Tom had heard all this from Neil. Even though they were on opposite sides of the World War III conflict, Dominion Agra backed Harbinger’s patent, and Harbinger backed Dominion Agra’s patent. It was only natural, his dad claimed. Dominion Agra could brush off criticisms of its monopoly on food by pointing to the other culprit—the company with a monopoly on water. They justified each other’s existences. And besides, it wasn’t like anyone in a position of power in the world actually wanted to break their monopolies. Every politician hoped to get a job in a Coalition company once they were through with public office.

“And now,” Cromwell said, “this brings us to what happened in the Middle East thirty-three years ago. This conflict had been coming for a long time. It was the last show of mass resistance against the centralization of global authority. As influence in the rest of the world became more concentrated in the hands of a worldwide business community, it went the opposite direction in the Middle East. Traditional authoritarian leaders were being replaced by representative governments. These societies resisted the idea of respecting the patents of either Dominion Agra or Harbinger. Because the resistance was at the street level—a societal refusal to play by the same rules as the rest of the world—it was determined that we would address the problem at the street level. With neutron bombs.”

Tom knew the rest. It was the last time United States and Chinese militaries worked together on anything. They carpet bombed most of the Middle East with neutron bombs, weapons of mass death that killed people but left buildings. Every regional resource remained intact, available, ready to be purchased on the free market. The Coalition companies had already divided the resources up among themselves. They cleared the 1.3 billion dead bodies ruining the view. Rumor had it, Dominion Agra and Harbinger were the first companies to open new offices in the region.

There were protests, Neil told him, but they simply were ignored or forcibly dispersed. And most people reacted to the genocide with a dull outrage that soon turned to apathy and finger pointing. Everyone blamed someone else. The few people in public office who suggested Dominion Agra and Harbinger had spurred their countries into committing a crime against humanity were quickly replaced by better-funded politicians willing to look the other way.

It was another thing everybody seemed to feel angry about, but no one lifted a finger to act upon. His dad used to bring it up in his angry rants at the morning commuter crowd, usually while people scurried past him and tried to avoid him. Tom wondered suddenly where Neil had been sleeping this last month or whether he’d managed to win a few games in the last weeks. It occurred to him suddenly, for the first time, that he really had no way of finding out.

“We’re not here to discuss ethics,” Major Cromwell went on. “That’s not our job here. We’re discussing tactics, and I ask you to examine the bombing in purely tactical terms: the resistance came from the ordinary people, and neutron bombs targeted ordinary people. The weapons were suited to the nature of the conflict, and they destroyed none of the infrastructure that would hinder the repopulation of the region. One of the founding goals of the Coalition of Multinationals, in fact, was to see the Middle East revived as a region.”

Tom slouched down in his seat. All he knew was, the Coalition of Multinationals—the twelve most powerful companies in the world, including Dominion Agra and Harbinger—united their power after the neutron bombing campaign. They did it, or so they claimed, to serve as a “privatized” version of the UN and prevent more neutron bomb–type incidents. But Neil always said they really did it because they’d just gotten away with something so horrendous, it convinced them they could get away with almost anything, as long as they united their power and held financial sway over every major government in the world. Together, the twelve multinationals had the money and the influence to do just that. Between them, they could buy and sell every country on the planet.

“After that bombing campaign, the Coalition assumed a foremost role in global governance,” Cromwell said, “which lasted until the famous splintering of their alliance. One lingering consequence of the Global Collapse was the devaluation of currencies worldwide. Precious metals soared in value, and the Earth’s reserves had been mined to near exhaustion. Nobridis Incorporated was the first company to turn eyes toward space. They wanted official backing from our government so they could receive taxpayer funding, so they petitioned our Congress for the first bid to the territory. This insulted the Chinese, who argued that the United States didn’t possess the unilateral authority to grant a claim to a territory in space. When our Congress granted Nobridis that claim, China retaliated by awarding the exact same territory to Stronghold Energy. It was a symbolic gesture, but it started everything.”

She flipped to an image of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. It was relatively close to Earth and one of the most potent, resource-laden areas of the solar system, which meant it was the most fiercely contested. Tom had seen so many news clips of skirmishes in the asteroid belt that they all blurred together.

“Various companies in the Coalition sided with Nobridis and the United States, while others sided with Stronghold and China. Soon the Coalition itself was split down the middle, every company on one side or another of the Nobridis-Stronghold conflict. Whereas before, these multinational conglomerates spread their influence throughout the world, a new trend arose when they began concentrating on holding financial sway over certain governments and not others. Our allied multinationals stopped sending funds to China or Russia and concentrated instead on sending them to India and America. The other half of the Coalition did the reverse. In this way, a fight between Nobridis and Stronghold turned first into a struggle between two halves of the Coalition and then into a new space race between the Indo-American and Russo-Chinese alliances—and soon into World War III.”

She flipped to an image of a shipyard in space. “Within a decade, territory was claimed throughout the solar system when one side or the other established a physical presence. Establishing ‘a presence’ means introducing a mining facility, a shipyard, sometimes just a single satellite. But the conflict mounted when the Chinese seized an Indo-American–affiliated platinum mine in the asteroid belt. After this, the conflict evolved into a true war. Not a war in any classical sense, of course. There are no civilian casualties, no bombs, no deaths. Authority over our planet isn’t even in dispute, since the warring companies of the Coalition still work together to shape the global agenda for governments worldwide. But out in space, all bets are off.”

She flipped to an image of a traditional pilot boarding a jet plane. “The first fighters were pilots in the Air Force who remotely controlled the ships in space. They couldn’t keep up with the preprogrammed maneuvers of the Russo-Chinese machines, so they were phased out. Many believed combat had evolved beyond the participation of human soldiers. Both sides switched to fully automated attack fleets. These automated arsenals waged the war until the first Intrasolar Combatants appeared on the Russo-Chinese side. With the advent of neural processors, human beings could finally hold their own against mechanized forces. The presence of human fighters had another benefit, because they added a personal element to the war, and this was exactly what the American public needed to remain invested in the fight.”