First...
The Computer Revolution stumbled and the vast debt piled up by the governments of the world dragged them down, and the world entered the Age of Instability. For two hundred years, the wonders of the Golden Age were subjected to rifle and nuclear fire. Piracy and slavery came roaring back, and genocide was practised widely. It was a dark world, a new dark age, peopled by lethally ruthless tyrants, and those were the good guys, the Kings of the Fire Spears who tried to create some form of peace and stability.
In the end, the Kings were able to do so, and the population of the Earth stood at one billion in 2205 Anno Domini. They fought each other for pride and for power, but even more, they fought the barbarians, the crazies, the pirates, and the mutants or more properly speaking the transforms who had gotten too close to some of the genetic engineering tools of the Golden Age.
It did not help that the Earth had grown cooler for decades, and that Kansas was no longer suited to grow wheat, but barley. But things calmed down. Some of the barbarians accepted missionaries, and a few tribes of mutant transforms were civilized. And the Earth moved from a Cool to a Warm phase, and suddenly there was more food.
And then some of the ancient universities began to send out scholars. These men had hidden in the basements of ancient centers of learning, and many had died when smoked out, but a few such centers had survived. And so the old learnning began to be put back to use. A new golden age was proclaimed.
Five hundred more years passed. Humanity moved out to the planets by means of the LEAP machine and by genetic engineering. The LEAP was a teleporter which worked best at certain ranges. It could throw someone into the Outer System with ease, but could hardly reach Earth's Moon, Luna.
The Outer System was populated by rejects who were transformed to meet their environment, and Leapt to it, often against their will. The Inner System was populated by humans as humans in spaceships driven by nuclear rockets. The last place that was built up was the Asteroid Belt because it was at the point of maximum inconvenience for both systems of travel.
This gave it the benefit of the best genetic engineering as it took in the lessons of the past.
The staid and stately Inner System hardly changed. 'Once a Martian, always a Martian' it was said. And in truth, it was more specific than that. Many 'humans' never went more than a hundred miles from their home, never moved after they bought a house upon marriage, and their socieities were fairly static. They had large governmental sectors sucking what little innovation was available out of the society.
The Outer System was anything but staid. It was turmoil and chaos without end. Bloody massacres alternated with kinetic energy strikes on one day and laser swords on the next day for variety. Whole populations moved tens of thousands of kilometers to escape human predators or the aggressively defensive who were frightened.
In between these two, the Belt civilization grew up. A typical Belter was stronger, and faster than well anyone else. He moved vast distances, but to run commercial transactions, or to accomplish a job. His society changed in vast spasms that went according to fairly clearly understood rules, but with vast sums of money at hand to the winner, the only thing that kept the rockhounds and the solar industrialists in line was that the government of the Belters cared little about taking care of people. Instead it focused on the Majesty of the Law. Getting on the wrong side of the government made dangerous men tremble. The laws were few, but enforced with great severity and quickness and impartiality.
In less than a hundred years, the Belt went from a minor power outweighed by the Moon to the Dominarch. Its power reigned over the whole solar system. Even the Queen of Saturn, with her millions of flying robot tanks produced by her hordes of slaves could only keep the Dominarch respectful inside the rings of Saturn.
The Inner System had experienced two great wars amongst themselves in that time. It seemed, thought some Belters, as if a form of insanity was permanent to the Inner System civ. But then they put up war, and made weapons no longer. Of course, this made the Dominarch unchallenged in power. However, they still sought to tell the Dominarch what to do. They claimed greater wisdom which was belied by their past.
The Dominarch largely understood them. That was a great part of its power. It knew the ways of friends and enemies. They did not understand the Dominarch nor the Outer System. It was not much of a surprise to many in the Dominarch when the Inner System kept attacking by words the Belt Civilization. The people in the capital city always misunderstand the march lords.
The march lords could have taken over the whole system, but the cost in brutality, nuclear scarred cities, planets ravaged, it hurt their conscience. Besides the more cynical among them figured they could last longer this way. Stay pure, stay rustic, and use the Inner System as a protected market for their goods without getting too involved and catching the 'Inner System Disease'.
And so as George Orwell noted so many centuries ago, rough men stood on their walls so that the quiet man could sleep peacefully in his bed.
Points:
1. The first half should be a clear reference to the Dark Ages with the university basement guys standing in for Irish monks.
2. I think the first half, the backstory was the better part, and I was tempted to stop it there which goes to show you that sometimes your material can get away from you.
3. This exhibits a technique for creating a New World on top of the Old World. If you want a break between the two instead of having 'in the 22nd Century, New America which consisted of Canada and Mexico and the Continental US had entered its fourth century of existence and....'. It allows you to create pretty much whatever you want to after giving say a century over to the transition period.
4. I don't have to say who the Belters are, right? Its obvious, right?
5. One of the basic techniques of Metaphor in Science Fiction is 'Its X and its in Space!'. Stargate Atlantis was 'Its Vampires and their in Space!'. This is of course, 'Its the Current World Order and its in Space!'.
Hopefully, on another day I can do a world in which Christians are trying to peacefully win the world over to voluntary communalism.