SSC

“You already contain perfection. Welcome to the future of humanity: You, by Smith-Shimano.”

Digital Existence and Physical Focus

Smith-Shimano Corpro is the second most powerful corpro-state in the galaxy. Unlike Harrison Armory and IPS-N, it holds little physical territory and doesn’t practice colonial missions in the traditional sense. SSC’s physical holdings are dwarfed by its omninet presence and its ubiquity across the Cosmopolita and Diaspora.
SSC rose to prominence during the Second Expansion Period. It rapidly dominated the Core market for biological and cybernetic enhancements in the heyday of Union’s liberal, pre-Deimos transhumanism. Following the Deimos Event, the First Contact Accords, and the ensuing crackdown on machine-mind creation and ontologic and singularity- focused experimentation, SSC adopted amore “natural” philosophy toward human enhancement. Instead of pursuing the marriage of human consciousness and artificial intelligence, SSC researchers began to focus on improving the bodies we live in; instead of negating the need to step to the stars, they sought to make it so we could step among the stars.
SSC’s corporeal research pushes the edges of what it means to be human. Cybernetic enhancements, subdermal nettings, aural communicators, neuroneutral omnihooks, ontologic bridges, cosubjectivity nodes, Panacea glands – the list is exhausting, and that only covers the tech designed by the Foreign Bodies Department of SSC’s massive research and development program, not to mention the wide portfolio of goods developed by artisan enclaves and masterwork fabricators associated with SSC worlds. The backbone of SSC’s power is demonstrated in the form of its own citizens, a population of millions spread across a constellation of moons, worlds, stations, and habitats in the Sierra Madre Line. The social and genetic composition of these populations is monitored and precisely cultivated using cultural suggestion, infrastructural guidance, and societal coercion. SSC’s goal is to produce best-fit genetic material for the corpro’s bigmanna buyers: colony firms looking to license bespoke populations for as-yet-unexploited worlds.

Campuses

SSC’s home campus is a shared virtual space in the omninet that connects the wide, anarchic net of SSCaligned worlds and moons into one cohesive body: the Constellar Congress, or, the Constellar. Worlds with membership in the Constellar – those directly administered by SSC, which are few in number, and worlds that administer themselves, but whose populations are genetic constituents of SSC and choose to associate with the corpro-state, which are far more numerous – are the “Constellar Worlds” that comprise SSC’s “population”. The Constellar Congress is shielded by layers of security coding (including hypersolipsistic, anticausal, and paradox-generating safeguards) managed by NHPs seeded from proprietary subjectivities and tightly administered by ranks of Constellar bureaucrats. This well-defended virtual state and represents the bleeding edge of organic/ synthetic virtual interfacing.
The Constellar Congress’s virtual campus is represented as a palatial, many-chambered estate where the representatives of SSC’s populations meet in virtual space. The building does not appear to have a counterpart in realspace, though it is often suggested that its architectural inspiration comes from a building on SSC’s first colony world, Opal, rendered inhospitable following bitter civil violence in the First Expansion Period.
Realspace SSC campuses exist across the Sierra Madre Line, providing similar services to embassies and medical centers for the corpro-state’s member populations. These embassies are uplinks for SSC’s private omninode, publicly accessible to the populations of these Constellar Worlds.

Worlds of SSC

Worlds under SSC’s direct control are dramatic in their environmental variance. They include everything from lightly developed atmospheric moons through to arcadian worlds. In all cases, their populations are tightly controlled through deep cultural manipulation to generate biome-specific lines of colony seed materiel. The people of these worlds are aware of SSC’s mission; they are freely associated members of the corpro-state, most of whom are as invested in its mission – literally – and are generally unconcerned with SSC’s human experimentation projects. Save for regular, culturally-appropriate samplings of geneticmaterial (a few hairs, a drop of blood, a swab from inside the mouth) and an expectation of arranged coupling, life on Constellar Worlds is unremarkable and quiet. Most Constellar populations view the Constellar Congress and its myriad environments as their primary cultural space, not whatever realspace world on which they reside.

Genetics

Despite SSC's use of Constellar worlds as advertisements for the quality of genome available for license, these worlds remain only that – advertisements. SSC does not sell people; according to its marketing, it sells potential. Cells and data are at the heart of the SSC’s business, not whole persons or populations. The corpro-state’s power comes from the cultivation of best-fit, healthy genetic material for colonial projects, medical and military applications, and private use.
To expand its libraries of genetic stock, SSC regularly mounts expeditions into all sectors of space with the goal of seeking out new and interesting populations. The recruitment and marketing materials carried by SSC representatives leans heavily on the benefits of immigration to SSC worlds: they are, the messaging declares, your ideal paradise.
SSC is also known for luxury consumer goods and machinery. Elegant ships, mechanized chassis, and hardsuits for the discerning Metropolitan, Cosmopolitan, and Diasporan. Fabrics and materials that feel perfect against the owner’s skin; cybernetic and biological enhancements that will never fail or be rejected by the body; flash-grown internals and extremities – insurance, should the worst happen. SSC’s LUX-Iconic line of consumer goods is bespoke down to the atom, crafted specifically for the purchaser of that ship, chassis, suit, or bottle of wine. There’s only one of you in the galaxy – shouldn’t there be only one of these?
What little of SSC’s power doesn’t derive from its genetic libraries comes from the licensing of luxury goods, cybernetics, and biological lines to Diasporan cultures, colonial missions, Cosmopolitan groups, and powerful private individuals.

The average galactic citizen knows SSC as a luxury brand that brings value to the material world through craft and expertise. SSC’s advertisements emphasize the hand-designed nature of its products and the long-cycle growth of its biologicals. Officially, SSC considers printing a necessary evil, suitable for making the goods the masses need, but not the perfect, unique items their clients deserve.