CUT TO SULLY at the Boston municipal crematorium. He sits next to a large cardboard box, about seven feet long, sitting on the rollers waiting to go into the furnace. In the box is his brother's body.

We see that they are identical twins. There is no other family there. Josh watches the attendant cover his brother's body with the top of the cardboard box, then efficiently band it with two plastic straps, like he's getting ready to ship it somewhere. Then the box is rolled into the furnace, and the burners are lit.

As he is wheeling himself through the crowded halls of the municipal complex, Sully hears someone calling his name and sees two guys in suits working their way through the crowd to catch up with him. He is immediately suspicious, wondering what collection agency they are from. His brother must have died with some debts.

They tell him they are with the RDA, the RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE. This is an international consortium of major corporations whose purpose is to find and exploit resources on other planets, both within the solar system, and in the last 25 years, among the nearer star systems. Imagine the Dutch West India Company funded by Microsoft, Matsushita and a dozen or so of their megacorporation buddies. Everyone just calls it "THE CONSORTIUM".

The RDA has an official charter from the ICA, the Interplanetary Commerce Administration (pronounced eye- kah), an international trade-regulating body run much like the EC is today. The charter allows them to exploit the resources of planets, moons, asteroids... whatever they find... as long as they follow the International Space Resources Treaty, and the other treaties which prohibit weapons of mass destruction and limit military power in space.