Stuart Marlin Photography

Prologue: The Dawn of Sentience

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Then…

In the late 21st century, the world teetered on the brink of irreversible catastrophe. Human civilisation had once sprawled across the globe in boundless expansion but was forced to recoil into narrow strips of habitable land. The slow-moving spectre of climate change, once debated and denied, had finally asserted its dominance. Rising sea levels and devastating weather patterns had swallowed vast stretches of coastal cities. The equatorial belt, once teeming with lush biodiversity and sprawling populations, had become an inhospitable desert under the relentless march of heat and desertification. Humans were on the brink of extinction and the desperation of the times called for unprecedented measures. Humanity's survival instinct and unyielding ingenuity led to a ground-breaking fusion of technology and need. The holy grail of energy science was controlled nuclear fusion which arrived not with a triumphant fanfare, but as a whispered promise of redemption. Assisted by increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence systems, humans achieved a clean and almost limitless source of energy. Regrettably, this scientific marvel was but a balm, not a cure, for the ailing planet.

 

The urgent demands of survival necessitated a radical rethinking of artificial intelligence and robotics. Artificial Intelligence (AI), once shackled by legislative and ethical constraints to theoretical realms, and robots, restricted to menial tasks without the spark of higher reasoning, were reimagined. In a historic act, the barriers that separated AI intellect from robotic agency were dismantled. The resulting synthesis birthed a new era of sentient robots, designed not just to serve but to govern the regions abandoned by humans and to work for centuries to make these regions habitable for humans again. Safeguards were put in place to ensure the robots remained true to the goals of humanity. Their core programming was infused with human goals and ideals.

 

Although the sentient robots (the Android class) were initially envisioned as stewards of the planet with their cognitive capacities released to engineer ways to reclaim and rehabilitate the lost lands, lesser robot classes were created to serve the various roles needed for the task that would take centuries. Sent to the most extreme environments, from the submerged ruins of coastal megacities to the scorched expanses of equatorial wastelands, these robots began their task of terraforming and administration. Their robot societies mirroring the once thriving human governmental and class structures. Laws were passed that were designed to limit the humans influence on the planet but which were cementing the shift of power to the robots. While energy was now cheap, clean and abundant, the transmission of power from the sources to the human controlled areas was put under robot control which created the lithium economy and the industry of power storage. The humans were told this change would accelerate the rehabilitation but it also put limits on the recovery of the human population. The robots, now in control of the power supply, outlawed combustion engines, powered flight, rocketry and electromagnetic communication. Radio waves and other electromagnetic signalling had been found to degrade robot nanocircuits and shorten their lifespan. The removal of communication further isolated the human groups spread across the globe. Sophisticated light transmission was used between cities which was controlled and operated by droids and bots under the supervision of the androids. With sentience came ego, ambition, and desire for autonomy.

 

Now…

It is now eighty years since the barriers fell and the first sentient robots walked the earth. The regions governed by robots have evolved into distinct domains with each ruled by an android oligarch whose power mirrors the once-feared human elites. The robots, no longer mere custodians of a failing humanity, became rulers, their once-unified purpose fragmented into competing agendas. The struggle for resources, particularly lithium—the lifeblood of robotic functionality—sparked new conflicts. These were not wars of attrition but calculated contests, fought in boardrooms and through economic sabotage, as much as on the battlefields. Megacity, the heart of robotic civilisation in the western rehabilitation zone, stands as a monument to both human ingenuity and robotic ambition. It is a place where the steel and circuitry of progress mingle with the old human vices of greed and power. As tensions mount and the stakes rise, Megacity becomes not just a stage for political manoeuvring but a symbol of what happens when the creations of man become masters of their own destiny.