Life is currently very different from back then. Humans are now led by a group of people who are called the Gifted. The Gifted are more advanced humans - they have been singled out for extrarodinary abilities. Among these extraordinary abilities is wisdom, which led to the Gifted being favoured as leaders over normal people. Of course, few people in the lower ranks understood this. There was a rebellion once against the Gifted - with one problem. They couldn't claim that they could do their jobs any better than the Gifted. Their place was sealed among the reigning top of the companies by the most logical argument - meritocracy. While they were detected and traced via ancestry, their abilities were unquestionably above all the rest. Most people are under the employment of one of the large corporations. If they are not, then they are probably working with a smaller corporation whose purpose is probably to serve one of these corporations. Pirates are rare, and if any, are probably working for one of the larger corporations in secret, stealing technology and shipments from other pirates in the Alliance systems. Each corporation has immense military strength, and has roughly several hundred thousand military vessels in active service at any time. Civilian-owned vessels are few, since most corporation work is done on planets or on larger motherships, through which there is usually a corporation shuttle class ship to borrow.
Research is the current focus of each corporation. The main focus of their research is weaponry and biology. Most computers have been reduced to mainframe systems, but personal computers now come in all shapes and sizes. Military computer systems are largely unlinked, but civilian carriers do have networked systems. Biotechnology is currently the matter of the most interest, but not the furthest along.
The most advanced technology made by Terrans so far is a method to harness zero point energy. This technology is by far the most coveted in the universe - but its existence has been kept secret by the TRi and GMTi for many decades. It's discovery has been erased from Earth's records. While the scientists who played an important part in its discovery were heralded as revolutionaries, their discoveries have been changed and modified to hide the existence of this technology.
Recently, technology to create artificial wormholes has been discovered. This is hoped to one day end the Terrans reliance on the Arlt Alliance hyperspace trade gate network. However, the technology has been unsuccessful at transporting living matter for some unknown reason. As of current, the technology is being harnessed for faster-than-light communication systems. Experiments with hyperspace are still in progress - it will be needed to plug the Terran vulnerability to attack.
- to be continued -