2400

The 2300's marked an era of premature conquest. Commercial operations out to Mars were limited to educational programing, research, and a kind of idealism, often the result of space ego centrics with money to burn.

On the Earth, the skyline was changing. The 2200's had marked a global resourcefulness. With the freedomization of energy, along with the high production of synthetic metallics, a new kind of sky scraper was born. These dwarfed the buildings of the 2100's. They towered to heights along the levels of the cumulous clouds, thin and strong. By 2340, this type of building was common place in major cities.

In 2342, a company called High End developed an orbiting power plant so large, it was said to be the first orbiting city. It was not a city, however, but an industrial mass production source of raw energy. Efficiencies in solar paneling had developed exponentially over the last 300 years and High End would need it. As a note worthy point, High End was developed from a consortium of companies. It would serve both government and private contracts in order to lay the ground work of what would be the first and arguably the only relevant stratosphere level aerospace network. High End did not seek to put their crafts into orbit but instead maintain a fleet of inner atmosphere transports.

Just like Moon City, High End had a brain child. He was not an engineer or an energy brat, but a marketing genius. In it's simplest form, he vocalized that the Earth had been left behind by whimsical space waste. He referred to "Moon City" as a looney bin for eccentrics and the "premature ejaculations of space elitists" He called those who failed to capitalize the letter E, when writing the word Earth, spoiled children, space gays, and prissy whinny bitches. In this way, he brought High End directly to the fore front of all of the Earth people. In this way, he raised money.

Only with an understanding of where High End came from can one begin to understand the magnitude of what High End did. It was a network of aerial crafts that served to transport goods, services, and people who lived on the Earth. It used by principal, only non-terra energy (energy produced in Earth orbit space). The crafts would never land on the ground. To board a High End craft, one would simply have to go to one of manny stations that only existed at the tops of buildings of certain heights. A shortage of these, there were none.

By 2400 the standard runway airplane was fit for museums alone. Moving from point to point on the Earth, was easy. High End had filled the skies.