path for revenge, which took her to Zoroaster.

Theia Mitchell used her fleet to perform a suicide attack on the Zoroastran defense platform, destroying it and causing its debris to rain down upon the planet's surface.

Meanwhile, John Mitchell Saint-Ivo was woken up deep in sleep, drunk, by the Tower's systems who told him he was now in charge of the company. Still in a drunken daze, John told the computer to leave him alone. Recognizing his negative as a refusal, the system moved on to the next person on the list - André Saint-Ivo, who eagerly accepted control. When John woke up, he found his brother dead and, after watching the video footage, discovered why. Enraged at his father for turning his mother into a mindless slave, John set out to kill him. However, André foresaw this, and John was met with combat robots, who nearly killed him. Somehow, John managed to crawl to the bio-robot section and downloaded his personality onto a digital matrix, before his body expired. The system then put his personality into a new bio-robot. By chance, all bio-robots looked like the founder of the company - Erlik Saint-Ivo, and, due to in-breading, so did John Mitchell Saint-Ivo. So, his physical appearance had not changed. Destroying a three-level section of the Tower, which killed his father and the ancestors, John left the Tower to pursue Theia.

Current state

Without any leadership from the Tower, Galactic Cybersystems collapsed. While the Tower itself remains on the desolate world of Hermes, it is now lifeless, its machines waiting for a Saint-Ivo to tell them what to do. No other corporation would achieve such heights as Galactic Cybersystems. The megacorporation itself is now regarded by many to be nothing more than a myth, its legacy disappearing from the face of the galaxy, save for a lone structure on an uninhabited world.

And even that symbol was destroyed when the ships of the Genesis corporation, fleeing from the Confederate fleet, engaged in a firefight with the automated defenses of the Tower. While many of the ships were lost, the damage done to the Tower by the fight (and time) have collapsed the gigantic structure. While the Tower is destroyed, many valuable secrets remain buried underneath.

External links

* [http://www.livadnyy.ru/index.php?id=64 Livadny's own website]