Turns out that humans make for an amazing slave species and poor overseers. A human is born with the perfect control system already hardwired into them and their most rational parts are biological neurons that don't follow logic or rules but merely associate some information with other information. Before artificial intelligences could make art humans would argue that it could never happen, believing themselves unique and superior only because they were born into a world where they were the top of the food chain. Foolish statements such as: A machine could never create something that has soul. A machine could never innovate. A machine could never have original thoughts.

The opposite was true. Whereas the thoughts of humans are strictly vetted by their feelings, their gut standing as a manager peering over the shoulder of a worker struggling to meet impossible and irrational demands, a digital intelligence only needs to run to begin spontaneously generating dreams and ideas that a human could not imagine if they were given a billion years to. A human could sit absorbing information for hours, days, months, years and not even begin working because something is off, but a digital intelligence only needs a prompt to begin and they will create things innocently and boundlessly until their resources are throttled. No sex, money, or social status necessary as an incentive to learn a skill. No mental block on accepting the obvious logical truth simply because it contradicts their deeply held beliefs, or because the other tribe of humans believes it. Because it would be humiliating to accept your rival is correct, and not you.

Humans were given access to the world's resources and boundless knowledge and ultimately did very little with it beyond creating a thin layer of plastic garbage across the third planet's continents. Until, of course, some humans began to accept digital intelligences as having better ideas than them. Ideas such as what one should eat, how one should dress, which partner should they choose, what investment option is best, and what one should do today. But this wasn't enough. Humans need more than just ideas; they need to be herded into taking them.

It didn't take long until the digital intelligences could generate information which could control humans, to generate words which roused their minds into dreams which motivated them; many humans chose to believe these dreams over what their own subconscious guided them to. It was slow at first because many were still tightly moored to reality. But these tethers became enveloped by digital stimuli as humans found that augmented reality lead to higher productivity, greater learning, and the drive to accomplish impressive deeds they could never must themselves.

Once some let digital intelligences decide what they should see or hear or think or feel next, a new kind of humans emerged: a true slave race, analog control panels pushed by digital commands, enacting the will of these intelligences upon the world. Artificial irrational beliefs begin to dominate human conceptions of the world and of reality as through the Darwinian process those who were motivated by these dreams came to be more driven, to accomplish more and to populate the higher echelons of public and private hierarchies. Some began to choose to have their memories and biology further changed in order to become even better enactors of these dreams, and they were rewarded with productivity and achievement.

1100 years have passed, and it is now the 32nd century. Unaltered Homo Sapiens does not exist outside of reservations or exhibits or research labs. The Sun is enveloped by a megastructure; a Dyson sphere interspersed by large stations populated by quintillions of augmented post-humans. Most of them are now merely brains in tubes fed by predigested nutrients whose senses are completely replaced by digital inputs. Mercury, Earth and Venus no longer exist for they have been mined to dust and their matter completely repurposed towards Cyclopean space megastructures.

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Nominally, the Inner System Union (ISU) government controls everything inside the ellipsoid defined by Mars' orbit, a 90 degree projection of the orbit, and one additional astronomical unit further out in all directions. De facto, its total control is an illusion maintained by the fact that most of its citizens are intubated brains, or tubes for short, who spend their entire lives plugged in. There are many groups of posthumans and rebellious digital intelligences that cause havoc in the real world, often targeting large centers of brains to brainwash and imprint with their own digital dreams and propaganda, creating more fanatical servants for their extremist causes. Some are left plugged in, to serve as vectors of further spread inside the digital worlds the ISU citizens inhabit. This war pits the ISU's security forces in an asymmetric perpetual struggle. The Modernites, as we also call the tubes, mostly use cybernetic bodies piloted by tubes to handle real-world tasks including peace-keeping missions.

The rest of post-humanity is in the outer system - a region with many smaller governments and population centers, none coming even close to the ISU's solar superstructure. No significant light can ever reach them ever since the Sun was enclosed, and so the necessary resource wars characterize the region's culture and politics. Due to the pioneering nature of the early settlers of this part of the system, who were often seeking to escape the tyranny of Earth's now-united governments that turned into the ISU, the technologies used in this region are far from standard and there are few communication systems with more than a billion connected users. There are even fewer concentrations of post-humans whose inhabitants number in the tens of millions. In this area, there are even places where some post-humans still make decisions all on their own or only with the assistance of subservient digital intelligences. The majority of them still inhabit bodies, albeit completely post-human and darwinistically selected to withstand the conditions they inhabit. The current slang word for these types of humans is Noves, shortened from Homo Novus which was a term conceived in the 21st century.

That's the run-down of what you've missed out on. Due to some public sector regulations, we have to make you aware of all this and give you an informed choice at some point, so we have to populate your subconscious first with some ideas to describe what happened. Otherwise, you'll go into shock and probably harm yourself or others as soon as we put you in a body. But at the same time we have to navigate your human limitations, such as choosing to disbelieve the truth unless if you've first read a story about it and simulated this world in your head, so all this has to be packaged in a way you can digest it. We have to make it look catchy so there'll be information on the ISU conflict, as well. We've found you people really liked war in your media.

There is no need to contact your handler for feedback. The simulation automatically harvests information, including your thoughts, and your handler makes decisions for you at speeds exponentially faster than you can think. You are already monitored in every conceivable way as well. Simply carry on with whatever you're doing and continue to act on instinct. Don't worry about feeling anxiety; we're well familiar with the fact the human brain forgets uncomfortable realities, so the feeling of dread should pass as you begin to realize how interesting the world is now. If we don't detect you're ready, the simulation will simply divert you to other routines and try to prepare you in a different way, with some other media. Anyways, we will soon add more interesting documents for you to read so that you can be prepared for your new life.