MODERN AGE AND ESCAPE FROM REALITY

Eventually the turmoil settled, and the world became used to the way things had changed. It’s been over 100 years since the megacorporations wrestled control from the governments and shaped the world into a dystopian nightmare.   The people of Earth rarely give much thought to the unreachable colonies or the wars in the stars above them. These events barely touch the lives of normal everyday people. Most people only have enough energy to care about their city and the tiny apartment they call home. Escape from reality is the key theme throughout this modern period.

Eventually the turmoil settled, and the world became used to the way things had changed. It’s been over 100 years since the megacorporations wrestled control from the governments and shaped the world into a dystopian nightmare.   The people of Earth rarely give much thought to the unreachable colonies or the wars in the stars above them. These events barely touch the lives of normal everyday people. Most people only have enough energy to care about their city and the tiny apartment they call home. Escape from reality is the key theme throughout this modern period.   Millions of people live within the confines of huge sea walls, consumed as much by the shadows the walls cast as the poverty they were born into. These people rely on both illegal and legal drugs to get through each day, desperately searching for the next artificial high to settle their mind. The government provides a token dole to the unemployed, but not enough to maintain anything close to a healthy lifestyle. The unemployed seek all forms of casual labor, even in highly technical industries, if they have the energy to work. The underground economy thrives, and criminal enterprise is rampant in the lower parts of every major city.   Many people opt to live entirely inside virtual reality, resenting the breaks they have to take to eat, drink, and defecate. In any one of the thousands of VR Cafes across San Francisco rows and rows of people sit in small, cramped, and unlit cubicles, jacked in to the network. The checked-out masses, living to die and resentful of any interruption.   Most people live a lifetime without ever seeing plant life or real animals aside from rodents. In place of nature Earth’s residents know the alien terrain of off-world colonies, working side by side with synths and AI under heavy megacorporation control.   Work life is witness to corporate infighting and the totalitarian crackdown on any resistance. But within the shadows and crevasses between the corporate hierarchies the real struggle takes place. Corporate raiders and libertarian protesters, fight the power the megacorporations have over every aspect of life.   Meanwhile the corporations have settled into their power much the way the governments they enslaved had by initiating conflict with their peers. In this way the megacorps are constantly fighting a war on at least several fronts.   In corp vs corp conflict, economic undermining, resource sabotage, and IP infringement all are accepted methods to settle disputes.   Corporate wars are sponsored activities with all the pageantry of a pro-sports playoff event. Usually these conflicts take place at resource locations where ownership is disputed. On occasion conflict breaks out within a city and the results are devastating.   Corporate conflict zones are subject to longstanding wars between corporate taskforces. Corporate armies jockey for position on resources and strategic landmarks in an ongoing power struggle with their opponents. Corporate conflict zones feature some of the best and most exciting broadcast violence for those desensitized enough to watch.   The popularity of conflict zone broadcasting has sparked the creation of celebrity warriors, with their own brand of sponsorship. Foremost among them is Eagle Bjornsson and his Wingspan mercenary company. Fighting for the highest bidder and equipped with “bleeding edge” armor and arms, Gunther is known for making any sortie into bloody carnival of brutality.   Conflict zones, like all popular entertainment, are a diversion; a distraction from the grimness of life beneath the neon yoke of the megacorporations. Government handouts sustain the masses, while the scraps of wealth falling from the neon spires of the mega rich give small hope to the cities.This is life, and it’s normal.   People do as they always do, they try and survive.   The past 10 years have seen several AI programs and synths claim sentience, each protesting for rights and liberation. Retirement agents, a new breed of law enforcement officer trained to track and shut down faulty synths and AI, quickly attack any such protest or synth act of rebellion. Depending on where a person’s thoughts on AI and synths, retirement agents are either heroes protecting the world from rogue programming and dangerous machines, or killers for hire hunting down escaped slaves.   Welcome to 2190.