The government of the Great Lakes Union is a paternalistic oligarchy run by a Council of Eight. The leader, Julian Armitage, an androgynous Human 2.0 with a mastery of double talk and euphemistic rhetoric, espouses doctrines of socialist equality and concern for the well being of the masses, while enriching the handful of mega corporations that support the Council Regime behind the scenes. Their headquarters is the old Madison, Wisconsin, now a militarized bureaucratic zone accessible only by those with government clearance.
The Council’s solution to the problems created by the post civil war inner city chaos and crime has been to create “cordoned zones”, walled off from the rest of the population, to isolate the criminal, and poorer elements from the rest of the population, and to abandon large swaths of rural areas as “non enforcement areas” left to the whims of the nomadic raiders. This allows for the concentration of law enforcement dollars on the wealthier and more economic important areas at the expense of the rest.
The urban areas are divided. Green Zones are protected by government run police or top notch security firms, They are reserved for people with important jobs, high credit scores, and/ or limited criminal history. The Orange Zones are less selective. People with bad credit, poor jobs, and moderate criminal backgrounds can live here. Low end security firms and bounty hunters provide substandard protection to the residents. Prisons, waste incinerators and other “Not in my back yard” facilities are located in the Orange Zones, as are industry, and the homes of the workers that serve the residents of the Green Zones. The Red Zones are for the rest, hybrids, escaped androids and sims, people with completely awful credit, violent criminals and so on. The atmosphere is like a cross between a post apocalyptic movie and a year round Burning Man Festival. They are set up as “Experimental Enforcement Zones”, where various community groups and vigilante squads compete for contracts from the government to clean up neighborhoods using any means necessary. Most Red Zones are little safer than the rural wastelands that surround the cities. The Twin Cities are divided in this manner.
The Red Zone
The core of old Minneapolis and St Paul make up the Red Zone, surrounded by a tall security wall and military outposts that manage the border, mainly allowing people in, but not many out.
Selected Points of Interest
-WeSew
The old West Bank/ Seward area, WeSew is home to anarchists, ismists, crazed dumpster bot mechanics and alt lifestylers of all stripes.
--Silicon Chinatown (SiChi)
SiChi is one of the Twin Cities centers of cutting edge cyberwear. Run by the Silicon Triads, five clans that originally left China after the bachelor wars, the best and worst of cyberwear can be found in the shady back alleys between old Nicollet Avenue and South First.
-The Floating Market
On the Mississippi near the old Washington Avenue Bridge, on the West Bank side, is a conglomeration of barges, houseboats, and makeshift vessels that serves as a market for River Pirates to sell their wares. While the Council Regime tolerates the pirates on the river, being more concerned about Great Lakes piracy (most of the Mississippi flowers through the territory of the North American Coalition, an enemy of the Great Lakes Union), it does not tolerate them setting foot in the Green Zones, so this is where they set up shop.
-The University Free Commune
Located on the East Bank of the old University of Minnesota Campus, the Free Commune is a walled city within a walled city. When the Red Zone was cordoned off, the University vowed to stay put, out of a stated ideological disagreement with the Apartheid like separation of the destitute that the Differential Zone Policy created. These ideological misgivings did not stop them from creating a wall around the University rivaling the one that keeps the Red Zoners within their zone. Now the “Free Commune” is home to rich kid brainiacs or just rich kids with influential parents, who want to escape the dull conformity of the Green Zones. This isolation has allowed the University to invest in Biotech and Pharmtec without any of the regulatory meddeling that would be faced in the Green or Orange Zones. The University has also had to invest a considerable sum in defense, and it s security is some of the most robust in the Red Zone.
-The Labrynth
Downtown Minneapolis had one of the worlds largest networks of skyways in the early 21st century due to the subarctic climate of the region. After the crime and revolutionary violence drove people out of the core city during and immediately after the Second American Civil War, downtown was abandoned by the business class, and the skyways became home to ismist gangs and deviants of all kinds.
-The Wild Wild East
Centered around old University Avenue and Rice in St Paul, the Wild East neighborhood is home to different South East Asian immigrants. There are Pho restaurants, Vietnamese jump bike racers, Thai back alley gene therapists, and hybrids and sims galore.
-The Isphalt* Graveyard
Near old University and Snelling heavily armored vehicles race against one another to the death, fighting for victory with speed, cunning, and heavy vehicular weaponry to jeering fans wagering their meager credits on who lives and who dies in this future version of NASCAR.
* Isphalt is a future form of Asphalt that is quicker drying and more sturdy. While most of the Red Zone has completely devastated roadways, University between Snelling and Rice is kept up with Isphalt due to the popularity of racing with the Graveyard Deathracers and the Jump Bikers.
-Skyline
In downtown St. Paul, the streets are filled with the debris of collapsed building and street warfare that accompanied the Second Civil War and the food riots that followed. The residents have taken to the rooftops, building a small city there, with markets, housing and roof gardens. When they ran out of space, window washing carts and other platforms were attached to the side of buildings, creating the haphazard jumble of vertical overcrowding that is Skyline.
The Orange Zone
The inner ring suburbs have been consolidated into the Orange Zone, known by locals as the Orange Slice. It is a grim region of grey Eastern European style apartment blocks, toxic waste incinerators, and gangland violence. Of course the Orange Slice is easy street compared to the Red Zone. The "Slice" includes old Richfield, St Louis Park, Golden Valley, Columbia Heights, Brooklyn Park, Robbinsdale, Maplewood, Roseville, and a number of other first tier suburbs that had experienced downward mobility in the early 21st Century. Life there has only gotten worse, but at least, its not the Red Zone . . . .
The Green Zone
The Green Zone surrounds the other two, a well regulated and picturesque area for those with the money or connections to live there.The Twin Cities used to consist of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Now the term refers to MEBAC (an acronym for some of the main suburbs that consolidated to create it: Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Bloomington, Apple Valley and Cottage Grove), and Norsanc (or the Northern sanctuary), a mega suburb which swallowed the old Northern outer suburbs.