Olympus Mons Blackout

The Olympus Mons Blackout, also known as the Stapleford Blackout Incident, was a total blackout that occurred within the Atlas Mons metrozone of the planet of Mars in the Solar System. Affecting over a million people near the Stapleford Corporate Headquarters Complex of the Stapleford Group, the blackout lasted approximately thirty six hours from the evening of the 19th of August, 2692, to the 22nd of August. Subsequent loss of function for various automated infrastructure lead to mild or severe non-fatal injuries of around one thousand people and the deaths of one hundred and thirty six. Two Stapleford Group employees, under the direct payroll of the Group itself, were publicly detailed as missing following the incident — Dr. Jörn Wittich and Dr. Gabrijel Antolić.

In the days following the blackout, the Planetary Republic of Hera appealed to the Coalition of Congressional Republics to launch an inquiry as to the cause of the incident, detailed in government archives as Coalition Infrastructural Investigation, Hera 9926. In a settlement between Hera and the Stapleford Group, a payout of 20 billion Coalition Congressional Notes was accomplished to cover both property damages and the subsequent medical bills of affected citizens, in addition to legal recompenses.

Many conspiracy theorists hearken to a leaked three-paged document online that purportedly originates from internal Stapleford memos known as the Blackout Files. This memo, attributed to a "G. Pauler", details the incident as a result of "gross transfer of electric capacity to all V sub-systems for Project Capitoline". Some say that this project is Stapleford attempting to invoke and research deep psionic phenomena, while others posit that it is an attempt to yield a superturing-class or even hyperturing-class artificial intelligence. The CCR and Stapleford Group both have verified to the media that none of these are the case, with the official explanation being that an aberrant power allocation protocol misdirected power to the mainframes, resulting in an explosion within the server rooms and a subsequent total blackout of the surrounding urban areas.