The Environment
Tape Loop is, fairly obviously, set in the future. I’m not sure when, some day I might draw up some sort of time line, but it’s not particularly important.
Due to global warming, Earth is entirely flooded, but continues to be highly populated, as cities are suspended above the water on a series of chains, and those who don’t have the money to live there have created artificial floating cities on the water. There’s a fairly visible class divide.
Other than Earth, humans have spread out and colonised anything they could lay their hands on – planets, artificial colonies in space, pretty much anything that stays stationary long enough to build a Starbucks on it.
So far the following have been mentioned:
New Texas
A tiny planet that was claimed by a few Earth Texans who longed for the days with horses, sheriffs and gun fights. It’s privately owned and out of Federation jurisdiction, so there aren’t any weapons restrictions and any laws are enforced by violence alone, meaning that it’s populated by criminals, outlaws and hopelessly bankrupt gamblers. The capital city is creatively named: New Texas.
Sangre ciel
The setting of chapter 2, Sangre Ciel is famous for the sky, which is varying shades of red throughout the day because the large levels of dust in the air. The atmosphere is hot and dry, and it's a rather literal translation of the term 'Red Light District'. The economy thrives due to a sex trade that draws customers from far and wide, and the language is a confusing mix of spanish and english, depending on how helpful the person you're talking to wants to be. The entire planet is plagued by insects, which is why the cities are built into the rock walls of cracks between the plates of earth, and all artificial lights outside are filtered to be red to avoid drawing the insects.
The Federation
Ah yes, the Federation. Why use police to control people when you have the army? The army doesn’t need to go to civilians houses and sort out domestic disputes, and they’re allowed liberal use of violence. The Federation – being run by the sort of people who think that things will sort themselves out if you don’t meddle – owns and directs the army to do their bidding. While this involves keeping the streets safe through scare tactics and hunting down criminals, it means that civilians have to know how to protect themselves to a certain extent. The Federation itself governs almost all planets and colonies while leaving it to the politicians to decide how they want their planet to be run.
The one method of control the Federation has brought into action is to imbed chips into all civilians that records their vital details and can be easily scanned to identify them. But this isn’t so much of a problem for the criminally minded, as they’re easily removed and swapped around for enough money. If you don’t have a chip, you tend to be killed on site if you’re unlucky enough to run into any Federation soldiers.
The Federation was also one of the first to use Genetic Modification on its soldiers, creating an elite force called the GM Core. While being stronger and faster than normal soldiers, experimentation found that increasing intelligence caused more problems than it was worth for an army of soldiers expected not to question why they are paid so little to risk their lives so often, so enhanced intelligence was scrapped.
There’s also an army section called the Federal Core Squad (FCS), which is made up entirely of humans who become untraceable once they enter the service. It’s well paid, but you have to be near suicidal to want to do it and they’re basically army assassins. For a number of reasons you will almost never be able to say you’ve known someone who was once in the FCS.
Aliens & Robots
There are none. Sorry to disappoint.
