“
Baseline is a model city. We all love City City, but we can’t all afford to be in City City. But everybody can afford to be in Baseline. That’s why it’s called Baseline. Baseline is an opportunity. Baseline is the future for the people who can’t quite reach the future, but want to be the future.”
Baseline is a small southwestern city[note 1] on Palisade.
History
It was created as a model city by the Frontier Syndicate, which advertises it as a more affordable variation on City City.[note 2] Of course, the "affordability" comes with its own price:
“
Baseline is a data town, sort of like the doom towns of atomic test sites, these like, incredibly clearly fake places, except people [...] “get to,” quote/unquote, live there for free, in exchange for being subject to an endless array of social, medical, and psychological experiments, none of which they get to be informed about. They sign away their right to be informed and to consent to individual tests in order to live here for free and have tests run on them.”
Gucci Garantine orders the Blue Channel to go to Baseline for their next sortie after the mission to capture a VIP named "Gem". Devotion commands Cori to build a church to it in Baseline during the same sortie.[1] Instead, the Blue Channel disobeys orders and goes to the Isle of the Broken Key to try to sniff out BIS spies and find a new source of sustenance for the Figure in Bismuth.[2]
This section contains spoilers for PALISADE 17: Upon Our Grace Pt. 4.
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As a direct consequence of the Blue Channel not heading to Baseline to assist people there, residents of Baseline attempt a revolution that badly fails.[3] Many people are killed,<ref>PALISADE 21: In Their Fear Pt. 2 including Ce Gull and Broadleaf, and the Frontier Syndicate's plans for Baseline succeed: within weeks, new versions of Baseline are popping up all over the planet.[3]
Footnotes
- ↑ In "Today Is a Monday" Austin describes Baseline first as a "little town" and then a "city".
- ↑ City City is, in fact, an output of experiments done in Baseline.