This is the description of the Universe where the story takes place. It happens here, in planet Earth, in a not so distant future, after the following events.
IT ALL BEGAN WITH THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES
With the progress of AI and robotics, it has become increasingly clear to the private sector that integrating these technologies to replace human labor was imperative for their survival. While some companies succeeded in implementing these technologies, the majority of their competitors either went bankrupt or were acquired by the more successful companies. With the disappearance of those jobs, the larger portion of the workers all around the globe became unemployed. Human labor is no longer necessary for wealth creation.
In the meantime, nuclear fusion energy has become a reality, providing nearly limitless energy at a decreasing cost, and potentially even for free in the future. With the right technological capabilities, producing anything could become virtually costless for a company.
What is the meaning of work in a society that it is not no longer required?
NEW VALUES, NEW SOCIETY
As companies shift towards technological advancements to replace human labor, many workers have found themselves jobless. However, this promise of virtually costless production could offer a beacon of hope for a more just future. It was essential to ensure that the benefits of these advances were widely distributed and not limited to a privileged few. And, for that, the role played by the governments were crucial. One proposed solution was to impose taxes on companies that generated wealth without creating jobs, given that this wealth was created at little to no cost to the companies, while the price of a jobless society is huge. Additionally, to use those taxes to implement a universal basic income. The states would have to balance the very powerful private companies interests with the people needs. That should be the beginning of working free society, the leisure era.
However, only a few governments have taken those measures. Rather than entering the leisure era, humanity was confronted with mass unemployment, leaving individuals without income or means to secure basic necessities such as food and shelter. The Labor Crisis began.
THE LABOR CRISIS AND THE SEVEN FAMILIES
Without a working class earning an income, there would be no market for companies to sell their goods, right? Wrong. The companies that successfully integrated the new technologies reorganized into corporations and their owners, called the Seven Families, became the primary market for their products. The Corporations produced every service, product and luxury article that this elite needed and desired in order to have extravagant lives in Norden Islands, an artificial fortified archipelago created in the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Denmark. The Seven Families produced and consumed all they needed.
As a result, the notion that a working class is essential for creating market value has been challenged by the rise of this new corporate system.
Work no longer had value, therefore neither did the worker. People couldn’t provide for themselves. The hunger came. Despair and madness plagued humanity, leading to the outbreak of wars across the globe. Democracies crumbled, with states and institutions disappearing one by one. Violence and savagery took place everywhere.
Meanwhile, the Seven Families were fine. The Corporations, which had established their productive system with their mining companies, landholdings and industries all over the planet, had a private militia to secure their activities and the lifestyle in the Norden Islands.
The Seven Families, responsible for the Labor Crisis, saw an opportunity in the chaos that took place: to use their Corporate Militias to dominate all the strategic territories of the globe that held every part of the production chain. From the owners of the mines, the industries and the farms, they became the owners of the countries where those assets were.
It didn’t matter to the Seven Families the condition that the rest of the world was living in, as long as the supply chain was functioning and safe. The new economic system that supported this elite was born and protected. They called it Corporative Capitalism. And the old Nation State concept was replaced by the new Militia-Corporation State one. People no longer lived in countries: they lived in territories named after the brands that controlled them.
THE MACHINE WAR
The Militia-Corporation States established order through violence. The number of rebellions against the Corporations grew everyday. And it began to threaten the very existence of the Seven Families. These revolutionary groups had this new corporate-bourgeois elite as the reason for this terrible world and, therefore, also as their targets.
This is when the war against the Machines began: it was better to create a common enemy against which everyone would join forces to fight, than to control each of the endless so called terrorist acts, attacks and revolution attempts. The war was fabricated and people bought it.
This is the universe where the story happens.