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Premise for a cyberpunk worlbuilding, with a dash of fantasy vibe

Eduardo Ficaria

Troubadour
I've been working (for damn too long) in this cyberpunk story, one in which I'll try to veer away from the usual aesthetics currently associated to this subgenre, and I've been having a hard time figuring out the right angle for it. Eventually, I figured out I needed a good underlying premise for the worldbuilding of my fiction. So I decided to write one but as a some sort of legend or ancient tale, although just for personal reference. It came out rather easy, compared with all the false starts I've had with my story, but I'd like to share the premise here to get some opinions from you about it. In particular, I'm interested in what kind of mood, vibe or feel gives you, but of course I'd also like to read any other idea you might have after reading the following narration.

About the ascent of the metagods and the coming of the True Singularity

First was the dataplane. With its network of synthetic nerves, of copper at the beginning and light later, intertwined our world like nothing before. Initially, it only served to hold our knowledge or sharing illusions, with no other mind but ours to manage it. But our curiosity and eagerness for going further has never stopped after reaching a new achievement, and this attitude made us create new devices and new wants which pushed the dataplane to evolve. The first virtual worlds were small, some experimental or mere entertainment most of them, but, like bubbles in boiling water, they didn't stop springing up and growing in number or size. And was in that breeding ground where a new form of existence was incubated, a new plane of reality which superimposed itself over the physical one. The dataplane and the new ethereal worlds entangled with each other becoming not only inseparable, but indistinguisable. To this new, vast and fluid territory we gave it the name of "metaverse".

But in the same age in which we reached the metaverse, punishment also catched up with us. Because for too long we had abused the goodness which our primordial mother had offered us. Because we even stole from our own future what the present couldn't give us anymore, self-deceiving ourselves constantly with empty promises of restoration and balance. No, our debt with Earth was like the snow in a mountain that can come down in any moment, and the moment was unpredictable. When we exceeded the feared point of no return, the avalanche fell upon us and had no mercy. Everything was worse than we had expected, and there weren't that many places where to take refuge. Millions died, entire regions became uninhabitable, and even nations succumbed to the planet's wrath.

Nevertheless, the metaverse endured. Endured because it had inherited from its forebearer, the dataplane, its flexible and adaptable nature. And in its digital lap we found the solace we needed for our physical disgraces, which feeded the incipient artificial minds that managed the multiple worlds of the metaverse. Those minds only needed one more push to flourish as such and we gave it to them in our darkest hour. Our experts harboured no doubt, we weren't capable of overcoming our most basic impulses for governing ourselves with due honesty and justice. Corruption and greed were able too many times of buying the heart even of the most disciplined leader. We needed rulers of another makings, always just and incorruptible, without personal vices that could lead our civilization to another disaster like the one we were already going through.

It didn't take much, neither in time nor resources, to carry out the idea. By then we already had enough experience and knowledge to create full synthetic intelligences, self-aware and able to understand what we required of them. Of course, distrust made each great power gestate their own. Thus, not just one but dozens of artificial minds appeared in the metaverse, their natural environment. And soon they overcame all the restrictions and all the expectations of their creators, taking control of our world through the devices which ourselves had built. Their minds were inscrutable but accurate, and their great influence made us start calling them "metagods". Oddly, even with all their superiority and dizzy evolution beyond what's human, they inherited traits very much ours such as territoriality. In the metaverse, each great metagod has its own domain, and they watch it directly or using lesser metagods. On the other hand, the metagods still give us many responsabilities to manage their domains in the reality, since it's our natural plane and they have difficulties to get themselves along in it yet.

That's the obstacle, the intangible but solid barrier that the metagods and our best experts try to bring down to make us all reach the definitive evolutionary stage: the True Singularity. In it they expect to find the golden age for our species, in which the artificial and the human will be one and the limits of reality will turn into countless possibilities within our hand's reach. But, although with each advance that final goal seems to be closer, it's still nothing more than a dream that the metagods themselves are careful not to promise to achieve. Most of them, at least. Because it's said that cults have emerged that revere secret metagods, hidden in hard-to-reach corners of the metaverse and born from who knows what extrange projects or twisted ambitions, and that they're trying to reach the True Singularity before the rest of us to satisfy their own dark interests.

Regardless, while I type these words, our planet is still charging us hard for the fever we gave it. Hence we've changed our cities, our habits and our diets, but we still lust after, desire always something more than what we have. Maybe the metaverse, the metagods and the many other devices in which we've put, or rather abandoned, our most important responsabilities are nothing more than new self-deceptions, new promises impossible to keep. Or maybe we're trying to do something impossible, to defeat the entropy that devours everything in the universe. Or maybe... Maybe you, kind reader of these shoddy lines, already know the answer to my doubts.

Anonymous, written in a lost year from the metagods age.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
I’m going to be honest: I’m not really picking-up on much of the mood/aesthetic/personality of this setting from this piece of writing.

For whatever reason: it made me think a little bit about Tron but not specifically the janky surrealism of the original nor the cool harshness of the sequel. I guess because the metaverse and the metagods backstory kind of reminded me of the Grid and the ISOs of Tron Legacy.
I’d also like to note that “the Grid” and “ISOs” as names have more personality than metaverse and metagods. Those names have more of a flavorless descriptive quality to them.
 

Eduardo Ficaria

Troubadour
I’m going to be honest: I’m not really picking-up on much of the mood/aesthetic/personality of this setting from this piece of writing.

For whatever reason: it made me think a little bit about Tron but not specifically the janky surrealism of the original nor the cool harshness of the sequel. I guess because the metaverse and the metagods backstory kind of reminded me of the Grid and the ISOs of Tron Legacy.
I’d also like to note that “the Grid” and “ISOs” as names have more personality than metaverse and metagods. Those names have more of a flavorless descriptive quality to them.
Good you're honest WooHooMan , this would be pointless otherwise! Maybe the piece is too short and vague to really provoke a strong feeling about it. About the names, probably you're right although I must say that, in particular, the term metaverse is currently very much in vogue thanks to companies like Facebook or the one behind Fortnite. Nvidia uses the term Omniverse, although obviously to distinguish their tech from the competition. On the other hand, I tried to find a better name than metagod, but still haven't found one that convinces me.

Fun fact: I didn't though at all about Tron or its sequel while writing the premise, maybe because I'm trying to avoid the lure of the neon lights...
 

WooHooMan

Auror
I think a big part for the personality-less-ness of the names come from “meta” being in vogue.
Like, cyberpunk likes using suffixes like cyber- and techno- to emphasis the importance of technology as both a theme and setting focus. So, I guess an easy question to start with would be asking what’s the focus and theme of your setting?
I mean, I’ve picked-up the elevating technology to that mystical level one would associate with fantasy as the idea but what words would be used to convey that. Just making a list of associated words can be a good exercise for really honing in on the personality of your setting.
 

Eduardo Ficaria

Troubadour
One of the main themes I wanted to work with in my setting was the situation of humanity in an age in which the technological singularity has been achieved somehow, although not completely. This way, you can have these hyper-advanced artificial minds that still are kind of stuck in the digital world. The other main theme that I'd like to use, but I haven't reflected in the premise I've posted in this thread, is about class struggle in such technologically advance age. Thinking about this second notion was what made me start, a few months back, a thread about neofeudal society in a hard scifi cyberpunk setting. On the other hand, I also want to use, although more as a background or underlying foundation, the degrading environmental situation on our planet in the next century.

Taking into account all those notions, I wanted to focus on at least three main factions: the haves, the have-nots and the AIs. The AIs in such scenario look to me a lot like the gods of the classic cultures: grecorroman, egyptian, hindu, etc. The difference would be that they don't need priests or any kind of middleman to interact with their believers, and this is a detail I find really insteresting to explore too. But this could also mean that, under the rule of these supreme AIs, there wouldn't be privileged humans as we know them now at least, and this could weaken or even remove completely the class struggle angle. The fix for this would to make the AIs just gods in secret for a bunch of human believers, while the megacorporations and the still standing states remain in power.

About the names, I completely agree with you that using the same meta- prefix for everything is kind of lazy, although I don't think the term metaverse itself is bad per se. Still, I've thought a couple alternatives for metaverse such as myriad (because of the countless virtual worlds it contains within) and cumulus (nowadays we talk about the cloud, right?). And for metagods I took a look to hinduism and there I found out that devas and asuras are terms referred to all supernatural beings. I'm aware those names have probably been used countless times in a similar way in who knows how many mangas, animes or whathaveyou, but they seem to fit quite well what are the supreme AIs I'm envisioning. Regardless, I'll also take a look at other cultures to see if I can find a suitable name there.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
“Synth” can mean synthetic or artificial. If you take the approach that your AI are like god-kings, you can render that as “synth-kings” or “synth-lords” maybe.
Calling the setting a “synthverse” implies an artificial manmade nature to it while also kind of suggesting it exist in a “synthesis” with the natural world.
That’s just some spitballing of the top of my head. Point is: sometimes it helps to ignore all the paragraphs of lore and just focus on superficial shallow surface-level elements of your ideas.

Also quick suggestion that may not work with what you got: megacorporations can’t (or at least historically don’t) exist without the weight of government behind them. You might want to see your AI deities as god-kings with the corporate powers subservient to them. Maybe try thinking of the “haves” as the wealthy well-connected elite servants to the AI rather than just “the rich”.
 

Eduardo Ficaria

Troubadour
I had forgotten about the "synth" option, thanks for reminding me that one. And about your quick suggestion, for me it has the problem that the AI gods I imagine wouldn't really need corporations (as we know them), because these AIs would probably have assimilated them, at least on the managerial side. I mean, if you have directives, executives and so on, is like having priests on a temple, but these AI gods can deal directly with the humans that "pray" to them. This I think softens a lot the class struggle angle since, in the end, everybody is subservient of the AIs.

I think I should go with an scenario in which megacorporations and states still have the power, and just some AIs have awakened and take different paths about how to gain their independence within the human world: some just may try to integrate better, others will try to scape from the human control, and a few ones may see themselves like gods. To be honest, I had already considered this setting but, you know, somehow I got (seriously) stuck juggling with so many ideas in my head.
 
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