The Ruddy Boatswain is a bar in Pirate’s Cove. Or rather, it’s THE bar in Pirate’s Cove. All pirates go there. In fact, you just can’t call yourself a pirate if you haven’t been there. It’s the place to be. Not-So-Jolly Roger and his friends visit frequently, so this is where you can try to influence them into doing what you think is right.

At The Ruddy Boatswain you can meet other pirates, drink a few jugs of rum and get the latest news and gossip. If you have a question or a problem, you can always turn to Finbar Dunbar, the bar’s colourful landlord. He has one mighty, hairy shoulder to cry on and knows everything about everyone. You can also recruit crewmates for your own missions, or maybe even be picked by Not-So-Jolly Roger to join him on one of his.

Misc: The bar offers a variety of drinks for the thirsty pirate, simple, but good and sturdy food, and entertainment. The entertainment is provided by Finbar’s voluptuous and bouncy daughter Barbarella. Beware, though. If you can’t control yourself, you will suffer the wrath of his other daughter, Barbarossa, who does the bouncing around the place. She will kick you out for even thinking about looking down someone’s cleavage too long.

Egghead is a PA (personal assistant) application that plugs straight into your hippocampus to avoid unecessary wiring and security breeches. Egghead is inpenetrable. You can safely store all your personal information, mails, codes, notes, and much more, away from prying eyes.

Features: Memory enhancement, instant access to mail, diary, notes, in your brain. Egghead3000 also includes a very helpful backup-service that stores everything, including all your brain functions, memories, etc, on MegaSmooth’s servers. The slogan: “Forgot your car keys? We’ll help you find them!” awarded MegaSmooth’s pr(opaganda) department a Gold Turkey Award for best slogan of 2108.

Security Issues: MegaSmooth claims that Egghead in inpenetrable. In fact, they claim it’s so secure that Willie Gates VII’s himself uses it. Surpricingly that is true. However, they have chosen to say nothing about his slightly odd behaviour since he got Egghead3000 (beta 3.599) installed. They also have no idea that Not-So-Jolly Roger has cracked little Willies password and thus made his innermost thoughts fair game for all pirates to see.

Have a peek into Willies brain here: xxxxxx

Misc: Oh, yes, I almost forgot… The Egghead PA application is brought to you, courtesy of MegaSmooth Software – your friendly software provider.

In the good old days Corpnet was called the Internet. But the Internet was gradually taken over by corporate interests that made the Internet harder and harder to use for normal users. Hence, in 2079 it was therefore decided that the word “Internet” was outdated and the Internet was renamed “Corpnet” to reflect what it had now become after years and years of corporate and governmental misuse.

Founding: Like most other early software providers, MegaSmooth sprung out of a garage in Silicon Valley in the early 1980’s. Young Billy Gates III had dropped out of college and his angry father sent him out into the garage to think about his unwise decision. No-one knows exactly what Billy did in the garage that night, but when he came out he was all flustered and talked incoherently about “world domination” and the very next day he started MegaSmooth Software with the money he got from selling his dad’s car.

After having spent two nights in a holding cell for stealing and selling on the car, his mom took pity on him and paid the bail, and he went on to develop and launch MegaSmooth’s first software line: “Little helper”.

“Little helper” was the first desktop advisor on the market. It made a little cartoon nerd (modeled on little Billy himself) pop up to give friendly advice whenever the user did anything out of the ordinary…well…it actually had an annoying habit of popping up ALL THE TIME!

That in turn led to MegaSmooth’s next software line: “Little Helper: vacation expansion kit”. A handy little program that gave the users the option to send Little Helper on vacation and leave them in peace. The bestselling product was the now legendary “Little Helper: extended vacation in Hell” expansion. After only three months on the market, it was estimated that a whopping 99.9 percent of all computer owners had bought it.

Legal Issues: After the release of the Little Helper vacation expansion kits, voices were raised claiming that MegaSmooth had intentionally made Little Helper as annoying and intrusive as possible to pave the way for the expansion kits. Numerous attempts were made to drag MegaSmooth to court, but after the notoriously nasty virus “Little Helper: life without parole” mysteriously ended up in numerous critics computers, and overrode all attempts to send Little Helper on vacation, the critique soon disappeared. It was also around this time that the company’s motto was created: “MegaSmooth Software – Your friendly software provider”

Corporate Nation status: In 2100 Billy Gates III’s great, great grandson, Willie Gates VII took full control of the company. The take-over was the result of an extensive employee study. With the help of his great, great grandfather Billy Gates III, little Willie managed to gather enough information about the company’s board that he could give them an offer they couldn’t refuse: “Give me full control, or else…!”

In 2108 little Willie fulfilled his great, great grandfather’s and his own long-time dream of world domination, by suggesting a wonderful new form of democracy: voting by shopping?, a system that gave the most successful company in each area power to legislate within that area. The new system of governing instantly sent MegaSmooth spiraling upwards to complete world domination, as all other companies by now were completely dependent on MegaSmooth’s software.

Corporate Division: Nowadays, MegaSmooth mainly works in two areas: Security and surveillance. A few people have claimed that they have moved on from Little Helper to Big Brother, but no-one ever said it more than once. They all happened to fall victims of all sorts of freak accidents. One man accidently hit a bus when he fell from his bedroom window (located on the 27th floor), another accidently ran into a BBQ skewer, no less than seven times, and so on.

MegaSmooth’s security section mainly work with making sure that people’s computers only run securely with licensed MegaSmooth software and spontaneously combust if any other software is introduced.

The surveillance section work to help people keep track of their everyday life. They have for instance developed a neat little memory upgrade software called Egghead3000. Users simply plug it straight into their hippocampus. Egghead3000 not only boosts their memory with all sorts of functions. It also includes a very helpful backup-service that stores all your brain functions, memories etc on MegaSmooth’s servers. The slogan: “Forgot your car keys? We’ll help you find them!” awarded MegaSmooth’s pr(opaganda) department a Gold Turkey Award for best slogan of 2108.

Corporate Culture: It’s fun to work at MegaSmooth. All services are provided. Employees can eat, sleep and wash their clothes at MegaSmooth. Basically, there’s no need to go home at night. In fact, MegaSmooth doesn’t expect their employees to go home. In fact it has been reported that the company let the guard dogs chase them down if they try.

Misc: Within MegaSmooth the phrase: “We eat dog food” is widely used to describe the policy of feeding the employees whatever the many guard dogs manage to catch. However, the company’s official canteene menu calls it: “MegaSmooth Surprise”.

History: Petland was founded in 2089 by Billy-Bob Nelson of Kentucky, who then became HRH King Billy-Bob I of Petland. The initial island was roughly the size of a football field, and was built on an estimated 5 789 326 PET bottles contained in four massive nets. Today, Petland has expanded considerably and has a harbour, a helicopter pad, a royal palace, guest huts and many other conveniences.

Government and politics: King Billy-Bob rules and his will is law.

Petland’s international relations with No Man’s Land are bad. In fact, they suck. Not only is Petland under constant attack from the Ecofem that dislike his use of Pet bottles, his ex-wiife Conzuela (Rico Fantastico) is the ruler of Transatlatis. She won the election with the slogan “I won’t rest until Petland sinks (and Billy-Bob with it)!” and won with a staggering 97.6 percent of the Transatlantis’ votes.

Geography: From having been a bare little island, Petland has not only grown in size, but has also developed a rich and beautiful tropical flora and fauna, long stretches of white sandy beaches and tall palm trees.

Culture: Hula dancing and coconut bras are culture, right?

Sport: Sport? Well, it requires quite a lot of muscle to carry a drink in your hand all day.

Religion: Nah… Unless leisure can be considered a religion.

Misc: Not-So-Jolly Roger was just a normal grumpy Roger until he met Billy-Bob on one of Petland’s beaches. Since then, everyone calls him Not-So-Jolly Roger.

History: In 2069 feminism was deemed unconstitutional, since it violated the notion that “all men are created equal” by advocating a political stance that was based on the notion that “all men are created equally bad”. This led to the closing of numerous departments of women- and gender studies and hordes of homeless feminists roamed the streets. Some of the more hardcore ones, found real life outside of their women- and gender studies departments so hard, that they didn’t only settle for a room of their own, but opted for a country of their own. Money was raised and a cluster of islands in The Pacific where bought. Thus, the kingdom of No Man’s Land was born.

The inhabitants of the new country lived happily ever aft… Well, after two weeks the new country was ravage by civil war between different fractions of feminism. It didn’t take long until No Man’s land was turned into a confederation of separate feminist states.

Today, No Man’s Land’s most notable island states are:

Anarcha funland – For fun loving anarcha feminists that never say no to a good political rally.

Riot Grrrrrandmothers – For the elderly feminists that haven’t forgotten the good old days in the Riot Grrrrl movement.

Ecofem – For ecological feminists who get a kick out of recycling and demonstrating against plastic waste in the oceans along the coast of Petland.

P P Island – Short for Post-Post Island. This is the by far biggest island in the confederation No Man’s Land, as this is where all who adhere to any kind of post whatever feminism gather.

Transatlantis – No Man’s Land’s haven for “honourary (wo)men”, i.e. men that used to be women. The island has been the object of quite a lot of controversy. Some claim that a woman with a penis is still a woman, whereas others say that anything with a penis, man-made or not, is a man and does not belong in No Man’s Land. But since the inhabitants of Transatlantis have proved to be a much loved addition to the entertainment industry of No Man’s Land, no one dares to suggest that the island should be excluded from the confederation.

Government and politics: No Man’s Land is run by a parliament consisting of representatives from each of the separate states. Instead of voting they practice a complicated automatic system of government that scan the parliament members’ speeches and measure pitch, volume and frequency of certain keywords like “Simone De Beauvoir”, “post”, “patriarchy” etc to determine who is right. The highest overall value of pitch, volume and keywords win.

And political theory… Don’t even go there…

Geography: The topography of No Man’s Land is varied and range from billowing plains, high peaks, marshy, dense crevasses.

Culture: No Man’s Land has the biggest concentration of singer/songwriters in the world.

Sport: No Man’s Land is very successful in shot put, wrestling and sledgehammer and has won all medals in these sports in the Free World Olympics ever since the federation was founded in 2069.

Religion: The women of No Man’s Land are very spiritual, but reject all notions of a heavenly father and don’t accept the idea that there should ever have existed even a bare minimum of three “wise men” at all and certainly not at the same time. Instead they worship the mother goddess of the Earth.

Misc: Since No Man’s Land’s was founded, the confederation’s states have only managed to agree fully on one thing. In 2089 a general cease fire was issued under the unifying parole: “No, Sir. I can’t boogie.”

Born: 2069

Family: The youngest son of Will Gates VI and Ursula Gates. One brother, Steve, that mysteriously disappeared during a camping trip with his younger brother. Married to Fiona Gates (nee Good and former wife of Not-So-Jolly Roger)

Early life: Willie grew up in Boston and was more or less raised into the MegaSmooth corporation. By then, the Gates had become what could best be described as “software royalty”. He attended The Soda-Cola Kindergarten for Bubbly Kids where he became a lifelong foe of a wee little lad called Roger Bonny.

However, Will and Ursula were concerned about their son’s lacking social competence and thought that the popular Roger might be the solution to their problems. They contacted Roger’s parents and offered Roger a full grant to MegaSmooth University and a top position within the company, if he took little Willie under his wing and helped him with friends in school and later on at college. Neither Willie nor Roger wanted to hear anything about it, but their parents agreed that it was a good solution and thus they were stuck with each other anyway.

The arrangement worked fairly well, until Willie and Roger were forced to share a dorm room at college. Willie still accuses Roger of throwing him out of the room on numerous occasions when Roger “helped a female student with her studies” and Roger accuses Willie of disturbing him by actually helping female students with their studies. In short, they were a match mad in hell from the very beginning.

Career: After college, both Willie and Roger ended up at MegaSmooth’s main office, were they had offices next to each other. Willie had a major crush on the Soda-Cola vending machine girl, Fiona, but she never even looked at him and went off to marry Roger instead.

Willie vowed to break up the marriage and new exactly how to do it, by gaining full control of the company and kicking Roger out on the street. Classy women like Fiona wanted classy successful men like himself, not bums like Roger. He was, of course, right, and four months after Roger was kicked out, he married Fiona, with whom he shares a perverse interest in making Roger’s life suck as much as possible.

Oh, right! When taking over the company, he kind of ended up ruling the world as well. But more importantly, he made Roger look like a looser.

Misc: Willie uses “Superstud3000″ as his password. It’s a very misleading password. Willie is by no means a stud. He’s not very smart either, since he has used the same password for everything ever since his college days when he shared a room with Roger.

Born: 2069 as Roger Bonny in Boston to a proud and loud Irish mother and a less proud and loud Irish-American father.

Family: No kids (as far as he knows). One ex-wife, the now Fiona Gates (born Good, but Roger thinks she’s all bad). She told Roger he was “the worst excuse for a man ever” and left him for fame, fortune and a little Willie. (Willie Gates VII, that is.)

Early life: Roger grew up in Boston and is “more Irish than a leprechaun” according to his proud Irish mother. At five, he could do a jig, play the tin whistle and holler “The Wild Rover” louder than anyone else in the local pub. Despite all that, he never managed to learn how to pronounce his mother’s Irish name (Aoibhe Ní Mhuirchú), so he still just calls her “Mam”.

Despite his difficulty pronouncing his mothers name, Roger turned out to be a fairly gifted child and got admitted to The Soda-Cola Kindergarten for Bubbly Kids. Later, he went on to Soda-Cola University in Soda Town where he had to share his dorm room with his old kindergarten foe and later wife snatcher, Willie Gates VII.

Career: After graduating from Soda-Cola University with a degree in APP (Applied Programming and Propaganda), he went on to work for MegaSmooth Software. They had after all paid his tuition and had promised him a good position if he agreed to help little Willie get friends and become a “normal” student.

Roger’s wonderful career at MegaSmooth ended abruptly the day little Willie marched in to the board room armed with a mighty file of personal information about all the board members and mysteriously was unanimously chosen to become the company’s new omnipotent leader.

Little Willie had always resented Roger as he had gotten all the babes at college, so he staged a horrible revenge that included stripping Roger of all his titles and perks, and then swiftly moved on to stripping Roger’s perky wife, Fiona.

Roger embarked on a brief career as “entertainment” for bored and filthy rich ladies on board the MS Love Haven (or the MS Love Handle as Roger and his mates on board used to call it). He was finally thrown off the MS Love Haven due to an unpaid gaming debt and ended up on the beach of Petland.

Misc: Roger has a mean golf swing. In fact it’s so mean that he once knocked little Willie off his feet and sent him to the ER where he got seven stitches. Thus, Roger’s mean swing is indeed the cause of the characteristical scar above little Willies left eye, that always glows red when he gets excited.

Born: 2084

Family: Daughter of David and Lorna Blofeld, who both died in a violent collision between their TV-sofa and the bulldozer that their daughter was driving.

Early life: Kat grew up in a small town in Main. She was a happy little girl until the day her parents decided to buy her a blue bike instead of the pink one that she had been longing to have for ages. The conflict exploded and the 6 year old Kat was finally sent to her room by her father who just wanted to watch the evening news in peace and quiet.

However, up in Kat’s room thoughts of revenge started brewing and since she was a creative little girl, she quickly came up with a crafty plan for how to get rid of her problems, i.e. her parents. She climbed out of her window, and headed off and fetched a bulldozer from a nearby farm. Then, she swiftly drove the bulldozer straight into the living-room, turned off the TV permanently and squashed her parents between the coffee-table and the sofa.

All in all, it was a great plan. The bulldozer thing was deemed a freak accident and the poor little orphan that had supposedly been sleeping upstairs through it all got everybody’s sympathy. The local church choir even collected enough money to buy her the pink bike of her dreams. She used to go out on long bike rides, biking up and down the hills of Main, singing “Born to be Wild” at the top of her lungs.

Career: The local church choir didn’t only collect enough money to buy Kat her pink bike. In fact, they also collected enough money to send her off to quite fancy schools and a nice college. Part of their fervour to collect money for the girl was due to Kat’s fervour to collect useful information about The Voices of Angels Church Choir members and her eagerness to spread it all around town if she felt that their generosity was failing.

Kat wanted to be rich and what better way than to work for the richest man in the world? She arranged a meeting with Willie Gates VII (or rather, she bumped in to him outside Megasmooth’s main office after having spent three weeks in a hedge waiting on him). When their eyes met, they both knew that they had found their soulmate and after a brief lunch, Willie immediately hired her as his personal assistant. Her first job was to escort Roger out of the main office and kick him out the door. A job she enjoyed disturbingly much.

Misc: Kat still enjoys driving heavy duty machinery and this skill often comes in handy when working for Willie.

Born: 2073 (nee Good)

Family: Married to Willie Gates VII, no children. Formerly married to Not-So-Jolly Roger.

Early life: Fiona grew up in Washington where her dad worked as a cleaner in the congress. Therefore, she often refers to the good old day’s when her dad “was a congressman”. Her mom was a piano teacher and when she was seven, Fiona could play all of Mozart’s piano concertos by heart. “It’s very important for a girl to know how to use her hands if she wants to get a fine man,” her mother used to say and in high school Fiona realised just how right her mom had been.

Career: After graduating from Soda-Cola University?, Fiona got a job tending to Soda-Cola?’s vending machines at MegaSmooth’s main office in Sillicon Valley. There she met a striking young, Irish lad called Roger, who seemed to have an enormous need to quench his thirst with Soda-Cola. Fiona spotted him and used her hands as best as she could to help him relieve his thirst. She took special care making sure that the vending machine outside Roger’s office was always full with nice, cool cans of Soda-Cola.

After a particularly drunken company party, she went in for the kill and three months later they were married, to Willie Gates VII’s great dismay. He had the office next to Roger’s and had been putting his money in the same slot as him for quite some time, and had hoped that the Soda-Cola girl should notice him. After all, his wallet was bigger than Roger’s.

As soon as they were married Fiona quit her job and started living off Roger. After all, that had been her plan all along: to get a rich guy with a fancy title. And Roger had both money and fancy titles, at least until Willie Gates VII unexpectedly took full control of MegaSmooth and kicked him out.

This was also very bad for Fiona who in one day went from being the envy of all the other women in the MeegaSmooth’s Executive Wives Club, to being a rejected outcast. It was a very unexpected turn of events and certainly very bad for her career. Luckily Willie Gates VII took pity on her and helped her out of her horrific situation by snatching her from Roger. “I’ve already shared a slot with you once,” he said to the dumbfounded Roger. “I won’t do that again. This time, it’s all mine!” And once again Fiona was greeted with envious looks when she made a triumphant return as the president of the Executive Wives Club.

Misc: Fiona has by no means forgiven Roger for letting her down by getting fired from MegaSmooth. So, to feel better, she does what she can to make his life hell. She has discovered that the most effective way of doing so is by sharing as much information about him as possible with her present husband. And as her present husband is very understanding, he stands by his wife and shares and supports her interest in Roger-bashing.