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—1980s—
-1987- Yoshizumi Ishino and his colleagues at Osaka University unintentionally clone a CRISPR sequence from the genome of Escherichia Coli. Although the function of the clustered DNA repeats and overall significance of the results remain unknown to the researchers, the moment stands out as the very beginning of what will go on to become CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology.
—1990s—
-1993- Although not the first to explore the consequences of continued advancements in Artificial Intelligence (see I. J. Good’s intelligence explosion model of 1965), Vernor Vinge’s essay The Coming Technological Singularity popularizes the term “Singularity” as a description of the hypothetical culmination of a recursively self-improving intelligent agent.
-1996- Dolly the sheep, while not the first animal to be cloned (see John Gurdon’s 1958 cloning of African clawed frogs from embryonic stem cells, and the 1984 embryonic cloning of a sheep in Cambridge, UK), is the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, thought impossible at the time.
-1998- Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, and UC Berkeley create the first quantum computer. The 2 qubit device, although unable to solve meaningful problems and only maintaining coherence for a few nanoseconds, provides proof of concept for a quantum computer onto which initial states can be loaded and solutions obtained.
—2000s—
-2000- researchers at the Technical University of Munich construct the first working 5-qubit quantum computer.
In the months that follow, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory succeed at creating a 7-qubit device.
-2001- Researchers at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California utilize a 7 qubit device to factorize 15 into 5 and 3, successfully demonstrating the famous Shor’s algorithm.
-2006- Scientists at the University of Camerino, posit a method for entangling objects on a macroscopic scale utilizing lasers and mirrors.
If macroscopic entanglement proves possible, in addition to enabling future construction of quantum computers operating on a macroscopic scale, it would indicate that macroscopic objects can exhibit quantum behavior, suggesting quantum effects are not strictly limited to the world of the very small.
As one author of the study, Stefano Pirandola, remarks,
"Would this theoretical scheme diminish the differences between the macroscopic and quantum worlds? This is a fundamental question of quantum mechanics. Whether or not there is a maximum size for oscillators that demonstrate entanglement is an open question right now. We don't know if there is some limit for the sizes of the objects to be entangled. Optimists think that it is only a matter of advances in quantum technologies."
-2009- the first confirmed human case of swine flu in La Gloria, Mexico. A mixture of human, swine, and avian flu viruses, there are 391,382 confirmed cases of H1N1 resulting in 18,449 deaths. Although these figures are considered by many health organizations to be gross understatements, with some estimates as high as 700 million infected and 284,000 deaths.
—2010s—
-2013- The earliest development and study of Cerebro-Organoids when Jürgen Knoblich and his team at IMBA publish their landmark paper detailing artificially grown, in vitro, three-dimensional structures derived from human pluripotent stemcells (hPSCs) that reflect early brain organization. At the time called Neural-, Cerebral-, or Brain-Organoids, these simple early cultures are used in rudimentary study of brain development and drug effects.
-Rising concern in academic and popular circles around unchecked advancements in AI and the associated technological singularity, lead to numerous scholarly articles on the issue, as well as discussion in various public forums, like the 2016 TED Talk from Neuroscientist Sam Harris titled Can we build AI without losing control over it?
Ultimately opinion remains split, some feel concerns around super intelligent AI and The Alignment Problem to be mere sensationalism, others see Vinge’s Singularity the inevitable end result of continued progress.
—2020s—
-A profusion of Large Language Models like ChatGPT 4 and Text-to-Video tools like Sora at the beginning of the decade herald a series of rapid advancements in both Predictive and Generative AI, leading many, experts and laypersons alike, to declare the technological singularity imminent, and to an increased push toward legislation addressing the issue.
-Conflicts in the Ukraine and Gaza see novel and widespread use of drones in combat environs as diverse as open field engagement, trench warfare, confined urban spaces, and subterranean tunnels.
Militaries around the world take note and begin developing the tools and tactics of the future.
-Advancing culturing techniques see more complex Cerebro-Organoids implemented in a wider range of scientific studies, but ethical concerns in the West limit use outside of research.
Rumors of extensive Organoid experimentation, particularly in PRC military contexts, abound in the latter half of the decade
—2030s—
-2032- Two 10 kiloton suitcase nukes are detonated in Tel-Aviv and a third fails to go off when the IDF successfully neutralizes the Hamas cell before they can activate the device. World opinion is split, with some seeing the attacks as the inevitable pushback to almost a century of colonialism and genocide, others reiterating that Israel has only ever attempted to live in peace with its neighbors and has the right to do so. Despite mixed popular opinion, world nations renounce the use of nuclear weapons, particularly as instruments of terror.
A month after the attacks, leaks reveal that the devices used were of Iranian origin, with further documentation showing extensive plans for a joint Iranian-Lebanese-Jordanian-Syrian operation against Israel.
After the international community calls for a preemptive ceasefire, Israel withdraws from the UN and declares war on the belligerents. Germany, Austria, South Africa, the United States, and—later—Saudi Arabia, publicly declare support for Israel.
5 months after the attacks, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan surrender. 2 months after that, Iran—or what remains of it—capitulates as well.
In the aftermath, Saudi-Arabia spearheads the initiative to rebuild the infrastructure in the region, while Israel takes a hard line on terror and anti-semitism, Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring,
“The days of our accepting, tolerating, and conceding are over. The days of accepting the anti-semitism directed at us from all sides, of tolerating the unending attempts on our lives and the lives of whom we love, of conceding our very right to exist! Those days are now passed. No longer shall we practice such tolerance, nor shall we practice an eye for an eye. It shall be a head for an eye.”
-Advances in AI continue to improve processes the world over, from city planing and waste management strategies, to weather forecasting and optimal eulerizarion of global shipping routes, but to the surprise of a growing majority in the scientific community, not only hasn’t Vinge’s singularity arisen, nor does it appear to have drawn any nearer.
Scientific consensus is that, in lieu of bonafide consciousness, at minimum, a sentient intelligence should arise from any sufficiently complex information processing system, and with the state of AI as it is seemingly at a peak of complexity, the majority of researchers acknowledge The Problem Of Non-Emergence as science’s preeminent enigma, and the first department of Synthetic Phenomenology Studies is founded in 2035 at MIT, with UC Berkeley and the Technical University Of Munich following suit the next year.
-2038- Warming global temperatures, if left unabated, threaten a significant rise in sea levels in less than 10 years.
Japan begins the most ambitious sea wall construction project ever undertaken, predicted to take 5 years and cost almost 300 trillion Yen.
—2040s—
-2041- After 3 years—2 ahead of schedule—Japan completes the Nurikabe (塗壁) sea wall project. It is a massive success and, implementing revolutionary construction methods that the Japanese have freely shared, the United States and many other nations begin sea wall projects of their own.
-2042- Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore reportedly manufacture 3 grams of Diamond Nanothread. While the process is far too resource-intensive to scale, it serves as proof of concept for several previously hypothetical projects, and causes a resurgence of interest in materials science.
-Breakthroughs in the field Quantum Computing see scientists leverage previous successes in creating error-correcting qubits, reducing—by an order of magnitude—the number of qubits needed to perform genuinely useful computations. Researchers predict truly fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2050.
-2043- Lessened restrictions on the manufacture and use of Cerebro-Organoids leads, initially, to society-wide increase in implementation, quickly however, the significantly limited applications of the expensive neural gel are discovered, and it finds it niche predominantly as“accessory modules” spliced onto more traditional computational devices, rather than spawning the grotesque “meat computers” that some envisioned.
-2044- Novel avian flu H6N2 emerges in the Chinese Guangdong province, causing an outbreak in several poultry processing facilities. As a preventative measure, several million birds are culled over the following month.
A week later, authorities report the first cases of human transmission, when 16 employees of the Wen’s Food Group processing facility are treated for cold-like symptoms, later discovered to be a unique subtype of the Influenza A virus. 14 of the infected die.
After 2,000 more individuals are hospitalized with similar symptoms, The National Health Commission mobilizes the People’s Armed Police Force, enforcing mandatory curfew and lockdown. Shortly after, with 50,000 sick and almost 15,000 fatalities, a national emergency is declared
The virus has an inordinately high mortality rate of 36% and, unlike the H5N1 and H7N9 outbreaks of 1997 and in 2013 respectively, H6N2 is easily transmitted from person to person.
While many human rights advocacy groups decry the Chinese administration’s aggressive response—razing and burning whole towns, summary executions for defying quarantine order—ultimately the spread of the virus is halted, over 10 million having succumbed to infection.
-2046- A lethal wet bulb event in India kills almost 300,000. Extreme heat waves in the southwestern United States concurrent with massive power grid failure results in the deaths of tens of thousands.
Climatologists declare this only the beginning of increasingly extreme weather phenomena.
-2046- The Boston sea wall project is completed, specifications shared by primary contractor Kiewit Hensel Phelps indicate the structure can withstand a global sea level rise of up to 20 meters.
-2047- Often called simply ‘goo’ in common parlance, the scientific consensus dubs them Cerebro-Organoids over the competing terminology Brain-Organoids and Neural-Organoids.
Significant advancements in culturing, protraction, and dry-ware interfacing, lead to growing reliance on the cultures as computational workhorses, and they see regular implementation in high-efficiency “time-share” processing, applications requiring low-latency intra-network communication, and Reflexive Computing.
-2048- Leaked documents from a PRC defector reveal thousands of preliminary attempts at “Brain Bridging” conducted on convicts and political dissidents in the first half of the previous decade. The attempts meet worldwide condemnation and the scientific community as a whole rejects the endeavor as a gross perversion of science, while the Pope, the Islamic State, and numerous other religious organizations declare it an unprecedentedly abhorrent affront to God.
As demonstrated by the Chinese, advances in neural tissue engineering have made it theoretically possible to connect the corpora callosa of two, or even multiple, brains, but in practice, the extremely invasive surgeries involved prove fatal without exception.
In light of the controversy, the UN founds a special human rights watchdog committee to keep the world appraised of the PRC’s dealings in the field of Neural Engineering. Under pressure from the UN, the PRC ratifies a hastily draw-up global treaty on neural engineering ethics and officially agrees to a moratorium on neurally engineered devices (N.E.D.s) and neural engineering procedures (N.E.P.s) in humans, including Cortical Bridging, Neural Grafting, and Organoid-to-Brain splicing.
Rumors persist that military implementation of N.E.D.s and N.E.P.s persist in the PRC—as well as the West. However, to abate global concerns, the scientific community reiterates their consensus that such neural technology, being extremely delicate and requiring very finely tuned conditions, is of prohibitively limited utility in the military theater. As Major General Roland Welk, DoD press secretary said, “There won’t be some Chinese ‘hive-mind’, some ‘brain-in-a-vat’ calling down air strikes on the Western powers.”
—2050s—
-2051- Previous decades’ steady, albeit incremental, progress in the field of Fusion energy plateaus. Despite best efforts, researchers are unable to net a fusion energy gain factor greater than 5.42, and only maintain the reaction for 19 seconds.
Though acknowledged as a breakthrough and proof of concept for hypothetical higher yield applications, scientific consensus is that widespread Fusion power is still a dream of the distant future, especially in light of the continuous strides being made in nuclear energy and renewables.
-2052- DARPA loans Caltech a 100,000 Qubit mainframe, as part of an initiative on Quantum-Classical pairing, after several unpredicted advancements made in Classical Computing begin to put into question the notion of any near-term Quantum Supremacy.
-2053- Continued ice sheet meltage has dramatically reduced Earth’s albedo, in turn precipitating further ice melt. Several catastrophic weather events in the early ‘50s have finally forced the major powers to acknowledge the significance of this feedback loop, and an emergency international coalition forms with the aim of mitigating humanity’s environmental impact, conducting large scale stratospheric aerosol injections to counteract rising temperatures, and shortlisting the world’s most impoverished and at-risk costal regions for the construction of sea walls and other preventative structures.
Many economists point out that such measures ultimately treat symptoms rather than causes, and that until economic incentives are aligned so as to encourage a reduction in environmentally damaging behaviors, humanity’s carbon footprint—and associated problems—will only continue to grow.
-2054- in response to increasing heatwaves and wet bulb events across the globe, Fort Worth, Texas—with assistance from several Japanese firms—begins construction of partially subterranean arcologies. The construction of these habitats, nicknamed “Mole Holes”, stimulates the economy and resuscitates tourism in the region.
The world takes note, and several other nations begin their own underground dwelling projects, most notably Russia, with its Norilsk-Ingarka conurbation, and the extravagant Dammam arcologies in Saudi-Arabia.
-2055-Concerns over the superior orbital presence and increasing military and economic influence of the PRC reach their boiling point, and—with the political groundwork laid as early as 15 years prior via handshake deals and de facto agreements—Northpac is officially formed, an international polity consisting of the former United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, The United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand.
The UN hesitates to officially recognize the new Nation-State, but acquiesces after threats of sanction against several members of the European Union.
-2056- Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota declare the end of cancer, after successful implementation of experimental CRISPR gene editing techniques on over 3 dozen patients with terminal cancer. While the sample includes only individuals with aggressive cancers of the pancreas, liver, and lungs, researchers are confident that the process can be applied to other previously untreatable forms, especially as continued progress in computing permits higher fidelity modeling of the body at the molecular level.
While the scientific community reiterates that the best cancer “cure” remains preventive measures, such as healthy diet and avoiding exposure to carcinogenic chemicals, the world watches with hopeful eyes as the biological sciences promise to deliver panacea after panacea to aliment and disease of all kinds.
-2059- long running political tensions in South Africa flare up after a high profile assassination attempt on President Coetzee is thwarted. The administration’s heavy handed policing tactics in the weeks that follow, lead to rioting and, ultimately, armed skirmishes between the South African military and forces of the self proclaimed Neo-Rhodesian Liberation Organization (N.R.L.O.). As the conflict intensifies over the following months, the UN steps in to maintain order and aid with the ensuing humanitarian crisis.
Eventually, tensions seem to abate and over the remainder of the year, an initially uneasy ceasefire holds as both sides make various concessions and officially agree to a peaceful resolution.
In December of that year, while en route to the peace accords in Johannesburg, leader of the N.R.L.O., General Arno Van Wyk, is killed when he and his attaché are ambushed by South African security forces upon arrival at O.R. Tambo International Airport.
Civil war erupts when acting head of the N.R.L.O., Colonel Dricus Le Roux, declares the assassination an act of war and deploys units within the country.
—2060s—
-2060- Scientists at Kyushu University successfully engineer what they call the world’s first true room-temperature quantum computer, when they are able to maintain coherence for intervals of up to 5400 seconds at 294 Kelvin.
-2061- Breakthroughs in material science allow for mass Diamond Nanothread fabrication. Enabling construction of the world’s first space elevator by Northpac, in the former Ecuadorian city of Manta, a project that is forecasted to take 4 years.
6 months into construction, the PRC begins work on their own elevator in Singapore, finishing a full year before their counterparts. Despite the tensions surrounding the endeavors akin to the space-race of the last century, the “tethers” as they become known, promise to be a great boon to humanity. In conjunction with nearly a dozen skyhooks in use, access to beyond the mere terrestrial becomes cheap and reliable, paving the way for a humanity with radically increased orbital presence.
-2062- A watershed moment in Synthtic Phenomenology Studies leads to the field all but dissolving. Several mathematical proofs in related fields herald the rapid series of breakthroughs that eventually solve The Problem of Non-Emergence. While it will still be some time before the understanding finds its way into the worldview of the layperson, scientists the world over are dragged along—some kicking and screaming—by the revelation that consciousness simply cannot arise in synthetic systems, only biology permits such a phenomenon. Machines can think, but they can’t feel.
Reflecting this changing Zeitgeist, Synthetic Phenomenology Studies becomes Algorithmic Systems & Computational Interface Sciences, the original hypotheses and conjecture now mere philosophical thought experiment, the science focusing on the patterns and interrelationships of complex—but ultimately forever inanimate—data sets.
Unlike the abbreviation AI, which remains in frequent use, the term Artificial Intelligence falls out of vogue. Replacing it are Synthetic Intelligence, Machine Intelligence, and occasionally Algorithmic System. Terms uncontaminated by its predecessors associations with conscious potential.
-2065– After years of bloody fighting in the southern half of Africa, the civil war finally ends. Rising from the ashes is a victorious Neo-Rhodesia, encompassing nearly half a million square kilometers of what used to be South Africa. 2 years later, in an attempt to revitalize the economy and bolster relations with Northpac, the Neo-Rhodesian administration enlists the Texan construction firm responsible for the Fort Worth Mole Holes, Rusk-Barnett Heavy Industries, to oversee construction of 6 fully underground luxury resorts and accompanying high-end villas.
The endeavor ends in abject failure. After going nearly 90 billion Rand over budget in the first 2 years, and amidst allegations of government corruption, the project is scrapped. Unemployment in the country hits 50%.
-2069- 4 years since the completion of the tethers, the remaining nations of the European Union—bankrolled primarily by the Swiss Compact—begin laying the groundwork for a space elevator of their own on the Kenyan coast. PRC national interests hamper construction, establishing naval blockades throughout the Indian Ocean, under the pretense of combatting the increasing maritime terror activity of the Gulf State pirates.
2 weeks later, in what becomes widely acknowledged primarily as a show of force, Northpac conducts a series of orbital volleys on known ports of call favored by major pirate cartels, and in a daring nighttime raid apprehends the Somali president and several heads of state, extraditing them to India to face trial on charges of funding and harboring terrorist organizations.
Ultimately, the PRC relents in the face of heavy sanctions from Northpac and the European Union, and the Kenyan tether, along with geostationary EURUP station, are completed within the first few years of the next decade.
—2070s—
-2072- The Kenyan tether delivers its first payload to orbit: the Tōku o miru inmitten der Sternesatellite. A German-Japanese collaboration to investigate several point sources between 60 and 2,500 lightyears away whose emissions are shifted far to the infrared—the temperatures of which cannot be accounted for by current models of astrophysical phenomena.
-2077- At the 15th annual The Future of Science & Technology Symposium in Boston, the joint Lockheed Martin-Vital Peak Genolytics presentation: Tomorrow’s Soldiers, Today: the Full Suite of Gene & Hardware Enhancements for the Warfighter of the Future, showcasing numerous breakthroughs in gene-editing therapies, provokes the ire of many attendees, who view it as a transparent attempt at glossing over recent controversies while poaching the fields top minds,
“It’s explicitly pro-military, they’ve tried their best to conceal that aspect, yes, but nonetheless it’s plain for all to see. There’s simply no place for pushing one’s agenda here. We are here for an open and free exchange of ideas, not to hear a sales pitch.
Are their results impressive? Well, they would be, if they’d been conducted at credible institutions and replicated by credible others, without such gargantuan financial incentives. But as it is, the bias is clear. This isn’t science. This is the two largest defense contractors in the world flexing how deep their pockets are.”
While the reception is overwhelmingly negative, many in the scientific community begrudgingly acknowledge that the technologies on display warrant further study,
“Sure, the execution was in poor taste, and all those results will require serious scrutiny, but there’s potential, I think.
Non-invasively tripling your mitochondrial count? C’mon, that’s a breakthrough. Who cares if they wanna use it to make unrelenting supersoldiers, think of the therapeutic benefits of such a procedure, for the old or the frail.
Or the ‘neural-transmitter’ that gives you peripheral somatosensory input from other people? Yeah, yeah, I know everyone’s knee jerk reaction is ‘oh no! Chinese brain bridging!’, and of course all that enthusiastic rhetoric about making ‘subconsciously integrated assault teams’ didn’t help, but just think about that idea for a second. Being able to feel—however limited—what another person feels. Even the most conservative realization of their Synchronized Network for Alternate Perspectives Synthesis would find tremendous application in therapy and rehabilitation settings.
Now, I’m not a geneticist, nor a computer scientist, so I can’t speak with authority on the other technologies, but for this one I can at least tell you that the psychology is sound. We’re not talking mind-reading, we’re not gonna be thinking each other’s thoughts, it’s extremely unlikely that the extra sensory inputs from SyNAPS would even be accessible to conscious awareness at all.
The key is what having all those extra inputs would do for your intuition, the gut feeling upon which so much of our decision making hinges.
That feeling, that picture created by all those extra inputs, being from multiple viewpoints, would be far richer and more nuanced. An intuition bubbling up to conscious awareness from such a panoply of insights would be far more trustworthy and reliable.
Forget for a second all the military applications. Forget a soldier ‘intuiting’ the position of an enemy around a corner because his comrade has line-of-sight from across the field, forget a breaching team working in perfect unison because the subconscious of guy A knows what the subconscious of guy B is thinking before either is consciously aware of it, et cetera.
Forget all that, those push the bounds of what’s even theoretically possible anyways.
Instead, think about the utility for teaching, or team problem solving, or, like I said, therapy and rehab. It would be a shame to write off everything we saw just because we don’t like the source.”
-2077- A data breach, presumed to be the work of Russian hacker-for-hire fringe groups backed by Northpac, shocks the world, when it exposes documentation stretching back almost thirty years, showcasing continued PRC experimentation into Cortical Bridging over the decades, despite the neural engineering ethics treaty of 2047, and the associated moratorium on N.E.P.s and N.E.D.s in human beings.
The UN and the World Health Organization declare it the most abominable human rights violation in history.
Representatives across the globe are unanimous in their condemnation,
“We all saw the videos, the documentation, before it was abruptly scrubbed from the Net. We all saw what they were doing. Hell, some of us were unlucky enough to be fully immersed when that data leaked, we stumbled through those nightmare rooms in 1st-person.”
In a departure from the typical schizophrenic tempo of story coverage amongst NetStreamers and PrimeFeed Anchors, they too linger on that sole issue as the world’s collective eye refuses—or finds itself unable—to look away.
The words of one influential NetStreamer, in a nod to the famed cinematographer, that went viral as the most re-shared comment on the topic,
“It was the most Cronenberg-esque shit I’ve ever seen. Whole rooms of… of… flesh. And those fucking multi-fetus things that they were growing… first time VR ever made me vomit.”
Despite public outcry, the scientific community acknowledges the astonishing implications that the PRC’s Cortical Bridging successes have on not just brain-to-brain fusion, but on the fusion of brain with synthetic systems, and in turn Uploading.
Several organizations, variably government or corporate backed, begin attempting—in earnest—mental transmission to, and emulation on, computer systems with non-human subjects. Although several sources claim continued human experimentation by the PRC, their increasingly isolationist political stance makes verification impossible.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
-In light of the ethical concerns raised by the breach, despite nearly 50 years of scientific consensus affirming that Cerebro-Organoids lack consciousness and are incapable of suffering, many jurisdictions pass legislation severely restricting their use. Several others, particularly the Muslim majority nations and the Vatican—in what would later be seen as an unnecessary and ill-informed attempt at moral policing—explicitly prohibit “any attempt at generating, simulating, or otherwise effecting conscious experience, in whole or in part, on any biological substrate, including but not limited to Cerebro-Organoids.”
Many of the more outspoken NetStreamers are quick to point out the rather comical implications of such a decree,
“So we aren’t supposed to generate biological consciousness, huh? Does Allah not want us having children anymore or what?”
-2078- Mexit. Due to growing feelings of political and economic underrepresentation in the union, the former nations of Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador, succeed from Northpac, declaring themselves a sovereign entity and claiming sole right of possession to the Ecuadorian tether.
Surprising many political analysts and economists, Northpac responds by officially recognizing the autonomy of the seceded states, paying the steep tariffs without complaint and maintaining amicable trade relations and access to the tether, though they shift the majority of their orbital payloads to delivery via Kenya.
-2079- Japan abruptly withdraws from the world stage. Adopting extreme isolationist policies and recalling its ambassadors and dignitaries from foreign lands, the Nippon Empire as it becomes known, is a reclusive island nation tolerating few outsiders.
—2080s—
-2080- Northpac begins construction of the fourth, and largest ever, space elevator from the recently completed Pax Aeternum station in the Pacific Ocean, implementing the latest advances in material science. Once completed, the Atlantis tether, as it is dubbed by the media, will be capable of lifting an estimated 20 million kilograms into orbit annually.
-2081- Researchers at the Amsterdam Institute for Consciousness Studies allegedly emulate a member of Drosophila Melanogaster via a Destructive Upload technique, but the results remain irreplicable, with many scientists questioning the validity of the measurements altogether, and most in the public sphere disparaging the endeavor entirely.
“So they uploaded a fruit fly, maybe, and they had to kill it to do so? Yeah, no thanks, you won’t find me lining up to go into that clinic any time soon.”
Despite advances in computing, neural modeling, and nanoscale scanning, scientific opinion is that Uploading might forever remain in the realm of science fiction.
-2082- In an unusual departure from their staunch “no business with outsiders” attitude of the past few years, the Nippon Empire sells the small island of Tanuki Yume to Hosho Yūrei Holdings Ltd. for the construction of a state-of-the-art data center and future university research park.
-2082- Cho Hye-Seon, the world’s oldest living human, born August 7th 1942 in Seoul, South Korea (at the time: Hanseong, Joseon), celebrates her 140th birthday. She is the keynote speaker for the Farewell Reaper: the Death of Death conference in Bozen, Südtirol, organized by Pfizer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and The Life Extension Project.
Dr. Sumiko Kishimoto, CEO of The Life Extension Project proclaims that advances in biotech and gene manipulation will soon render death obsolete,
“Everyone in this room right now could live to 150. Anyone born today could live to 250. And the citizens of the next century will live an order of magnitude beyond that. We are on our way to the future, and death isn’t coming along for the ride.”
-2085- The Atlantis tether is officially completed as geostationary Sceaphierde station receives the first payload—its 150-odd person crew—from the surface. Pax Aeternum quickly becomes the center of a global shipping hub, with countless jurisdictions in Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia artificially extending their island territories to accommodate booming industry over the following years.
-2086- After initial success with mice early in the decade, the first induced hibernation tests are conducted on primates at the University of Chicago.
40 Bonobos are subjected to the experimental Walthon technique and held in what lead researcher Dr. Darinka Aganin calls “metabolic dormancy”for a period of 9 months before attempted revivification.
70% of the specimens survive the process and, although 15 suffer irreversible brain damage and are subsequently euthanized, the remaining 13 experience no ill effect.
Extrapolating from the results, many scientists believe that within the next few decades, long term storage of humans in a state of suspended animation will be possible.
Dr. Aganin, announcing their success at that year’s The Future Of Science & Technology symposium in Boston, unveils further plans for research,
“These findings, we are very optimistic. Many problems we overcome, many other problems we have now method of resolve. My team, myself, we are confident that result of 100% success possible.
We will prove this in next trials, and already we have plan.
From generous donor, our institute has acquired 80 Pan Paniscus. Later this month we begin. We suspend Pan Paniscus for 5 years, implementing many new method adjustment we have devised.
5 year, in 5 year we resuscitate specimens, and we show world success. We bring world future.”
-2087- Summer temperatures in India peak at 65°C, while the Badwater weather station in Death Valley records a world record 71.1°C high.
Although increasingly large numbers live—at least during the hottest months—in underground habs or domed arcologies, lethal heatwave and wet bulb events continue to ravage the most impoverished communities on the surface.
At the World Health Assembly conference in Geneva, Ebba Sundström, Director-General of the WHO, draws attention to the issue and lambasts the board, and the world, for failing for so long to address the issue,
“We are living in a world that we simply cannot accept, that we mustn’t accept. A world where some lucky few live in the comfort of climate controlled habs, while others toil and suffer in the sweltering heat. A world where the affluent look out upon a desert horizon from behind the glass of a trillion dollar arcology, where they live and laugh and play with a thousand others, while the destitute outside literally bake to death in that very same desert. A world where the poor live next to chemical plants coughing death into the air, or munitions dumps leaching it into the water, while they wait for the day—someday, any day—that the next Mungeshpur Incident happens, where they and everyone that they love will die. And when that happens—not if, but when—their deaths will be nothing more than a 2 second blurb on the PrimeFeeds, the sheltered fortunate going about the day oblivious to their 100,000 neighbors dying outside. This cannot be! We simply cannot stand for such a status quo!“
-2087- Advances in the field of nanotechnology lead to the first truly successful forays into mechanosynthesis, when scientists successfully fabricate several components of large-scale devices via a molecular assembly process. Although requiring a feed of preprocessed matter, and able only to produce very simple objects out of a narrow range of materials—all of which require additional assembly later—researchers are optimistic that future advances in computing power, currently vastly insufficient for the atomic precision required, will open the door to nanoscale manufacturing of complex devices from a wide range of materials.
-2088- the PRC begins construction of a space elevator in Papua New Guinea, details from the reclusive hegemony not forthcoming, media consensus is that it intends to rival the Pax Aeternumtether once finished.
-2089- Stock prices for Hosho Yūrei Holdings Ltd. plummet when the on-site reactor for their Greenland data warehouse suffers a catastrophic meltdown, resulting in the deaths of 63 employees and causing over 10 billion Krone in damages.
—2090s—
-2090- at 04:42 CET / 11:42 NIST, simultaneous PRC orbital volleys destroy the Tanuki Yume island tech campus operated by Hosho Yūrei Holdings Ltd., as well as a former, presumed abandoned, GlobeFund vault in Alpenrose, Südtirol.
30 people are confirmed killed in the Tanuki Yume island attack, including the CEO of Hosho Yūrei Holdings Ltd., while unsubstantiated reports from Tyrolean Bundespolizei indicate several senior GlobeFund executives and a contingent of Saudis, including former Prince Faisal bin Rahman Al Saud, killed during the vault strike.
While official motives remain unknown, various theories circulate, with some political experts suggesting rouge elements within the PRC responsible, others adamant the strikes are part of longterm strategy to destabilize the European and East Asian regions.
With the Chinese administration silent on the issue, Northpac’s official stance is that the PRC, with its years of unpredictable action and demonstrably inhumane policy, constitutes an existential threat to Nations the world over, and, at an emergency UN conference, encourages the EU, Saudi-Heg, the Swiss Compact, and others, to embargo, sanction, and otherwise restrict international relations with the volatile regime.
-2091- the PRC completes the Longwang space elevator in Papua New Guinea. Unlike the Singaporean tether, which has been a longtime international surface-to-orbit transportation hub, lifting countless nation’s payloads for decades, Longwang accepts no foreign commercial activity and the contents of its lifts are shrouded in secrecy, although expert consensus is that its payloads are military in nature. The tether’s geostationary Shangdi Station becomes the new de facto capital of a rapidly expanding PRC orbital territory.
While the Singaporean tether remains officially open for international trade and transport, increasing global factionalism sees it utilized almost exclusively by those Nations already assimilated into the Chinese hegemony.
-2092- in a high-profile case, several researchers from the Montreal Institute are arrested and tried for 1st-degree murder, when it is discovered that they utilized university facilities to conduct Destructive Upload procedures on 26 individuals over a span of 3 years.
While the accused insist that attempts were made only on terminally-ill individuals of sound mind who understood and consented to the procedure, and that the majority of the attempts were successful, investigators are unable to verify the claims and many in the scientific community remain skeptical, including several of the prosecution’s expert witnesses,
“So they’re saying several of the patients had treatment-resistant depression, as if that is a valid justification. If anything, that just casts further doubt on the patients’ compos mentis. If these people truly wanted out, if they were truly ready to go, then that’s what we have physician-assisted-euthanasia for, and that’s what they would’ve done. That these people were promised a ‘new life’, a life where suffering can simply be ‘deleted from the source code’, that’s the most damning revelation of all. That shows beyond any doubt that they wanted to live.
The truth is that none of these people wanted to die, none were ready for the end. They simply wanted an end to their pain. And the defendants used that against them, these purported men and women of science specifically targeted this vulnerable population in order to recruit their test subjects. ‘Oh but we were successful’ they say. ‘No one was killed because the process worked!’ they claim.
Well, even if we ignore for a moment the opinion of every credible scientist that Uploading is impossible even in principle, even if we grant that such a thing could be done, then the next question is so obvious as to almost not even need stating: if the uploads were successful, where’d they go? Did they just run away and hide? Get lost out on the Net? Get assimilated by cyberspace itself?
No, if any of those attempts had been successful, we’d have more than just a few novel strings of code and unexplained blips in the network as proof. What happened here was murder, plain and simple, well intentioned as it might have been, it was murder.”
Official rulings sentence all to life imprisonment, and in the aftermath of the scandal, several other charges, ranging from criminal negligence to aiding and abetting, are levied out to various staff, administrators, and in one instance the director of the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal.
Legislation is passed in an attempt to deter future attempts at Uploading, although rumors persist that dozens of clandestine facilities around the world continue work in the field, with a few fringe groups even claiming successes with Non-Destructive Uploading techniques.
-2092- In the face of devastating heat waves, with no end in sight, the Saudi-Heg invests in the largest ever fully subterranean conurbation project. An expansion to the abundant arcologies that dot the desert, it will be a system of city-sized habitats spread under a quarter-million square kilometers of their kingdom, linked by high speed maglev. The project is expected to take a decade to complete, and ultimately provide year-round living space for 100 million people.
-2095- Room temperature quantum computing officially arrives after researchers at Oxford University report that they can maintain qubit coherence indefinitely at 294 Kelvin.
A month later, after replicating the findings, researchers at MIT astound the world when they are able to maintain coherence for prolonged periods—as long as 4000 seconds in one instance—at a blistering 328 Kelvin.
Other academic institutions, corporations, and government agencies hurriedly begin investing in enormous 2-state processing facilities of their own, while many researchers excitedly take the logical next step into high temperature quantum computing.
Finally, after the decades of incremental gains, the years and years of diminishing returns, of asymptotic growth, the point of inflexion has finally arrived. In unison with the advances in Classical processors and Neural Gel augmentation, the future of computing promises growth on a truly exponential scale.
-2096- Cho Hye-Seon dies in her sleep at 154 years of age.
At her funeral, streamed across the globe,
Dr. Kishimoto of the The Life Extension Project celebrates her life and times and bestows a vision for the future,
“Hye-Seon lived a full life, a long life, a life of joy and happiness. If we could ask her now ‘were you satisfied with your life’, I think she would say yes, she would say she was content, happy. She would say, ‘do not be sad, do not mourn me, go, go out and live your lives!’
Though I do wonder, I wonder what she would say if we could ask her ‘Would you like to come back, would you like to be here with us now? Are you ready to go?’
Alas we cannot ask her, but if we could, if we could ask her if she wished to remain in that peaceful darkness, or be here with us, with her friends, her family, I think I know which she would choose. It’s what we would all choose. We all want to remain, to persist. Some of us may make our peace, may accept our fate and stride bravely into dark oblivion, but not one wants to, not really. We all dream of denying death its due, of defying that which shan’t be defied.
But that dream, my dream, the dream of so many countless billions who have come and gone, the dream to deny death, that dream shall soon be a dream no more.
Soon, very soon, within-our-lifetimes soon, we will overcome death. We will have the ability to live forever. And I don’t mean via upload or stasis. If ever such things ever become possible, they won’t really be living, not truly. I’m talking about living, truly living, as I am today, here before you all.
Living and breathing and feeling every moment of your existence, for as long as you so choose, that is our goal. That is the world that we at The Life Extension Project envision. One where we never have to ask the question ‘are you ready to go?’”
-2097- In a feat that would’ve been akin to magic a mere decade before, progress in the field of nanotechnology sees the first macroscale objects built atom by atom. Initially extremely simple, within months more complex objects become possible. While sufficient computational power remains the biggest obstacle, recent seemingly exponential progress in the computational sciences promise to surmount this roadblock in rapid fashion.
Scientific consensus is that humanity is mere years away from fully scalable molecular nanotechnology. Stock prices soar.
—2100s—
-2100- Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieve ignition! Surpassing the nearly half-century old previous best by almost 2 orders of magnitude, their self sustaining fusion reaction has a measured energy gain factor of 413, and, after their results are replicated a dozen more times in PRC facilities, scientists—albeit not military tacticians—the world over celebrate the end of the decades of tests that had always pointed to viable fusion energy being ‘just a few more years’ away.
The powers of the world shift focus, pouring resources into Fusion plant construction and integration. Within 2 years, there are over 50 Fusion power facilities around the globe. In conjunction with the advances in photovoltaics, they promise a bright, clean, abundant future for the denizens of Earth.
Climate activists rejoice, suffering no longer the want or need of petrocarbons and non-renewables, humanity can finally, finally begin the long-overdue process of living in harmony with Mother Nature.
-2101- the Saudi-Heg completes its ambitious subterranean dwelling project, not only a year ahead of schedule, but vastly exceeding the wildest expectations, with the vast spaces capable of accommodating over 200 million people.
In such high fidelity do the lush habitats mimic the surface, that the notion of living underground—so long disparaged as an undignified, albeit impendingly necessary, sociocultural debasement—seems no longer the last resort of some dystopian endtimes, rather it has become a desirable prospect.
Hordes of global elite—who for so long measured their status in mountain top châteaus and private islands—rush to construct exclusive simulacrums of their own below the earth, as corporate and government powers pour more and more resources into expanding the world’s already extensive subterranean infrastructure.
-2102- Molecular Nanotechnology reaches its zenith with the completion of the first true Universal Assembler at Los Alamos Labs.
While advancements in nanotechnology have made variations of 3-D printing sufficient for the vast majority of construction projects over the past half century, the Los Alamos Assembler is the first device capable of producing any material atom-by-atom, including its own components.
In the months that follow, a larger device is completed in orbit, at Northpac’s Sceaphierde Station, drastically simplifying orbital construction, as raw material is simply pumped up for assembly in zero-G, with no need for any prefabrication.
Alternately dubbed ‘Compilers’ and ‘Autofabs’, these devices see rapid implementation in all sectors of industry, and experts predict commercially available models by the middle of the next decade as miniaturization becomes feasible and the costs of manufacturing plummet.
In light of the breakthroughs, esteemed science popularizer and NetStreamer, Gaurav Gawande, shared his insights,
“It is not hyperbole to say that these devices will utterly revolutionize society, like CRISPR, the Internet, the Printing Press, the Wheel, the very advent of language itself!
So long merely a staple of distant future science fiction, Assemblers are poised to become as ubiquitous as the cellular phones of a century ago. With compact mealfabs in place of home kitchens, medfabs delivering custom medicines in exact doses, fabricators churning out fresh batteries for personal transport—or simply printing entire vehicles, charge and all.
Printing a new pair of shoes in your home, or a 50 million kilogram habitat in orbit.
From fast food, to fissile fuel.
The infrastructure of the world manifested by autonomous drone swarms, the brick and mortar they lay created by the same wonder machines that spawn them!”
-2105- Over a period of 8 months, a timeframe impossible pre-assembler technology, Northpac completes the most advanced orbital habitat in history, Paenultĭmus Station, a city sized research center heralded as the port from which humanity’s cosmic sailing shall begin.
Researchers immediately begin work on Icarus One, the first of a planned fleet of solar research vessels. Scientific consensus is that, with humanity’s recent strides in technological advancement, the time is now to undertake the most ambitious project in human history: stealing fire from the sun itself.
Lyvi Tas, CEO of The Prometheus Initiative, outlines his vision for the future from the Paenultĭmuscommand center,
“For millennia our our species has fought and struggled to survive. But fight we did, struggle we did. And in doing so we haven’t merely survived, we thrived, we flourished, we conquered. We have conquered the Earth, we have harnessed her. And now it is time we do the same to that gem in the sky, that flaming gem which since time immemorial has been both worshiped and feared. It is time to harness the Sun itself. To tap the deepest well civilization has ever known. Not merely catch whatever light it sees fit to grace us with, but to take it, of our volition.
While experts agree that the completed infrastructure for Direct Solar Mass Conversion Array is a century away, it is beyond a scientific certitude that our current assembler technology—neverminding the field’s daily breakthroughs—in conjunction with a raw material stockpile on the order of a solar mass, would see humanity elevated to Godhood.
The Icarus fleet will be our vanguard, the harbinger of a future in which humanity’s cup runneth ever over.
In 4 months, when the fleet is completed, the journey will begin. Humanity will take the first step toward that ultimate goal: harnessing the source of all things.
And what can we expect from that source? What such treasures might it bestow? What do we stand to gain once we’ve completed this final conquest?
Well, I’m not one to mince words or exaggerate, so I’ll put it plainly: everything, we stand to gain everything.”
In addition to securing the future for a humanity amongst the stars, political experts see Paenultĭmus Station as an essential deterrent to unchecked PRC orbital expansion. A bulwark against any subjugation by the increasingly inscrutable authoritarian regime.
-2106- World population hits 11 billion, almost 2 billion of whom live the majority of the year underground.
Advances in construction facilitated by the decade’s progress in Molecular Nanotechnology have seen the creation of ever more subterranean cites, each quicker than the last, and rapidly maturing Fusion Energy technology sees the majority built as entirely self-contained ecosystems.
-2106- Operatives acting on behalf of The Islamic State detonate a 2 megaton nuclear device hidden in a payload en transit along the Kenyan tether.
Occurring at approximately 10,000 kilometers, the detonation severs the tether, resulting in the deaths of all 163 individuals aboard the tether’s earth-end. Although integrated emergency breakaway points and chutes minimizes damage to ground based facilities, an additional 20 employees working at the Kenyan anchor site are killed by the catastrophic detensioning.
As the Kenyan tether’s counterweight settles into higher orbit, EURUP station is drawn up with it, the ensuing rebound resulting in collision between the two, killing 344 more.
When a joint Northpac-European Space Agency rescue operation arrives at the crippled station, a 5 megaton device, smuggled within a shipment the week prior, detonates, killing over 3,000 and scattering a dangerous cloud of debris.
Autonomous Space Debris Containment vehicles are largely successful at mitigating the hazard, and although both the Ecuadorian station and Sceaphierde sustain light damage, there are no further casualties as a result of the attack.
The Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack the next day, and within the hour, representatives from the EU, Saudi-Heg, Northpac, and even the PRC, convene in Vienna to formulate a response, as military analysts scrounge the data in an attempt to ascertain how The Islamic State was able to circumvent security and smuggle not one, but two, nuclear devices onto the tether transit system.
At the end of the first week of the proceedings, unknown actors attempt a nuclear first strike on Pax Aeternum, but anti-missile missiles and railgun batteries successfully neutralize all incoming warheads.
The Islamic State initially denies culpability and, although they later backtrack and once again claim responsibility, many experts suspect PRC involvement behind the coordinated Pax Aeternum attack. Northpac mobilizes surface and orbital military assets and, for the first time in history, declares a state of DEFCON 2.
In a rare public address, His Excellency the President Liu Chiang refutes PRC involvement in both the Kenyan tether and Pax Aeternum attacks, denouncing them as war crimes and proclaiming solidarity with Northpac, the EU, and other nations impacted by the terrorist actions in Kenya and the Pacific.
Despite placating rhetoric, tensions continue to rise, with Northpac battle groups placed on high alert and mobilized to the most contested zones both on- and off- world, Chinese counterparts matching their maneuvers all the while.
Expert opinion is that both power’s orbital infrastructure—sensitive and fragile as it is—will remain neutral ground. As will homeland territories on the surface, neither side willing to go that far, the threat of mutually assured destruction conjuring the magic of deterrence once again, the constantly updated firing solutions of orbital platform weapons systems mere chest puffing to avoid losing face.
Instead, the release valve for the pressure is steeper tariffs, harsher embargoes, and escalation in the long-running proxy wars.
Trade and travel are greatly disrupted as multiple conflicts flare up around the globe. Particularly in the central and southern Americas after Northpac deploys naval squadrons and ground troops to the Ecuadorian tether under the pretense of deterring further terrorist action, eliciting the outrage of many, who view it as a transparent attempt at reasserting dominance over the only remaining tether not under control of a world superpower.
Despite the protests, Northpac’s Prime Minister emphasizes the purely peacekeeping nature of the force and cites concerns over potential PRC-funded guerrilla forces destabilizing the region.
Several in the media are quick to point out the irony,
“So they’re worried about PRC-funded guerrillas on their doorstep, huh? Well they sure don’t seem to mind funding guerrillas on someone else’s doorstep. Just look at the Guinea Rebels, or the Tūya Pūmi and Bumi Tulen in Singapore, everyone knows they’re backed by Northpac. It’s the classic ‘do not to me what I do to thee’.
But what are you gonna do, it’s a tale as old as time.”
-2108- A massive cyberattack on Northpac and PRC mainframes by unknown actors exposes several highly classified military programs on both sides.
In addition to thousands of extra-judicial killings and extraordinary renditions carried out by PRC operatives on Northpac soil over the past 5 decades, the data breach reveals numerous long-term social engineering operations, either conducted, planned, or under-way, leading to the arrest, expulsion, and—in a few high-profile cases—interrogation and imprisonment, of all PRC affiliated foreign nationals within Northpac territories.
Conversely, orbital paths and decryption keys for Northpac stealth satellites and ultra-high atmosphere reconnoissance devices (U.H.A.R.D.), as well as a myriad of PRC military and civilian installations designated as High Value Targets, are uploaded to the Net, eliciting outrage from the Chinese administration and prompting His Excellency The President’s declaration of “an imminent clash” between the two powers, “a great restructuring of the global hierarchy”.
The world waits with bated breath as the two superpowers further withdraw into their respective ethnospheres, consolidating resources and pruning alliances.
—2110s—
-2110- All at once, the heretofore lukewarm Indo-Pakistani conflict goes hot.
The ensuing nuclear exchange kills an estimated 200 million people outright, and in the following days, various health and humanitarian organizations predict the ensuing nuclear winter to cut global calorie production by 40% and lead to the deaths of approximately 3 billion more over the coming year.
Riots break out in conurbations worldwide as droves in the tens of millions attempt to enter the nearest self-contained habitats, counterparts tenaciously refusing to leave the underground sanctuaries.
Martial law is declared in nations around the world as governments attempt to restore law and order. In Russia, many thousands are killed while attempting to storm, en masse, habs reserved for heads of state. Similar incidents take place throughout the European Union, Africa, and Northpac’s Eurasian territories, while in Neo-Rhodesia almost 100,000 are killed when private security forces protecting a Johannesburg private hab community open fire on the crowd.
2 weeks later amidst the chaos, purported extremist factions within the Saudi-Heg preempt a nuclear first strike on Northpac’s Israeli territory. Although the Iron Dome and Chazak Orbital Arrays successfully neutralize the missiles, concurrent orbital volleys cause widespread devastation in Tel-Aviv, Rishon LeZion, and Haifa.
While the royal family officially disavows the action, Northpac conducts retaliatory bombardment of Saudi-Heg surface infrastructure and disables their orbital platforms.
While open orbital confrontation between Northpac and the PRC remains frozen under threat of mutually assured destruction—delicate spaceborne infrastructure all but impossible to defend from the countless kinetic weapon platforms dotting the skies—their proxy skirmishes on the surface flare up, often into full scale war between the Superpower’s respective belligerents, resulting in an estimated 100 million casualties within the 18 months that follow.
-2111- Near year’s end, with governments the world-over continuing to topple and civilization’s bread and rice baskets struggling to endure the widespread environmental devastation wrought by nuclear war, the incessant conflicts begin to relent, both Superpowers apprehending the true gravity of the situation, diplomats working frantically to sustain an uneasy detente.
-2111- in a milestone that goes unnoticed by the majority of Earth’s inhabitants, Valhalla station is completed in orbit around Mercury, sustaining a small party of scientists, including CEO of The Prometheus Initiative, Lyvi Tas, who are overseeing the manufacture of automated assembler facilities on the surface, which will harvest the planet’s raw material to begin the first phase of construction for the planned Direct Solar Mass Conversion Array.
-2112- Record heatwaves batter the globe. With humanitarian infrastructure already pushed passed the breaking point and existing subterranean habitats nearly at capacity, few able to accommodate more, millions die.
Scientific consensus is that rising global temperatures, in conjunction with nuclear fallout, has rendered over 50% of the world’s land area uninhabitable, with that number estimated to rise to 70% within the year.
With vast resources freed by the uneasy peace, the two great Powers turn their focus inward, expanding existing underground infrastructure and coordinating the massive social migration.
Peripherally, some of the world’s more affluent nations attempt lottery or merit based programs for access to habitats, and construct countless emergency domes on the surface for those unlucky masses trapped topside, but the majority of governments around the world—if they even still function—see such decisions made through nepotism, bribery, and coercion, otherwise via Might Makes Right, military coups and violent overthrows neverending.
And in the most destitute regions of the world, where the infrastructure—if it ever truly existed at all—is crippled, death is the inevitable fate for hundreds of millions.
-2113- The Islamic State detonates low-yield nuclear devices in over a dozen subterranean cities around the world, including Montreal, Kansas City, Hong Kong, and Beijing.
Immediately following the attacks, Caliph Abu Abdulrahman al-Sayyaf al-Bilawi issues a jihad against the Chinese and Northpac governments,
“Our brotherhood is united in the jihad. Northpac and the PRC, where Islam is spat upon, where Sharia and Wisdom are ignored, where Allah—praise be to him—is mocked! These are the very manifestations of evil, these where the infidels congregate and blaspheme and fornicate. These we must purge. We shall continue this righteous war on all fronts until the infidels are expelled from the lands of the earth, until Allah—praise be to him—looks upon this world and sees only our glorious Islamic Nation spread from sea to sea.”
Recognizing the existential threat posed by organizations with ideologies wholly at odds with free society, and with experts on all sides unable to ascertain how such attacks were coordinated without any forewarning, Northpac, the PRC, the EU, and several other polities, organize an emergency international coalition.
A joint Sino-Western alliance—the first in 150 years—formed to combat the threats to not just any one nation or people, but to all nations, all peoples. A task force to ensure the survival of humanity itself.
Military assets conduct round the clock raids and orbital strikes to neutralize high ranking members of the Islamic State—and any other groups that threaten the species’ collective survival.
On the homefronts, the PRC’s heavy handed policing tactics, long castigated in the West, begrudgingly implemented.
The paradox of tolerance finally solved.
Civilized society finally disabused of the notion that one must tolerate all, even the intolerant.
Persons and groups who just can’t play nice, simply rounded up and removed from humanity’s collective project.
Dogma incompatible with human flourishing deleted from the equation.
The herd culled. Cancers excised.
And with those hundreds of millions of human variables accounted for, the best and brightest—regardless of nationality—set to work. The world’s foremost scientific experts, the engineers, doctors, physicists, all toiling together to save the planet.
The apex of collaboration.
Humanity’s collective technological prowess at long long last leveraged in full.
All to facilitate the greatest migration in the history of mankind. That great diaspora, already underway for half a century, not to the stars, but underground.
-Over the remainder of the decade, humanity—rather its more fortunate—abandons the surface.
The world, population nearly halved in the span of 4 years, will see almost a billion more deaths before the last blast doors seal.
Those on the wrong side—the outside—consigned to die on that hellscape of a surface, denizens of the inside relishing a paradise unprecedented.
But once those doors close, once humanity locks itself inside of earth’s womb, a new golden age will begin.
Assembler technology, coupled with the near limitless power on offer from the synthesis of Fusion and Solar, render traditional farmland and water supply obsolete. Calories can simply be printed—along with everything else.
Synthetic Intelligences, superhuman in their reckoning, perfectly coordinate human movement, optimizing interaction, ensuring perfect harmony, all while facilitating the cleansing of the planet. With resource acquisition and manufacture & processing already fully automated, the Systems build immense drone swarms, in turn building ever vaster swarms to build the still vaster devices of salvation. Massive atmospheric scrubbers to transmute radioactive nuisance into stuff more manageable, fleets of airborne drones replenishing ozone, earthborne swarms tilling, re-fixing nitrogen into the soil. The seas pumped and purified.
A return to the surface promised after the passing of a mere decade.
Until then, humanity will flourish in its subterranean utopias. Scarcity, want, need, all things of the past.
—2120s—
-Synthetic Systems tasked with anything that could remotely be defined as work, humankind is free to recreate in perpetuity.
For some, leisure involves stimulating the senses, the flesh, whether with other flesh or virtually. For others, leisure is diving headlong into niche intellectual fields. And for a growing contingent, leisure is a life immersed in the labyrinthine worlds of the virtual.
For nearly all though—save for those so fully enraptured in those nested layers of synthetic reality that they’ve lost the ability to distinguish the authentic—leisure means travel, whether vicariously through technology, or in-person.
And with the near-limitless energy on offer, physical travel is trivially easy.
While the occasional anthropological surveys to the surface proper have dwindled—those persistent reminders of a barren world increasingly unwelcome in the post-scarcity utopias, collective consciousness willing itself to forget the horrors of the oh-so-recent past above—travel to and from orbit is as simple as pressing an elevator button, and a small minority of civilization makes its home there, conducting research and continuing preparations for that inevitable push outward to the stars.
Likewise, transit between subterranean settlements, far from being difficult or restricted, is a regular occurrence.
Dense webs of shielded maglev tunnel join hundreds of settlements in massive underground metropolises.
For those separated by ocean or vast geographical distance and not yet linked by the ever expanding ground network, hypersonic air transport makes the globe-spanning treks in mere hours.
While many of the earliest Northpac and PRC settlements, sitting most centrally within their opposing milieus, see little in the way of in-person cultural exchange, communication remains open, and billions congregate daily in VR with fellows spread far and wide, on the other side of cities, continents, and previously seemingly insurmountable cultural divides.
The exchange of ideas, for so long reduced to a trickle by competing national security interests, has become a raging river. The floodgates of knowledge are open. The vast gulf of ignorance and misunderstanding, shrinking precipitously, threatening to disappear entirely.
And while few are under the illusion that there aren’t still some secrets about in those increasingly post-national amalgams enveloping the world, many philosophers, historians, and social scientists see these as the beginnings of a true unification. The start of the greatest revolution in the history of civilization. A grand renaissance. The genesis of a humankind that doesn’t see itself in terms of particular nationalities or ethnicities or creeds, but rather as of earth, as Human.
-2122- from Mercury, another milestone. Scientists aboard Valhalla Station report the successful completion of phase one. .000000136% of the planet’s mass has been converted into initial spaceborne assembler facilities, which will soon begin construction of the Direct Solar Mass Conversion Array’s primary skeleton. With automated drones working around the clock—and progress expected to begin exponentiating in 40 years—even the most conservative estimates see the Array completed in just under a century.
-2123- without warning, the world goes dark. While intra-refuge systems remain operational, inter-refuge communications and transportation are lost for a period of 8 months.
When global comms finally come back online, only a few subterranean habitats remain, the majority lost to unknown causes, and all hails to spaceborne settlement going unanswered.
Additionally, transportation systems beyond local refuges remain inexplicably nonfunctional.
Encrypted data transmissions, intercepted in the interregnum by researchers in Northpac’s Midwest Subterranean Refuge KCM.39.94–a system of 14 interconnected habitats, christened Eden by its 2 million inhabitants—are analyzed by researchers. And although heavily corrupted, a concerted effort between scientists of the remaining habs manages to decode portions of the signals, extraporential algorithms filling in the rest as best they can, giving a fragmented, but nonetheless elucidating, insight into the events that likely transpired:
A massive thermonuclear exchange between unidentified actors, possibly precipitated by a Chinese attempt to hijack the Global Information System, has decimated earth, as well as humanity’s off-world infrastructure.
In addition, countless orbital strikes have destroyed the majority of humanity’s underground sanctuaries, with those not killed outright by bombardment or the tactically released Chemical and Biological agents, to suffer lethal radiation poisoning and starvation.
Motives remain unknown, as do the true perpetrators, but scientific consensus is that a return to the surface—fraught as it is with heatwaves and fallout, and clean-up infrastructure all but annihilated—will not be possible within the century.
While there remains sporadic communication with the few surviving refuges, travel between them is impossible, and the following years see each of the de facto polities turning inward, adopting increasingly isolationist attitudes, reminiscent of nation-states past, albeit born of anomie and hopelessness rather than any flavor of nationalism or patriotism.
-By the second half of the decade, mankind’s collective apathy sees increasing numbers opting to spend their lives in VR.
And while the virch-real divide is nothing new—most of the world’s population having navigated the two as a routine part of daily life for decades—this marks the first time that the majority of subjective experience is occurring in virtual environments.
Many, especially those in social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences, lament the trend, noting such a life’s radical departure from the human optimal, expressing concern regarding the long term effects of a society-wide dive into isolated realities,
“If everyone is ‘under the visor’, if everyone is living in their own microcosm of experience and sensation, then that’s it, that’s the end of our society, that’s the end of our species.
‘Don’t be alarmist’ they say, ‘only a few fully isolate, most choose shared worlds’ they say, but I’ve seen the stats, and I know what the science says. It may be ‘only a few’ today, but soon that few turns into most, and most turns into all.
At this rate, in less than 5 years everyone will be under. In a world where no one needs to work, where the Sim Pods can feed you, clean you, repair you, where you never have to leave, what’s there to stop you? What’s the disincentive? I’ll tell you: there isn’t one. And if we don’t act quickly, it’s going to be too late. We’ll end up in a world with everyone plugged into their own personally tailored synthetic reality, completely cut off from everything else. A world so utterly removed from the actual, so lacking in connection, that everyone lives inside a solipsism of pure lived-experience epistemology. A world once in, we could never leave, so immutable the distrust of our senses will become. For in a world where the only things you can know for certain are those that you’ve chosen to put your faith in—1st person experience itself having been divorced so completely from empirical reality—then what could possibly bring you out of it?
What experience, what argument, what evidence could possibly bring you back from such solipsistic oblivion?”
Despite the vehement outcry from some circles, the ever growing majority—at least those still maintaining a degree of real world presence—argue that such existence is the logical, desirable next step for civilization.
Advocates of the movement, Synthates as they call themselves, scoff at what they see as an orthodoxy stunted by a fear of change,
“They wanna say ‘it’s not real’, like it doesn’t mean anything. But look at where we are right now, look at that sky, is that real? How about those clouds, or The Sun, are any of those real? No! We’re a hundred meters underground right now! Of course they’re not real, nothing is!
The truth is we are all already living one big fake ‘synthetic’ existence, so what’s the problem if someone wants to live a life where they suffer neither need nor want? Where they get to do anything and everything that they want? Is it just because they are ‘alone’ in their worlds? They can’t socialize with ‘real’ people? What does that even mean anyway? The only thing I can be sure of is my own experience. There is nothing, no scientific formula, no logical argument, no irrefutable proof demonstrating that there are any minds other than my own. This is the conclusion that I’ve come to, and, if we are to believe that there is truly a we, that there truly are minds outside our own, well then it seems like most of them have reached that conclusion as well.”
While there remain holdouts in the face of the new zeitgeist, communes of the self proclaimed Verus strictly limiting their virtual interactions—a few eschewing plug-in tech altogether—by the close of the decade, almost 80% of the inhabitants of Eden opt for continuous immersion in synthetic reality, with five sevenths choosing complete isolation.
Highest confidence projections anticipate total isolated reality immersion within 4 years.
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