The Real World of Avatars 2.0

The world in which Avatars takes place is halfway between our own and the dystopian cyberpunk future imagined by William Gibson. To illustrate the changes that swept across the world, we'll use the fictitious city of North Bend, New Jersey.

North Bend of the Present

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Phoenix Rising by Tigaer

The Towers

Arcadia believed he was building the future - an arcology, a giant indoor city that would provide housing, food, and work for everyone within, and a standard of living comparable to the richest of the 21st century. His vision faltered when disaster and scandal beset his company, and he was forced to scale down what he had to those who could pay and abandon the rest.

The Towers are massive buildings that loom over the city. Each one is a hub of commerce and residence, with offices, shopping and theaters and restaurants, and clean, luxurious apartments within walking distance of all three. They are served by airpads at the top where Skybuses and taxis wait to ferry people between the towers and the suburbs, or even to the lights of New York City itself. Real food is plentiful, and served by smiling humans who are secretly grateful they're not "down there". Utility robots are ubiquitous, carrying out thousands of little tasks, then vanishing into the hidden robot tunnels.

The Districts

Where Arcadia failed, other investors stepped in. They salvaged still-good buildings and construction materials and built walls to keep out the hordes of scavengers and derelicts, and instituted regular security patrols to man the walls. Rent is a lot cheaper than the Towers, but every time someone looks up from the suburbs to the darkly gleaming Towers, they can't help but be reminded that so is their pay.

Apartment buildings have landing pads to serve those who work in the Towers but can't afford the rent. The streets can be walked during the daytime, but a curfew sounds at 9 PM and then skimmers start to patrol - if you're on the street, you'd better have your citizen's ID so you'll just get a warning and a flyover to your home rather than thrown out of the walls.

Districts are generally numbered after the Tower they adjoin, so Magnolia Seven is the 7th suburb next to the Magnolia Tower.

Life inside an apartment building is comfortable. You have real vegetables from the hydroponics in the Works - not just enhanced proteins like the proles, though no one points out the fast food restaurants everywhere that serve up soy substitutes, they're just so convenient. Once a month you can splurge, go out on a date, have a steak and feel like you're living in the Towers. There's chatter everywhere, talk about who's winning in real sports and who's starring in the latest holocast sensation. You don't play VR games, you're too busy having a real life.

Or at least that's what you say in public. In the privacy of your own home, who's going to know when you boot up Avatars or that hot new game, the Gloaming? And in VR, you can have the kind of success you imagine that people in the Tower do - people looking up to you, doing what you tell them to, bringing you the finest food and wine. It's a heady sensation, one that lasts until your head hits the pillow.

And if your dreams sometimes seem to have this odd pixelation-- well, it's hardly worth mentioning tomorrow at work. You don't play VR games.

The Works

Taking up a big corner of North Bend is a big heap of metal that was originally going to be the manufacturing and hydroponics sector that provided all of the arcology's needs. After the near-meltdown disasters, Arcadia abandoned the concept of his own industrial sector as too much trouble - but with all that machinery around, some of the smarter scroungers were able to get enough of them running to start small scale operations, and that led to what is now called the Works.

There's a big field, the Dump. Garbage operations dump the trash there, and scavengers swarm through to pick out anything that can be salvaged or has high value when recycled properly. Junkers swear at them as they work mechanical shovels, scooping up huge loads of what's left, wheeling them around and dumping the rest into the Sludge Pits, where they get melted down and fed into reclaiming pits that break down everything into different kinds of goo, all of them gray. Some gets turned into fertilizer for the high-density soybean farms. Others go to the Factories, and get made into cheap and shoddy consumer goods.

The Works is pretty much a company town. If you work there, you make just enough to get by, and you turn a blind eye to the scavengers that slip a bit of change to the guards so they can try to "strike it rich" off of the gleanings. And at night, you line up for the buses - not Skybuses but old fashioned, unbelievably gas-burning relics - that take you back to the cheap tenements and soup kitchens just outside the walls of the Districts.

But distraction is cheap. You get a discount on all the goods they make here - so pick up that dented VR helmet and jack right into another world.

The Dregs

Outside the fortified suburbs is the Dregs, wreckage of the Arcadia Arcology that couldn't be salvaged or sold. Toppled sections of floor serve as primitive windbreaks and roofs, filled in with torn-down billboards. The homes and buildings that weren't demolished are the best intact structures, but they are generally occupied by armed gangsters. Don't cross them - your only chance of getting justice is to appeal to the New Jersey Police Department, a tragically shortstaffed and poorly budgeted agency. No one will pay corporate police to step outside the walls and bust some heads here.

There used to be a lot more people here, "back in the days" - after the Ecoclysm, when refugees poured into North Bend to get shelter. They're mostly gone now, and the pickings are better for those that remain - scavengers and gangsters.

If you're a scavenger, charity soup kitchens serve up a filling (if thin) gruel in the morning and then if you're lucky, there'll be bosses from the Works or the farms calling for workers. If you're not, you get to go diving into the wreckage, or pass a few folded-up New Dollars to a guard to let you into the Dump so you can try to find some actually salvageable goodies. Then you bring these back to the Beach, a shantytown where washed up types will fix what can be fixed and buy them off you. Hopefully you've made enough to buy a cheap mealpak and a beer. Pull the heat tab, eat up, then find someplace to sleep out of the cold rain that's begun to fall - you don't want to be out in that stuff, it'll burn you.

If you're a gangster, you worry a lot more about who really rules the Dregs. Maybe this is a day you go and stake out some of your territory, chasing out interlopers and making sure those scavengers picking over your junk know who's boss. Maybe this is a day to push. Some days you're helping out with the sleaze operations like gambling and electro-drugs, other days picking your teeth off the ground and looking for something to make the pain stop. The idea of quitting and going to the Works never enters your head. That's /going legit/. You're /better/ than that.

Timeline

2020s: North Bend was a small town in the northern part of New Jersey, a suburb near the Big City. If you climbed up to the top of the North Bend University clock tower and looked east, you'd be able to see the towers of Manhattan.

2030s: The Ecoclysm struck. Global warming caused the sea to rise up over miles and miles of coastline all over the world. The population crashed, and only emergency deployment of an experimental CO2 reduction technology brought things back under control over the next ten years. North Bend suddenly became a waterfront city, swamped by refugees from the once-glittering skyscrapers of New York City. They built shanties and tents, anything that would hold the teeming millions, and cultivated vast algae farms to produce enough food to keep them alive.

2040s: the United States government, depleted of most of its resources and at a huge deficit, turned to private enterprises to make up the shortfall, resulting in an apparent era of limitless growth as the waters receded and investors seized the opportunity to profit off of the rebuilding. One such investor bought up most of the land around North Bend and constructed a massive mall and arcology, 'Arcadia', where people could live, work, and shop in the same building. It would have supported itself with its own hydroponic gardens, and been powered by wind and solar energy.

2050s: short-sighted greed cut the legs out from under the world's economy, producing what is now called the New Depression. The Mafia, still alive and well in the 21st century, turned out to have used substandard materials when its union workers built the arcology, which reacted poorly with the new acidic soot that began to rain from the skies. Several disasters later, it began to collapse into a shantytown. Mr. Arcadia channeled his resources into holding onto the last, most profitable residents, the corporate executives and their workers, reinforcing the towers in which they lived and stripping workers and robots from the rest.

2060s: a time of cautious optimism. The global economy has stabilized due to the joint efforts of governments and corporate states, and physical warfare is considered obsolete. Exploration of space has resumed, with missions being sent out to the Asteroid Belt to move asteroids closer to Earth for mining for the metals badly needed by its industries.

Technology

Consumer electronics are plentiful. Practically everyone who isn't out-and-out poor has a PDA or an earphone that keeps them in touch with everyone else.

Personal sidearms are not uncommon, more so in the Works and the Dregs where you need them for self-protection. Guns mostly use mass accelerator technology that fits in the palm of one's hands, but it's still possible to find 'old fashioned' propellant-based firearms in the hands of collectors. Explosives are clean fuel-air-based explosives. Biowarfare is illegal, as is nanotechnology capable of self-replication.

Most individuals don't own vehicles, but instead, use the public transportation system, or share communal hover-vehicles, ranging from bikes to cars to buses, all of which are electric and will recharge on widely available landing pads when not in use. These can be called for an autopilot pickup. Skybuses make regular trips between the Towers and Districts.

AIs and Robots

"Artificial Intelligence" is present in many places, but usually very limited - unless your question is very simple or one of those for which they were prepared, they'll have to refer it up to an actual human. Thus virtual receptionists and sales representatives are quite common, prepared with extensive spiels about their companies. People experienced with AIs will quickly see the giveaway mannerisms even in VR.

"Artificial Deities" are a step above normal AIs - but despite their ability to speak in a very natural and intelligent fashion, it should not be assumed that they think like humans. They are less and more than that. They have vast computational capabilities and can simulate whole societies according to accepted theories, but for all their power, individual human emotions and morality remain difficult for them to comprehend. For this reason, ADs are kept under strict control with network monitors in place to prevent them from reproducing themselves elsewhere, and guillotine protocols are installed on all major connections so that they can be shut off immediately if there's any sign they are going rampant.

ADs must run on quantum cores - nothing else has the processing capability. They cannot run on clouds of computers without so drastically reducing their speed that they may as well be normal AIs.

Robots generally come in these models:

Utility robots. These look like garbage cans on wheels or treads. They can raise or lower their front and back wheels to allow them to pass stairs, and are equipped with a variety of arms and tools. These expert systems are designed to carry out one task with enough smarts to handle unexpected obstacles, not to hold conversations. They will put a call out to a human supervisor if they run into something they don't know how to handle.

Androids. These are humanoid models that are nevertheless clearly non-human, and usually designed with smooth curving plastic to prevent injuries, should one malfunction. They are capable of understanding most natural language questions and order and holding a conversation within their area of expertise, but they find it difficult to interpret human emotions and mannerisms.

Military robots. These are big hefty two-legged models that resemble ED-209. They have military AIs and are generally not disposed to talking about their orders to just anyone.

However, many robots are animatronics - specially built robots that can be made in the form of a wide variety of beasts. They range from pet-sized sold as toys for the kids and kids-at-heart, to lions and horses found in amusement park and zoos, all the way up to giant mechanized company mascots that resemble living parade floats. These robots can be further enhanced with fake skin and fur, and given tiny electro-muscles that let them seem very lifelike - the question is whether you can afford it.

Biotechnology, Clones and Cyborgs

Most diseases are curable, the problem is affording the cure.

Genetic engineering isn't available to the poor or middle class except to eliminate hereditary diseases. The rich use it to ensure their children have every advantage, but eccentric rich will sometimes add a few "designer touches". If a player wants to play an anthropomorph or other type of radically engineered character, it's possible but they will have to have had rich parents, and their looks will draw attention.

When people want to draw looks, of course, that's when designer surgery comes in. Want cat ears? No problem - electro-reactive plastic ears covered in fine faux fur are readily available for a price, and don't require a full cybernetics suite. This only incurs a charisma loss if you look like a cyborg.

Actual biological chimerae are feasible, but not on a mass-produced basis. If one is encountered, it will be a rich person's plaything or an escaped research program subject.

Cloning of humans and recording brainwaves is illegal, but that doesn't stop some people from doing it. However, it is possible to detect a clone due to trace signatures of the process used to build them. Once a clone is apprehended by government agencies or corporate security - think of Blade Runner here - it is sentenced to humane execution. This is the subject of a popular holodrama, We're All Alike (Under The Skin).

Bionic prosthetics are available, but will usually awaken pity or unease from those who are aware of these, especially if the prosthetics are colored or shaped in a way that violates human norms - they've all seen the shows where someone goes nuts and massacres everyone around.

Cyborgs are in use by some more extreme security forces. It costs a lot to build them, so while they are individually extremely capable and dangerous, it isn't seen as cost effective by most corporate security agencies. Their very presence strikes a chill into the heart of those around them. Again, the whole cyborg goes berserk thing. Initial market tests for a show that featured a cyborg hero were uniformly negative.

Government Agencies

There are entire worldwide government agencies tasked with the protection of Earth's ecology, physical and virtual. Among these are:

Internet Consumer Protection (ICP), which enforces spam prevention and prosecutes commercial fraud, sometimes with armed response teams.

Cybercrime Emergency Response Team (CERT), tasked with stopping runaway AIs and other threats that could escalate into a collapse of the Net.

Human Individuality Enforcement (HIE) has been romanticized for its Clone Detectors, security forces that go after suspected clones and "replicants" (androids built to exactly resemble people in order to take over their identities). The actual majority of their work is in airports and Tower checkpoints where they check papers and validate people's identities as they pass through to the megacorporate offices.

United States - still exists as a government, and still employs thousands of people across the country in a variety of agencies, including fire and police departments, but it has had to delegate a lot of its authority and its ability to collect taxes to corporations - it's simply stretched too thin to be everywhere at once. As a result, some megacorporation armies may rival the strength that the US could assemble in a given place - but that's them putting everything they have there, since they don't have to save troops for defense from other countries.

New York Police Department - tasked with law enforcement in the greater area of New York and New Jersey, of which North Bend is part. In practice, the corporate security in the Towers and the Districts handle petty crimes there and it's a matter of pride with them not to have to do more than ask the NYPD to come by and pick up a perp, so the investigations and patrols the NYPD carries out are mainly in the Works, and very occasionally in the Dregs when evidence of a murderer are just too numerous and blatant to ignore.

Corporations

Avatars LLC - still the world's largest VR gaming company; as of 2064, it was estimated 1.2% of the world population subscribed to their game. However they were set back significantly by the Breakdown of 2065, and Dantech is catching up fast. In the corporate world, Avatars LLC is well known for its proprietary GESTALT AI that gives it an edge over all other companies for enormous simulations: besides their signature VR game, they also support number of military and scientific research programs, such as a next-generation weather modification program for cleaning up the Ecoclysm's fallout.

Dantech is a multinational that produces computers and software. Their product line ranges from VR goggles and PDAs to high-density archives for libraries and universities, all the way up to quantum AI cores, though they haven't managed to duplicate Avatars LLC's unique GESTALT AI as yet. Their new gaming division is headlined by the Gloaming, which has become the second most popular VR game in the world with an estimated 0.8% of the population subscribing, and they predict it will pass Avatars in the next few years.

Space Colonization

The first space station collapsed and fell out of orbit during the Ecoclysm, digging a huge rift in the earth and causing great damage. A new one was built in the heydays of the 2040s, partially abandoned during the 2050s, and is now being refurbished and expanded to support the asteroid mining operations.

Asteroid miners are minor folk heroes these days - a lot of people agree that it would be interesting to go into space, and that it's brave of these people to undertake the difficult work of going out there to tag and bag asteroids... But actually going there seems like a lot more effort than it'd be personally worth to them to do - so there's a mystique about the ones who go through the intense physical regimen and training needed to carry out the missions.

There's a small colony on the Noon for research purposes, but it doesn't appear likely that it will be expanded much more than that - there aren't many resources on the Moon worth exploiting.

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