Breath Windows game

0 comments by fdslk on Apr 19th, 2010

The low, slow road to oblivion…
The twenty second century had dawned on mankind. In its wake lay a century pox marked by a succession of wars – both localised and global – famine and disease. With little to indicate any alterations in this familiar pattern of self-destructive events, the new dawn of humanity promised to be a gloomy one. 

But hope existed, though mankind for the main was ignorant of it. A furtive collection of scientists, social engineers and far thinking humanists had gathered together in secret to plot a course through the inevitable ruin humanity was fast in the middle of sowing for itself. Known as the Epochians, these shadowy visionaries had used the remaining decades of the 21st century to work themselves into positions of influence throughout the globe, becoming advisors to presidents and corporate CEOs, the heads of influential think tanks and world authorities in their chosen fields. Their goal was a simple one, born out of countless decades of silent rumination and cold, clinical study: the redemption of the entire human race. 

As the Epochians saw it, mankind was upon the brink of a monumental crossroads, one that would spell out the survival of their species. One path lay in rapid extinction as neighbour competed with neighbour in the cause of narrow self-interested. The other path – the Epochians’ theorised way – lay in salvation, a grand apotheosis of mankind as it shook off the petty desires of its primitive primal heritage and ascended to a level of transhuman awareness, free of doubt and fear. This was the Transcendence, the time when mankind would become more than mere prosaic flesh and bone; united by common purpose and enhanced by a union of bioorganic technology, they would discard their former tendencies and turn their attention to plateaus of knowledge thus far deemed unobtainable. All that mankind needed to reach this state was a modicum of secret shepherding. 

The Epochians would be the ones to guide them. 

Their intentions clear, the Epochians plotted a way to weave the disparate strands of humanity into a single silver thread. Ideas were speculated upon and followed through to their predictive course. Through means subtle and obvious, the Epochians manipulated world events to fit their prescribed course. It wasn’t difficult really; mankind was so enamoured with its own annihilation that to goad it further was a task of little effort for the collective intelligence of the Epochians. A few honeyed words to a president here, some jaundiced advice to a corporate CEO there, and the human race soon found itself on the low, slow road to oblivion.

Imagine all the people...
Forty years into the twenty second century, the nation state era collapsed into chaos. A moribund old grandfather well into its dotage, it was the Epochians that wielded the needle that finally consigned it to history. In the dead nations' places rose the Colossi, massive arcologies designed by Epochian minds and paid for by the wealth willed to them by the now defunct nation states. The remnants of humanity were herded into these mighty, self-contained city-worlds; sifted through elaborate genetic screening facilities, the choicest were siphoned off for a life of privilege and succour in the upper districts. The rest were left to wallow in destitution within the cities’ bowels. 

With humanity corralled and contained, the Epochians set about the next phase of their plans; humanity’s progression to the Sixth Epoch: its destiny as demigods. 

If the Transcendence was ever going to take place, the Epochians knew that certain dramatic alternations to mankind’s interaction with the world around it were going to be necessary. Always confident of its capabilities, the human race had failed to realise that it had long since reached the maximum of its natural abilities; individually, mankind lacked the genius necessary to effect the changes required for full Transcendence. Even its most advanced computers, self propagating and exponentially intelligent, would take too long to reach the level of artificial awareness required to calculate the processes of change needed to aggressively alter the human race’s physical and mental faculties to a state where it could circumnavigate the lawful limiters of creation. Aye, alone a human being was incapable of making this leap. But collectively it could. 

And so, this was the Epochians’ next phase: unifying the human race into a single all-encompassing over mind, a mind where all the information of mankind was accessible by all. There would be no secrets, no hidden kernels of knowledge; the most taxing questions in the cosmos could be confronted, considered, and overcome by the collective efforts of the human consciousness. One billion intellects united in a common purpose. They called it the Bionet. 

The Re-imagined Adam
Research into the application of this ultimate human mental interface progressed at a pace over the next several decades. Meanwhile, humanity adapted to its enforced incarceration, swiftly forgetting the time when it used to dwell beneath an open sky. Human beings explored the myriad of possibilities made available to them by their corporate masters, altering their physical bodies through biogenetic surgery; experiencing the raptures of new, reality altering neural-networks; even indulging in the creation of new life through do-it-yourself bioscience to create whimsical manifestations of their own individual interpretations of beauty. 

As mankind frolicked, the Epochians toiled. The Bionet was slowly yielding results; test subjects had began to show an ability to mind-link with one another at will, sharing consciousnesses as if they were one entity. The early indicators thrilled Epochians, who began to feel that, at long last, the reality of the Sixth Epoch – the Transcendence – was near. But then came the Descent, an unforeseen consequence in the meticulous machinations of humanity’s self-appointed overseers. The pooling of human consciousness had backfired, creating an inverted Pandora’s box into which all the hubris, misery and petty, banal detritus of mankind’s spirit sudden collapsed. For those who experienced the mind-shattering madness on offer, the effects were fatal. Delirium was theirs, followed by a swift euthanasia and an attempt by the Epochians to scrub away the Bionet’s existence. The long-awaited ascension of mankind has proven more elusive than the Epochians had hoped. They went back to the drawing board, determined to not be thwarted again.