One thing some Freerailers keep asking is - how did things get this bad, in this ugly, torn-down, toxic railworld of ours? The Titan Trains have no destination, but they did come from somewhere - a past which is actually our not-too-distant future. Stay a while by the flaming barrel and listen!
To understand how we ended up in such a sorry but traintastic state of affairs, you first need to know about a golden age of technology, referred to in retrospect as the ‘Pinnacle’. Occurring roughly around 2040 - 2080, this was a period of advancement and innovation that gave humanity the futuristic technology that underpins our Titan Trains and the Grid they run on.
Three items are of particular pertinence to our perilous predicament. The first is the Fuel Core - a small, efficient nuclear fission fuel cell that became a universal standard for industrial machinery. Another was the NOM or Nanoscale Omnipurpose Magnet, which made atomic manipulation possible using tiny magnets - this unlocked 3D printers that can turn scrap materials into new objects. All you need is the right raw materials and a lot of energy. The third is the Grid itself - a rail system of epic proportions that began to unite the whole world with high-speed trains and replace freight shipping. When combined with the other two, the first Titan Trains were created - vast, almost self-sustaining rolling cities.
The maiden voyage of the first Titan was in 2078, at a time when they were still largely being sold to the public as luxury cruise liners. However, things were already tilting towards apocalypse in the wider world…
Starting around 2070, a series of events occurred that individually might have been survivable, but as a chain they decimated humanity. There is no one single event that ended the world, but a series of calamities known later as the Collapse, ranging from pandemics to solar flares and finally nuclear war as nations scrambled to survive by any means necessary.
Fortunately, companies and nations with foresight had already invested heavily in the Grid, which leading think-tanks proposed as a way to literally ‘ride out’ the end of the world. Many of the world’s wealthiest moved onto the great Titan Trains, while many of the poorest simply perished, or obtained work in the third class of the trains, becoming little more than organic cogs in the machine.
It is rumoured that the team, or perhaps even a single Architect, behind the original Grid proposal was fully aware that this would be the true usage of the Grid. They say that the end was predicted, or at least feared to be inevitable, so while the Grid was built under the guise of shiny capitalism, its true purpose was already being designed.
To put it simply, the Grid is not just a global rail network, but an infrastructure designed to weather the Collapse and provide a skeleton on which to rebuild civilization - one day. The Titan Trains were always going to become our Arks. Then again, people say a lot of things and hit each other with pipes for fun.
Whatever the truth, the Titan Trains worked, more or less. For a small fraction of the population, there was salvation. Things were better of course for the ultra-wealthy who bought First Class tickets, whose investment made the Grid possible in the first place. But, fast-forward to now: 2157. The Titan Trains are starting to fall apart; the system is struggling.
Thanks to NOM technology, a Titan Train was designed to reprint its own repair parts from the most basic of metal, plastic and chemical sources - the ultimate recycler. The same even goes for its passengers, who can be reprinted after death, provided they have paid for the energy and material cost. In practice, however, resources are hard to allocate evenly while keeping people happy. Something always has to give.
Whatever clever designs went into the Grid, they didn’t account for the free radical which is human nature. We don’t like working together towards a common goal, we don’t like being kept in one place and we get bored easily. Cabin fever crept in, but the world outside the Grid is toxic - so the next best thing was to steal a Dagger Shuttle and become a Freerailer, on the Grid but not part of the system, charting your own course. Who wants to be a passenger in life?
Anyway, that’s enough story time and it’s probably about as reliable as a salami sledgehammer. The elders have been reprinted too often anyway and the Train’s AI gets more faulty each day, half the archives have corrupted data and Scrappers ate all the good books! So, who knows what’s really true? Perhaps time will tell, Freerailers!