The Kingdom of Ithaca

In the Odyssey of Homer, Odysseus sought above all to return home to Ithaca. The various humans on the Longshot vessel Odyssey found themselves a home when Earth was not welcoming. The beautiful planet had vast alien structures and a cool yet pleasant climate. Bound by a shared sense of dedication, they, like Odysseus, would defend their home to the death.

Project Methuselah

"Methuselah lived one hundred and eighty-seven years, and became the father of Lamech.

Then Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two years after he became the father of Lamech, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died. "

Genesis 5:25-27

The story of Ithaca begins with Dr. Abigail Halliwell, a leading research in the transhuman research field. She was a lower-level researcher with Brazilian group that later formed the Magnates, but she was fired for refusing to let them proceed with unethical experiments. She shared their desire to make a more perfect human, but her Christianity and ethical conscience would not let her fall into the trap of making people into machines. Her goal was to improve on the corrupted human condition, and make something like the legendary antediluvian humans. Beyond a long life, she desired to slow aging itself, so that a person would not be physically mature until they were much older. There were also minor physical improvements and considerable selection for memory, intellect, and imagination.

Her work attracted a wide range of backers. A number of prominent leaders in the Evangelical Christian movement endorsed her work, and her ideas became prominent among the conservative wing of transhuman enhancement. Her emphasis on making people ideal for families was quite popular. Her movement also began attracting satellite groups who shared her vision of enhancement without the ensuing libertine ideology. There were chivalrous knights, Orthodox Jews, and even a heft contribution from the Government of Singapore. All came together to start Project Methuselah.

The first children were born to parents who knew they would be old when their children grew up. This started the trend of extreme protectiveness toward Project children, which continues in modern Ithaca. While not afraid to discipline them, modern Ithacans react disproportionately violently to threats to children. Informally sometimes called "Abbies", the children were educated in private Project schools until they were old enough to safe on their own. As the majority of the Abbies came of age, the excesses of the Brazilians began to come to the light, and Dr. Halliwell was threatened for her past work with the transgene systems and her later research with a old collaborator on creating specialist bioroids, which she never implement. The Project had enough political power to keep her out of harms way, but only just. Many of their allies on the right had left them adrift, and the politics of the era seemed to be turning against them. The time had come to act.

The Odyssey Expedition

It is said that Dr. Halliwell copied her all of her findings and left them as a legacy to her children before going to the Posthumans - a trip from which she never returned. It is known that the Odyssey appeared with a first-generation FTL drive not long after her disappearance, and the colonists boarded the ship, as if it were a modern Ark. Most government were glad to be rid of them, but they brought with a lot of people from all walks of life, and a vast group of children.

The trip through space was long, but they had cold sleep. When they arrived at the world, they rejoiced, for they had a planet of wonders. Mysterious Precursor structures dotted the surface, and the climate was ideal. The leaders of the expedition, including the ship captain, took up leadership roles in what would later become the nobility of Ithaca. Everyone had to work, especially the leaders, setting the precedent for the service nobility of the future.

They set to work rapidly, they ran into a problem early on. Ithaca's population was growing too slowly. The Project was designed for a long-term stable society, not a frontier world. This led to the production of bioroids based on Dr. Halliwell's research. While many people objected to such an unnatural process of reproduction, there simply was no other way to build up a suitable labor force. The new bioroids used specialized traits for specific tasks, though nowhere near the level of Haraway. For example, a steelworker bioroid used traits from families of steelworkers back on Earth. This origin, along with their training from birth, gives them a high value to society. They also were given full rights, a status which has remained to the present day.

The Colony of Ithaca

TBA