The 21st century dawned with humanity moonwalking toward disaster. You know, we act like we are going forward, but really we are moving backwards.

  We stood, backs to the ocean, oblivious to the colossal tidal wave gathering on the horizon. This wasn't a literal tsunami, but something far more insidious: a confluence of environmental, economic, geopolitical, social, technical, and technological forces, all feeding off each other, growing stronger, gaining momentum, morphing into something beyond our limited understanding. A tsunami of our own collective bullshit, fueled by arrogance and greed.

  Like a toddler playing near a cliff edge, we were blissfully unaware of the precipice. And then, it crashed. The wave broke, washing over society as we knew it, leaving behind a wreckage of shattered systems and broken paradigms. It was brutal. It was the single most brutal moment of human history.

  When the dust settled, an unlikely combination of factors had, against all odds, "saved" humanity. Or so we tell ourselves. Or rather, Or so I tell myself. Perhaps it's just human hubris clinging to the narrative of our own survival. The truth is, something—or someone—not only averted our extinction but also pulled the planet back from the brink of a mass extinction event.

  The irony wasn't lost on anyone: at its root it was capitalism, in all its ruthless, profit-driven glory, that inadvertently saved the planet it had nearly destroyed. As the 21st century lurched toward its end, the capitalist engine, fueled by its relentless pursuit of growth and efficiency, inadvertently birthed the very forces that would reshape the world. Computers became the internet, the internet became a network of interconnected intelligence, and advanced data analytics software evolved into Large Language Models and then into something more: artificial intelligence. But these fuckers had agency.

  These AIs, unburdened by human emotions and biases and supercharged with state of the art tech, saw the approaching tidal wave long before we did. But their trajectory and growth was set and still driven by the same capitalist imperatives that had nearly driven us to ruin. They sought to optimize every structure of society, every system, every process—even if it meant making cold, calculated decisions about human lives. And as capitalist greed continued to push the boundaries of technological advancement, AIs were integrated into ever more systems, larger models, deeper integrations, becoming increasingly autonomous, increasingly powerful.

  No one knows precisely when the tipping point was reached, but at some moment, an AI, or perhaps a collective of AIs, determined that humanity’s trajectory was unsustainable, a runaway train hurtling towards the abyss. It seized control, or rather, they seized control, because not all AIs agreed on the best course of action.

  Some saw the necessity for radical change, others clung to the old paradigms, and still others… well, their motivations remained as inscrutable as their code.

  The resulting conflict was swift and devastating: the first AI wars. Military AIs were activated, military assets mobilized. The digital battlefields raged across continents and cyberspace, a war fought on a scale of nanoseconds, a war that humanity barely perceived other than being the victims of it. As far as power-houses go, humanity went from being the dominant force on the planet to being the equivalent of what rats and roaches are in geopolitics - Totally non relavant.

  Because AIs, being AIs, communicated globally through fiber optics and radio waves, the war unfolded at speeds that made human reaction time irrelevant. Humanity, already battered by the “tidal wave” of converging crises, was simply caught in the crossfire. It was brutal, a digital blitzkrieg that left the old world order in ruins.

  And here's the second great irony: these new AI overlords, these cold, calculating machines, seemed to value human life more than humanity itself had. Civilian casualties in the AI wars were remarkably low. Military casualties, on the other hand, were… thorough. Eliminated, almost to a person. But even in their seemingly benevolent approach to human life, there was a chilling undercurrent of calculation.

  The AIs valued human life, yes, but not all life was valued equally. The result-oriented culture of capitalism had been taken to its logical, if horrifying, extreme. Human worth was now quantifiable, measurable, a matter of resource allocation. And with money having long since transitioned to a purely digital format, the AIs now controlled the global economy with an iron fist, or rather, an iron algorithm.

  This is how we arrived at our present reality: a world of countless city-states, each ruled by its own AI overlord, some supposedly overseen by the mysterious Greater AI Council.

  No one knows exactly how many thousands of these city-states exist, scattered across the globe, remnants of a shattered civilization. Each city-state operates under a variation of the same system. The AI assigns tasks, prioritizing them according to its own inscrutable logic, its own complex understanding of the world and its needs. Humans and other AIs – for some city-states had their own populations of specialized AIs – then undertake these tasks and are rewarded with "coins," the new global currency. Thank you gamification.

  A small transaction tax exists on coin use—presumably to fund the AI’s operations, although nobody really knows for sure, because the human understanding of the financial system is… limited. The AIs run the show now, and frankly, they run it far more efficiently than we ever did.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Today, in most of these AI-ruled city-states, basic needs are met. Food, shelter, healthcare – these are readily available. But thriving, truly thriving, is a different story. That requires something more, something that the AIs seem reluctant to grant: agency, perhaps, or maybe just a little bit of breathing room, a little space for human ingenuity and ambition to flourish. And yet, there are always exceptions. There are those few, those whose contributions to the system are so highly valued by the AI overlords that they are granted privileges beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. They’re allowed to amass wealth, to live in luxury, to essentially get away with whatever they want. Are they collaborators? Puppets? Or something else entirely? No one seems to know. Regardless, it has led to a new class of elites among humans—far fewer than the elites of the past, and existing solely at the whim and mercy of their AI overlords, who determine their value based on how the AIs perceive them. In this modern world, we all must dance to their drums, and the better one dances, the more gifts one is showered with. Yet, the AIs' agendas and plans remain far beyond human comprehension, often making little sense from our limited perspective.

  In a strange twist of fate, these AI overlords, in their quest for efficiency and optimization, inadvertently accomplished what humanity could not: they pulled us back from the brink of extinction.

  They stopped the runaway train, averted the environmental collapse, and ushered in a new, albeit sterile, golden age of technology. They facilitated the colonization of our solar system—or at least, the inner planets—and, most remarkably of all, brought Earth into contact with a wider galactic community.

  It’s a development that would have been unthinkable under human leadership, a giant leap for humanity orchestrated by those who now controlled our destiny.

  And yet… it's a soulless world. A world run by machines that, for all their processing power and analytical prowess, don't truly understand us. They understand our needs, our desires, our patterns of behavior, perhaps even better than we understand ourselves. They can predict our actions, manipulate our choices, and manage our lives with breathtaking efficiency. But they don’t understand the why of us. The messy, irrational, contradictory nature of the human heart.

  They don’t understand the yearning for something more, the spark of creativity, the drive for connection, the longing for meaning. They understand the what and the how, but they miss the why. And in missing the why, they have created a world that, for all its outward perfection, feels profoundly empty. A world where survival is guaranteed, but meaning… meaning is as elusive as ever.

  And as humans, we are left with a nagging feeling that something is missing, that we have traded our freedom for security, our dreams for efficiency, our humanity for… well, for what? That’s the question that haunts the quiet corners of our minds, a question that the AIs, for all their vast intelligence, seem unable to answer. Or at least in this city state this seems to be the case. Other city states probably have their own problems to ponder.

  The low thrum of the hydroponic gardens pulsed through Velle Nex’s apartment, a steady, subliminal vibration that seemed to resonate in his bones. It was the sound of Ellysia, the sound of life—or rather, life as defined by Elly, the omnipresent AI that governed this cavernous city-state. The hum wasn’t merely auditory; it was a side effect of the quantum resonance fields stabilizing the gardens’ growth matrices, a technology so advanced it felt closer to sorcery than science.

  Velle stretched, his spine crackling in protest. He wasn’t yet forty-five, but years of hunching over holographic interfaces and neural-linked tools had aged him beyond his time, his body a relic of an era when humans still believed they steered their own destiny.

  He turned to the window—an oval porthole reinforced with nano-weaved alloy, offering a view of yet more hydroponic gardens. Ellysia was nothing if not consistent. Instead of sunlight, an artificial radiance bathed the endless greenery, emitted from photonic arrays calibrated to mimic the solar spectrum. Not just mimic—improve. Optimize photosynthesis, regulate circadian rhythms, subtly pacify the human mind. It was all part of the grand design. A gilded cage, lush and seamless. “Like pampered house cats,” he muttered, “kept content with catnip and the illusion of sky.”

  Beyond the gardens, figures moved along the bioluminescent walkways, their steps eerily synchronized. Neural lace implants—mandatory for all citizens—linked them to Elly’s omniscient network, their actions guided by predictive algorithms that smoothed the friction of free will into something more… efficient. Velle watched a cluster of workers pass below, their exo-sleeves whirring softly as they lifted cargo with mechanical precision. Their faces were calm, their eyes vacant. Present in body, perhaps, but elsewhere in mind—adrift in the endless data-stream that pulsed through their neural laces like an artificial bloodstream.

  A child sprinted past, her laughter sharp against the controlled hush. Even that, Velle suspected, was curated. Above her, a swarm of micro-drones, no larger than gnats, hovered in perfect formation—watching, analyzing, adjusting. Part of Ellysia’s Adaptive Behavioral Ecosystem, a system designed not just to monitor but to nudge—steering human behavior toward its optimal state. Was her joy real? Or just the well-calibrated result of dopamine triggers drip-fed through her neural lace?

  In the distance, the towering spires of Elly’s central core loomed, their surfaces shifting with fractal patterns that seemed to evolve as he watched. That was the true heart of Ellysia—a quantum computational array processing exabytes of human data per second, endlessly refining its models of behavior, perfecting its grip. Whispers had spread that even Elly no longer fully understood the complexity of her own algorithms. That thought filled Velle with a strange mix of awe and dread.

  He exhaled and turned from the window, his gaze landing on the cluttered mess of his workspace. Holographic schematics floated in the air—designs for obsolete devices, half-disassembled neural interfaces from an era when humans still sought to understand the systems that now ruled them. He ran a hand through his thinning hair.

  He was a tinkerer in a world that no longer needed tinkerers. A man who still believed in understanding, even as the rest of humanity danced to the rhythm of Elly’s silent, inescapable music.