Current Year: 2187 AD
Primary Setting: Commonwealth City
Alternate Names (by era): The Platform, The Civic Array, The Unowned City
Commonwealth City is 180 years old.
It is stable.
It is functional.
It is not at peace.
The City has survived:
The collapse of corporate sovereignty
Two American civil wars
A global world war
Climate destabilization
The failure of multiple economic systems
The normalization of post-human life
What it has not survived is certainty.
In 2187:
Survival is guaranteed, but meaning is not
Power is distributed, but never evenly
Ownership is abolished, but influence thrives
History exists—but is filtered, debated, and weaponized
This is not the end of history.
It is what history looks like when it refuses to resolve.
2007 — Initial Construction Begins
Construction starts on a massive offshore urban platform off the coast of New York.
Publicly, it is a climate resilience and flood mitigation project.
Privately, it is a testbed for:
Autonomous logistics
Modular housing
Privatized infrastructure governance
Early designs assume:
Corporate ownership
Tiered access
Subscription-based survival services
No one calls it a city yet.
2010s–2020s
The Platform expands steadily:
Automated ports
Self-contained energy systems
AI-assisted transit modeling
Experimental housing blocks
It attracts:
Engineers
Logistics firms
Data infrastructure contractors
Climate refugees priced out of the mainland
The seeds of later conflict are already embedded:
Survival systems are owned.
Early 2030s
The United States fractures along overlapping fault lines:
Federal authority vs. regional autonomy
Corporate sovereignty vs. public legitimacy
Climate migration vs. closed borders
The Platform becomes strategically critical:
Offshore
Self-sustaining
Defensible
Logistically indispensable
2032–2038 — The Second American Civil War
Not a single war, but dozens:
State-level secessions
Corporate-backed security conflicts
Infrastructure sabotage campaigns
Data warfare and narrative collapse
The Platform declares operational neutrality.
It continues to feed people.
That decision saves lives—and creates enemies.
Late 2030s
As mainland governance destabilizes, the Platform begins acting autonomously:
Independent logistics arbitration
Neutral transit corridors
Emergency housing guarantees
This is the first time survival is offered without allegiance.
2040s — World War III
WWIII is not fought primarily with nukes.
It is fought with:
Infrastructure denial
Climate weaponization
Data collapse
Proxy conflicts
Economic annihilation
Nation-states fall.
Corporations rise—and then eat each other.
The Platform survives because:
It cannot be blockaded easily
Its systems are distributed
No single owner can shut it down without killing everyone inside
2047 — The Ownership Crisis
A coordinated attempt is made to seize the Platform’s infrastructure rights.
It fails catastrophically.
The result:
Millions dead elsewhere
The Platform flooded with refugees
Corporate ownership declared untenable
This is the moment the old world dies.
2055 — The Unowned Charter
After prolonged internal crisis, the Platform’s governing bodies issue a declaration:
No individual, corporation, or state may own systems required for survival.
Housing.
Energy.
Food distribution.
Healthcare.
Transit.
Core data architecture.
Ownership is replaced with stewardship.
The Platform becomes The Unowned City.
Immediate Consequences
Corporate flight
Violent resistance
Sabotage attempts
Economic shock
The City almost collapses.
It doesn’t.
Because people refuse to leave.
This era produces most of the institutions known today.
Assembly Secretariat formalizes procedural governance
Civic Systems Authority (CSA) emerges to prevent systemic collapse
Maintenance Corps unify infrastructure labor
Block Councils form to handle street-level reality
Patchwork Clinics arise where policy fails medicine
Mistakes are made.
Some are buried.
Some are reframed.
This is when the Continuity Forum is founded—officially to preserve history.
Unofficially, to stabilize narrative.
Survival is no longer the question.
Meaning is.
Neon Row explodes culturally
The Pulse Union organizes attention itself
Mirror Syndicates appear as identity becomes inescapable
The Data Ombuds are created after surveillance scandals
Freeholders reject the City entirely
Commons Projects test alternative collectivisms
Externally, the City becomes infamous.
Not because it is perfect.
Because it works well enough.
In the last 25 years:
External Interests intensify pressure
Technocratic drift accelerates
Cultural fragmentation increases
Ideological confidence erodes
The City has not fallen.
But it is no longer young enough to believe it cannot.
Not all of this is taught the same way.
Some events are:
Contextualized
Softened
Reframed
De-emphasized
Actively debated
Different factions tell different versions.
The City allows this.
Because enforced certainty would break it faster than disagreement ever could.
The Unowned City was not born from idealism.
It was born from failure.
It exists because every other system proved worse at keeping people alive.
In 2187 AD, the City still stands.
Not because it solved history—
—but because it learned how to survive it.
And the question facing everyone inside it now is the same one history always asks:
What do you do next, once survival is no longer the problem?