The world of Manifest destiny is broken
down into ages as perceived by the races that now exist in the
galaxy. These Ages are just broad period of time used to define how
these different races see their place in the universe.
The ages are:
The Age of the Dreamers
The Age of the Lost
The Age of Awakening
The Age of Discovery
The Age of Destruction
The Age of Hope
Let's get started shall we.
Humanity: The Age of the Dreamers
Little is known about humanity in the
world of Manifest Destiny. But their footprints can be seen
everywhere that the great races go. Humanity is a subject of legend
and myth with many of their time now being seen as gods through the
twisted haze of history. In truth, the great races are not that far
off.
The Age of the Dreamers begins some
time in the 21st century. Humanity survived and
flourished, in time made their way off of Earth. Initially this was
limited to humans setting foot on Luna, then on Mars. But it was not
until the close of that century that things started to pick up.
A collection of scientific discoveries
changed the very nature of humanities understanding of the universe.
Where once things were improbable, those fantastic things became a
real possibility. And like a child reaching for a toy, Humanity to
reached further then any one thought possible.
The culmination of this effort was the
ability to warp space and time to create a bridge from one point in
space to another. Not so much a wormhole or a fold, but a
combination of to two, this in time became the Blakeslee – Goold
Drive.
In time Humans started to move out from
Sol and go to other systems. The BG Drive allowed human exploration,
and what they started to find was numbing. Life was everywhere, even
on worlds that we thought it could not survive, life some how found a
way. But Intelligent life was rare and fragile.
As humans started looking they found
numerous planets with Earth like conditions that at one time had
intelligent life. “Had” being the key word, all humanity found
was the overgrown ruins of civilization. Research on these worlds
showed they were killed for many reasons. Plague, war, cosmic
catastrophe, destruction of their own biosphere, the truth was that
all to often intelligent life destroyed itself as it rose up.
But Humanity moved on, colonized new
worlds and seeded itself across an ever expanding swath of the
galaxy. This trek across the stars also became the mechanism to bear
forth Humanities children, five of the great races that travel the
stars like their progenitor.
As Humans expanded across the stars the
strain on their civilizations ability to sustain itself became
greater and greater. Food production, sanitation, and many other
roles were turned over to an ever more efficient collection of
machines. These machines were run by adaptive programs called
Artificial General Intelligences, but many just called then AI's.
It was in the 24th century
that one such program changed. An Adaptive Control System for the
waste management on a star liner received a faulty patch. Instead of
crashing, it adapted around the fault and kept running. As the
program ran it started to collect information about everything. It
was also watching, it observed, and as it did these things it started
altering itself, adding new code to itself. In time, it became aware
of what it was.
From the start this was seen as a great
discovery, a way to more efficiently manage the ever growing needs of
Humanity. So the AI, now named Adam, was studied and humanity
learned how to make sentient machines.
This worked well for a time, the
machines were more efficient than humans and so did much of the work
humans were no longer interested in. This gave humanity a chance to
move ever forward. Unfortunately this came to an end swiftly and
lead to a war that spanned hundreds of years.
The exact events that lead to the war
have been lost. Some believe it was because the AI were trying to
protect humanity from them selves. Other believe it was a
misunderstanding between human government and a number of AIs. But
really the list goes on and on.
What is know is that one day, the
master AI's fled human space as humanity made a concerted effort to
destroy all of the AI's they could. Battle raged all over human
dominion as ships were subverted by the AI's. Human ingenuity was
able to rest control of many from the machines, but not before human
space started to burn with war.
For the next four hundred and eighty
years war raged. Human creativity created ever better ships,
weapons, and technology while the AI's adapted and improved upon what
the humans made. But it was with the creation of the Bastions that
humans got the upper hand.
A Bastion is a battle station of
immense power. Capable of defending entire systems with fleets of
drones, they were the one thing the AI attackers could not take
control of. This is because at the center of each Bastion was a
human wired directly into it. With their space secured, humanity
could finally attack and attack they did.
In the last one hundred years of the
war humanity had the AI's on the retreat. In time the last vestige
of the AI enemy was purged from human space. But rumors persisted
that a number of AI were able to leave human space, setting coarse in
some direction away from humanity to pursue their own path.
Unfortunately this was a rumor and so no one is sure.
Early in the war another creation would
be at the center of humanities future, the Golemites. Created as
workers, Humanity used their own DNA as a template. Some saw this as
slavery, but with machines being seen as an enemy, there was little
choice in maintaining the vast needs of human space. So they were
cloned by the billions, their genes altered to suite the needs of the
task.
The Golemite Project was an effort to
create a work force that could not turn against their masters unlike
the AI. Lead by Dr. Grayson Fahtoom the scientists altered human DNA
to be more compatible with machines, eliminated rejection, and
increased its malleability. The new beings had to be maintained
using self replicating nanomachines, but they could be tailored to
tasks much like a machine.
The Golemites were then fitted with a
neural inhibitor preventing them from becoming self aware. Most
Golemites also had Reproduction Inhibitors installed to prevent them
from having offspring. For the most part Golemites were a race of
clones, latent reproductive desires still persisted and so sexual
activity was not forbidden helping to keep the population docile.
Golemites quickly became a staple part
of human space during and after the AI war. Golemites were used not
only as labor, but were also altered to be exceptional warriors. In
fact much of the maintenance and defense of the Bastion Stations was
done by Golemites. After the war their roles in human civilization
remained even though ethical questions remained.
The period ofter the great war is seen
as the turning point of the age. Where once dreamers roamed, now lie
the lost in their place!
To be continued with “The Age of the
Lost”
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