2320: A magnetic containment failure at the Kobe-Kyoto No. 8 fusion reactor causes an accident which flash-incinerates over thirty city blocks instantly, killing eight million.  After two years of poring over dense, "grown" code, programmers locate a five-hundred line fault believed to be the culprit.  The SEC decries the overreliance on embedded networks and orders greater human oversight of crucial systems. 

2327: Spartan scientists discover that by using lasers at wavelengths around ten to the negative seventh meters as a carrier wave, the Transit Gates can be forced to open to specific systems with 99.9999999...% certainty; furthermore, by modulating the wavelength up or down, the destination can be selected from among any of the gates within about five parsecs of the point of origin.  Knowing that they have a guaranteed way to return to Earth space, the Spartans begin a massive military buildup with the intention of overthrowing the Solar Economic Consortium. 

2330: In what amounts to a concession to reality, the nations of Earth lift the three hundred-year-old ban on genetic modification, allowing more people than ever to join the ranks of posthumanity. 
 
2342: When her ship loses power after being struck by an old EMP mine left over from the Beltway conflict, Naishi Kartapolous becomes the first human to make contact with an alien race as her vessel plummets into Jupiter's atmosphere.  The aliens--"Jovians"--are transparent, bubble-like entities hundred of miles across, drifting through the upper atmosphere in packs the size of continents.  However, Kartapolous isn't able to relay this discovery to anyone before her ship is crushed in the grip of the enormous atmospheric pressure. 

2350-2375: Fulfilling their century-old promise, the Spartans return.  Despite the innovation of the carrier wave, and the advantage of surprise, the ensuing war leaves both sides decimated and in need of decades' worth of rebuilding.  By war's end, several of the space elevators have been felled, killing billions and choking interstellar commerce.  Little or no scientific advancement occurs during the next century; the period is akin to the devastation that created the Consortium, only orders of magnitude more deadly. 

2400: Survivors of both sides of the Spartan War agree to turn over the tasks of repopulation and economic regeneration to a new governmental entity, the Terran Authority. 

2407: Construction begins on a new, all-pervasive data network throughout Authority space. 

2418: The first Authority-built spaceship rolls out of the assemblers. 

2425: At the Wolf 359 colony, relatively untouched by the war, Dr. Paul Saraq publishes his landmark work on brain plasticity and conditioning.  In 2440, zealous students and fellow-travelers of Saraq rename a sterilized colony world after him and begin to repopulate it with the intention of creating a society based on his ideas. 

2431: Contact is made with the Axians and their three-world commerce empire; they ultimately agree to become part of the Authority and make large capital investments towards the rebuilding process. 

2445: Randal Qert, a low-level computer technician on board a Legion cruiser operating in the Proxima system, notices a series of regular, tightbeam EM pulses traveling towards the local Transit Gate from one of the system's millions of asteroids.  Investigating, the vessel's crew discovers a partially-intact alien vessel half-buried in the rock's side, though no bodies are in evidence.  Linguists spend the next century and a half attempting to make sense of the complex language ("Lingue Galaxia") encoded on the ship's computer. 

2543: The Saraqans begin offering Polymaths for sale on the open market. 

2567: After two decades of intensive study, a team of Authority scientists replicates the FTL communications system employed by the alien hulk.  Large, building-sized etherlink relays are immediately constructed on every Terran planet and the larger battleships and space stations, allowing for the creation of humanity's first true interstellar communications network. 

2615: The tomb of Dr. Mohammed M. Morgan is unearthed after almost six hundred years.  In a complicated procedure taking over eighteen months, Morgan and his companions are revived; young 20th-century enthusiast Jefe Kloster is assigned to aid them in adjusting to the world of the future. 

2631: Mohammed Morgan makes a bid for control of the corporation he founded, a concern which has persisted to the present day.  He is awarded 51-percent ownership by an overwhelming vote in the Popular Arena. 

2653: A sudden attack is mounted on the outlying Authority planet Albrect by the hive-collective culture called the "Nesters"; the sparse Legion forces there are easily overwhelmed by the invaders' advanced nanofactured weaponry.  The next day, the Popular Arena votes to set the economy on a war footing and gives the Legion carte blanche to exterminate the Nesters.  The war drags on for over a decade, with the Legion's superior size and communications evenly matched with the Nesters' inexhaustible resources, nanotechnology, and hive control. 

2664: The world's foremost Polymath, Dr. Lisa Sorenson, creates the Authority's first nanofactory, giving the Terrans the crucial edge they need. 

2665: War's end.  Both sides, having adhered to the Geneva Convention, have had their civilian populations relatively untouched, the most egregious atrocity being when an Authority captain, mistaking a transport ship full of refugees for a nuclear suicide hull, had ordered the Nester vessel destroyed.  Reparations are made and the Nesters are offered provisional membership in the Authority.  They accept, though they still refuse to divulge their reasons for the attack on Albrect.