Our country always took pride in its picturesque landscapes: green bogs, sharp cliffs, misty hilltops. Nature is close to the heart of every Scottish citizen. So, it is my great honor to reflect today on the remarkable journey undertaken by this nation over the past decade. Through the joint effort of our private industry, governmental support, and public research institutions, we have helped bring the world’s information closer to nature and Scotland’s soul. Farewell, Silicon Valley; farewell His Majesty King William V. Welcome, Independent Republic of Scotland; welcome, Organoid Nation.

[Excerpt from the opening remarks of Nicola Prescott-Swinney, Prime Minister of Scotland, during the 8th Annual Scottish Panel on Industrial Innovation, 2035]

The beginnings of Scotland’s space industry were rather modest. During the 2020s, small spaceports like those in Sutherland and Shetland popped up over the northern part of the country, catering mainly to a suite of small climate-monitoring satellites designed for continuous Earth monitoring in polar orbit. Unlike the massive infrastructures of Cape Canaveral or Baikonur, these places were intentionally unassuming—an untrained eye would not even recognize their cosmic purpose.

Meanwhile, Scottish universities were racing to increase their budget spending on information and communication technologies, focusing on what were still experimental computational substrates—especially biocomputing. Originally, the calculus driving this decision was based on pure institutional pragmatism. Inspired by the Cronin Group’s breakthroughs in chemputing, the universities simply wanted to diversify their portfolio and foster scientific advances on domestic soil, hoping to attract founders attention by branding biocomputing “computation with Scottish characteristics.”

The effort paid back, but perhaps not in the way originally planned. The most burgeoning field of biocomputing in the late 2020s was organoid intelligence (also known as “intelligence-in-a-dish”). This involved the manufacturing of literal minibrains made of human stem cells. Organized in 2D or 3D matrices and interconnected by electrodes, these little blobs of neurons could outperform silicon-based computer chips, in both their computational power and their energy efficiency. And with more university research teams as well as private companies jumping on the organoid bandwagon (sparked by the successful generations of Final Spark’s Neuroplatform), the race for the finest engineering techniques for organoid production could begin. With a new substrate promising to replace silicon, the clocks of Moore’s Law were reset.

While experimenting with possibilities for high-precision bioengineering, the rising organoid industry found its unlikely ally in Scotland’s outer space infrastructure. The spaceports were the secret sauce that accelerated what was destined to become the biggest global revolution in hardware production since the invention of transistor computers (which heralded the end of vacuum tubes blowing up on the room-sized devices that probably helped win the Allies World War II). Since the research on pluripotent stem cells in zero gravity demonstrated the advantages of organoid manufacturing in outer space, Scottish biocomputing companies secured affordable launch contracts with local spaceports that delivered the cells to automated organoid cultivation stations in polar orbits. Soon, vertical liftoff and landing maneuvers became routine occurrences in northern Scotland’s skies, supplying the computational infrastructure with an influx of fresh, wet, forebrain organoids grown on 3D spheroid scaffolds in orbit.

From the early 2030s, Scottish spaceports made the logistics of hardware manufacturing fully vertical, as it turned into a column of rockets bringing manufacturing materials to orbital labs and parachuting mature organoids back to Earth. As planetary computation gradually transformed into an applied branch of biology, it also powered medical breakthroughs in organ cultivation for transplantation, bioprogramming of cells and bacteria, nanorobotics, and cruelty-free cosmetics testing using lab-grown skin and tissues. Besides organoid hardware, commercial biotech applications, such as the nanorobot aerosol “Nosey” (“Instantly relieves stuffy nose – now with 48h protection”) became globally popular high-end health products “made in Scotland.”

However, “made in Scotland” also quickly became one of the most disputed trademarks in international relations. By becoming a biocomputing superpower, Scotland gained enough confidence to unilaterally declare its independence from Great Britain—a contested move leading to many countries establishing informal diplomatic ties with the new state, despite not officially recognizing its independence (citing the former empire’s official standpoint that Scottish–British relationships belong to the UK’s internal affairs). Stuck between the US and the European Union—the former in a fully revisionist mode (involuting into a self-obsessed protectionist nation-state) and the latter too busy securing its unstable eastern border—Britain was too weak and isolated to prevent the de facto independence of Scotland.

Yet, having a separationist economic powerhouse at one’s doorstep may also be a blessing. The UK responded by cutting taxes on foreign profits and providing a premium visa regime for affluent clients, leading to a steady stream of capital regardless of its geopolitical provenance. Alongside Singapore and Switzerland, these moves weirdly stabilized Britain’s role as one of the global neutral zones in the multipolar world.