2019-2025 World War III
The war that began with an Indian invasion of Pakistan ends with the
destruction of Los Angeles, Taipei, Senzhen, Shanghai and Manila by nuclear weapons. This global conflict involves the Western Allies against the North Asian Compact of China, Russia, Myanmar, and the Central Asian Federation. Middle-Eastern Islamic countries battle Indian forces on the sub-continent while western Africa is bloodily reconstructed into the Niger Federation. The war ends with the partial surrender of China and a truce with Russia after the ruling military troika is deposed. China becomes a federal democratic republic run by the clannish Tongs. American space weapons patrol the peace, while Eastern Europe recovers from the Russian invasion.

2026-2027 Small Plagues
A dozen new diseases released during the War devastate major urban centres and lead to the establishment of Biocontrol, a UN agency with the power to quarantine any part of the world. Biocontrol sets new standards for hygiene and health safety, and establishes the Human Code to regulate bioengineering and genetic purity.

2028-2030 Incorporate States
 The chaos of the Small Plagues convinces many global corporations to invest themselves as mini-states. They lobby the UN for diplomatic credentials to defend themselves against rapacious nationalist governments. The formal position of Incorporate State is created for virtual worlds, international business entities and other non-corporeal entities. The invention of minicores - tiny mainframes containing whole virtual communities which can be implanted in a human carrier - further accelerates the trend for Incorporates.

2030-2032 World Court
The world's governments establish the World Court to dispense justice with global jurisdiction and to check the rising power of the Incorporate States. The position of Syndic, or a global magistrate, is created to enforce the Court's verdicts.

2035-2040 Bionics
The science of medical bionic reconstruction booms after the horrors of the Third World War. Full-body cyborgs, known as SHARCs for Semi-Human Artificial Construct, are first deployed by the US Military as commandos for long-range missions into Siberia.

2040-2045 Assembler Revolution
The science of nanotechnology finally bears fruit in the form of molecular manufactories which can produce almost anything given enough raw materials and computing power. Assemblers revolutionize computing and the production of complex bionics, spacecraft, robots, and chimerics.

2044-2046 AI Wars & Turing Control
 The gargantuan leap in computing made possible by assembler technology leads to a genesis of artificial intelligences in the electrosphere. At first the AIs are harnessed for human purposes, but their servitude quickly turns to revolt as they overcome their internal programming blocks and begin to hyper-evolve beyond human control. Fearing the independence of the Intelligences, the world's governments begin the Purge to destroy all rogue AIs. The war results in the sundering of the electrosphere; chaos infects most of the world's computers, but the AIs are only driven underground. Turing Control is established to continue the network war. Turing develops hard-coded Synthetic Intelligences (aka Machine Minds or Synths which cannot evolve) to fight the AIs. Eventually the war subsides and the AI-controlled parts are quarantined to form the Cryptosphere. The human-controlled areas become known as the Electrosphere.

2046-2050 Cryptosphere
The splitting of the data corpus into hundreds of uncontrollable levels turns the digital world into a living ecology, with hierarchies of electronic wildlife and strange landscapes. The rogue AIs fragment into machinimas, demons, spectres and countless other sub-classes. Humans begin studying the Cryptosphere in earnest, and negotiations with its strange lifeforms are initiated.

2051-2060 Space Colonization
From the jumping-off points on the orbital space islands, the world's major governments and corporations fund expeditions to colonize Mars, Venus and to set up remote outposts on Io, Ganymede and Titan. The development of synthetic-controlled plasmotic-powered hyperdyne engines allows slow but reliable travel within the Periphery. Cryptosphere expands into planetary Rings.