NorwayDespite being heavily invested in

its oil deposits,Norway has weathered the

end of internal combus-tion without too
much difficulty — a native plasticsindustry
has sprung up and is taking advantageof
the now-cheap oil and government
subsidies,which have stabilized the job
market and kept theeconomy ticking
over. Those government subsidiesreach
essentially everywhere in the economy,
andpractically every citizen is in some
way compensat-ed for their work at least
partially by the state.Oslo was briefly in
the running to play host tothe European
headquarters of Team Tomorrow,and this
prompted a wave of new construction —
particularly, of a model headquarters that
TeamTomorrow could operate from while
they con-structed a more permanent facility
(should they notdesire to remain in the one
provided). When theywere passed over for
Venice, however, the bottomfell out of the
entire scheme, and the governmenthas
been trying to find a way to recoup their
invest-ment. The leading plan — still in
the early stages— is to form a Norwegian
national team of novas,modeled on
Nippontai, to operate on T2M’s leveland
raise the profile of the country. So far only
a sin-gle nova, a local small-time hero
who goes by Olav(his actual name), has
expressed interest in sucha scheme, which
is so bogged-down in committeethat it
hasn’t even got an official name yet.