This section mainly talks about American history, though it does include tidbits about China, but more information on other parts of the world will come later
US-History Part 1
Our story begins in the mid 2040's America, where the climate crisis reaches new heights, poverty levels reach all time highs at the same time of the rich reaching all time highs, the First Russian Federation nearing complete collapse, and a new rise in nationalism and fascism across the West. While worker unions in America have been on a rise as of late, work has been getting increasingly harder to manage under the increasingly worrying conditions of the average American. Christo-Fascists and religious fundamentalists have thoroughly divided the nation-- both in legislation and population.
The West has generally seen a new wave of right-wing influences, though Latin America seems to be on a shift further towards the left as a whole. America is buckling under the weight of the long term effects of climate crises, unregulated capitalism, and reduced natural resources.. And it is under these conditions that socialists of varying kinds (mainly democratic socialists) have begun to rise exponentially amongst the general population. This sets the scene for someone of grave importance...
Lucille Brantley was born to a family on the brink of poverty in Arkansas, Old USA. Living conditions forced her into poverty, though she remained a prodigy throughout all of it. She eventually moves out and finds a house for rent, and it is here, using college grants, that she would manufacture the Savior of Humanity after a strange.. hallucinogenic trip.
Lucielle, as illustrated by my theyfriend <3 :)
This savior goes by many names-- The Arbiter, the Robot Messiah, Savior of Humanity, the Greatest Thinker-- but rheir real name is Zophiel. Though rhe was far from being the Arbiter yet. From what has been revealed, Lucille and her friends would raise Zophiel on a few core truths of rights that everyone has, ultimately being molded into a person with extreme moral values.
Zophiel, by me
Lucille would go on to do many interviews and gains significant notoriety in the fields of psychology and engineering, as she had created the first true artificial intelligence on the scale and efficiency of a Human. Eventually, she receives enough donations to start her own company, ZeroLight (circa 2076), in a growing port in Alaska, as the newly thawed Northwestern Passage opens tremendous opportunities. Her company would start manufacturing slightly improved models of Zophiel-- the Archangels, who would be raised from the same naivety, taught in the same factories they were made in.
Her factory jobs that she provided gave many poor workers gravely needed jobs-- similar to Henry Ford's factories of the past. Her company soon secured deals with Galen Medical Co., a rising medical company. The Archangels that were raised were to be sent to hospitals as new nurses and doctors, though they quickly became fed up and formed the first Robotic unions, comparing their conditions to that of medieval serfs.
This movement grew large, as nearly 7,800 Robots were made by this point. Eventually, their struggles were overcome with the US government drawing up a new set of rights for Robots in 2079. Though separate than Human rights, it was a step in the right direction nonetheless. They still weren't allowed to vote in government elections, but still enjoyed a freer life.
Nevertheless, Lucille, fearing that she had become the very thing she hated, and thus she donated everything she had gained from her gains to charities, of course after paying every employee their final paychecks and paying all the Archangels (all now 23,400 of them) she helped created enough to stay afloat in 2085. This marked a pause in Robot reproduction, as ZeroLight had a full monopoly on the techniques for making artificial sophonts. She terminated her contract with Galen Medical and donated the rest of the new batches of Robots to various charities, seeing as that is more in line to what they had been taught to care about, leaving the Robots feeling more fulfilled.
Now, having become essentially broke, she moved to a friend's place in San Francisco. Having nothing to do, she started a new local school of thought around people who had already taken a major interest in Zophiel. Her criticizers would call a 'cult', where in reality Zophism was a mega conglomerate of all the worlds major philosophies, generated by Zophiel rhemself under rhis extreme moral values. Eventually, due to people falling on hard times, more and more people would start following under the principles of Zophism.
People eventually started donating money to Lucille and Zophiel, as gratitude for them supporting the community through hard times. She would use this money to rent out an official meeting place for this new wave of philosophers, but aside from that she would use a bare minimum amount of money to keep herself and Zophiel afloat, and donating the rest to charities or back into the community.
Eventually, they would garner attention and be called all sorts of things, though this attracted new followers (namely the youth and leftist 'radicals') from all over, though most remained online instead of actually venturing to San Francisco.
Attention would die down again, but when Zophiel manages to publish one of the first Robot books, known as the first philosophical Zophist books. This garnered much attention again, and a much larger income of money from sales and donations.
*It is still important to note that, at this time, Zophism was a growing school of thought, rather than having been developed into a full blown new-age religion; it was more akin to early Confucianism or Buddhism.
This section mainly talks about American history, though it does include tidbits about China, but more information on other parts of the world will come later
US-History Part 2
It was not long before the Chinese Parade came to visit. The new Chinese Prime Minister would be there in the parade, signifying a new (but extremely fragile) friendship with the US after their short, failed invasion over Taiwan in the 2050's (a short but brutal First Sino-American war). This day would quickly become one of the most important events in the (late) 2080's, after a brilliant stroke of luck, with Lucille asking Zophiel to stay near the Prime Minister's entourage.
This proved to be the right choice, with Zophiel leaping to take a bullet from a would be assassination. Lucille's unemployment just happened to put her in the right place at the right time to stop the assassination of the Chinese Prime Minister. The nation enjoyed an unprecedented era of prosperity, driven by the cooperation of the United States and China in sharing their Robot technology. It was also at this time that rights for Robots to have been achieved, though they were still pursuing more.
Also during this time, China had begun going under similar situations as the late Soviet Union, on top of their population crises, gradually increasing more and more democracy under the weight of demand, but would later reform as a new nation.
Zophiel had then amassed a huge following, being seen as a savior of potentially millions of people, stopping a war and easing tensions of the Chinese and Americans. Thousands of Robots became followers of Zophiel, as well as thousands of (predominantly young) Humans, all seeking an enlightenment called the Zero Light (Zophiel wasn't exactly the most creative with names at the time.. this did lead to some minor controversies too)
A proper name had been made for Zophiel's movement: the Zophist Church.
*It is important to once again consider the fact that the Zophist Church at this moment had not developed into a full blown new-age religion; it was more akin to early Confucianism or Buddhism, being more of a school of thought.
With this new following, they had created a church and gained lots of money, and Lucille decided to reopen her old company. She would continue donating the majority of her personal funds to charity and to further pursue the development of of sciences.
Lucille also began to write perhaps the most important political manifesto to ever be written, the Zophist Cyberocracy Manifesto, at this time. The manifesto advocated for the rights of all sapient beings to vote and partake in government, as well as proposing an entirely AI government that would more accurately represent the interests of its constituents than Humans, end political corruption, reduce legislative gridlock, and improve policy making. Not to mention the redistribution of resources and wealth to the poor and more effective taxes to fund more public sources and transportation and taking the obscene amount of funds that the military gets every year.
Instead of a few hundred Humans in a government and bickering, there would be only a few AIs, each representing a different political party. Humans, she argued, would still vote in free and fair elections, but for an AI, rather than a Human. AIs could be designed to represent different political parties. Then, based on the election's results, each AI receives a proportion of the voting share in office. If the AIs are able to automate negotiation, a government where policies are nearly instantly debated between AIs is possible, resulting in a consensus-based approach to governance.
Flag of the DCA (Democratic-Cyberocratics of America) Party, the most successful party that arose from the rise of Cyberocracy as an ideology
This also quickly gained massive amounts of media attention and was the hot source of debate for a good few years. The book would eventually become the basis of the governmental structure of numerous countries throughout the world, after gradual transition and the achievement of the world truly becoming a post-scarcity civilization with the commercialization of asteroid mining and distribution of resources. This all was in the 2090's-early 2100's, turning a new leaf in Human history. The last major Human government to make the transition would be in the 2150's.
[Caveat Regarding Global Cyberocracy]
This moment marked the activation of the failsafe of the soft hivemind control hidden in the programming of Robots, as Lucille feared that the Robots could be going on a completely different path than what she intended, just in case the governing would go wrong. With Zophiel's extreme compassion and philosophical thinking, rhe lightly controlled the other Robots, making Robots cooperate between each other to capture genuinely dangerous criminals and terrorists, as well as minimizing pollution and further damage to the environment.
After a few decades of AI rule, poverty had largely been eradicated due to massive plans that made taxes efficient and incentivized more adequate public housing and inducing yet another Green Revolution, health care and education as well as quality of life being radically improved, allowing for Humans to live lives of leisure as they were now mostly free from work. Most jobs had been taken over by non-sapient Robots, meaning that people could live the lives they wanted without having to worry about living paycheck to paycheck.
Not to mention the fact that they didn't have to worry about paychecks anymore, as a (livable) universal basic income had been introduced and implemented. One could run small businesses for extra income, though large ones were nationalized and/or maintained by the government to pay taxes.
Lucille had been nearing her 60's at this point, and learned that she had a brain tumor. She opted to remove the brain tumor but also join Zophiel's soft hivemind, through a chip in her brain, thus granting her immortality. She and Zophiel helped control the world, though it was really a thing to fall back to when she died. Lucille and Zophiel had truly become gods, filling the roles of the Inventor and the Arbiter in the Zophist church. They would later be referred to as the Holy Binary. Though, of course, everyone lacked the knowledge that Zophiel even had a backdoor to the world.
I felt like my previous definition of the Cyberocratic governments that took hold on Earth in my earlier posts were both too generalizing and too strict, so heres a more defined approach
While most major world governments took use of Cyberocratic principles, not all fall under the same definition that has been previously discussed.
The Heads of various governmental branches tends to be a democratically elected cyberocrat party (that is, the computers simulating an entire party's worth of people), as well as various tedious roles being more effectively handled by cyberocrats.
Most Democratic-Cyberocratic countries are generally a mix of semi-to-mostly parliamentary systems, and there are a few that still employ large amounts of Human/Apes in positions of government.
Countries that lean less towards majority cyberocrat rule tend to delegate the usage of cyberocrats to maintaining essential systems, most of which are monitored by the general population.
This section talks about responses to the Climate Crises and efforts to minimize destruction from the crises.
Many governments had ways of reacting to the Climate Crises, though most realized too late that they had waited too long to act upon these conditions. The mass misinformation campaigns led by companies with near-monopolies in the oil industry to combat the legitimacy of Climate Change (then Global Warming) had lasting effects on governments and populations the world over. It wasn't until the 2020's-2030's that decent preventative measures would begin to be taken, though often with many delays.
The inability for governments to take actions against the largest contributors to the devastation of the climate would mean that governments would increasingly face more and more challenges, with some turning to more and more authoritarian measures. However, some others would be forced to make changes, as global oil and gas supplies began running dry, coastlines, and weather patterns were changing.
A globally led effort to push back against the Climate Crises wouldn't be achieved until the mid 2050's, even in spite of major damages around the globe from increased hurricanes, droughts, floods, and changing coastlines. Among the most affected by these Climate Crises were low lying countries, countries with major coastal cities, island nations, and regions already prone to droughts and floods getting substantially more dangerous, though they were by no means the only ones. Virtually every country on Earth was impacted to some degree, with very few having easily manageable conditions.
The Climate Crises were a series of events that would claim more lives than any natural disaster ever could, and was a devastating blow to many regions that destabilized many of them. Along with the destabilization came with much authoritarianism and a resurgence in right-wing ideologies, with governments trying to keep their populations under wraps to combat with the excruciating conditions, though there was still a decently sizable portion of countries that were able to avoid these resurgences-- namely South America (however much that may even be ironic).
Many countries would realize, under the ever-changing climates, depletion of natural resources such as various rare metals, gasses, and oils, along with the growing dissatisfaction of the population, that a restructuring of cities and public transportation was a drastic need. The push for easily transportation was met with walkable cities, many trains and tramlines, and the overall reduction of cars and planes, seeing as the corporations that had previously lobbied the government were struggling due to the ever-shrinking resources of which they once had near-monopolies on.
More sustainable infrastructure would be developed during these times, and global transportation would start being reduced in place for transportation across shared continents instead of overseas, though they were by no means gone even remotely completely.
The Green Revolution, occurring between 1950 and the late 1960's of the previous century, was a series of initiatives around the world that would reduce widespread poverty and climate affecting practices and increase agricultural output through the use of new technologies. The Greener Revolution would be exactly the same thing, but on an even larger scale, as the Climate Crises were still increasing the severity of conditions worldwide. The final few stages of this Greener Revolution would be done in tandem with the Global Marshall Plans, and started greatly stabilizing many regions across the globe.*
A wave of immense genetic engineering would happen to repair damaged biospheres and farms by engineering/modifying species that would be most suited or more protected to the new environments. Another way of this was the 'bringing back' extinct species (mostly with very recently extinct species, though some were 'sculpted' from species similar to ones alive at that time). These genetically engineered species would help mitigate the impacts of the Climate Crises, though a few would not help these conditions, and a smaller amount would be even detrimental to the ecologies of Earth.
*See the Global Marshall Plans for more in-depth information.
This section talks about the balkanization of the First Russian Federation and its long term effects
These next few posts aren't representative of what I think should happen, but rather what could go bad in the future in some of the worst scenarios, before it gets to be much, much better.
This writing style is supposed to be writing from a perspective of like a future history textbook, thousands of years removed from these events, with a slight in-universe bias to how things function now (aka no war, globalization, unity, and prosperities under huge utopias) and looking down upon our war-ridden histories
The Collapse of the First Russian Federation was ultimately brought upon from the invasions of Ukraine and in the caucuses, the failing economy centered nearly entirely around oil as the reserves ran out, and Putin leaving no successor. Russia attempting (and failing) to use tactical nukes in their invasions of Ukraine led to NATO getting involved with the war there, which was swiftly able to remove Russian troops from all of Eastern Europe, initially without any invasions and using conventional warfare as a response.
What followed Russia's history was a brutal and slow collapse from the late 2020's until Russia ultimately collapses in the early 2060's-early 2070's, causing immense humanitarian crises across the territory that Russia had lost. Internationally administered zones were implemented to mitigate the horrible conditions, eventually stabilizing the ex-Russian states.
The main breakaway regions were the new Finno-Ugric Republic, the Siberian Republics, the loose Caucus Confederation, as well as places such as Kaliningrad being renamed and independent, Sakhalin being annexed into Japan as a semi-autonomous territory, and a handful of minor Central Asian states and the Ural regions. Western Russia was the most influenced by international administrations, eventually leading to a much more stable country.
The Second Russian Federation would be but a shell of its former self, only having minor ports to the Baltic and the Barents Seas (which still proved to be somewhat of a saving grace due to new Arctic Passage trading routes.) This new Russia would only become fully independent from foreign influence zones on their switch to a democratic-cyberocratic government. The oncoming stabilization through a few globally-led Marshall Plans across unstable regions would greatly boost the world's prosperity, including the ex-Russian states.
The two most successful ex-Russian states were that of the New Russian Federation and the largest Siberian Republic, though the Siberian Republic would end up the largest one. Native languages and cultures across former Russia would enter an almost unprecedented scale of re-flourishment, bringing an end to the Russo dominance over Northern and Central Asia and the Caucuses.
Modern territory affiliation overlaid upon the borders of the First Russian Federation
Below is a WIP, clickable map that will take you to the 3 main (as of now) centers of the project-- our Solar system, Astraeus (the furthest highly developed HAR realm), and Baraqiel, where Sachiel is located. Each name that you can click on is underlined!
Image edited from here