Continuing our look into the backstory of Tales of the Quantum Corps, the following post provides more details about life in 2100 AD.  Specific topics covered include Business and Trade, Arts and Entertainment and Life and Culture.

BUSINESS AND TRADE

The most important thing to know about the economy in 2100AD is that everything is affected by the existence of molecular nanoscale assemblers.  The use of fabs to create products (other than food products; organic materials are still somewhat ‘iffy’ due to the complexity of their ‘software’) has altered the global economy in fundamental ways.

Now, for the first time in history, if you can afford a fab or can steal one and the feedstock and the software drivers that make it work, you can make anything you want: clothes, cars, guns, electronics, basic shelter.  Imagination is the limit.  This means that money to buy these items is no longer needed, once you have the basic setup.  Some parts of the global economy have changed to a subsistence + economy.  This means that fab owners can supply many (though not all) of their basic needs without money….only their fabs and basic feedstock.  And basic feedstock essentially means anything composed of atom and molecules…in other words, anything at all.  One effect of this potential personal abundance is that makers of these items in the traditional economy are rapidly put out of business.  Anything that can be made by fabs will be made by fabs, in stupendous abundance and variety.   And those who previously made these items will be unemployed and out of work.  So unemployment in traditional industries that make traditional products is high and climbing.  These jobs will never come back.

The lessening of the importance of money and credit in sectors of the economy (there really is only one global economy now) affects banking and many other sectors.  Money was invented to facilitate trade and exchange…it exists as a universal translatable medium of exchange.  With the presence of assemblers and the ability to create your own products at a whim, the need for trade is reduced, thus a medium of exchange is less important.  Of course, people will always trade and swap things back and forth.  Now, they can swap items directly with less need for money, credit, loans, PayPal, etc. 

In many parts of the world, people swap fabs, fab drivers, and the items they make from these fabs.  In other words, barter has returned in a big way to drive significant parts of the global economy.  This is especially empowering for those who don’t have a lot of money anyway.  And it is particularly vexing for governments who derive their revenue from taxes. 

In 2100AD, trade and exchange in fab components is brisk and drives a lot of the legal and illegal economy.  Especially valuable are the fab drivers, the software cores of the assemblers and their config engines.  A brisk black market exists for config engines and the fab software, with cartels and gangs known as fab lords trying to control and monopolize more and more of this trade.  Fab lords, hackers (of fabs and genomes) and twistheads (addicts who use embedded nanobotic swarms to manipulate their dopamine and serotonin levels in their brains on command) are a fact of life in all sectors of the economy, in every country and region, with local variations.

Another key facet of the economy in 2100AD is the presence of the digital domain now known as WorldNet, a descendant of the 20^th/21^st century Internet.  Much of the world’s business, maybe most of it, is now on-line.  Many corporations and organizations exist only online and have no real physical infrastructure.  A significant part of world trade is online and involves only virtual exchange of digital products or services.  Payment is little more than an electronic accounting convenience: subtract an amount from this account and deposit it in this account. 

With so much of life now online, digital and virtual, the effects on the world’s physical infrastructure, such as urban regions, farms, etc has been profound.  Cities still exist and are as crowded as ever in a world of 9 billion people.  But many cities have become hyper-concentrated into ever smaller areas and thus have a smaller environmental footprint than before.  Other cities have become hollowed out, as people chose to live (if they can) in more pleasant surroundings, at the beach or the mountains.  Some ‘cities’ and communities exist only as virtual worlds and have no physical presence at all.  Urban sprawl is vanishing, as the outer regions of urban areas are abandoned and natural forces reclaim the land.  Countering this trend is the explosive growth of angels and uncontrolled nanobotic swarms, drifting around the countryside. 

And there are regions on the perimeter of the Sanctuaries, as well as inside these protected regions, where the land, water and air environment is being deliberately altered by the swarms, under direction of their embedded Prime Keys, to an unknown state (but one which will wind up being closer to the Earth’s environment 3-4 billion years ago).

One of the more intriguing developments in the global economy is the growth of a nascent trade and exchange between humans and ANAD swarms along the edges of the Sanctuaries, in bazaars and markets that resemble Arab souqs.  Clearly, ANAD swarms can produce items that humans value and want (unique clothes, decorative items, swarm facsimiles of ancestors and loved ones, swarm love objects, etc).  Interestingly, ANAD swarms also seek exchange for things that humans produce, such as other humans (there is a baby trade in parts of south Asia), certain foods, music and various arts and craft items, etc.  Nobody really knows what the swarms do with these items. 

The changes in business and trade to a subsistence plus economy, the growth of the virtual online world and the lessening of the need for money and credit have profoundly affected the look and feel of the developed world in 2100AD. 

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

The world of molecular nanobots has brought great change to arts and entertainment.  The advent of sentient swarms of nanobots and angels have created entirely new forms of entertainment.  Now it is possible, with the new technology, to create human-like companions, lovers, soulmates, faux spouses, even an entire cast of a Broadway play or film, and have it acted it out or sung in your own living room as if it were a live performance.  It’s even better than Star Trek’s holodeck!

Angels and sentient swarms have re-made sports as well.  Now it is possible to create entire games in your backyard, or in downsized fashion, in your living room.  An entire replica of the Daytona 500, with cars and race track and screaming fans, could be played out in swarm simulation. 

The artists who create the config engines to generate the swarms and mold them into some kind of story are the real heroes of this entertainment revolution.  There is even a sim you can buy that re-creates Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, at whatever scale you choose.  People buy this and set it up, then observe and even interact with the character according to defined rules of the story.  Simheads are going nuts with this stuff.  It’s better than TV, better than the WorldNet. 

An additional effect of the nanoscale technology is the use of bots inserted into your mind to provide unique experiences and memories by stoking certain neural circuits, boosting serotonin and dopamine output and creating whole new experiences in your head.  Twistheads like this stuff.  The bots are simply swallowed and make their way under programming to selected parts of your body and mind, where they play out sequences that provide you with, say: the experience of being Superman, or a whale, or a character in a movie, complete with boosted muscle output, enhanced vision, touch or hearing and requisite skills and memories.  Like neural architects, these bots work at the molecular level to re-engineer your feelings, thoughts, memories and abilities, in a structured fashion, so that you can truly become whatever it is you desire to become…Rudolph Valentino, General George Sherman, Hercules, money and imagination are the only limits.

The real artistry and skill is reserved for those who program the config engines and develop and write the scripts and stories to make these entertainments work.  A typical production would involve programmers (who have to develop the configs and the sequence by which the configs will change according to the dictates of a story), atomgrabbers, writers, neuro-techs to work with the physical side (inserting and maintaining the bots inside your body), and a host of other trades.  With computers and robotics of the early 22^nd century, it’s perfectly possible to house all these trades as a series of programs in servers somewhere and call them up over the Net any time you need them.  Hollywood has become a distributed cloud of functions, resources and utilities.

Of course, the downside of all this great entertainment technology is that increasing millions of fans and aficionados are steadily becoming addicted to the realism and power of the sims.  Combined with the effects of swarm-angels floating around the countryside, licensed and controlled in the developed world, completely uncontrolled in many other parts of the world, the sims make it difficult to know what is real and what is not.  And with so much of the world now heavily and increasingly dependent on nanobotic technology for economic growth and life support, plus the existence of the Sanctuaries and the ANAD swarms as proof that a new man-made lifeform is steadily taking over more and more of the planet, it’s hard not to wonder if Mankind has finally created something that will ultimately surpass him and make him extinct. 

There are more and more people who fatalistically assume that Man’s days are numbered.  With the broad popular knowledge of the Old Ones, that they are the ancestors in some way of all ANAD nanobots, that they are coming to Earth on a certain date and that somehow the Earth is (or must) be re-made in a new way for them, is scant comfort to many who are troubled by these developments. 

Man’s tools have always changed the ways he interacts with his environment and changed him in profound ways.  These newest tools threaten to carry this process to some kind of definitive conclusion, where Man is no longer Man.

The Assimilationists think Man should merge with his ANAD nanobotic swarms and create a new symbiotic lifeform, then sit back and await the coming of the Old Ones. 

Not everybody agrees.

LIFE AND CULTURE

The Assimilationists believe we are meant to merge with our ANAD bot swarms and become new symbiotic lifeforms.  It is one of the great questions of the age in 2100AD.  Nanobotic technology and swarms have developed to the point that inserting bots and swarms of bots into our minds and bodies is already a routine thing. 

The next logical step is to use ANAD-style bots to enhance or augment our bodies, providing capabilities that we wouldn’t have naturally.  Assimilationists believe such a symbiosis, which had its genesis with Quantum Corps’ Symbiosis Project, is a natural and inevitable part of evolution.  They also believe that without such enhancement, Mankind has no future and no hope.

One fear that drives Assimilationist thinking is the understanding that the Old Ones are coming and that humans had better be ready.  Some of who follow Assimilationism think that the Old Ones are really the return of Jesus, or God.  Others aren’t so sure how much we can trust the Old Ones, or whether we even should.  It is generally and broadly known that ANAD-style assemblers have a link to the Old Ones through their core processor: the original ANAD processor contained instruction sets taken from the genome of an ancient virus unearthed at Entebbe, in east Africa.  And archeologists, working with nanobotic engineers, have concluded that the Old Ones may well have provided the original genomic ‘seed’ for all viruses on Earth.  This was always the theory of Doc Frost, although others have disputed this.

The expected arrival of the Old Ones lends a sense of urgency to the demands of the Assimilationists.  A variety of spiritual and religious cults, sects and movements have arisen since the existence of the Old Ones and their anticipated arrival was announced (in 2080, in the aftermath of the Hellas Enigma case). Some say the Old Ones are really God, or Jesus and the Second Coming.  Some say the Old Ones are a final judgment on Mankind.  Some say the destruction of the world is imminent and that we have 55 years to repent (Doc Frost and many inside Quantum Corps believe there is some truth to this, that the Old Ones mean to re-make the Earth into a more compatible environment, perhaps closer to what Earth was like in its primordial days 3.5 billion years ago, that they mean to rewind the evolutionary clock and start over again).

The Assimilationists say the only way we can be ready to meet the Old Ones, either to stop them or to join them (and there is a branch of Assimilationism that feels merging with the Old Ones is the only realistic alternative) is to merge with our ANAD nanobotic creations and augment or enhance our selves into something like the Old Ones are said to be.  Most theories about the physical nature of the Old Ones consider them to be a sort of vast swarm of bots, drifting through space, a kind of hive mind.

The Assimilationist agenda encourages adherents to seek enhancement with nanobotic swarms and technology….literally, to let your body and mind be flooded with bots to boost enlightenment, intelligence, speed of reaction, memory and the ability to link with the WorldNet, in other words, to do your part to build a giant single mind on Earth (similar to Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere).  In many respects, Assimilationists have a Gaia view of things, differing only in their belief that the Earth is not yet a living organism, but through their efforts, will become one.  Achieving the state of no’os, union as a mind, is the highest goal of most Assimilationists. 

Assimilationism is an outgrowth of transhumanism.  The anticipated coming of the Old Ones thus can be thought of as a version of the Singularity.  However Assimilationism focuses on true symbiosis with our nanobotic creations. 

The next post to Quantum Corps Times will be more background information on life in 2100 AD, in this case dealing with Science and Technology, Philosophy and Ethics, and Education.

 The next post, on or around the middle of February 2015, will cover more backstory and provide details about Science and Technology, Philosophy and Ethics and Education in the late 21^st and early 22^nd century.  All these details are foundation to the stories that make up Tales of the Quantum Corps. 

The back story to Tales of the Quantum Corps takes place in a time frame that spans the last third of the 21^st century and the first half of the 22^nd century.    Taking the year 2100 AD as a center point for this time span, the next few posts will describe what life is like in that year…sort of a backgrounder to all the stories of Johnny Winger and the Quantum Corps. 

GENERAL

Life in 2100 AD is generally a time of great technological progress, conflict and promise.  The growth and spread of ANAD-style nanotechnology has had profound effects on every aspect of life in the last fifty years.

ANAD systems and poorly regulated fabs based on ANAD technology are widespread, around the world, in every city and village and on every farm or commune.  Fabs (fabricators) based on ANAD can create almost anything inorganic that human beings can imagine.  Cars, furniture, clothing, sex toys, homes, electronic devices, guns, etc can all be fabricated from atom-scale feedstock.  All you need is the fab, the core with its software drivers and the requisite feedstock.  Organic structures, especially living systems (strictly forbidden in most places) are still difficult, expensive and generally not worth the effort.  Otherwise, the sky’s the limit.

More importantly, robotic nanoscale systems based on the original ANAD design (from the 2050s and Northgate University, Dr Irwin Frost) are widely recognized to be a parallel sentience and life form, both a companion and competitor to Man on this planet, even though the devices were created by Man.  The swarming nature of ANAD bots and the complexity of their swarm formations have given rise to the belief and understanding that ANAD swarms are worthy of being called a new life form. 

Moreover, the spread of ANAD technology has been so explosive, and the swarms so compelling in their sophistication and behavior that the term angels has now entered popular use as a way of describing such swarms, with all that implies.  Angels (now a generic term for ANAD swarms) are originally defined as messengers from God, spiritual beings and protectors and guides for humans in their relationship with God.  Angels as ANAD-style swarm entities are companions, love mates, partners, and all other things, even pseudo-religious beings to many people on Earth today.  Some people have even developed swarm analogs of themselves, so that when they die, the swarm version remains behind…a strange form of immortality.

A growing symbiotic (some would say parasitic) relationship has developed between Man and ANAD.  Because of the growth and spread of independent swarms, quasi-official recognition of their status has been granted formally by the UN and by most other political entities.  In other words, ANAD swarms have rights, now defined by law.  Not only do they have rights, ANAD swarms have independent lifestyles and can reside (if they choose) in protected sanctuaries, which are almost like nation-states.  During Johnny Winger and the Golden Horde, ANAD swarms (angels) were given political representation in the UN.

Humans have a conflicted relationship with ANAD swarms.  On the one hand, humans are deeply dependent on ANAD technology and the fabs which are spreading so quickly.  Human economies and lives depend on fabs now.  Many economies and societies would fail if ANAD systems vanished or were banned.  Yet many people are uneasy with this growing dependence and the rapid growth in sophistication and complexity, and now official status, of ANAD swarms.  Man has not had a serious competitor on this planet for millions of years.  Now he does.  And this competitor is of his own creation.  There is growing concern with where this relationship is going. 

Will Man and ANAD remain partners, with ANAD a more or less junior partner?  Will Man and ANAD fight each other?  What will be the outcome?  Will Man and ANAD merge into a new life form, symbiotically blended? 

And what of the Old Ones and their imminent arrival?  This is now universally known and both anticipated and dreaded in equal measure.  The use of the term angels for ANAD swarms accords very well with the coming of the Old Ones, whom some regard as a return of the Messiah or even God Himself.  There are overt religious, even existential, undercurrents in the relationship between Man and ANAD and the expected arrival of the Old Ones, who are popularly understood to have been the ancient progenitor of the nanoscale assemblers’ core software. 

What do the Old Ones want?  Should we fight them or welcome them?  There are some sects and cults on Earth who want to merge with the Old Ones and join them in traveling around the galaxy.

These questions plague human beings profoundly in the opening years of the 22^nd century. 

POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE

Global politics in 2100 AD centers around the UN and its satellite organizations.  There is a Secretary-General and a General Assembly and a Security Council.  The SG is probably the most powerful, or at least influential human on Earth, though his power is tightly proscribed by procedure, precedent and law.

One key attribute of global politics in 2100 AD is the proliferation of entities represented in the UN.  In addition to the more than 200 nation-states, there are dozens of non-state entities which have achieved some kind of representation: corporations, societies, cartels, and now, even the swarms themselves.  As a result, the General Assembly is an unwieldy, unmanageable, contentious faction-ridden body which produces nothing of consequence except reams of debate and oratory.

Real power lies with the Security Affairs Directorate, and its commissioner, known as UNSAC.  In the year 2100AD, this man is the Swiss national Gerhard Niemann.  Below UNSAC, the enforcement arm of the UN is called UNIFORCE, which has a General Staff (based in Paris) and numerous military and police elements.  These elements are UNIFORCE Net Corps (UNINET), Security Corps (UNILAND, UNISEA, and UNAERO), Frontier (formerly Space) Corps (also called UNISPACE), Quantum Corps, and Sanctuary Patrol. 

The UN organization is nominally democratic with all General Assembly members having a vote.  The Security Council is limited in membership to a permanent group of five voting members, and about ten associate members.  Five of the associate members are changed every 2 years. 

A key concern in 2100AD is how to integrate the ANAD swarms into public and political life.  This is a highly charged and contentious issue.  For representation purposes, the swarms are treated as a single entity, sort of a nation-state.  Even though nanobotic experts insist that the ANAD swarms form a single, global organism (a kind of hive mind), the UN considers them or it, a form of nation-state, with citizens.  In reality, ANAD swarms are a single entity like a body and to consider its constituent parts as citizens is like considering your arm and your nose as citizens of your body.  It’s ludicrous and meaningless.  But that is politics in 2100AD.

There are even proposals to grant representation to the Old Ones, in absentia, to better prepare the way for their arrival. 

CRIME/LAW ENFORCEMENT/PUBLIC SECURITY

There is plenty of crime in 2100 AD.  The use of nanobotic technology and the use of fabricators (fabs) is tightly controlled by law.  Society cannot tolerate unregulated use of fabs and matter engines and the production of goods and items without some measure of control to keep the economy and the environment stable.  Some areas of the world do a better job of this than others, like North America and western Europe.  East and South Asia, Africa and the Middle East have minimal and poorly enforced controls over fabs, which run riot in those regions. Cultural and economic forces ensure that people in these regions will not follow containment regulations very well.   UN BioShield and Quantum Corps have global responsibility for enforcing laws and regulations on licensing and use of fabs and nanobotic swarms.  As a practical matter, UNQC relies heavily on local law enforcement to carry out these responsibilities.

Because of the continuing and galloping demand for fabs and what they can produce, criminal cartels and gangs have moved in on this business in a big way, and not just Red Hammer.  Fab lords, hackers, twistheads and others routinely steal and peddle unlicensed fab cores (the matter compilers).  Others use their knowledge and skills in nanobotic devices to create bots and swarms of bots to assemble anything imaginable, even organic things which are strictly forbidden and usually not very successful. The end result, when combined with twistheads and other rogue gene sequencers who hack into the genomes of any living entity and mix and match with abandon, is a riotous profusion of living, semi-living and non-living organisms and entities for sale around the world.

Hackers and twistheads will even hack into your own genome and graft new gene sequences onto your germline or other chromosomes, to provide you with new abilities, new prosthetic devices, new capabilities…all for a (sometimes steep) price and with no real quality assurance or proof that it will work and won’t kill you.  The gutters and alleys of many cities (especially in Asia) are filled with deformed and mentally unhinged people who are the result of failed hacks and swaps, half-alive, semi-conscious zombies who can barely take care of themselves.  Combine the zombies with angels (swarms of uncontained nanobots resembling para-human life forms) let loose on the environment and the back alleys of these cities take on the look of feverish nightmares from some drug addict’s fried mindscape. 

There are cartels and gangs which have attempted to organize all this.  Red Hammer has been the most successful and they are under constant assault by UNQC and other UNIFORCE authorities and enforcement agencies.  Some of these cartels have acquired finances and technology which enable them to rival nation-states in influence and power.  In the case of Red Hammer, having access to the technical archive of the Old Ones also made them a particularly nasty threat (and, of course, the Old Ones used this cartel for their own purposes, which became clearer as the 22^nd century opens). 

The atomization and diffusion of nanobotic and genetic knowledge and technology around the world has made it possible for even single individuals and very small groups to wield extraordinary power and influence.  Criminal activity and threats proliferate and spread like viruses and the only realistic way to enforce law and order on the environment is to diffuse and proliferate as well.

Toward this end, the growth of BioShield and UNQC and Sanctuary Patrol has been likened to growing a law enforcement immune system for the planet, some organization or group of organizations that can automatically seek out and destroy threats as they are detected.  This philosophy of law enforcement has come into vogue in the latter years of the 21^st and early 22^nd centuries.  The only problem with BioShield as a planetary immune system is the question of human rights, justice, the presumption of innocence vs guilt and massive violations of privacy and security in one’s home and personal life.  But the threat of unregulated nano and rogue gene sequencing, not to mention climatic disruptions and environmental breakdowns caused by the above is so severe, that quick and effective reaction is a necessity, if the planet and its biosphere is to survive. 

However, just as our bodies’ immune systems occasionally go haywire and attack the body itself in auto-immune diseases like AIDS, a planetary immune system like BioShield might also turn against the planet and destroy or damage the very thing it seeks to protect.  Or worse, a criminal cartel might be able to gain control of BioShield and pervert it to use as a threat against civilization or authority, for a ransom, for political or religious gain or for other purposes.

This is an ongoing dispute (hasn’t it always been?) between the forces of individual freedom and the forces of stability and containment. 

 

The next post to Quantum Corps Times will be more background information on life in 2100 AD, in this case dealing with Business and Trade, Arts and Entertainment and Life and Culture.