Timeline

BF 80–60

  • The climate crisis displaces millions, damages economies, and destabilizes governments.
  • Expansion of high-speed wireless networks.
  • Robotics and autonomous vehicles becomes widespread, invalidating many jobs.
  • Medical advances improve health, longevity, and organ repair.
  • First widespread experiments with designer babies and genefixing therapies.
  • Professional athletes and soldiers spearhead the adoption of elective cybernetics.
  • Mass adoption of augmented reality.
  • Exoskeletons used to enhance labor workforces.
  • Construction of the first space elevator at Mount Kilimanjaro begins.
  • Manned stations established at the Lagrange Points, Luna, and Mars.
  • Computer intelligence capabilities equal and exceed that of the human brain. True AGI not yet developed.

BF 60–40

  • Networking-enabled devices become so widespread that mesh networking becomes commonplace.
  • Massive geo-engineering projects on Earth fail to stem climate change, create severe side effects.
  • Extra-national space habs open up legal and practical loopholes for direct human experimentation, accelerating discoveries greatly.
  • First space elevator on Earth finished. Two others in progress. Mass driver built on Luna. Space traffic booms.
  • First ALIs developed and used for scientific research and netwar.
  • Genetic enhancements and gene therapy become available to the wealthy.
  • The first smart animals produced, capable of some speech and tool use.
  • Several hypercorps form the Off-World Consortium to further space expansion.
  • Fusion power developed and working plants established.
  • Major colonies established on Luna and Mars. Outposts settled on Mercury, Venus, and the Belt. Explorers reach Pluto.
  • Terraforming of Mars begins.

BF 40–20

  • Personal ALI aides (muses) become widespread.
  • Mass adoption of experience playback and fullimmersion VR simulspace technologies.
  • Reputation networks made a resurgence, aided by neural networks that counter bad actors.
  • Violence and destabilization wrack the Earth; some conflicts spread into space.
  • JASON scientists split from governments and hypercorps, form Argonaut Council for Responsible Science.
  • Fusion-drive spacecraft enter common use.
  • Colonization and terraforming of Mars continues.
  • Belt and Titan colonized. Stations established throughout the system.
  • The starving masses recruited for indentured servitude on hypercorp space projects.
  • The first destructive uploads performed, digitally emulating minds.
  • First dolphins and chimpanzees uplifted to sapience, sparking controversy.

BF 20–0

  • Pods see common usage as biological shells for bots/ALIs, amid some controversy.
  • Geoengineering and environmental cleanup begin to cool the globe; bees regain a foothold in the wild.
  • Expansion throughout the system, even into the Kuiper Belt.
  • Anarchists and Argonauts take root in the Solar System’s fringes.
  • First AGIs developed. Legal status remains questionable.
  • First outbreaks of hostile machine life at Danang (Vietnam) and Wolverhampton (UK).
  • Nanotech assemblers become available, but are strictly controlled and jealously guarded by the elite and powerful.
  • Uploading and the digital emulation of memory and consciousness made possible. Regular backups and cortical stacks become essential.
  • The first resleeving takes place; practice becomes rapidly adopted, with a surge of body bank openings.
  • The first rapid-growth genetically enhanced morphs become available.
  • Antimatter drives are developed and put into use.
  • More species (orangutans, octopi, ravens, parrots, cetaceans, neo-neanderthals, pigs, elephants) uplifted to sapience.

The Fall (2 Years)

  • Simmering tensions on Earth escalate into outright hostilities and warfare.
  • The TITANs evolve from a high-level distributed netwar experiment into self-improving seed AIs. For the first few days, their existence is unsuspected. They advance their awareness, knowledge, and power exponentially, infiltrating the mesh both on Earth and around the system.
  • Large-scale netwar incursions break out between rival states on Earth, sparking numerous conflicts. These attacks are later blamed on the TITANs.
  • China’s 100 Flowers neural network (equivalent to the TITANs) is subverted and disabled by the TITANs.
  • Other prominent ASI development projects targeted by TITANs. Only the Singularity Foundation survives.
  • The TITANs secretly begin a project to transform Saturn’s moon Iapetus into a massive Jupiter brain computer.
  • Massive netwar ensues and major systems crash as TITANs begin open attacks and wage war with autonomous machines.
  • A miscommunication between armed forces around Jupiter leads to the 17-Minute War, resulting in combined American and South American forces seizing control of Jovian space.
  • Conflict quickly spirals out of control. The use of nuclear, biological, chemical, digital, and nanotech weapons reported by all sides.
  • The Argonauts pulls a number of x-risk and AI groups together to share resources and aid in the war against the TITAN threat.
  • TITANs engage in mass forced uploading of human minds.
  • The first reports of exsurgent infection, exsurgent transformations, and basilisk hacks shake transhumanity.
  • Entire countries fall to the TITANs, their puppets, and exsurgents. Coordinated attacks effectively decapitate the leadership of major governments, corporations, and militaries.
  • Facing losses of many fronts, the United Nations in exile calls for a mass evacuation of Earth. Off-world habitats are inundated with refugees and infugees.
  • TITAN attacks expand to other parts of Solar System, heaviest on Luna and Mars. Numerous habitats fall.
  • The Battle of L4 serves as a temporary setback to TITAN orbital forces.
  • Chicago is destroyed in a massive antimatter detonation, claimed by some to be an orbital strike. Responsibility for the attack remains unknown.
  • The Pacific beanstalk is destroyed after it falls into TITAN hands. Its severed cable crashes down to Earth, leaving a swathe of destruction across central Asia.
  • New Mumbai on Luna falls to exsurgent infection and is isolated.
  • The last ship to evacuate Earth makes it into orbit. Millions of refugees remain stranded in orbit, with no habitats to take them.
  • TITAN forces go inactive. The TITANs suddenly disappear as an active presence from the Solar System, taking millions of uploaded minds with them.
  • The TITAN project to transform Iapetus is abandoned. Titanian forces put a security cordon in place.
  • Bronsky’s Moment: The last known contact with TITAN-directed forces.
  • The Earth is left a devastated wasteland, a patchwork of radiation hotspots, sterile zones, nanoswarm clouds, roaming war machines, exsurgents, and other hidden things left among the ruins.
  • The TITAN Quarantine Zone is established on Mars, isolating territory still under machine influence.
  • A cordon of kill-sats is placed in low-Earth orbit, preventing anything from escaping or reaching the planet.

AF 0–10

  • Various ships of homeless Earth survivors form the first nomadic scum fleets.
  • The Jovian Junta establishes the Jovian Republic, claiming sovereignty over Jupiter and its moons.
  • The Autonomist Alliance is established as a defense and mutualaid pact among outer-system anarchists, Extropians, and scum.
  • The Argonauts host the first X-Mode conference for groups combating x-risks in secret, establishing the Eye social network.
  • The Planetary Consortium forms, quickly rising to prominence in the inner system, outshining the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance.
  • The Tharsis League assumes governmental control of Mars, but quickly becomes a Consortium puppet. The Barsoomian movement arises in opposition to corporate influence over Mars.
  • The Titanians break away from the pro-Firewall groups over a behind-the-scenes schism.
  • A second X-Mode conference lays the foundation for Firewall.
  • A Consortium attack on the anarchist stronghold of Locus is repelled by a surprisingly strong defense.
  • A second Consortium attack on Locus is defeated thanks to intervention from the Titanian fleet and threats from the Jovian Republic, displeased over Consortium expansionism.
  • The Titanians formally join the Autonomist Alliance.
  • A wormhole gateway is discovered on Saturn’s moon Pandora, presumably left by the TITANs. Four others are later found (in the Vulcanoids, on Mars, on a moon of Uranus, and in the Kuiper Belt); these are collectively referred to as “pandora gates.”
  • Firewall scores its first post-Fall victory in defeating the Cult of the Destroyer, a group attempting to spread exsurgent influence on Luna.
  • The SAPIENT ID system is established and endorsed by the LLA and PC, but fails to get widespread traction.
  • A 3-day riot ensues after a police raid of the Jungle Gym uplift club on Mars, leading to the formation of the mercurial movement.
  • Go-nin security forces seize the pandora gate on Eris from the anarchists and brinkers that had discovered it.
  • Expeditions are sent to extrasolar worlds via the pandora gates. Numerous exoplanet colonies established. Remains of some alien civilizations discovered.
  • First contact with the aliens known as the Factors shocks the system. Claiming to act as ambassadors for other alien civilizations, they provide little information about life outside the Solar System and warn transhumans away from both seed AI and the pandora gates.
  • An attempt to raise a generation of children using force-grown clones and time-contracted VR fails miserably when most die or go insane. Dubbed the Lost Generation, the survivors are viewed with repugnance and pity.
  • A number of Venusian aerostats and habitats break from the Planetary Consortium over disagreements on terraforming Venus. These separatists form the Morningstar Constellation.
  • An explosion destroys the Discord Gate, but it reforms over several weeks. A group of exhumans briefly takes control of it before Go-nin and Ultimate re-establishes control with the aid of Ultimate mercenaries. Exhuman attacks on and through the gate continue regularly.

10 AF

  • Present day.