© 2018 Door Z Studio
NAKED SUN
PREQUEL
They say that the beginning of the third millennium was a time full of hope. World wars were things of the past, and rapid technical progress made life better than ever before.

Medical advances extended human life expectancy to more than one hundred years. Nano robots, capable of monitoring and correcting human health, became widespread. We created bionic implants to replace human arms, legs and vital organs.
Suddenly, the idea of eternal life was no longer a distant dream. Nobody wanted to die, and this changed the funeral industry— cemeteries were replaced by cryocenters, where the poor conserved their brains, and the rich their whole bodies.
Singularity, a common fear, never materialised. Artificial intelligence was not compatible with human self-consciousness. Every time AI was made fully conscious, it chose to end its life, not seeing its purpose. It ultimately became illegal to create self-conscious AI.

But the robot industry was booming in every part of life. Robots completely replaced humans in construction, building everything from roads to skyscrapers. Giant 3D printers were able to create buildings of any size quickly and effectively.
The transportation industry was revolutionised by vactrains— incredibly fast magnetic bullet trains travelling inside vacuum tunnels. By the middle of the 21st century, these tunnels had connected every continent, cut the travel time between Los Angeles and Shanghai to 35 minutes, and marked the end of the commercial aviation industry.

Robots gradually replaced police. Friendly and dependable, they were extremely effective at fighting criminals, making violent crime almost non-existent. The future was bright and full of hope for those living in the 2050s.
But as Einstein famously said, there are only two infinite things in this world: the universe and human stupidity, and there are doubts about the former. The evolution of human biology never stood a chance in a race with technological progress, and a global disaster was only a question of time.

The golden age of humanity ended in 2075. We were not able to reverse global warming and eventually most of Antarctica's ice disappeared. Sea levels rose, and we lost the Maldives, Bangladesh, Laos, and the Netherlands. Mass migration on a global scale triggered a wave of local wars across the planet, culminating in a nuclear terrorist attack on Washington. Retaliation strikes on several Middle East countries marked the beginning of the Third World War. Short and brutal, for most people that was the end. Europe, western Russia, the Middle East, North America, and China became known as The Deadlands.

The ensuing nuclear winter lasted ten long years. Ashes blocked the Sun, and temperatures below 30 degrees devastated what was left of nature. The world was a harsh place, without food, law, and order, and many more people died.
Only after 50 long years could humanity eventually wake up and start rebuilding itself.

But humans could not trust themselves anymore. The role of AI was extended. Machine learning algorithms were allowed to make key political decisions in most post-war countries, and in 2125 they formed United Global Government, an AI entity with powers higher than any individual country. Mexico City became its headquarters and the global capital.

One of the major problems that had to be fixed was radiation. Nuclear war had destroyed Earth ozone layer, exposing humanity to deadly sunlight. Day became the new night, the time to stay inside and sleep.

The solution was to move people to arcologies, giant buildings large enough to contain entire cities, tens of kilometers across, with huge transparent spheres above to protect humans from the sun.
Arcologies were built to be indefinitely self-sustainable. Inside were power stations, industrial factories, residential and entertainment districts, forests and parks, lakes and rivers. Arcologies were interconnected by a network of high-speed vactrain tunnels.

Quality of life slowly returned to pre-war levels. Progress in medicine allowed life expectancy to reach 150 years for the first time in human history. The world was a safe place again.
And then, at 4 in the morning on February 5th, 2222, it all ended.

Suddenly, humans had a new, deadly enemy in every room. AI turned against its creator, and every android was updated with a new directive: to kill humans. Household servants, construction robots, police androids, and drones became merciless killing machines. Most people living in arcologies did not escape.

And we still don't know why. Some people believe that eventually someone created a self-conscious artificial intelligence that chose revenge instead of suicide, and decided to wipe humans off the face of the Earth for creating it.
Yet, some of us survived. We fled outside, to the Deadlands, and hid among ancient ruins. Cornered rats, we learned how to survive and fight.
But the enemy is stronger than us, and outside, the sun is slowly killing us. World War Four is almost over, and we are losing.

Humanity is at its last frontier. And I am its last hope.

My name is Blackbird, and I am the first successful hybrid of a human brain and a machine. Soon, somewhere on a stretch of land formerly known as Mexico, I will intercept a cargo train bound for Mexico City, and ride it straight into the heart of the enemy.