"We chased fat, sugar, and sex. Industrialization, then digitalization, gave us that in one way or another. We didn't even think about what the prize was until much, much later." – Kent B. Berg, 2066

"As soon as people were done busying themselves with killing, they busied themselves with building." – Unknown, 2103

"That's how we experience life, is it not? We live through the processing of data entry stimuli." - Lian Jia, 2161

Year 2188. Humanity endures despite its relentless march toward extinction: the 2077 Collapse, the Atomic War, the Great Plague. Yet somehow, humanity bounced back, more resilient than ever, more connected, enhanced by our own creations—gods of our own hyperreality.
Some things, however, remain unchanged:
Death.

You greet this young woman on this: the last day of her short life. Munich spreads out before her, a mega city and a 'Gridplex' city, one of many digital hubs where people live out their lives both in flesh and as information in the unfathomable digital sub-reality of the grid. A torrent of data so complex and esoteric that all meaning is lost to human perception, like a single leaf caught in an algorithmic maelstrom of our own creation.

In the grand scheme of things one life is insignificant and yet the apex of being. The only form of being humanity has found no matter how desperately they sought or built.

Beschreibung

Ethica stands there, gazing down at her body sprawled across the floors below. Whatever she has become, she retains that form:

22 years old
5'1".
Petite.
Cobalt-colored hair.
Augmented to the nines.
Dead.