The Steps

The Steps rising from Lake Ontario off the shore of Greater Toronto.

Overview

The Steps, as they are referred to in Greater Toronto, are immense, monolithic platforms built to serve as temporary Atlan shipping yards during the Reconstruction.

These platforms were constructed in the lake, outside of the district's territory, making it easier for Atla to deliver large shipments of materials, tech, and other resources to fledgling districts without breaching strict New Dawn Accords laws regulating the movement of people, goods and technologies into and out of a district.

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Historical Context

The Steps during their construction during the early Reconstruction era.

Unparadigmed shipyards like The Steps were a necessary technicality for GATA during the Reconstruction era because of its own strict regulations; the System automatically enforces hard-coded expressions of NDA laws and policies that would have restricted their aid shipments.

Thus, these nearby "Gray Zones" were often utilized as staging areas where the possession and use of unparadigmed tech was technically not a crime, or at least, not one enforced by the System.

Without using these intermediary shipment hubs, the unparadigmed tech employed across GATA's Existence Doctrine infrastructure would have triggered countless false-positive alerts and automatic sanctions for the district. To overturn these erroneous System judgements, each record would have had to have been manually reviewed, which was an undesired burden that would have impeded the regular functioning of the government.

When static platforms were finally paradigmed into the district, there was no more need to ferry System shipments from the Gray Zone platforms into the city, causing them to fall out of use.

One of many warehouses constructed on the Steps by private enterprise.

The Steps saw a brief repurposing during the late Reconstruction's boom when private enterprise was permitted in the district and the free market opened back up across GATA via the System economy. The Steps were an enticing location for ambitious private enterprises because the Steps are unparadigmed, allowing them to use and trade various technologies with fewer restrictions and taxes.

However, increasing tensions between GATA military forces and Sovereign militias in the region exacerbated pro-Free Territory sentiment, triggering a wave of protests and culminating in a series of deadly Sovereign raids on the Steps.

As a result of these events, Greater Toronto’s local government tightened their enforcement of district borders at the orders of the Second Quorum, and the Steps once again fell into disuse. Plans have been proposed over the years to convert them into a garden monument.

Resurgence in Use

An underground rave held in one of the abandoned warehouses on the Steps.

Recently the local youth have begun taking statics out to the offshore platforms to throw illegal sync raves outside of the district's paradigm. So far, while their escapades have frustrated local authorities and Gate Patrol, who have no jurisdiction on The Steps, the situation has not yet warranted the attention of Angelis or the Quorums.