Temeredine Station, Callisto, Jupiter Space -- 14 Apr. 2057: The system's oldest and largest borganization has suffered a fatal collapse of common ideology and split into two separate factions. No violence has occurred, though tensions on Temeredine Station and across the Jovian complex are running high. A petition has been filed in Callisto Regional Civil Court to arbitrate the division of common assets and to determine which group, if either, will be permitted to retain the Temeredine name and network identities.
Temeredine borganization was founded on 25 October 2039 as a proof-of-concept for the potential of neurolinking technology; 24 individual minds, including 5 humans, 2 gorillas, 3 dogs, 4 synthetics, and a full digital imprint of each biological person were integrated together by an experimental prototype of the Kyanis Neurological Integration System. When the Kyanis corporation attempted to dissolve the link and disentangle the minds of the individual volunteers involved, the collective entity which had been created in the experiment protested and sought the protection of the Armstrong Court, taking the name Temeredine and claiming to be a new and unique individual. Since the landmark decision declaring integrated meta-minds to be autonomous persons in their own right, Temeredine has grown immensely in both numbers, with at last pre-schism count over 12000 biological and 15000 virtual minds voluntarily joined together, and in wealth and power. Temeredine was one of the single wealthiest individuals in the system, though that wealth was diluted by the necessity of maintaining a small nation's worth of bodies and avatars. A lifelong member of the Socialist party, they has served as both President and Director of Callisto, recent rumour has it that they has been considering challenging Callisto-Orbital's longtime Libertarian elector Pacman Packard for eir seat in the Trapezoid.
However, an irreconcilable schism has developed between the part of the Temeredine collective consciousness which holds firmly to Socialist principles and the growing segment which has been influenced by the prevalent Libertarian social attitudes of the Jovian complex. "I had warned Temeredine of this possibility," stated Dr. Pritchard Mitchell, a member of the research team involved in the original experiment who has since gone on to become a professor of social psychiatry at Cordwainer University and a noted expert in borganization psychosociology. "Most of the borganizations and neuro-parliaments which have been formed since their inception have chosen to apply a compatibility test, limiting new inductees to those who broadly shared the ethical or political ideals representative of the whole. Temeredine has maintained a policy of completely open recruitment, from both a lack of a founding mandate and a dominant belief that ideological diversity would strengthen the collective consciousness. I have seen the signs for some time now; Temeredine's decisions were becoming erratic and they was more and more frequently frozen by indecision. The further-flung parts of the network had begun taking actions unapproved by the centre and sometimes contrary to their own stated intentions. Temeredine as we knew them is dead."
Our correspondent on Temeredine Station, Skip Limnu, reports that tempers are running high. "Almost everybody on this station was a part of Temeredine," he told us in an email brief. "They work together, eat together, sleep together, sex together, and play together. Where they once shared an uncanny uniformity and a continual cheerfulness, tempers are now running high. Bodies who share dormitories are on different sides of the divorce; they are beginning to reorganize themselves, but in the meantime they must share an intimate space with those who are now strangers to them. Political arguments break out at the slightest provocation, and develop with frightening rapidity into screaming mobs. Work on the various enterprises of the Temeredine commercial empire has ground to a standstill. Station services are becoming erratic; bodies flock to the few cafeterias that can get their act together well enough to serve meals, and outside contractors have been called in to run water and air distribution. Hyperlayer function is erratic at best, with constant public flamewars infesting every page. Perhaps worst, though, is the hurt and betrayal written clearly on every face. Temeredine is suffering. They has been scarred beyond healing. They is a broken shadow of their former stature."
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