Revision [288]
This is an old revision of Av2RealWorldCorporationsAndAgencies made by ConradWong on 2010-10-05 23:30:25.
Corporations
Avatars LLC - still the world's largest VR gaming company; as of 2064, it was estimated 1.2% of the world population subscribed to their game. However they were set back significantly by the Breakdown of 2065, and Dantech is catching up fast. In the corporate world, Avatars LLC is well known for its proprietary GESTALT AI that gives it an edge over all other companies for enormous simulations: besides their signature VR game, they also support number of military and scientific research programs, such as a next-generation weather modification program for cleaning up the Ecoclysm's fallout.
Programmable Matter Corporation - a company acquired by Avatars LLC for their electron simulation algorithms, among other technologies. Dr. Blake Forester, later implicated in a number of missing persons and murder charges, was one of the researchers transferred.
Dantech is a multinational that produces computers and software. Their product line ranges from VR goggles and PDAs to high-density archives for libraries and universities, all the way up to quantum AI cores, though they haven't managed to duplicate Avatars LLC's unique GESTALT AI as yet. Their new gaming division is headlined by the Gloaming, which has become the second most popular VR game in the world with an estimated 0.8% of the population subscribing, and they predict it will pass Avatars in the next few years.
Reality Check is a small company operating in the North Bend area, operated by Jason Edwards. For a modest fee, they will check your company's security and advise on how to fix any vulnerabilities revealed.
Government Agencies
There are entire worldwide government agencies tasked with the protection of Earth's ecology, physical and virtual. Among these are:
Internet Consumer Protection (ICP), which enforces spam prevention and prosecutes commercial fraud, sometimes with armed response teams.
Cybercrime Emergency Response Team (CERT), tasked with stopping runaway AIs and other threats that could escalate into a collapse of the Net.
Human Individuality Enforcement (HIE) has been romanticized for its Clone Detectors, security forces that go after suspected clones and "replicants" (androids built to exactly resemble people in order to take over their identities). The actual majority of their work is in airports and Tower checkpoints where they check papers and validate people's identities as they pass through to the megacorporate offices.
United States - still exists as a government, and still employs thousands of people across the country in a variety of agencies, including fire and police departments, but it has had to delegate a lot of its authority and its ability to collect taxes to corporations - it's simply stretched too thin to be everywhere at once. As a result, some megacorporation armies may rival the strength that the US could assemble in a given place - but that's them putting everything they have there, since they don't have to save troops for defense from other countries.
New York Police Department - tasked with law enforcement in the greater area of New York and New Jersey, of which North Bend is part. In practice, the corporate security in the Towers and the Districts handle petty crimes there and it's a matter of pride with them not to have to do more than ask the NYPD to come by and pick up a perp, so the investigations and patrols the NYPD carries out are mainly in the Works, and very occasionally in the Dregs when evidence of a murderer are just too numerous and blatant to ignore.
