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The local galactic group is a pretty busy place nowadays. The Triumvirate Zone's been officially "intergalactic" for a few hundred years now, and it's still a big deal given the distances and, more importantly, the energy expenditures involved. Spread throughout the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies thanks to a combination of Loophole technologies, the Triumvirate Zone is certainly the "dominant" unifying authority within, say, four hundred kiloleeches of Old Earth. Outside the Milky Way's sphere of gravitational influence, out past the galactopause (an inaccurate term, but sufficient), is the Up-And-Out, and it's out of there that we've got our biggest challenges coming.
At least that's what the Federals would like us to think, and who knows... they may actually be right. In the end, it depends on how one wants to see the Zone--something which it has an opinion on but not one they particularly care to force upon even its own citizens--and it all has to relate to that old concept of "dominance." When a nation on Old Earth dominated a particular land, that was simple enough; land was part of its dominion (hurrah for Latin and the flexibility of its roots) and all within that land was part of that nationstate. Simple enough, but as anyone with enough brain cells to have a coherent thought can tell the Zone certainly doesn't dominate even the entire Milky Way; for one, there's a lot of empty space and uninhabitable planets in there--the concept of domination by volume completely breaks down for these kinds of scales--and for two, it ends up that there's plenty of non-Zone "territory" within the Milky Way itself. The Coalition of Non-Aligned Systems (CNAS), the True Earth enclaves, the thousands of truly non-aligned worlds (which usually go by t'naw around here)... all of that's definitely non-Triumvirate. Some, like the CNAS and most of the t'naw, are benignly so; others, like True Earth, are belligerent in their not-dominated-status.
Why does anyone wonder why it's called the "Zone" in the first place?
Then there's the undeniable fact that the Triumvirate Zone's method of "dominance" isn't exactly... dominating. The only way it could be more lassiez-faire, really--to the common guy on the street--is probably by not existing at all. Calling it a confederacy wouldn't exactly be accurate, just like calling it a proper democracy or even a representative republic wouldn't be accurate either. There's really no words in the traditional lexicon for it; it's a huge patchwork of mostly microscopic states that are represented in various levels until it finally gets to the representation of the Council. If this were anything like a traditional political body, this would require levels of bureaucracy never before imagined except in dystopian nightmares of inefficency... but, again, laid back is the word of the day. I can count off the number of laws that apply universally across the Zone on one hand. No, really, the Federals mean it when they say they pretty much only exist so the member states within it can coordinate better.
Again, that's why it's a "Zone" instead of an "Empire" or a "Republic" or what have you. It's all about communications and transportation technology in the end, but that's another story for another time.
All these nations inside the Zone joined up for their self interest and are now, through the effort of the Federals, being turned towards being productive idealistic citizens looking to forward the ideals of the Triumvirate. The degree of success the Federals have had is directly proportional to the age of the member, although of course there's notable exceptions to the rule. It starts with the Zone being picky about who it allows to sign up in the first place, and moves along from there. Still, that doesn't deny the fact that this "representational oligarchy" generally run by idealistic egalitarian do-gooder Federals is made up of autocracies, dictatorships, democracies, oligarchies, corporations, anarchies... whatever works. Hell, "Whatever Works" is the unofficial motto of the Zone.
Nevertheless, the Zone is big and powerful and this tends to annoy other people. Some, like the CNAS, fear for their own identity--not that they don't like the Federal image, they just don't want to be swallowed up by it--and others, like a good deal of the t'naw, just don't classify. Still others, like True Earth, have real ideological, social, political, or economic differences with the Zone and decide to aggressively oppose Zone policies and interests. Generally, the Zone lets this happen so long as the rather distinct line of no direct harm isn't crossed; once that happens, the Federals step in and remind everyone that their fearsome reputation was actually earned.
Did I mention that the Zone is also something of a de facto military dictatorship, of sorts, maybe, not actually? Well... perhaps the old turn of phrase "military-industrial complex" is fairer to what the Federals really are, if one wishes to oversimplify. Still. Fact is, no one likes the thought of messing with the Federals unless they either slept through How To Survive Inside the Milky Way's Galactosphere 101 or actually like the idea of being freshly dead.
Which, in the end, is a good thing. The Milky Way and its satellites don't make up the entire Local Group, certainly, and I said at the beginning that it's the group that makes up a happening place. That'd be because of the Reavers out of Andromeda. They'd be the other superpower, with their own collection of satellite galaxies that they've conquered in their own unique way. Now, you have to understand, they really do dominate. As hands-off as the Zone is, the Reavers are hands-on; instead of telling people to do their things with mild limitations and asking for polite support in return, the Reavers take people mind and body (and some would say soul) and make them part of their big happy family, no questions answered or protestations listened to. A massive command economy dedicated to improving itself and everyone else around it in a giant intergalactic Crusade, and they've found us.
They've found us and have been dealing with us for probably the past, oh, four hundred years now. Let's just say it's been an interesting time. For all of you keeping track of numbers, yes, that is not exactly a coincidence that the Zone became an intergalactic empire at around the same time it met the Reavers. All of the following should be pretty clear, but it never hurts to look at the politics and physics behind history. Starting from first principles:
Once the Reavers found a way into our galactic Channel network, well... we had to bottle it up, and that meant securing the entrances to our galactopause from theirs in the long term and rooting them out of their cubbyholes in our galactopause in the short term. That's where our knowledge of the Third Loophole system, universal jumping, came in handy. Expensive, though, very much so... which explains why the Federals are pretty much the only people who have it, and that is also another story for another time.
So the Local Group, dominated as it is by Andromeda and the Milky Way, is likewise dominated by the centuries of conflict between the Reavers and the Zone... to our minds, at least. Sure, there's Thaurians out there too out by Triangulum, and some others of intergalactic note, but zoom out too far and then no one dominates anything.
That's just how space is. Humbling, isn't it?
--essay on a GLONET site by an anonymous human commentator posting from Old Earth
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