Lore:Interdyne
 Interdyne Pharmaceuticals |
Other Names: Dyne, IDP |
A one-stop Frontier shop for all your medical needs. Interdyne, you can count on them in your darkest hour.
Doctors can't be everywhere, but with Interdyne, they're always close.
Interdyne Pharmaceuticals
Interdyne Pharmaceuticals is a Sovereign Corporation who establishes many medical facilities that double as research facilities, and staff them with doctors. These facilities produce medications on-site, rescue nearby civilians, and treat the local populace. In the Nova Sector, they presently operate as an independent company in the mining areas, rescuing lost Shaft Miners and selling various products to the station. When they are not rescuing or treating, the doctors aboard may experiment with various sciences, or just relax.
Interdyne facilities have held doctors of all walks of life, from trainees to retirees, anyone decent with a scalpel and willing to learn has a home in Interdyne.
Visiting Hours
Interdyne's business model is one of going places and setting up outposts full of qualified doctors, giving them enough toys to play with to keep busy so that when Frontiersman John comes in with six testicles and zero brain lobes, the doctors are Awake, Alert, and Able to help.
Medical care in SolFed is a deeply personal journey between you, your community, your nation, and SolFed. We understand that the infinite expanse of space means your options range from limited, to limitingly diverse. The shelf-life of common healing drugs is measured in days, and that's by design. Bulk sales aren't good business these days, and hoarding's a great way to turning expired drugs into secret poisons. Having a pharmacist in your neighborhood's really the only sound decision you can make, and thankfully, you don't have to. Interdyne is here for you, for all your medical concerns that aren't "economic" enough for a larger healthcare chain to handle.
For too long, doctors have had to choose between helping people, and saving lives. Research, or residency. In the core worlds, thousands of the planet's brightest minds and steadiest hands, locked in an ivory tower, treating the same six maladies and singing the same sob songs to grieving families. It's necessary work, of course, but it's also a waste of talent. Back when the human body was a mystery and novel cases walked in on the regular, it may have been necessary to have doctors prepared to solve a puzzle before it bleeds out, but these days stationary doctors drown in elder care and basic organ work, stagnating until their keen wit is dulled to ineptitude. To put it bluntly: pedestrian healthcare is boring!
Business plan: Providing critical medical care and rescue through a wide variety of cutting-edge medical solutions, premiums at affordable prices. Emergency responses are billed to the relevant nation, as per tenancy agreements, individual contracts, and the underlying principle that in SolFed, letting your citizens die avoidable deaths is a "dick move" that is "unpleasant" to mention at parties. More personal treatments are available at the capacity and capabilities of the present doctors, from mundane healing drugs to things you will never know you have always needed.
At Interdyne, our guarantee is that there is no guarantee: holding our doctors to high standards would mean forcing them not to take the risks that get you to peak health. We value informed consent as much as the next Hippocratic establishment, but if you're willing to risk a 10% survival procedure, able to sign a consent form, and the doctor's willing to try it, Interdyne isn't going to get in the way. Come to your nearest Interdyne facility and explore the Frontier of biology!
Enrichment
Despite their benevolent triage, Interdyne Pharmaceuticals is primarily a research company. Doctors, in the long spans between patients, have an entire facility of cutting-edge machinery with which to explore new innovations and sharpen their skills. Other companies in the vein of Interdyne find it more economical to keep their doctors cryoslept, in a perpetual state of panic, awake only in moments of carnage, asleep as decades of medical advancements pass them by. And somehow this isn't considered a "prison sentence?"
Doctors in Interdyne's employ are encouraged to diversify their skillsets, exploring the medically unknown on the company's dime. Legally, Interdyne employees are "Scientists," not "Doctors," which frees them from various Duties of Care, impartiality, and non-combatant obligationsInterdyne is not an Adventurer's Guild, band of Mercenaries, or Snake Oil Salesmany.. Across the standardizedShoutouts to Clown Main 2, and MerlonFire23 for their insight and enthusiasm in the Interdyne Holonet Channels. IDP CloudmaneHorse-agnostic. class of Scientific Vessel and IDP MarlinfaireFish-atheistic. Scientific Outpost, employees have access to experimental capabilities in the fields of xenobiology, microbiology, and pharmacology. Nonmedically, vessels include a full array of self-sustenanceAble to thrive without external help, not necessarily consuming from what one's own body produces. activities: hydroponics, atmospherics - leeching only from the finest gas giants -, barkeeping, and the libreocollectiveA small library. "Librarian Sciences" is (unenforcably) trademarked by the QC Claire-Marten Shipping Associates. sciences. In the interest of independence, several Interdyne employees are designated as minersShaft miners, those who dig. All Interdyne employees are of age in both local and SolFed jurisdictions. While Interdyne does provide care for all ages, Interdyne facilities are not a safe or nuturing environment for children to be raised full-time in, and "Take Your Child To Work Day" was cancelled after an incident internally known as "Speed Dial" or "Crank Call.", but are paid specifically to manage the material situation in any capacity, from digging to salvage. As many of Interdyne's patients are rescues, these miners serve as our first contact with the customer, and should be ready to defend their new wards as they are transferred to medical.
House Calls
SolFed, contrary to popular opinion, is 99% unclaimed space. Pedantically, given how sparse space is, "matter" within SolFed is a statistically insignificant anomaly, but even in a political sense, most of SolFed is owned in name only. Just as one cannot count the grains of sand on the beach, so too can a nation not catalogue or control every last meter of liveable space within their cosmic borders. Near-infinite are the numerous asteroids, comets, drifting stations, stable orbits, planetoids, and even planets in any particular nation. Typically, a nation has a list of the star systems it claims to control, arbitrarily divided into Sectors, as well as the major inhabitable and inhospitable landmarks surrounding them, and the estimated population count per Sector.
More precise records are typically kept only at a local level, as the SolFed Council does not particularly care whether the eligible population in a sector lives on a stellar body or around it, simply that the nation pays taxes on their behalf in exchange for appropriate representation in the Council. The Bureau of Astrography will usually have the more granular maps available, using them to redistribute Marshal patrols and hubs, though these will obviously never be as up-to-date as a region's own charts.
Interdyne, thusly, offers a foothold for less-monolithic families to settle in a stable manner. To qualify for SolFed membership, the minimum threshold for a prospective Nation is their ability to sustain and protect a populationSpecifically, the minimum threshold for 1 Vote in the SolFed Council. This fluctuates, but once a Nation is established, it is not automatically disbanded should it no longer meet the threshold. (Unless a vote of Adverse Possession or the like is called to dissolve the nation, but that's typically Not Done, in the class of a Dick Move.). Interdyne facilities, through expertise and lobbying, offer a disproportionate quantity of "medical capacity" compared to their costs, strengthening any claim for (adverse) possession in effectively-abandoned space. If the so-called parent nation is unaware of these squatters, they clearly can neither sustain nor protect them, nor collect taxes appropriately.
Though the process is not simple or fast, SolFed holds provisions for "Squatter's Rights," allowing for neglected communities to secede from the nation that claims their land but not their citizenship in a peaceful and sanctioned manner. The legal specifics fluctuate as various votes pass, but the general gist is that if your nation cannot find you to evict you, but enough laypeople can find and join you to the point you'd qualify for a single full Vote in the SolFed council, then clearly your nation has Forgotten or Neglected you. If you are then able to retroactively pay SolFed dues on SolFed services previously rendered (Marshal patrols, etc.), your nation is Valid.
Given how much "economic potential" gets taken from SolFed nations as a result of forgotten colonies growing large enough to leave, Interdyne is often called the "Seventh Arm of the Syndicate," regardless of how many publicly-facing "arms" of the traditionally-armless snake are acknowledged. While Interdyne has no formal relationship with the Syndicate, they've successfully combined plausible deniability and the Hippocratic Oath as a legal defense several times to avoid nation-level consequences for healing and aiding Syndicate members and ships.
Obstetricks: A Company Is Born
Interdyne self-classifies as a Pharmaceutical company because they provide pharmaceuticals. Contrary to naysayers, this wasn't a stylistic choice or tax dodge.
In the time before SolFed, Interdyne Pharmaceuticals' existed to chase migrations and miners with massive mountains of modern medications, as traveling apothecaries and floating warehouses. In the time of the ICA, minersTwo schools of thought, each with varying amounts of success: large trawling ships casting a wide net, filtering large swaths of space dust to filter, and precision navigators, hunting for live asteroids large enough to manually mine. Both suck in comparison to modern mining. would depart from Sol's outer planets to the Oort Cloud (effectively a microasteroid megabeltLike your mom wears.) in hopes of capturing and processing enough asteroids to bring back the frontier's blue gold: Bluespace Crystals, more often the dust particles. Traveling the two light years manually meant carrying everything with you, with every square inch of surface area another threat vector for the dense clouds of debris to penetrate, and every ounce of ΔvThrust. That is, fuel is heavy so it costs fuel to carry fuel. needing an additional ounce of rocket fuel to maneuver. With profit margins tight and the work long, most Oort Mining ships pushed against the minimum thresholds of safety and comfort for a stronger bounty, with dreams of a haul dense enough to retire your bloodline off of.
Interdyne, playing the odds, chased these miners into the dangerous Oort cloud as a companion, not a rival. By promising a steady supply of medication and repairs, any miner allied with Interdyne could haul (according to Interdyne advertisements) 30% more cargo per crew member, at only 15% the overhead - that's 15% extra for freeThe numbers are intentionally misleading. That's advertising, baby.. Interdyne succeeded where others failed by their sheer dedication to the people.
Interdyne succeeded where others failed through savvy marketing and their predatory stance on rescues: if you weren't an Interdyne member, you were in no position to negotiate whatever exorbitant fee the rescuer offers. At least, that's what the advertisements say. Half a rescued ship is better than dying alone in space, and subscribing to Interdyne is better than both! With the Oort Cloud, you either inter or you dyin'e... that slogan didn't last long, but the company prospered.
Historians with a vested interest in pissing corporations off suggest that Interdyne had significant competition in the rescuing business, and only prevailed through sinister treachery and extortive injustices. Normal historians believe Interdyne was actually one of the more ethical companies of the era, and that tales of shaking down dying folk were greatly overblown by irate tycoons having their fleet's earnings liened for fuel costs for rescues au gratis (Pro bono? Historians have receipts for both; it seems that whatever phrasing the individual rescuing ship used is what was billed. CryptohistoriansHistorians focused on deciphering codes, cyphers, and double-speak. Not related to historians studying burial practices, except when the tombs are guarded by secret cyphers, which is actually fairly often. suggest a relationship between the flourishing descriptions and how much they think they could fleece the rescuee's parent company for).
As solid forms of Bluespace became more readily accessible, humanity all but abandoned the Oort Cloud for harvesting and began on their first Great Migration. Many OortycoonsPortmanteau of Oort and Tycoon. Not to be confused with Oorty and a slur, please. lost significant portions of their gains trying to double-down on the Oort Cloud, marketing the cloud as pollution-free (it was not), organic (it was not), home-grown (it was not) Bluespace superior to the cheap crystalline garbage found in more anomalous areas (it was not). Interdyne, with little capital invested in mining-specific ships, effortlessly pivoted from servicing isolated mining expeditions to servicing isolated colonizing expeditions. Because of their unique ability to pivot to the new paradigm of space useIf this makes sense to you, report to your nearest Interdyne Medical Facility to be treated for your obvious mental disorder: Middle Manglement Mindedness., Interdyne remained a strong Corporation, easily serving as a prime example of what SolFed would later declare a "Sovereign Corporation".
Patient Zero, The Capital
Again according to the marketing, a Colony supported by Interdyne has a 40% higher chance of survival and 70% higher chance of prosperity. Interstellar Dynamics: A Future For You Is A Future For Us All. (This, too, did not stick.) The first star systems that SolFed would award directly to a corporation, thus founding the Sovereign Corporation program, were stars that Interdyne had declared they would have a robust presence in, quadrupling the value of the territory overnight. Interdyne's headquarters would move from Saturn to Jonvus 1 (TODO this name sucks), the third of their stars, when it became clear that the political situation on Saturn was untenable; as is typical after failing a "hostile takeover" or "attempted buyout" (depending on who is asked).
Jonvus 1TODO: make this name NOT SHITTY is one of Interdyne's least important holdings, ironically, functionally serving as a postal address for the highly-distributed company. Around Jonvus 1 are 4 planets, each noteworthily unexceptional. Planet 2 is in the Goldilocks zone of natural habitabilityClose enough to the sun to be warm, but not too on fire. and once possessed great tracts of green life, whereas the others are habitable through terraforming and technology. Jonvus 1 mostly imports what materials it cannot synthesize - not for scarcity, but the expense of mining it themselves in industrial quantities. Interdyne doctors, should they retire and not to their immediate surroundings, have the Jonvus Elder ReciprocalNamed as such to justify calling the elderly retired doctors JERCs. Care complex as a company-sponsored retirement option. New Interdyne recruits are encouraged - but not required - to spend a short tourSix months to six years, though some find it to be their passion and stay. Somehow. caring for their elders here, gleaning medical advice and institutional knowledge from the oldheadsNot an industry-standard term. before seeking their own pathMetaphorically. Interdyne holds no particular interest in Alternative Astrography and uses the Bureau of Astrography's charts, same as most other nations. through the stars.
The first AccreditedLicensed to dispense College-equivalent credits. Not by any particular SolFed agency, but by various College-admissions-equivalent private firms. It's mostly to justify a copyright on the term "Accredited." retirement homes, these facilities are informally known as the Interdyne Institute, with residents organized into wards by specialty. A four-year tour of caring and studying under the vast array of elderly doctors is galacticly considered equivalent to a typical eight-year medical school track, depending on the rotations. That said, Jonvus also hosts conventional medical teachers, especially in subjects the current residency is ill-equipped to teachUsually the knowledge is too new, or too old such that the experts are dying out, or a literal lack of equipment (as is typical of Psionic surgeries).. Tuition is mostly waived for those on the caretaking path, and entirely waived with a contractual tenure aboard an Interdyne installation in need.
Industrial Revolution
The advent of the Chemical Synthesizer and its consequences could have been a disaster for the Interdyne business model. A business built around stockpiling essential medicines to dispense to the needy should have been displaced by engineering companies once those essentials could be printed from effectively just electricity, but the secret to Interdyne was never about stockpiling materials, but stockpiling talent. While there were some growing pains in transitioning from warehouse-style ships to sleeker powerhouse vessels, the goods themselves were in no danger of going unwanted. Interdyne's real threat was the ease of simple medicines, of folk believing they need only the basics, of folk settling for what they can make themselves, of folk willing to die by the DIY.
The introduction of a neopharmacological form of Meth, with a simple recipe and difficult execution, recaptured the mystique of the Pharmacological Arts. Even to this day, the allure of easy meth draws wannabe chemists to break into a secure lab, push the funny buttons themselves, and blow themselves up. The inventorDyet Soo Crose, though often falsely attributed to the Sugar family. of the Chemical Synthesizer described the release of the underground chemistry textbook, the "Chemonomicon,"A search of the Deep Holonet might reveal the following: A secret message leading to an _unsanctioned page_. the "Worst PR imaginable. I made the Synthesizer to save everyone, to make health a choice, not a battle! Now all anyone knows about chemistry is funny free drugs that explode on you." On paper, nothing connects Interdyne to this viral disclosure. Businesses have been built on stranger "coincidences," after all.
Within weeks of the illicit instructions being circulated, the six major insurance companies mandated that all chemistry-related functions be performed only by licensed doctors, and their chemistry labs be highly secured and reinforced against accidental explosions. With the fears of badbreaking successfully blown out of proportion, Interdyne's stock prices instantly stabilized from their rapid plummet, and tripled what they had been within a month.
Modern Holdings
In terms of cultural coverage, Interdyne is one of the largest standalone nations, with hooks in over 70% of all societies. While Interdyne facilities struggle to compete in dense cities against dedicated, standalone Dire Care facilities, IDP usually finds some street corner to set up on, in more of a local drug store capacity than one-stop shop. Even in the most close-minded societies or hyperzoned urban sprawls, Interdyne simply declares the need for an embassy there, and well would you look at that they're also selling tirimol and plastic surgery, as is the customs of our people.
Most permanent Interdyne stations service regions of 500 to 1000 eligible patients with a full compliment of 64 Scientists. Though the modular design of Interdyne stations means they can be scaled vertically, if a region of more than 1000 patients needs full Interdyne coverage, typically a second Interdyne station is constructed closer to the appropriate district, rather than trying to funnel traffic to a central location. Smaller classes of stations and vessels exist, with the smallest mass-produced vessel class, the IDP Cloudmane, and the smallest mass-produced planetary station, the IDP Marlinfaire, hosting 8 scientists each (typically 4 Researchers, 3 Miners, and 1 Chief). "Interdyne: When your Alternative Medicine is still medicine, you've got it pretty good."
The Nova Sector
To Interdyne, the Nova Sector started as another speculative precolonial venture; that is, Interdyne said they were going to the weird deadly zone, and only Tarkon Industries, Twin Nexus, and some lesser companies bit. From 2XXX until 2557, Tarkon repeatedly attempted mining excursions onto Indecipheres, from several orbital stations. It went okayNo it did not..
The Tarkon travel-class shuttles provided could reliably land on the volcanic surface for upwards of thirty minutes before instability and hostile reactions would force the ship to leave. Indecipheres, predatory mistress she is, would then render the area incompatible with rescue for a prolonged duration. Tarkon eventually got in the habit of teaching their miners the art of shelter construction, and would later launch orbital pods with cryosleep caskets. Interdyne, likewise, would land a single IDP Cloudmane in a central location, serving as an expensive but reliable emergency exfiltration. Through their combined heroism, Tarkon and Interdyne successfully mined... a modest amount of Bluespace crystals, and other materials. Enough for self-sufficiency, but at projected rates, not enough for an economic revolution and certainly not enough to justify a high-traffic throughway. Still, settlers would trickle in to make their own way or enlist with Tarkon doing roughly the same. Until Nanotrasen.
Like many science-oriented companies, Nanotrasen deployed several research stations, including the NSV Void Raptor, to study the anomalous properties of Indecipheres et al. With a total of ~3000 employees in the sector, averaging 200 employees on-shift per day, Nanotrasen was like the fourth-most active corporate entity in the Nova Sector, far from the massive scale of Tarkon and supporting Interdyne. When the Void Wars drifted through the Nova Sector in 2557, most of Tarkon's employees chose to fight and die for their sector, with many Interdyne installations catching crossfire and/or willingly hiding in low-power cryosleep, leaving Nanotrasen as the largest active presence at the time SolFed decided to pay out political capita.
In 2510, a smaller mining company, Akhter, revolutionized "Lavaland Mining" through a saturation of seemingly permanent landing structures. Though these structures have the facilities to host several full-time workers, they host no crew directly. These structures appear to the planet as a potential residence, somewhere newcomers would be lured to to reside. By willfully laying a trap for Indecipheres to exploit (haters will say the structural supports and decentralized nature), they manage to remain on the surface for weeks at a time. While Akhter's records of precise mining station records were lost in the Void War, it seems that there's always a fresh mining station somewhere new on the surface with fresh ores nearby.
Brand Affiliates
Interdyne holds a majority share of interest in medical manufacturer, DeForest. When an Interdyne scientist produces a product with commercial viability, they take it to DeForest, who works out the logistics of producing it at scale, distributing, marketing, etc. Sometimes the scientist spearheads the product themselves, though often they find the bureaucracy and engineering to be confusing, trite, or otherwise incompatible with their envisioned lifestyle. Regardless of if the product makes it to market, if there's something patentable, Interdyne pays out a standard royalty package in order to license it to DeForest.
This separation of corporate entities makes sense to deep accountants and brand loyalists, even if it just seems that Interdyne could just split into something like Interdyne Productions. Confusingly, Interdyne does produce a few recurring products under the Interdyne branding, though these tend to be medication brands produced on-site by prescription or request.
Products
Interdyne
Sansufentanyl
The lifesaving drug used to treat the eradicative disease Heriditary Manifold Syndrome. Users of Sansufentanyl can enjoy upwards of a half-hour of prolonged existence in a "timeline that rejects them." Independent researchers studying HMS find that while the disease mimicks chronological distress, there is no evidence of other actual timelines, especially not an alternate timeline accepting them, nor that the drug or disease genuinely has a chronological component. HMS numbers have skyrocketed since the distribution of Sansufentanyl, though this is explainable by survivorship bias, in that unrecognized HMS fatalities would easily be confused with blood poisoning, getting lost in the woods, running away from home, spontaneous combustion, and many other missing persons cases. We cannot truly know just how many cases of HMS went undiagnosed, given the state they are left in.
Hereditary Manifold Syndrome
No wait no it's a natural phenomenon. Interdyne spends upwards of a million credits per year discrediting harmful rumors that Sansufentanyl causes HMS. Autoinjectors filled with 20u of Sansufentanyl in the pockets of known Syndicate Infiltrators who have been proven not to have HMS of their own are coincidences, a smear campaign against one of the most noble Sovereign Corporations in the Federation. One legal defense suggested that the autoinjector was full of Sansufentanyl from a different timeline, procured through sinister Syndicate means, and that the injection of this foreign Sansufentanyl attunes the victim to that rival timeline. This was enough to incur "reasonable doubt" that Interdyne is liable for the use of these autoinjectors, but set the precedent that Interdyne should be cautious with how Sansufentanyl is produced and distributed.
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