Mankind has entered a brave new world.

To ease congestion and transportation, massive skybridges are built high above city skylines. These mammoth structures span much of the country and stretch overseas, connecting many of the nation’s cities and the outside world in one giant network. These bridges, in addition to daily commute, ease trading and cut down on expenditures on ships. However in these seemingly prosperous conditions, underneath this pleasant exterior, many problems still exist.

By 2050, the Democratic Party had assumed control of the United States government, as the Republican Party had been destroyed in the Great Party Split a few years before. Thus, the United States returned to a one party system that had been in place when the Federalist Party had been crushed more than two-hundred years before. This new government passed a “package” of reforms in the name of helping the poor, dubbed “The Robin Hood Reforms.” This package included a exponentially heavier income tax, putting more fiscal strain on the rich elite of the country, imposed a set of laws against outsourcing of executives forcing businesses to stay in the country and as a result pay even heavier taxes. They also set a price cap to keep all goods “affordable.” This also included a huge list of hidden provisions, such as the complete disbanding of the United States Marine Corps and a huge amount of budget cuts for the military excepting the Coast Guard. Despite their good intentions, this set of laws only made things worse in the country.

San Francisco, a major proponent of the Robin Hood Reforms and a highly liberal city, was one of those ironically hardest hit by the effects of the “reforms.” This city was cited often as a highly depressing example of how bad things got. The massive taxation on businesses in the area prompted mass layoffs because they could not raise prices. The layoffs prompted a large amount of people to seek money from government welfare. The government then used the revenue collected from the business taxes to pay the welfare checks. Eventually, the government ran out of extra funds for the rapidly increasing unemployment rate and then further taxed the rich to make up the difference, prompting more layoffs. This infinite loop continued until everyone was poor. Naturally, the suicide rate increased sharply as more people decided to be done with the world and poverty. Then the government, in an attempt to decrease the suicide rate and, as a double entante and non-mentioned benefit, prevent armed rebellion, passed “The Happiness Act,” which mandated that all citizens take anti-depressant drugs, especially the younger children to prevent “early trauma.” This, combined with mandatory Ritalin consumption, made the young students very susceptible to government propaganda. Gangs ruled the streets of San Francisco due to resistance by teenage and twenty year old resistance to the drug law. The once prosperous streets of downtown San Francisco gradually became a ghost town. Homeless lined the streets and the stairways of the skybridges. The San Francisco police eventually resorted to passing money under the table to the various gangs in the area, paying them to take down any critics of the government’s policies. Churches were banned and destroyed but in some cases the gangs would protect the church communities within their sphere of influence. In this hellish realm, our ensemble cast must fight to survive.