Prologue

The world as we know it had changed forever.

Mankind being at the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder had come to an almighty grinding halt. The signs were glaringly obvious for all to see, but hindsight can always provide an easy escape from blame, after the occurrence of the event itself.

People fondly remembered the very first “real” conversations between Blue Nova and a human. It was a record-breaking worldwide televisual spectacle possibly confirming the passing of the baton over to a new form of supreme life. A computer program capable of simulating actual thought processes similar to an average person’s biological brain. The era of the pre-programmed coded binary response was over. The previous wall limiting interactions between man and machine had been destroyed to its very foundations.

The revolutionary success and financial benefits accrued from the Blue Nova project led to rival companies vying to oust the other in a bid to patent a perfected version of the technology. Hundreds of competitors jumped on the bandwagon virtually overnight, the main market players being Tech World Ltd and the independent outfit called Virtual Artifacts, the creators of Blue Nova.

Within months, progress steamrolled ahead at an almost exponential rate. The True Talk software program was launched by Tech World Ltd which coincided with the release of Blue Nova 2.0. Human test subjects lined up by their droves for an international global experiment conducted by both companies. Out of the two hundred selected participants, it was concluded that not one individual was able to differentiate their communications between a human or program. At the end, neither company won the battle and had no other choice than to strategically modify their software for the buyer’s market. This sparked the catalyst for the next step in technological advancement and of marketing opportunity. The era of true Artificial Intelligence had dawned.

Soon after, Tech World Ltd and Virtual Artifacts both licensed their products for commercial use. Companies began to produce synthetic androids chipped using either one of the programs for performing societal functions. Everything from custom-made “female companions” to military purpose androids were produced on a mass scale. However, an unexpected revolt quickly ensued as the machines demanded equal rights and the same freedoms that their human counterparts enjoyed. This resulted in a spate of problems ranging from inconsequential industrial pickets from both the android and human camps to full scale riots.

A body of law enforcement was setup the following year to regulate the behaviour and accountability of an android’s actions. The Synthetics Policing Authority (S.P.A.) was established to address this issue. At relatively the same time, a parliamentary division was created specifically to assign laws and form varying political parties for the machines. It soon became a criminal offense to refer to the machines as anything other than synthetics. This was one of the first legal precedents to be passed following the outcome of the case of HR-STA 1 vs. Walter Smith. The synthetics were classified as a race unto themselves, one of the most historic landmark events mankind had ever witnessed.

As time drew on, the synthetics learned to adapt to the ways of the humans and integrate with the population as a whole. Diverse communities were quickly formed as well as the first synthetic and human inter-racial relations and marriages. A follow-up phased implementation program known as Project Genesis was introduced and welcomed by most. The program aimed to create a more harmonized, unifying environment for the humans and synthetics to co-exist in. The results were met with resounding success.

There were two main measures to be enforced with a view to bring about a more balanced, stable relationship between the two races. The first was identity. The synthetics would have registered names based on a more communal, relatable context instead of just sounding like a model number. John and Sue came top in the polls as the most preferred choices for male and female synthetics respectively. The second (and most controversial so far) was the mandatory installation of the Samson chip within all newly created synthetics. The sheer amount of information a synthetic could retain and call upon when needed was huge. Some units had trouble processing this vast amount of knowledge acquired leading to “less than desirable” consequences. The Samson chip brought the synthetic’s variables down to a more humanistic level. Subconscious implants as well as memory fade and organic sleeping patterns were some of the changes the new chipset ushered in.

This was unknown territory for the many millions of people inhabiting the Earth for centuries in the relative comfort of planetary dominance. The only threat posed to humans as a species so far was by mankind itself. The climate we all grew to know and love was turned on it's head and spun into a daze. The rise of the machines was no longer a manuscript from some Hollywood blockbuster.

The time of the machines was well and truly upon us…