Backbone Site

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Backbone Site is a sanct located northwest of Discontinuity with slightly over 20000 citizens.

Architecture

From the surface, Backbone Site looks insignificant—just a small floating platform with maybe ten buildings on it. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, figuratively and literally.

Backbone Site is, unlike most sancts, tightly anchored on spot on the seafloor. While the materials required for anchoring a sanct aren't exactly cheap, Backbone Site has profited from the choice as the matter of running communication cables is greatly simplified.

Running along anchor cables are thousands of sealed compartments that make up the living space for Backbone Site, running most of the way down to the seafloor, connected by hundreds of flexible tubes that work as elevators. From underwater, the sanct does look awfully like a spine—one reason for its name.

Economy

The primary economic functions of Backbone Site arise from its location, networking infrastructure, and industry in electronics manufacturing, recycling and salvage. Interestingly enough for an isolated water-based sanct, though, Backbone Site does not rely heavily on imports at all - in fact, it is totally self-sufficient.

Each compartment in the sanct is made of three three sections. On the top is living space, where a home or business is located. The center contains a large turbine open to the powerful sea current that flows over Backbone Site, giving electric power to the compartment. The bottom area, which is by far the largest, is devoted to multiple levels of fields where food is grown for those who live there. The plants are maintained with desalinized water and solar simulators, and have the side effect of providing oxygen for the compartment.

Thus each of the thousands of compartments can live alone indefinitely. They have food grown themselves, water desalinized from the vast source around them, air from the plants, and hydroelectric power to keep things running smoothly.

Electronics are built from recycled parts of older models - something Backbone Site is famous for. Metals are also heavily reused. Conservation is a way of life to people in the sanct.

All this means Backbone Site can concentrate on exports, strengthening its economic influence.

Networking

Networking is the original source where Backbone Site gets its name from. This is where bundles of optical cables branch between Benacia, Apollonia, and the isles of Amity and Yardistan from which data transfer goes on further south. Backbone Site is also equipped with a strong POEL array. Its location thus provides it a somewhat unique opportunity to be a nexus of data passing between Shireroth and the rest of the world, and inside Shireroth.

How much access the Octopus Array has to the gigabits of data passing through the Backbone Site Internet Exchange Point (BSIX) every second is kept somewhat unclear to outsiders.

Electronics manufacturing

While not really a factor to set Backbone Site apart, the sanct does currently house two large semiconductor fabrication plants.

Electronics recycling and salvage

While the cost of these economic functions has been steadily growing during all of the existence of Backbone Site, this sanct is still one of the cheaper places to get the job done. They work hard to keep their facilities working at top quality, because they personally rely upon this to manufacture much of their own electronics, buying outmoded and broken models from other places when they need more materials.

The Octopus Array

The Octopus Array is the name given for the supercomputer running the Hunter-Seeker. It is mostly built out of computer parts left over from the electronics recycling industry - computers sent in to be repaired for which a replacement was immediately sent, etc..

The array is maintained, and paid and spoken for by the Hunter-Seeker Association. Physically, it is an an impressive economic force, drawing over three megawatts of power and requiring a constant stream of replacement hardware requiring a squad of ten engineers to just put it all in place. Indirectly, the entire thing probably pays the wages of hundreds of people. More impressively, the HSA games the stock market constantly, but stays out of sight behind a facade of subsidiaries and affiliates - it is difficult to determine its actual effect on the economy. Many analysts place it as one of the most significant economic movers in all of Straylight.

The Breakers

The society of Backbone Site is famous for the group known as the Breakers. More on their history will become available as soon as the rest of Straylightian history is worked out. There will probably be quite a bit of it. They are a group of remarkable cultural resilience, maybe about five hundred years old, about two thousand strong. Most of the Breakers live in Backbone Site, and they are predominantly employed by the electronics recycling industry.