The world of Reflections

The United States: America has changed since our day. The second civil war-thirty-four years prior to the Face in the Mirror-broke out as a result of an attempt by the mountain and central states to succeed from the union. This was prompted by perceived progressive/socialist encroachment on civil rights by the Federal government. The conflict between the more liberal and conservative leaning states was interrupted when a coalition of abandoned welfare recipients and disgruntled immigrants formed the disenfranchised and lashed out at both sides with terrorist activities. Denver was devastated by a nuclear bomb. Manhattan was somewhat less devastated by a radiological weapon. The horror of those attacks, coupled with the war weariness the nation was already experiencing, brought the two main sides to the negotiating table. The progressive and conservative sides cooperated in bringing the ringleaders of the disenfranchised to justice and after much argument reconstituted the union.

The reformed United States is a much looser union than that at the beginning of the twenty first century. The saying used to be, "Before Lincoln the United States were and after Lincoln the Untied States is." After the second civil war the United States are much more separate once again. Another important effect of the war was a degree of curtailment of the rights of immigrants throughout the union and of non tax payers in most states. These restrictions on immigrants, wartime casualties, and decades of dropping birth rates led to a major labor shortage in America.

Robots make up for some of the shortage but were not capable of true thought or rational judgement required for many tasks. The genetic engineering firm Agrodine came up with a unique solution to this problem in the form of the neo ox, or nox species.
Noxes were a genetic mix of bovine and primate DNA, and the first neo people created. Born from cow surrogate parents a nox would reach full physical maturity in six years and was intelligent and strong enough to perform a wide variety of tasks that robots just weren’t suited for or that most humans simply found distasteful. Within a decade millions of noxes were a major part of the nations labor force and were soon joined by the primate canine hybrid kanids and feline primate hybrid felis.