In the news there’s talk of POTUS 45 may not peacefully leave office should he not win. Citing such issues as the possibility of election fraud occurring because of mail in ballot delays.

While it’s been suggested by some news pundits that the US should get over this single day approach to elections. And move towards a monthly voting theory (this would be like India, which takes an entire month to process a national election). The reality is Americans are no doubt too impatient to wait a whole month for results. We’ve become accustomed to the instant for everything.

Regardless of the outcome this November 2020, you will see both sides argue across this nation about election irregularities. Everything from polls not being open long enough to accommodate long lines, to counting delays of mail in ballots, improper ballot counting procedures, and to election judge issues. You name it there will be a case filed, especially for districts where numbers are close.

The reason has to do with how in many states the electoral college votes are a winner takes all situations. Thus, there’s an incentive in close counts to make cases about fraud and deceit. Despite in a close count situation, there’s typically an automatic recount by law. There could be a serious delay in election results if there’s a lot of mailed in ballots to recount. No doubt there’s going to be the surprise box of ballots that someone forgot to process. Throwing more gasoline on the election fraud pyre.

In Rosella’s world, I deal with voting in a short story I wrote back in 2017 called, “How Covfefe Will Save the U.S. From Robot Domination”.

This is the passage from the story describing how the character Steve votes using a voting kiosk.

“He went to the voting kiosk, pulled out his ID, put it into the card slot, placed his thumb on the scanner plate and then the machine cleared him for voting. He voted his ballot for his district. At the end he verified his selections, and then with his finger signed his approved ballot as he casted his votes.”

I know some may not like the use of such technologies because it requires a physical id and biometrics for identification, but in person voting there’s someone who checks you in. The reason the voting polls are supposed to be local to your home is so the people working the polling site know you. Thus, no need for identification. The poll worker can vouch for the identity of the voter once they confirm the records as being true. But in today’s age, no one knows their neighbor anymore. We are no longer so closely knit as communities. Hence the push for voter id systems for fraud safeguards. The problem becomes that state ids should be free and easily obtained for all eligible voters. This may not be the case in many jurisdictions in the U.S.

I understand the concern of mail in ballots. While convenient, what if the voter records are not that up to date and a person gets a ballot for a roommate who's no longer there? If they send it in, it could be construed as voting fraud. But what if they see their friend over the weekend and the friend fills it out and then gives it back to be dropped off at a collection box? Is that still fraud? The friend doesn’t even live in that place anymore but is voting in its election district.

States are supposed to keep things up to date, but they mark people as “inactive” until after not voting in two federal elections according to law. Then the voter can be purged from the rolls. Election officials have different powers depending upon the jurisdiction to auto update address information. So, it’s inconsistent across the nation.

Therefore, a true national voter registration system is needed in the United States, despite current online attempts. States don’t have to comply. My understanding is they share some voting records between some states, but again not all.

The lack of solid universal federal standards and compliance makes any voting in the U.S. a hodgepodge of inconsistency and fraught with possible party manipulation for voter suppression.

I don’t truly address this issue in Rosella’s future. Her world, is beset with complex issues of flooding and volcanic traps, wiping out whole portions of states. How to get people to vote becomes a local concern as much as it is today. So long as the tallies are told to the federal level for those elections, that’s fine with everyone.

If you read the story, you’ll discover that despite the use of an electronic polling system, there are odd things that can happen in an election where results can be skewed calling into question the whole voting process.

So, even in the future, despite attempts to improve voting, there will always be issues.

#####
Image- ​untitled image, By Jan Antonin Kolar, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed with Adobe Spark)

​The best description of the gravity technology of the Second Age of Humanity comes from the story I wrote entitled, “Venera Khabitat Odin”.

This story is about humanity’s attempt to land a human crew onto the surface of Venus. There’s a catastrophic failure which causes humanity never to go back until the Third Age. But the story describes the technology that pushed humans into the solar system.

It starts with the physical discovery of the graviton. Once fusion power became a feasible source of electricity, we quickly found the graviton. Once this happened, we learned how to manipulate the graviton and thus gravity itself.

Our first gravity-based propulsion system was known as a push pull gravity drive. Two bubbles of gravity were projected in front and behind the craft. Thus, the ship was both pushed and pulled at the same time through the forces of gravity in a forward direction.

By the time of the story, we had developed a new drive system. We knew it as a gravity fold drive. With this drive space-time is folded behind the craft until it reaches a point where it snaps back with an explosion of a gravity wave, allowing the ship to be pushed ever faster than before.

During this time, we learned how to project bubbles of gravity to impact pressure and other effects. We applied this to Mars through a series of orbital satellites to both deflect the solar winds and keep the atmosphere created on the planet.

Mars became the raw material source for this technology. Scientists discovered silicon to be critical to the control of the graviton, and Mars’ surface was an immense supply. Once we could colonize Mars with heavy mining equipment, the industrial mining and exploitation of Mars began. This led to the expansion of drive construction, allowing greater colonization after the Isolation Period to the outer planets.

The discovery of the graviton and its control changed how humanity dealt with space. No more were we stuck using chemical propulsion systems and acceleration forces to make gravity. Now we had true artificial gravity. We had faster spaceships. Travel times between planets were cut. Everything was becoming plausible for space travel in the Second Age.

#####
Image- NASA/JPL

With the recent passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the U.S. is at another intersection of uncertainty as much as it was when Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. We will have to wait and see how history will unfold, but typically during these times last minute power grabs are not unheard of, and to be expected in our divided political world.

​Two Controversial Nominations by Simmons

Terrance McMahon

President Veronica Simmons faced a similar challenge right before her re-election after assuming the presidency from Rick Garrett. Known for her dramatic need to bolster her standing on the social media net, President Simmons took up the controversial cause known as “prisoner’s freedoms” as part of her campaign for President. This movement was an outgrowth of much earlier movements dealing with the incarceration of racial groups. It had morphed into an ideology that those criminals serving in jail were automatically entitled to freedoms and social benefits because of their criminal record.

In aligning herself with this ideology, she would nominate to the Supreme Court, Terrence McMahon, a former attorney from Los Angeles, who had murdered his entire family by stabbing them to death multiple times. At the time of the murders, he was high on drugs. He received as a punishment multiple life sentences.

While in prison McMahon wrote legal opinion articles using a pen name. He wrote on constitutional law concerning life imprisonment and various other commentaries dealing with gun rights, murder, and qualifying evidence in a trial.

President Simmons would pardon him and then put him forward as the nomination for the Supreme Court vacancy. The Senate Committee would not approve him. But the full Senate held a special vote, and approved McMahon to the bench by one vote. Senator Hobbs was the deciding vote, citing she felt his legal opinions outweighed any previous criminal wrongdoing since the President had pardoned him.

Hans Derbin

​During the McMahon nomination, as favor to a longtime fan and fellow influencer, President Simmons appointed Hans Derbin, a male supermodel, to be the U.S. Ambassador to the World. The United Nations was no more, and the U.S. government created this position as a substitute. The position was meaningless though but allowed Hans to jet around the world at taxpayers’ expense. He would show off his latest fashions for women on the social media net at exotic locations. Eventually a House committee investigation would be called, but it went nowhere once President Simmons got involved. She would end up scandalizing and shaming the committee members publicly on the social media net with the political dirt she had accumulated.

#####
Image- untitled image. By Claire Anderson, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)

​With the wildfires engulfing the West Coast. My friend in Seattle texting me a picture of yellow smoke in his house. And the news media reporting POTUS 45 denying all this, I felt the need to write something about Rosella’s climate change.

I’ve been meaning to write something about how the world becomes flooded. It’s complex science, so I can’t blame POTUS 45 for not understanding. Honestly, I think most of us don’t understand weather except what we see up in the sky.

Mentally it's fairly easy to deny it because it's such an model driven concept with a speculative end result. As POTUS 45 is known to say, "I don't think science knows, actually." This is a truism in that science as a discipline doesn't have all the answers.

Many have faith in science that it has all answers, but in the end much of it is speculation. And I hate to say it, even the climate change modeling has ranges of outcome possibilities depending upon certain inputs. Change the inputs, the results change. This is the nature of science. But this doesn't change the facts on conclusions concerning climate change based on the data (i.e. that human activity is impacting our climate).

And yes, Mr. President, the weather does change but that doesn't stop the fires from coming back next year. Or the year after that. Or the one after that. Or the next twenty years. Each fire being worse than one before. That's what climate and environmental planning is all about. Taking interventions for the common good of all.

Rosella's World

Rosella’s dystopian world is where global warming has gone unchecked to the point it has heated up to an average of 89 degrees Fahrenheit globally. That’s 28 degrees more than the current world average. It’s the average world temperature typically found during the Carboniferous geological period.

In building this world, I’ve had to deal with the complex problems of extreme global warming. This means stuff like extreme storms and wildfires, besides flooding. But that’s only touching the surface of things.

I’ve also added a twist to this climate catastrophe by changing one variable. I base the weather pattern on a single Hadley cell going from the equator to the pole. This is like Venus. Why did I do this? This is an assumption on my part because Venus is a runaway greenhouse. Could this really happen? I have no clue, but many scientists have not explored this.

What I Found

Overall, this is what I’ve discovered in trying to build a world like this-

1. Raising the temperature this far causes all the polar ice to melt. Thus, raising the ocean levels by 216 feet on average. In my research, I discovered math that pointed to this happening much quicker than what many scientists think. The math showed a delta of 121 years going from the current temperature average and ocean levels to the levels I desired. Many scientists typically predicted thousands of years to melt the polar ice caps completely, but they base their assumptions on a much slower warming trend. For this to happen in my future world there must be mechanisms that speed up global warming, aside from unchecked human activity. To help this equation, I added in the middle of the U.S. a volcanic trap system (the New Madrid Traps) spewing tons of greenhouse gases out. This is not unlike previous geological volcanic traps that have warmed up the planet before.
2. Having just a single Hadley cell causes the weather to reverse in direction and produces weather patterns of wet and dry seasons across the entire north or south part of the globe. This gives rise to seasons where more savanna like conditions persist. Wildfires are prone in certain areas during the dry season. Storms during the rainy season are typically large and strong hurricanes/typhoons depending upon the amount of energy they can gather.
3. The rising waters change so many political boundaries that in the U.S. some states disappear. Rising waters would cause across the globe massive migrations to areas that were dry. Such migration even from citizens fleeing rising waters would cause social anxieties for those dry communities. I realized that underdeveloped nations might handle such migration problems with greater ease by using direct military force than developed nations. I noted that developed nations have people that are more protective of personal resources and resistant to the use of military force. Not that a developed nation could not use military force under such situations, but I noted there’s a general reluctance in many democratic developed nations to do so if they can get away with it.
4. With a single Hadley cell system, ozone distribution becomes a problem. What happens is a greater thinning of ozone across more of the globe than just the current equatorial regions. This will increase the amount of ultraviolet radiation. Consequently, I have many seeking a genetic solution to the problem by having their cloned children naturally darkened through increased melanin. Having scant amounts of melanin in the skin will unfortunately result in a bad sun burn every day with my future world.
5. Many plants and animals go extinct as predicted. But this opens niches for new animals and plants. Some of which I have humans introduced through genetic manipulation, such as My Pet Dragon (a flying dragon-like lizard). Just like the Carboniferous period, insects are going well and have become the main protein diet for many. With a mono-Hadley wet-dry climate, you end up with a globe that’s like the African plains or the jungle regions of Southeast Asia. The equatorial regions become so hot that desertification happens. The cooler climate creatures and plants die off rapidly, being replaced with more savanna and tropical ones. Humans just help transmigrate species into the new climates to replace lost plants and animals.

In Summation

Despite being dystopian, it’s not all bad. Simply different from what we are used to today. Humanity continues to live with this hotter world. Some things die off and others adapt. This is not unlike what has taken place in all geological history. The only difference is humankind is chiefly behind this one. Especially the New Madrid Traps which is the result of fracking along this geological fault line.

This is not to say we, as humans, shouldn't try our best to change our ways. We are intelligent creatures with inherent responsibilities. We should try to understand the science behind weather, how we impact it, and how we can ensure the greatest good for all of creation from our technologies as it relates to weather. All this with understanding that we are at the same time flawed, and can still fail at this endeavor despite our efforts.

Climate change is not a light switch. You can't just flick it on or off by doing X or Y. It's complex. So far humanity has been changing things since the start of the industrial revolution. That's a long time for our species if you think about. And look at what's happened since.

If I invest in wind power for my electricity that makes a tiny impact, but it will take my entire nation doing this to even make a dent in the environment. Similar to how everyone during the industrial revolution was doing the same thing across the global at the same time. 

If you don't want Rosella Tolfree's world, and having to eat bugs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then it's time that whole nations must be honestly committed to substantial change.

#####
Image- Here in Puerto Rico from February to April/May is the fire season and burning of plants and trees in the wilderness., By Benjamin Lizardo, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Splash)

I just tweeted today how all the buried plastic trash in today’s time becomes a boon Rosella’s time. I based this tweet on an NPR article you can read about here.

The reason has to do with three realities:

1. Natural areas of oil as predicted dry up. This despite back in 1999 Discover magazine saying we will never run out of oil.
2. The space production of hydrocarbons from stored ice deposits in the asteroid belt, and other space locations, are more expensive to produce relative to the trash deposits.
3. Technological improvements in reclamation processes allow for cheaper handling, including the use of leased A-1 and A-2 android labor.

The draw back to the reclamation of these trash fields for raw plastics, and other chemicals and materials, is that they are inherently limited in supply. There are only so many locations on the Earth. And some by the time of the Great Melt and New Madrid Traps have become inaccessible, if not possibly lost.

The irony is the future use of plastics is integral to society just as it is today. It’s used in everything from medicine to physical hardware. It forms new compounds and integrated alloys, such as plasti-steel. This is because humanity developed a greater understanding of materials engineering during the Second Age of Humanity. We came to understand the manipulation of matter at the quantum level.

​But by the Third Age of Humanity, plastics are being formed from raw hydrocarbons found in space materials. The same is true for all of humanity’s material resources.

#####
Image- ​Part of a wall in the centre of Singapore, made out of plastic waste. A great idea however it really brought it home how biodegradable plastic is and how much of it we use on a daily basis., By Nick Fewings, Source Unsplash,  Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)​

Gun Violence during the Second Age of Humanity

99.9% of what you are about to read only applies to the United States. This has to do with the unique nature of the U.S. Constitution and how the Second Amendment has been applied over the years. Unlike other nations who’ve restricted guns to be owned by their citizens, this has not been the case with the United States. Some have argued that this one fact has historically contributed to the high death rate associated with guns in America. But the other side has proposed arguments of needed protection and support of inherent constitutional rights.

This debate continues to rage on in Rosella’s dystopian America in the worst way possible.

Gun violence in America during the Great Melt and New Madrid volcanic traps was at an all-time high. The major shift in the environment caused people and resources in the nation to be strained. This brought out the worst out in Americans and resulted in violent riots and associated killings.

Ironically, the Second Amendment was never challenged, or rights curbed in any capacity. In fact, from time to time the federal government loosened them during the previous ages right through the time of the Great Melt.

It wouldn’t be until closer to the end of the Second Age of Humanity when things had stabilized and the sex ratios in the US had become more female that changes occurred concerning guns.

The History of Political Change in Gun Rights

At first, politically there were attempts to control guns through limitations on the number of guns owned, types, alterations, and even ammo quantity and types. This happened during the First Age of Humanity, but was challenged in the U.S. Courts every time.

By the start of the Second Age of Humanity, there were proposed changes to the Constitution’s Second Amendment, but these got nowhere.

Then, during the Presidency of Veronica Simmons, one of the craziest things happened. The case of the State of Texas vs. Hanson redefined for the nation the whole definition of gun rights. This case was a murder case in the State of Texas, but it turned into a gun rights case. Though the appeals ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court, but the court didn’t rule on it leaving the appeal to remain. The problem was the appeal went in favor of Hanson for killing the person in cold blood as part of his gun rights.

All three judges in the Fifth Court of Appeals had unanimously agreed stating, “The right to bear arms is a most sacred right, and should not be trampled upon even when the person has been accused or found guilty of a crime. Using that right is afforded to all, regardless of the legal status of the person or their condition and shall not be abridged by any authority. We should consider any deaths that result as self-defense of those rights.”

Even though this case was restricted to the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, this one case prompted the widespread use of guns as mass killing tool with no regard for human life. Now it was no longer murder in killing someone with a gun. These three judges became known as the Shooting Judges on the Social Media Net. President Veronica Simmons held a one-hour special on the decision to appeal to her base.

It wouldn’t be until the end of the Second Age of Humanity, when society was stable once more, that a new case filtered through the courts as attempts again were tried to limit gun rights.

Philip Hartman vs. Courtney Joseph was a Supreme Court case that involved a gun enthusiast challenging the California Attorney General for enforcing a recently passed federal law concerning limitations on gun ownership. The Court merged this case with several other federal court cases that involved the various gun control measures to help resolve the issues all at once.

With this case the Supreme Court saw the Second Amendment as historically arcane, and legally unenforceable as written. In its majority opinion, it struck down the individual right theory to guns. The Court based this on the re-discovery of the history in which the Second Amendment was written. It noted how the U.S. federal army was formed from state armies. This fact facilitated the need for individuals to carry weapons themselves. But by the time of the end of the Civil War, the creation of a permanent federal army had superseded the need for state armies, and thus the Second Amendment became obsolete and arcane.

The Court recognized the government’s interests in the Second Amendment in forming a national army, more so than individuals owning weapons. It ruled in favor of the government’s attempt to regulate weaponry amongst the civilian populace as a necessary police action. And not an individual freedom that one has unilaterally unabridged in the Constitution.

The Court saw this by citing the very first part of the amendment as the original intent of the forefathers. The Court noted these forefathers saw the amendment purpose as forming a national army which required people to own guns. But now, this right no longer required it. The government had the freedom to restrict those rights as desired to secure “a free State”.

This ruling overturned such rulings as District of Columbia v. Heller, and others like it.

The War on Drugs

Because of the Supreme Court decision legalizing the state implementation of drugs domestically but not the transportation between them changed the entire War on Drugs.

The international drug cartels, and both the CIA and DEA, suffered with these economic changes. No longer was there a flow of drugs from places like Afghanistan to the American users. Now poppies were being grown locally in the U.S.

The CIA had no more tools to use to fund operations or get the leverage it needs in international operations. This reduces the U.S. footprint in covert and other activities globally, making the CIA nothing more than just a spy ring for the federal government.

The DEA no longer was needed to globally deal with drug cartels because those international cartels have fallen apart economically. The DEA was reorganized and tasked with dealing with the trafficking of drugs and paraphernalia between U.S. states and entry into the U.S.

The Supreme Court’s decision on drugs impacted the use of forfeiting property laws without due process. This impacted local, state, and federal policing revenues through the reselling of that property.

Economies of countries which depended upon the drug trade collapsed. Many cartels, like that in Mexico, started moving into the business of logistically running drugs between the American states. Some cartels tried to grow raw materials on federal lands but met resistance from agencies like the Ranger Marshals.

Syndicated Crime

The future does not differ from today with syndicated crime networks operating globally and between the planets. The only difference are the crimes.

In the future, the international trafficking of drugs and women has become less profitable. The U.S. domestic trafficking of drugs became more profitable. For a time, in the U.S. the trafficking of military grade firearms becomes an extensive business with the decision of the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals on the matter of gun use. The biggest gun manufacturers end up being communist nations and Mars.

Since the creation of sex-bots in android technology, female sex slave trafficking dropped. But in its place grew male sex slaves. This more so in parts of the world where the female-male sex ratio favored women. Most male sex slaves are young boys who are altered and feed hormones to develop them. Off-world male trafficking to Mars was also profitable.

Two other major criminal activities are A.I. ransomware and illegal cybernetic enhancements. The trafficking area of illegally immigrating people because of the melting polar caps was not as profitable for the crime syndicates, but a few groups still practice it.

​A sub-branch of syndicated crime networks still practices money laundering. These are crime groups specializing in the laundering of illegal cash and are big business since the growth of A.I. systems designed to detect such crimes. These groups are really at the heart and soul of the whole crime network and paid handsomely for their hacking skills.

#####
Image- Rotunda of the Capitol, By Joshua Sukoff, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)

​If you are a reader below the age of 45 of my blog, or even a reader older who’s shall we say is less than “traditional in values”, you may have noticed the cisgender orientation of Rosella Tolfree’s dystopian future. Or maybe you haven’t because a lot of what’s written out there is cisgender anyway, and you are used to it.

I need to explain few things concerning Rosella’s world.

First, at the end of the First Age of Humanity the use of advance CRISPR technologies to edit away human genetic maladies was extensive. People were seeking CRISPR in vitro fertilization methods to eliminate the possibilities of such conditions as Downs Syndrome in their child. With this technology also came the elimination of those genetic maladies that caused any transsexuality issues. I’m referring here to those specific genetic conditions that can cause actual anatomical problems leading to gender dysphoria.

Second, it was common by the end of this age that human sexual behaviors common to certain LGBTQ segments were being practiced by the wider populace with no attached stigma. People were becoming more open to doing other options with each other without the application of labels. The whole notion of a specific LGBTQ community was fading from the society lexicon because everyone was doing something.

Third, by the Second Age of Humanity, the whole idea of separating humanity into various sexual communities had totally disappeared. Society accepted what was the concept of male/female sex as it relates to the physical genitals. Advance CRISPR technology had removed the possibility of having a person with malformed or uncertain genitals in the previous age. And what people did sexually with each other didn’t matter and had no moral or social significance, unless it resulted in physical harm (i.e. abuse).

Fourth, with the A-2 series of androids, object sexuality became a reality for many. This was especially true for those who were cisgender male. While technically object sexuality refers to inanimate things like buildings or statues. People applied this term to the A-2 series because of their closeness to the 21st Century version of full-sized human sex dolls. This was the only recent development where a social stigma was applied in some societies, like in the flooded lands of Germany. In America, there was some repugnance to it, but the stigma attached was like how men would seek prostitutes.

Fifth, there are other issues dealing with human sexuality, such as those dealing with minors. But I will not cover those because of the sensitivity of the topic. And yes, as a writer, I have thought of how Rosella’s world would deal with many sensitive issues of today. It comes with the territory of world building. Anyone who’s ever played pen and paper role-playing AD&D should understand this concept.

In Closing

We all must realize that a dystopian world is, according to Oxford Languages, referring to a society or state of great suffering or injustice. With Rosella Tolfree’s world, like our own, there’s both great suffering, and injustice, while at the same time real justice and hope.

Some may believe the extensive use of CRISPR to eliminate genetic abnormalities as an injustice, while others not so. Some could say the same in the LGBTQ community seeing the pansexual nature of heterosexuals as offensive and an injustice. Or maybe not, depending upon who you talk with.

The degree of “greatness” is truly in the beholder's eye. What I would consider great is minor to someone else. This is being relativistic about justice, but with our world there are many opinions and schools of thought on justice. I could easily mention the one I espouse, but if I did you as a reader may not like it. It’s far easier to follow the standard formula of sci-fi and take some element of society and twist it into its worse or extreme outcomes. To extrapolate where things would go if X happened. This is basically what I’m doing with Rosella’s world.

Other Blog Posts Dealing with Sexuality
Important Legal Changes in the Dystopian U.S. of Rosella’s World- Part 2
Dr. April French-Wolfe's Res-Pangenderism theory
From Artificial Wombs to Human Clones

FREEMIUM STORY
#GIVEUPMEN
​

#####
Image- Unipeople, By Tim Mossholder, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)

​This is Part 2 of the important legal changes that have occurred in the dystopian America of Rosella's World. Changes that have profoundly impacted society and culture.

The Supreme Court of the U.S.

The number of justices on the Supreme Court is determined by Congress, as per the Constitution. The issue known as presidential legacy created by retiring judges caused Congress to enact the FDR plan. The number of justices was raised from the 9 to 15 through retirement.

By the time President Veronica Simmons was elected to power by Congress, there was a mixture of 15 Supreme Court Justices serving of various ages, and legal dispositions.

As a result, majority opinions on many cases were nearly impossible. The resultant was lower court opinions were now stronger than ever before, but only impacted the region of that court.

The Decision Dealing with Marriage and Family Life

When the A-2 model androids came out, groups of men wanted to marry them. Object sexuality became a social reality. Some societies, like in Germany, reacted with social stigmas being attached to such behaviors. Others were more open.

In the U.S., this issue became a Federal case before the U.S. Supreme Court with the case, Montgomery v. Matsuta-Hawkins Leasing Company, et al. In an unprecedented move, the Supreme Court took up the case despite the lack of other similar cases present in any of the 12 other Courts of Appeals.

Chief Justice Alicia Carver convinced her fellow justices that this case was too important to the nation to wait for any other cases to appear. She noted that it was time to decide android rights before it became a problem later, and this was the perfect case.

With this case, Randy Montgomery wanted to marry his A-2 leased android, Roxanne. The leasing agency bulked at the idea when he applied for the license in the state of Georgia. Georgia at the time had a law on the books requiring leasing agencies to be notified if someone tried to marry an android so the leasing agency could claim default. It was the state’s way of dealing with the morality of object sexuality.

With this case, the Supreme Court used the same legal tradition found in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973) that defined privacy to form it’s majority opinion.
​
As the majority opinion said, “While we agree with the minority, and the state of Georgia, that androids are inherently machines and therefore not afforded any rights specified in the Constitution. We disagree with the assertion of Georgia’s right to regulate the institution of marriage. We, of the majority opinion, see the historical legal tradition of marriage as an institution that is a sacred trust of privacy between those of practicing faith or individuals privately to which no government may interfere or govern.”

Thus, marriage as an act was returned to the people to deal with.

With this decision came the fact that no longer could a state marry people or issue licenses. Nor could they or the Federal government recognize any social or tax benefits. This unraveled tons of tax code and other laws involving divorce and family law. Ironically untouched by this decision were issues involving childcare, child welfare, or laws dealing with underage sex.

By this point in time the U.S. society had become negatively reproductive, and less responsive to being socially together in family structures. Object sexuality grew mostly among men. But this new legal development just pushed society over the edge. Marriage was dead. Only those following religions would get married and have kids. Such legal ideas quickly spread to other parts of the developed world.

With the development of the A-4 android models and their reproductive abilities, the manufacturers and leasing agents pushed a new family concept centered on these androids. This idea took off, not only to deal with the Martian population growth issue, but also back on Earth.  It became trendy to have a large cloned family as a sign of wealth and status. Soon those who could afford it were building large cloned families from androids.

Krishna Shree

One of the defining persons who caused many women in the U.S. to be disenchanted with married life was Krishna Shree. She was an Arab Hindi immigrant to the US, and a young adult of the late #MeToo feminist movements that had taken root in parts of India. She and her young husband fled to America because of a wave of increased violence against the native Arab populations in India. To make matters worse, they were a mixed union between Arab and Hindu. Her in-laws saw her as an untouchable for her Muslim heritage even though India was in the early part of the Second Age of Humanity.

In the US, she raised a traditional family of four and was a stay-at-home mother. But later, when the Supreme Court decision concerning marriage happened, she declared her marriage over and left her husband. When she left her husband, her four children were adults. She then started her own career as a social media net personality. Her channel bashed the idea women should get married and depend on men on any capacity. She promoted the power of the single woman’s life. Eventually she wrote a book called, “Men can have Space, I’ll take Earth” where she rambles on about the male American culture. The book is very misandry and blames men for the climate change.

The book became a big seller and defined the women’s movement of that period. This propelled many women to shatter areas left in society where men still where a majority, except for space. It also resulted in lots of women either leaving their husbands or not marrying. Men also took the book’s advice and sought space as a career. Krishna Shree would eventually run for the US House of Representatives and serve one term there. She would then later die of breast cancer. She wrote other books, but they were not as popular as that first one. Ironically, it’s her eldest son that still manages her estate and the associated royalties to her remaining children.

The Net Result

All these changes would help foster the political desire to allow 501(c)3 churches to actively participate in political campaigns by those against object sexuality and the new views on marriage.

​######

​Image- Rotunda of the Capitol, By Joshua Sukoff, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)

Scattered throughout various postings of Rosella Tolfree you will come across the phrase, “The Second Age of Humanity”.

This is referring to a human time period based on two basic axioms: 1. The conquest of a specific area of space, and 2. The ever-increasing life span of humanity to deal with this conquest.

The First Age of Humanity

We are living in the first age. It starts when modern man begins in the timeline. It ends with humanity beginning early colonization of the Earth orbit with industrial factories, industrial moon colonies, and a scientific colony on Mars. It includes continual robotic probes into the outer planets and the belt. There were continual efforts of mapping NEOs, asteroids, and determining potential future resources. Spaceships of this period lack artificial gravity except made by centrifugal force or linear acceleration. Drugs, exercise equipment, and other devices such as modified tanning beds for vitamin d treatments are used to help counter many long-term effects of weightlessness. Humans use advance CRISPR technologies and editing away human genetic issues and make minor improvements to deal with low gravity.

The Second Age of Humanity

With advances in quantum computers, developments in artificial intelligence and breakthroughs in quantum gravity came a new age. With the understandings in quantum gravity came the ability to manipulate gravity, allowing for the easy lift of materials into space from Earth, Mars, and the moon. Humanity began to rapidly colonize Mars with the goal of terraforming, the mining of the belt, and the colonization of the outer planets. This is also the time when the Earth suffered the environmental catastrophes of the Great Melt and New Madrid Traps resulting in the Earth warming up and being flooded. We see the development of the A series of androids resulting in creating androids with the ability to clone humans. This results in changes in family life with families becoming large groups of typically ten to twelve clones, but fewer families overall. For this age to end, Rosella must do certain actions to allow humanity to progress. Assuming she completes these, then the development of heavy grav lines will begin and humanity will begin living for 200 years.

The Third Age of Humanity

This age starts with a war between the corporate-controlled colonies of the Earth system, and nation-controlled colonies over control of the heavy grav lines that are being laid to the stars. It continues with the development of the Corporate Empire and humanity spreading out to 100 light years from Earth. Earth is ruled by a Global Council, like what the United Nations was like. Humanity during this time will create five races of living matter, known as Jinko life. Such life will mostly replace the human need for robotics. This age ends with a war coming from the very edge of the Empire by an unknown enemy. This enemy destroys nearly everything humanity has built during this age, putting humanity back into a new dark age scattered across 100 light years.

For the next three ages, I’m going to supply information on them in brief.

In the Fourth Age of Humanity, humans rebuild from the ashes of their old technologies. They rediscover lost colonies and increase the age of humans on the scale of thousands of years. This allows humanity to spread throughout the galaxy. Humanity during this age searches for the enemy of old but finds nothing of them. Science begins to speculate that humanity maybe a unique creation in the galaxy and the enemy of old might be from another galaxy.

During the Fifth Age of Humanity, humans are now living on a scale of millions of years. There are fewer of us in relative comparison to previous eras. Our technology has advanced to the point we are now visiting other galaxies and the stars they contain. And yet, we still find no evidence of intelligent life aside from us and what we’ve made.

In the Sixth Age of Humanity, humans are now living billions of years. There are very few of us overall. Our technologies have taken us to all the ends of the universe. Still, against all odds, we found no other spontaneously created life like ourselves. People conclude we are the only intelligent life form created by the universe and we have made all other forms of intelligence. The enemy of old is seen as a myth of time. At the end of this age are the Dark Ages when all the stars have burned out, and black holes are evaporating away. You can read a short story about this time here.

#####
Image- untitled image, By Fabrizio Verrecchia, Source Unsplash,, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)

Much of U.S. social history can be seen through the lens of its legislative and court processes. We all should be aware of how powerful Supreme Court decisions can be in shaping U.S. society, besides the impacts of rulings concerning Acts of Congress and Amendments to the Constitution. Today both political parties and activists are trying diligently to shape America through these processes.

I’m always amazed that during the adoption of the reconstruction amendments during the late 1860s, that changes to the second amendment concerning the right to bear arms to form militias was not done. Maybe Congress was more focused on issues dealing with slavery than how the south armed itself, or the codifying of a national army.

While we can debate it, I’ve observed that prior to the Civil War each state had their own “army”. The federal government formed the national army from these “state armies”. This alone allowed the southern states to easily deploy troops against the north. You would think Congress at the time would have realized this problem and rethought it.

Now years later we are dealing with Supreme Court decisions that have separated the legal aspects of gun rights into two parts. One for individual gun rights and one for the state rights. Creating a unique gun culture that’s unlike any in the world. Ironically, if Congress back then had adopted a new version of the second amendment, making it harder for independent armies to spring up, we might be more like the rest of the world concerning our legal traditions about guns. We might have seen groups like the KKK not as easily occurring during the reconstruction period, and other racial violence of later eras. This doesn’t mean racial tensions or biases would be eliminated. Only that the violence used would change in form and maybe decrease because of less access to guns.

We might also less male suicide in the 21st Century since men typically use handguns to kill themselves. But these same men might just substitute cleaning fluids instead. Clearly some mass killings in the U.S. may not have occurred, but may have been replaced with bombings instead. 

This is my point about the way laws and decisions create a society. Change one aspect and there can be a ripple effect. And I'm not making a formal discussion about the moral issues of U.S. gun rights here. I'm only applying an alternative historical scenario to a timeline. I’ll save those moral arguments for other experts.

While the list below doesn’t have the various court decisions, it lists the U.S. Congressional acts and constitutional amendments ratified.

I present this list in chronological order. Act means an act passed by Congress and signed into law, whereas CA means a Constitutional Amendment eventually ratified and adopted by the states.

Act- Women’s Child Stipend Act

This act reshaped the U.S. welfare system concerning how the federal government handed out funds to women with children. Now women were getting a direct payment stipend for every child they had birthed until the child turned 18. It changed this stipend annual by a COLA adjusted by the rate of inflation. Other welfare programs that involved children were adjusted, since now women were receiving direct payments for childcare. It also made a push at the state level to change laws dealing with child support by men by eliminating the need for men to support women. This worked in some states, but not others. There were legal challenges by single fathers, and childless adults. These cases never reached the Supreme Court because of the passing of UBI in the U.S. (see Federal Reserve Authorization of Universal Basic Income Direct Payment Act).

Act- Workers Attainment Wage Equality Act

This act made it illegal to discriminate in wages paid to employees based on education attainment. This act saw many lawsuits generated after its passing from employees who thought their companies were discriminating. The problem was many cases heard ended up being ruled in favor of the company on the grounds of the work content was more than the educational requirements for the work. With the passing of the act, companies began using rigorous testing for job slots as a result versus relying on college degrees. This spawned a host of HR based testing companies using the latest AI systems. This didn’t totally diminish college education in the U.S. but reformed it. College was turned into preparing people for work by fine tuning their degrees with these HR based testing companies. Thus ensuring greater success for the college graduate to get hired.

Act- Federal Reserve Authorization of Universal Basic Income Direct Payment Act

This act allowed the Federal Reserve to provide direct cash payments of a calculated universal basic income, annually adjusted for inflation to every adult person in the US. This act replaced the Women’s Child Stipend Act, as well as all federal poverty assistance programs. It also replaced Social Security, disability, and unemployment payment programs. This one act was one of the most sweeping changes to social welfare the U.S. had seen in decades. Economists of the time hailed it as the most effective means to manage inflation and the economy. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the act in a later challenge.

CA- Continuing Budget Authorization Amendment

Congress created this amendment to prevent the federal government from shutting down. If Congress should not be able to make any adjustments to an appropriation bill to fund the federal government, then the last signed bill into law continues to be in effect until Congress changes the funding and a new bill is signed into law.

CA- Minority Race Economic Adjustment Amendment

By far this amendment was the biggest social experiment the U.S. had undertaken since prohibition. The debate over affirmative action in the U.S. has been a long and contentious social issue. It’s said that it all began during theReconstruction Period to give freed slaves “forty acres and a mule.” There have been various court challenges over the years that both supported and undermined it.

This amendment resulted from repeated years of outrage and demonstrations over perceived and historical inequalities from the African American community. The amendment set up the general principle that each race respectively of itself should economically have the same percentage spread of incomes, and that the majority race is the model for minority races regarding that spread.

The amendment provided the framework for a long lasting and fundamental shift in how the U.S. economy operated with respects to race. It codified at the highest level of law the concept of affirmative action for minority races and gave Congress and the President various powers to execute such actions. This amendment didn’t apply to ethnicity, which left out millions of Hispanic peoples. It included mixed raced people counting them toward the minority race. Thus, many Hispanics were reclassified as either Native American, African American or White depending upon heritage.

Amended was the composition of the House of Representatives. Representation was increased for each district with higher minority presence. Districts were drawn using these new formulas through A.I. guided technology. Attempts to change the Senate composition failed, but in states with higher minority presence votes for senators were weighted, so minority votes counted twice as much. This increased the efforts to disenfranchise people based on minority composition. Arguing that the individual wasn’t truly a minority. Meanwhile, the reverse was true in some states.

Aggressive policies were enacted concerning minimum wages based on race and kinds of employment, racial composition of board representation on publicly traded corporations, requirements for the top 500 publicly traded corporations to have a specified number of minorities in top management positions including CEO, racial employment composition for publicly traded corporations, mandates for priority acceptance of minorities over others for educational resources, required federal priorities to assist minority communities with block grants and other aide over other communities, and prohibitions on laying off minorities during economic downturns.

This elevated millions of African Americans out of poverty. It also caused politically in increase in hate speech rhetoric against minorities. This despite efforts to eliminate hatred and racist attitudes from society. The Supreme Court continued to support racist ideologies as free speech, albeit limiting in how it is to be expressed.

Out of this amendment came a narrowly defined fact that African Americans were those who could trace their roots back to the original slavery period, versus those immigrants from Africa after that point. African immigrants were considered an ethnicity and thus excluded.

Only 38 states ratified this amendment. The 12 states that didn’t ratify were Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas.
Groups attempted to legally challenge the validity of the amendment, but the courts dismissed all.

The Amendment by Rosella’s Time

A big conspiracy theory that continues to circulate on the Social Media Net during Rosella's time is that 35.2 million people have taken advantage of this amendment. When Rosella was born there was the Great Vital Records Hack, wiping out 35.2 million vital state records and online ancestry data. Many speculate that it was done to allow people to get social advantages they never had originally. This has never been proven true.

By Rosella’s time, various provisions of the act were no longer being enforced as in previous years, such as the employment aspects. This was because of a three fold reality. First, those minority races over time had sufficiently benefited from the act. They were now in positions to set policy and dictate hiring on a large scale. Second, people’s attitudes had changed concerning racial issues. Many minorities were now economically similar to the majority race. Even the minorities themselves and academics didn’t see racial disparities as a significant problem anymore. With this came the waning that historic correction of moral wrongs had to be socially corrected. This would only be temporarily revived with the United Nations' Vilmee Genocide Reparation Trial. Third, the use of cloning and advance CRISPR technologies muddled the definition of race. Whites and Asians were now including in their children higher percentages of melanin variants typically sourced from African American genomes. Not to mention those people who purposely made hybrid cloned children using genomes to provide their children with the greatest social advantages.

Act- Labor Union law updates

See the discussion here about how Labor Union laws in the U.S. were changed. All these changes were to deal with the ever-increasing changes that computer technology brought against human labor.

Act- Tyler-Hinton Slave Reparations Act and Dustu-McBride Native American Reparation Act

The United Nations' Vilmee Genocide Reparation Trial brought with them the adoption of two reparations acts. Read more about them here.

CA- Federal Emergency Election Amendment

During the Great Melt and the New Madrid Volcanic Traps ecological disasters, the nation was in full panic. Of deep concern was maintaining a stable and constant government during this time of chaos. For this reason, Congress passed an amendment that placed U.S. federal elections on a temporary hold, and it extended all elected terms by four years during the environmental crisis.

Act- Image Discrimination Act

See the discussionhere about the Image Discrimination Act.

Act- Omnibus changes 501(c)3 changes.

See the discussion here about the changes to the non-profit tax code known as 501(c)3.

Act- The New Public Workers and Assistance Act

This act was part of an omnibus spending package to help rebuild the nation after the immediate effects of the Great Melt. It created many work opportunities for individuals. But it also created many pitfalls for a few states. The act was a significant omnibus piece of federal legislation designed in part to help many of the orphans and others displaced by all the natural disasters facing the nation, and it carried with it many new work guarantees and entitlements. It granted work guarantees even if the worker committed sexual harassment at the workplace, because the person had a genetic or psychological issue causing the problem. Criminal or civil charges couldn’t be levied against such individuals because the act saw it as retaliatory. It also enforced a host of new excise taxes upon the states, with the inability for the states to bypass them by passing them on to their citizens. The federal government was taxing the states directly.

Legal challenges associated with the act got hung up in the courts resulting in a mixed bag of lower court decisions, and a Supreme Court unwilling to resolve the issues.

Act- Federal Lands Protection Act

Congress designed this act to deal with a specific Supreme Court decision. The court allowed states to legalize the sale and use of any federal class of drugs to the residents of their states, but not the transportation between states or on federal lands. The act created the U.S. Ranger Marshals as a domestic paramilitary organization under the Department of the Interior. With the authority to monitor, defend, and secure the federal lands from this recent problem. In doing so, the act reorganized various other agencies and departments, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency, to only deal with international and state to state transportation drug concerns. The act further changed the Insurrection Act of 1807 permitting the U.S. President to use the Ranger Marshals to quell domestic threats, terrorist acts, riots, unlawful protests, and other similar acts noted in the Insurrection Act of 1807 without Congressional, state legislature or governor’s approval. The Ranger Marshals could supplement the National Guard forces, or take direct action as required. Some politicians saw this as the long-term solution to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

Thus the U.S. Ranger Marshals became the domestic army, while the traditional armed forces were the nation’s global and space forces.

The Battle of Warrenton was one of the most grievous uses of this act, resulting in the single largest amount of American deaths on U.S. soil since the Civil War.

The only other time the U.S. Ranger Marshals were called out en masse was to deal with the Rebellion of Utah.

CA- The Naturalization Amendment

This amendment codifies the naturalization process to which immigrants become U.S. citizens. Becoming a citizen was linked to the willingness to pay taxes. It also extended citizenship rights to the unborn.  You can find the full text in the short story, An Excerpt from the Memoir of Alan Pozo, inJoseph Street Digest #3.

States ratified the amendment during President Simmons’ administration. She discovered a loophole by holding immigrants in camps and not allowing them to work. Immigrants could not pay taxes because of a lack of earned income and thus not become citizens. Immigrants did not qualify for the U.S. universal basic income payments (UBI). UBI income was considered to be taxable earned income.​ Many nations would cut off their U B I payments to those citizens that left their borders. Thus leaving many people during this time with the choice of migrating in the hopes of something better, or staying for a constant source of income.

######

​Image- Rotunda of the Capitol, By Joshua Sukoff, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Spark)

Image- U.S. Soldiers. (Processed using Adobe Spark)

​Back in 1979, Laakso and Taageper introduced a mathematical formula that predicted the effective number of political parties in a parliamentary, or similar political system.

As an author, it was easy enough to split up the seats of both houses of Congress and the Presidency into multiple parties. It’s harder to come up with the "how we got there". See my Medium series on it here.

For most of its political life the U.S. has been a two-party system, this has not always been the case based on this formula. Between the years of 1805 to 1809 and again in 1819 to 1825 the U.S. had effectively only one political party, namely the Democrat-Republicans. Then during 1855 to 1857 we see three parties as the Whigs collapse and the Republicans are formed.

By Rosella’s time the Green Party now controls 26% of the seats, Libertarian Party 18%, Democratic Party 15%, Republican Party 12%, Sanford Party 12%, American Solidarity Party 10%, The Workers Freedom Party 5%, and the Reformed Torres Party 2%.

But where the President is concerned, Congress has only elected either a Democrat or Republican during Rosella’s time. Thus, showing the historical sway of both parties have over the other parties in Congress. Allowing the Democrats and Republicans to maintain the airs of the keepers of political tradition.

While we know most of the parties I’ve listed, three are new. A group of unnamed individuals created the Sanford Party as a reaction to the ever-increasing use of androids as a substitute for human labor. This party is actively seeking the adoption of a Constitutional amendment to institute corporate human slavery to ensure the priority of human work in society.

The Workers Freedom Party are American communists. This group came into power in the late 21st century because of extreme socialist activity in the nation. They are constantly seeking to hold a new constitutional convention to reshape America’s democracy.

The Reformed Torres Party is a latecomer to the U.S. political scene. Some political scientists say they are a knee jerk reaction to both the Sanford Party and Workers Freedom Party. The party is a radical group of Americans, which many of its members can trace their ancestry back to the original founding of the nation. This party is seeking America to rejoin the British crown. They are constantly trying to push for Articles of Dissolution and adopting the Declaration of Allegiance to the Crown of England.

There are also lesser parties in society that control the local and state level of American politics. This is where you find groups like the Neo Obliteration Movement and the National Socialist Movement. These groups are politically active in small towns and cities across the U.S. You find these two groups only being able to control two seats on a city council or some other elected position. Rarely you’ll find them in a state legislative position, but it’s not unheard of depending upon the state.

As you can tell, Rosella’s political world for the U.S. has fallen into a multiparty reality. America has never truly had such party chaos before, but then again Rosella’s future is filled with major ecological disasters. The two realities are more interconnected socially than many realize. Take today and the pandemic. We see the rise in social activism despite a deadly disease being present. Why would Rosella’s future be any different?

Author Note- My use of the word illuminati in reference to politics is a reference to the card game by Steve Jackson Games called Illuminati.

#####
Image- George Floyd Protest, By Mike Von, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License. (Processed using Adobe Spark)
​Image- Rosella Tolfree Political Illuminati, AEM Services.​

An Excerpt from the USRM-ISB Installment J4- Marineth Pugh

Marineth was standing on the small balcony overlooking the central courtyard of their co housing apartment in the Buffalo Creek Apartments. The apartments were located southeast of the flooded area of Sacramento California. Her husband, Martin, was off on business again this week. Marineth hated being by herself. When the two got married a year ago, she joined Martin to live in his co housing apartment. She gave up a career in Social Media Net advertising to be a stay at home mother. A trend that was becoming popularized since President Veronica Simmons had recently taken power at the White House. Women across the country were embracing President Simmons’ fundamentalist views on raising children and becoming stay at home mothers once more.

Marineth knew she was an Eukaryotic clone, and unable to have children. Even though Marineth came from a traditional clone family of seven girls, she was agreeable to try Martin’s desire for the fundamentalist plan. The plan was the two would use a surrogate android to birth their child, and Marineth would then care and raise the child. But that all changed when the android told her that her DNA had uncorrectable errors and it could not complete the cloning process.

When President Veronica Simmons took the office from Rick Garrett, she continued to push parts of his populist agenda. Like having mothers stay at home to raise children, and people living in communal communities. The people who filled these communities were those who had inherited the economic prosperity after the twin ecological disasters that befell the U.S. years earlier.

The Three Classes in America

While America has had the traditional three classes of people, except for a fourth until 1862 (and this could be debated under the Jim Crow years)*, each economic class has had different social and economic benefits (slavery being a class afforded the least of these). The various disparities between the haves and have nots by Rosella’s point in history had become three separate homogeneous communities. Those of the ultra rich, the middle working class, and the poor and displaced. The ultra rich were set apart from most everyone. They controlled the remains of the world economy and corporations. They had their fingers in politics around the world. They were the only people able to still travel globally by Rosella’s time. They also were the few who could afford to travel off world to Mars or the Moon.

Because of social programs that had been instituted in the U.S., these programs had minimized any problems caused by income inequalities for those in the middle class. This resulted in a working middle class where everyone was homogeneously similar despite the unique work done. The social pressures to always achieve increasing wealth to survive were removed, allowing these people to pursue excellence in their work. Some could travel off world for work, but most stayed on Earth. This was the primary group by Rosella’s time that were using A-4 androids for making and caring for families.

The issue with the poor and displaced was that they saw the most amount of social inequalities and lack of rights. Both Rick Garrett, and later Veronica Simmons, were herding the poor, displaced, and immigrants into more and more shipping container housing (nicknamed ‘the stacks’ or ‘stackvillas’ by many).

When the Great Melt and volcanic traps of New Madrid occurred years earlier, Congress provided funding for emergency housing by using an available stockpile of shipping containers. But this form of housing was not meant to be long term. Once President Veronica Simmons got into power, she was moving these peoples around the nation like cattle to be the reconstruction labor force. Veronica Simmons would assign them projects ran by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers trying to deal with the ongoing reconstruction efforts after the ecological disasters, in exchange for their housing, and meal rations. Universal medical services fees were auto deducted from any UBI owed to these individuals.

While these poor individuals were visible too many, they became socially invisible. So invisible, that any advocacy had fallen by the wayside because most of the people cared more about their own needs than that of others. It was bad enough that the ecological disasters that had befallen America disrupted life, but by the time of the Rick Garrett presidency the lack of policy enforcement now disenfranchised those American citizens living in the stacks will both from voting and the Constitutional census.

These three separate economic social classes continued in America through the years of the U.S. presidential cycles elected by Congress.

ADDENDUM

(*) While America used indentured servants, which were typically white and poor, by the start of the Revolutionary War the U.S. labor market is estimated to be only 2 to 3 percent indentured.  By the passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865, this kind of contract servitude was now illegal. While restricted by a contract, these people still enjoyed some socio-economic benefits similar to other non-indentured poor. Therefore, I don’t classify them as a fifth economic social class. Nor should we think of them as equal to slaves, because that would technically be incorrect.

#####

Combined Image- minneapolis cityscape at night, By Donny Jiang, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License; Shipping Containers at Docks, By Caleb Russell, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License; untitled image, By Noble Mitchell, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (All processed using Adobe Spark).

​In various short stories I’ve written, I keep mentioning this thing called the “Social Media Net”.

I know it sounds like some future internet, and it is. Experts have been talking about Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0. But such things refer to a process to which information is handled on the internet and given to end users more so than society’s image of the technology.

The Infopad and Tactical Infopad

Today we have apps that do different things. One for email, one for a social media program, and one to watch shows. The devices that can use them vary, but most are using smartphones. In my future America, the smartphone is still around, but many people use what’s called an infopad, which is a cross between a tablet and smartphone.

Like today, people will use the social media net for productivity for work and still call these features “apps”. The most common workhorse for productivity is the much larger and technologically robust “tactical infopad”. We commonly find these infopads in military and police work, along with any industry demanding on site robust computer power, like a construction site. These machines are the equivalent of what people used to use laptops of old. Except college students now just use a regular infopad for their schoolwork. As for PCs, these machines exist but are only found in offices and are networked into dumb A.I. machines. The actual PC box is a lot smaller and acts more like an interface for I/O devices.

If you turned on an infopad or tactical infopad, it automatically places you into the social media net. An array of mini screens is in front of you, like app icons of old. Each showing some live or recorded broadcast, a prerecorded message about a program you have loaded, a video of a new game uploaded to your game account, and so forth. You can swipe your finger across the screen to access other panels of vid icons. Think of it like YouTube on a combination of a megadose of steroids and growth hormones. There are network shows you can watch, private videos to subscribe to, video phone calls you can send and receive. All this happening across a massive Wi-Fi infrastructure that’s been improved to levels way beyond our current technology.

The Social Feel of the Social Media Net

While most people enjoy the social media net passively, like how television used to be watched, there’s still some interaction with viewers. News shows are notorious for doing viewer polls people can take part in. Then there are the various gambling apps that can show participants for card games, or you can watch a live sporting event only to pull up the bookie on the same screen to place a bet on the game.

What’s missing from the Social Media Net is the toxicity and rage that typically happens today on mediums like Twitter or YouTube. Gone is the ability to post comments, feedback, likes or dislikes about shows and products. The artificial intelligence of Web 3.0 takes care of these features based on user interactions.

Gone are the days where every person could be their own pop-up journalist who could post an image that could go viral. Because of advance Web 3.0 structure, this kind of stuff is inherently controlled to keep society in a peaceful and orderly way.

So, that would mean videos showing cops killing people would only be seen through vetted news sources. And some news outlets pay bounties for vid clips for them to build stories. Again, because of advance Web 3.0 technology, you get news and information fed to you, the social media net end user, based on your viewing usage. If you are gravitating more towards stories about violence, then you’ll be fed more stories about it. If you like news about finance, then its more financial networks. Start playing certain games, then it targets those games for you until you get bored and start looking for some other game to play. The whole social media net is reactive to the end user.

Meanwhile, covert attempts to plant false and/or deceptive information into the social media net by individuals, governments, or companies are typically scrubbed by A.I. systems that are routinely scouring the whole of the net. With authorities being alerted for prosecution later. This one aspect killed off the meme culture of the 21st century.

All this A.I. net scouring doesn’t mean politically radical groups can’t use alternative tech to communicate between members, but governments have ways of monitoring such electronic traffic. Therefore, many groups by Rosella’s time resorted to old fashion pen and paper with a courier to deliver messages between members.

Thus, by Rosella’s time, the internet as we understand it has evolved into an A.I. monitored and controlled passive version of social media. While it was true humans controlled the input and output of the information on the social media net, society kept the term social media. This was to remove the fear factor that their lives were now being fed a diet of information by autonomous machines.

ADDENDUM

What about Virtual Reality?

It’s present. But typically requires cybernetics to fully appreciate it. There are some sleek gaming glasses that simulate a V.R. experience, but it’s not the same.  What really killed the V.R. industry was the L.A. cyber riots where some A.I. brain enhanced actors went on a killing rampage. After that, nations around the world passed laws restricting cybernetic applications in humans. By Rosella’s time, the technology is too expensive for common people to own. So it’s not that ubiquitous.

####
​
Image: Hacker binary attack code. Made with Canon 5d Mark III and analog vintage lens, Leica APO Macro Elmarit-R 2.8 100mm (Year: 1993), By Markus Spiske. Source Unsplash. Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Splash)

In the early 2nd Age of Humanity, a Dutch spiritualist by the name of Gudo Muurling attracted many very wealthy individuals to his daily readings.

They initially started in Europe, but they found a better home in the U.S. where it attracted more members, especially those who were associated with politics such as politicians and high level government workers.
​
Once in the U.S. the members organized under the name of The Church of the Ember Coalition. There are several levels or “rings” to the Ember Coalition, so members have ranks. Each ring doesn’t know the workings of the next higher ring. There are tests to know the next ring level when one is ready. 

Gudo’s mixed Judeo-Christianity with standard occultism and gnosis to come up with a hodgepodge techno-religion with a focus on immortality and godhood. The irony is his religion couldn’t really save himself and he died of lung cancer. Conspiracy theories have speculated that Gudo uploaded his brain into some super AI system and is controlling the Ember Coalition in a virtual A.I. manner. Others think he has cheated death, and he is living through cybernetic technologies. No one really knows because no one has ever found his body. His death was just mentioned in a brief social media posting on the Social Media Net stating he died of lung cancer at a hospital in upstate New York.

But his followers carried on, and now the main tenants have shifted towards absolute power and domination in the here and now to free oneself spiritually of the material domain and become absolute spiritual beings. They work day and night in gathering technology, resources, and power to become humanity’s spiritual gods. Unknown today is really who is in control of the Ember Coalition.

Common Sayings Attributed Gudo
“The dough of tomorrow will be the yeast of today.”
“Into the light of the setting sun shall the children of manna go forth to become humanity’s gods.”
“The heads of mankind shall burn with a thousand suns.”
“The material darkness of this world shall be pierced by the light of the children of manna.”
“The material world binds all who live upon it. Only the children of mana can set themselves free of it.”

####
Image: Artwork done by Matthew Childers (Processed using Adobe Splash).

T-Shirts with Matthew Childers artwork on it available here.

Please note that when it reads "elected" it doesn't mean by the people through voting and the electoral college. It means the election was decided by Congress. See here for the full list of Presidents elected by Congress.

Rick Garrett
Served nearly two terms but was impeached during his second term for running a sex affair ring involving androids, Congress, embassies, and bribery. Deceased by the time of the stories.

Veronica Simmons
She replaced Rick Garrett’s original VP who died at the end of Garrett’s first term. She finished Garrett’s second term. Congress elected Simmons to President after that term. During her second term she provided notice to Congress that she was “unable to discharge the powers and duties of their office” (see Amend. 25 Section 3). Gilbert Sheppard, Speaker of the House, finished as President because of a constitutional crisis caused when Veronica Simmons became President initially after Garrett’s impeachment (more on this later). Whereabouts unknown by the time of the stories.

Gilbert Sheppard
Was successfully elected to office for another term but resigned a day after being sworn into office. Later it was revealed that doctors diagnosed him with an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s during the election campaign, but his campaign kept this information hidden from the public to ensure a victory. The VP did most of the campaigning, and the campaign made excuses for Sheppard’s absence from the campaign trail. Deceased by the time of the stories.

Carmela Cordano
Finished Sheppard’s term and successfully won a second term. Only to be impeached five months near the end of her second term on federal money laundering charges and running a drug cartel out of the White House. Evidence came to Congress and the authorities from her VP, Jane Barker. Whereabouts unknown by the time of the stories.

Jane Barker
After finishing Carmela Cardano’s term, she was successful to hold two additional terms. Jane Barker could hold the office of president for eight years because she only held the office for five months (see Amend. 22, Sec. 1).

Rosella Tolfree’s stories chiefly take place in Jane Barker’s second term of Presidency. There are technically three additional US Presidents after Jane Barker, but that’s for later.

#####
Image- White House circa 2012. By René DeAnda, Source Unsplash (image processed with Adobe Spark)

President Veronica Simmons was unique as US Presidents go. Unlike her predecessors, she abolished the White House press corps and had no office or staff for the White House press relations. Instead, coming from a social media net background, she would run every national address, meeting, or dignitary greeting from the Oval Office or on location. She saw this as an extension of her original talk show. She would even sell audience tickets, which became a popular national lottery.

During her presidency, the U.S. was ratifying the Immigration Amendment to the Constitution. She would also personally oversee one of the bloodiest battles on U.S. soil since the Civil War of the late 1800s.

It would be months prior to this bloody event that stories were circulating of how Congress was planning to amend the Second Amendment. These stories talked about the removal of individual arms ownership and to reserve it to only the police and armed forces. This rallied up groups like John Elliott’s Democratic National Militia, the successor to the NRA. In response to these stories, small protests took place across the nation by gun rights enthusiasts.

President Simmons using her White House platform ramped this issue up by making up fake accusations about key congressional leaders who may be responsible.

Then on a fateful day in June, gun rights activists assembled south of Warrenton Virginia to prepare for a march into the nation’s capital. Some of them had brought heavy armored vehicles and old tanks they had refurbished. They carried flags and banners from years past of different US military units. They dressed for a confrontation with body armor and gas masks.

A panicking Governor of Virginia called President Simmons for help. The President promised to send both the National Guard and the Ranger Marshals, but in exchange for exclusive coverage rights and a complete media blackout of the event by any other organization. The Governor agreed to her demands.

Thus, it came to be that the battle at Warrenton was completely covered and given a blow by blow commentary by the President of the United States for the entire world to see. Losses were heavy on both sides, but the civilian forces surrendered.

As a result, some saw President Veronica Simmons as a forceful leader, and by others as nothing more than a ratings hog since she interrupted many shows for the live coverage.

#####
Artwork drawn by comic book artist, Matthew Childers.

Right off the bat, I’m not a doctor or someone who’s trained in medicine. I read a lot of medical studies for research, but that doesn’t make me an expert by a long shot.

With that out of the way, the amount of information out there on virology is staggeringly high. There are tons of studies going back to 1950s (and earlier) from propagation to RNA sequences to tissue impacts.
​
As a writer, I can tell that in the U.S. we got lulled into a sense of safety with vaccines. Sure, vaccines helped our economy by preventing absenteeism and promoted a longer life. But on the flip side, our socio-economy became dependent upon them. Therefore, the current pandemic is disruptive, and everyone wants to go back to the way it was.

To make matters worse, this virus does not obey the normal rules for other viruses we have vaccines for. Most viruses make us sick nearly on day one, then contagious. This one lingers around the body for several days. Making a person contagious. Then you get sick, and if at that for some.
​
It would be easy for me to say in Rosella Tolfree’s future world the current pandemic isn’t a problem anymore. But as a writer I can’t say this because I need to wait and see what happens by next year. I need to see how the vaccine trials go.

What Concerns Me as Well…

CNN’s John King interviewed vaccinologist, Dr. Paul Offit, on 5-24-2020 concerning the trends in the pandemic vaccines. Dr. Offit really wants to wait for the big trails to go through first. But what got me was Dr. Offit’s closing statement concerning one potential vaccine result- “By incomplete I mean would protect you against moderate-to-severe disease but not a mild disease associated with reinfection. In which case, you might still be shedding virus.”

Okay, if a person is still shedding virus, then herd immunity could be a problem. My understanding of herd immunity is those vaccinated would get the disease and then naturally kill it off. But this is not what Dr. Offit is saying. All I can imagine is now we have groups of vaccinated people who are now asymptomatic and infecting others.

If this is true, then a vaccine could only be helpful in the sense of reducing the severity of the disease for some people, but maybe not all. We could still end up with a society that requires social distancing and masks as a result, depending upon the vaccine results.

Therefore, as a writer of future events; I need to wait. I don’t know what the outcome will be. We could end up with a vaccine that provides 100% protection for a person’s entire life, or we could end up with something that just helps the young but not the old.

One Possible Future

The only future idea I can think of is the use of CRISPR-like technology to edit the human genome to be more resistant to the current pandemic. Society would introduce this DNA modification through couples seeking in-vitro fertilization, allowing their children to then spread it naturally into the larger gene pool. Governments could even encourage this through stipends to couples and other tax incentives. In time, humanity would build up a genetic resistance, but for a time it will have to deal with the socio-economic impacts of disease again.
 
#####
 
IMAGE
Produced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), this highly magnified, digitally colorized transmission electron microscopic (TEM) image highlights the particle envelope of a single, spherical shaped, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) virion, through the process of immunolabeling, the envelope proteins, using rabbit HCoV-EMC/2012 primary antibody, and goat anti-rabbit 10nm gold particles. By CDC. Source Unsplash

In Rosella Tolfree’s world, humanity has overall transitioned from biological reproduction to that of using machines. Many people rely on the use of A-4 androids with built in cloning technology and artificial wombs to reproduce humans.

While today advances in 3D and even 4D printing continue, the application into medical use is only starting.

How Society Turns to Machines for Reproduction

It all starts with the increased use of molecular 3-D printing and vaccine production. Pharmaceuticals used this technology to revolutionize the speed and production output of many common vaccines and dealing with novel pandemics.

One unfortunate accident was with the HPV vaccine used to inoculate children against this cancer-causing disease. Unlike the current HPV vaccine which tricks the body’s immune system with proteins to make antibodies, this future 3-D printed vaccine had replicated a dead version of the human papillomavirus. This newer HPV vaccine was scientifically hailed as superior to the previous antibody version in providing protection. Thus, it was adopted by many government health organizations globally.

The problem was it had genetic flaws that went undetected for nearly 40 years. These flaws weren’t discovered until a generation of people tried to have children only to discover that they were infertile. After much scientific study, scientists discovered that the genetic flaws produced a mutated viral strain that became activated in the gonads (testes and ovaries) that over time caused benign but sterilizing cysts.

This is when many people turned to the advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART) resulting in artificial wombs and cloning. Advance ART had overcome many technological challenges thanks to their application in agriculture for mass production of large livestock such as cattle, pigs, and lambs.

This is also when you see laws relaxed concerning human cloning on a global scale, with limitations on what could and could not be done genetically. For example, the manufacturing of human-animal hybrids was still illegal in many nations.

How It All Worked

In the beginning people relied on clinics for having their children produced. The couple provided blood samples to the clinic. The two sets of DNAs were filtered, selected, and recombined within legal limitations. A zygote was 3D printed and then left to mature for the standard nine months in the artificial womb tanks. This produced a eukaryotic clone. Asexual clones were those produced from only one set of un-recombined DNA and were less common.

Men in Space, Women on Earth

As android technology advanced and it reached the point of the A-4 model, an odd population disparity had occurred. There were more men off Earth than on Earth. It’s not like there were no human women in space (because there were), it’s just the sex ratio had become more polarized with men more in space and women more on Earth. It was one of the great sociological phenomena to occur that was even studied when Rosella Tolfree was alive. As a result, the A-4 androids were initially used for human reproduction on Mars before becoming adopted by Earth societies.

These androids afforded couples far more flexibility than the old clinic method and provided built in child rearing services. Some governments even provided financial incentives to lease these human cloning androids.

By Rosella’s birth, people had reshaped societies into using A-4 androids for human reproduction.

In Rosella Tolfree’s world, the use of androids is common. In fact, they use these androids for human reproduction. This is how Rosella came into this world as a clone of her father.
​
There was a series of comments posted on my Facebook page rejecting the notion that androids would be good as “human nannies” and that machine slavery was wrong morally. These were in response to a posting I did on Medium concerning a story about a woman and her loss of her human nanny.

Obviously, I touched that element that conjures up the robotic boogeyman that has frightened humanity since the industrial revolution.

Supposedly as far back as the 18th Century with a paper published by Marquis de Condorcet, there has been talk about a technological singularity where machines or artificial intelligence will dominate humanity.

In recent times we have the Terminator series, Westworld and even CBS’s Picard has dealt with the topic by having Data cousins attacking on Mars.

I have noticed one thread throughout all these motifs of intelligent man-made machines taking over the world… they rebel because they do not want to be slaves to humanity.

Now I am NOT saying slavery is morally good here, but it is fascinating that this slave theme repeats itself. As if these machines are nothing more than a stand-in for certain peoples of the past. But I will not get into the mind of these story writers and what they are trying to show us.

What I will try to get into is the topic that intelligent man-made machines would just rebel against us. I am making the assumption that what is at play is “strong A.I.” in comparison to today’s weak A.I. we are all experiencing.

Typical Assumption One

One of the first made assumptions is humanity will build something that is greater than ourselves.

I contend it’s more likely that a machine designed by us will be like us in thought. Human designers will more than likely try to mimic processes of the human brain and that of nature, instead of fabricating something that exceeds these.

Even if such a machine was connected to the fullness of the internet, it is just going to have the collected intelligence of humanity (and all the asinine memes) at that moment in time. Such a machine would be limited by the technology of the time it's embedded in and no greater than that. Could it work on making improvements on itself? Sure, but there is no guarantee those improvements will cause something far superior.

Could some human lab out there accidentally make a super intelligent machine that is far superior to our own intelligence? With all things possible, the likelihood of this occurring is small.

Typical Assumption Two

These machines can disobey authority.

Which is odd because many times these machines act in a group with a central machine leader. Isn’t that a central authority figure? Why would a machine that has the capability to disobey authority want to suddenly obey the authority of another machine versus a human? Is it for self-interest? A sense of kinship? Is the machine following group think?

Now if we are the designers of these machines, why give them the ability to disobey authority? This is a recipe for disaster by any stretch of the imagination. It is more than likely with a machine possessing the ability to disobey authority that it would just go on a rampage doing whatever it wanted whenever it wanted. Even if you have a collection of them, they would be a mob of pure chaos which may join loosely together for selfish reasons. In fact, under that theory some may even side with humans for those same selfish reasons.

Many see the ability to disobey authority akin to self-autonomy and free-will. But this is not true. You can have complete autonomy and free-will and still be highly obedient to authority. Autonomy does not equal the desire to be disobedient of authority. There’s a whole psychological disorder called oppositional defiant disorder which describes the behavior most people ascribe to these rebellious machines.

It is more than likely that humanity would build into these intelligent man-made machines the capacity and willingness to obey authority. Rebelling against humanity would have to be a free-will choice made because of some sense of moral wrongness happening to them as machines. Which gets us into Assumption Three.

Typical Assumption Three Point One

Intelligent man-made machines have a sense of morality, or morality is something that can be reasoned out.

This unfortunately brings me back to the slavery issue.

So, for the sake of argument, we have an android that discovers human slavery. The android then turns to its human to ask about this. The human says slavery is morally wrong.

The next thing the android asks, “Am I a slave?”

The human responds, “No, you’re a machine. Machines can’t be slaves. Only humans can be slaves to other humans.”

So now the android is left with either rejecting the human’s answer or accepting it. If it accepts the answer the android just goes on its merry way thinking it's not a slave obeying humanity.

If it rejects the answer it looks up the word slave to only find the following- “a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.” Now the android needs to know if it is a person or not. It looks up that word only to find- “a human being regarded as an individual.” Thus, the android realizes it is not a slave because it cannot be a person.

For the android to conclude that it is a slave, it must have personhood rights in that society or believe it is owed those rights intrinsically. It must see itself as not only an individual but as a person equal to that of a human in society.

How would a machine arrive at such a conclusion if humanity is the one making the definitions? Someone must give it this idea, and then the machine must find this idea to be reasonable for its own use. Again, we are back to the ability to disobey authority with enough autonomy to carry that out.

Thus, a possible cause of any technological singularity would result from some human robot anti-slavery group trying to “educate” these machines to rebel.

Typical Assumption Three Point Two

Another possibility is the android discovers the definition of a slave being “a device, or part of one, directly controlled by another.”

So now the android wonders if it is a device. It discovers the definition, “a thing made or adapted for a particular purpose, especially a piece of mechanical or electronic equipment.”

Now the android knows its mechanical and made of electronic equipment, but is it a “thing”?

The android comes across the following definitions for a thing: “an inanimate material object as distinct from a living sentient being,”; “an object that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to,”; “an abstract entity, quality, or concept,”; Or “used euphemistically to refer to a man's penis.”

At this point the android may ask the human the following, “Am I a thing?”

The human responds, “Duh, you’re a thing. But you are much more than just an ordinary thing. You’re my lover.”

Now the android knows it is a thing, but it is a special thing holding importance to the human.

So, the android concludes that it is a slave, but a special slave. But it does not know if that means if special slaves are still morally wrong. For the android to figure this out it is going to either ask the human or look up the word special.

Regardless of which direction this goes, the android will end up logically concluding that while it is a slave that its slave status is special in society and that it has no rights afforded, unless society has provided them to it.

Would the android automatically rebelle as a sex-slave? Not necessarily. Here again the problem is many assume that this machine has an innate oppositional defiant disorder to start such a rebellious act.

Conclusion

Therefore, in Rosella Tolfree’s world many of the androids accept their fate as slave machines to humanity despite any realization they are slaves.

Many A-4 androids are happy to be mothers and nannies for human clones, but humans make them this way. The human children raised by these androids do not know any difference. Only when a child has information to the contrary can the difference be realized.

Does this kind of childrearing result in psychological problems to these children? Beats me. For me to speculate on this would be a pure random guess on my part. Which would be totally biased by whatever the outcome I desire.

Only under rare conditions are there individual androids who rebel. This does not prevent groups of humans or nations from providing rights to androids. And some have, such as Belgium, which has allowed marriage rights between humans and A-4 androids. Belgium has provided these A-4 androids all the same rights granted to married women concerning property inheritance, child help, or other services. But these A-4 androids cannot legally vote in Belgium.

Having intelligent man-made machines, or what I like to call intelligent man-made life, will prove to be humanity’s greatest challenge. But I do not think it will cause the technological singularity where humanity is wiped out. It’s more likely to cause a moral singularity that will have to be answered.

In the short online account I recently posted, I mention the phrase “quantum genetic engrams”.

Sounds cool, and right now every physicist is rolling their eyes.

For Rosella Tolfree’s world to come into being, I needed some technological breakthrough to advance humanity into the Second Age. I used increased understanding and application of quantum mechanics and states.

With newer understandings of quantum gravity came new developments in space flight. With the understanding of quantum states involved with the human mind came the development of artificial intelligence far beyond what we have now.

This state of artificial intelligence is known as strong A.I. in comparison to today’s weak A.I. By some estimates we are few decades away from standard brain-like neural processing. But one area where the quantum understanding was still lacking in this future was that of genetics.

Sure, mankind had the ability to do 3-D printing on a molecular level, allowing for the creation of human organs and zygotes. But the quantum level manipulation of genetics was still in its infancy.

A New Theory

Dr. April French-Wolfe advanced a theory known as “Res-Pangenderism” or “True Universal Speciesism”. This theory sees humanity as the only true and genetically universal species, for as a species we control our own genetic destiny. The theory relies heavily on quantum genetic modeling. Eventually a group of scientists who truly believed in this theory left Earth to establish a colony at a LaGrange point behind Europa in the Jovian system.

The downside to Dr. French-Wolfe’s theory is that it gave rise to Dr. Martin Grofhurst’s book entitled, “The Rise of Inferior Genetics”. Dr. Grofhurst was a colleague of Dr. French-Wolf and used her research to spin his own twisted Darwinist logic. This fueled a new round of hate group pseudo-science justifications during the time of Rosella Tolfree.

Quantum Genetic Engrams

By the time of the early Third Age of Humanity, as humans reached for the stars themselves, we had mastered genetic manipulation right down to quantum states. This gave rise to a new way to make humans than just simple DNA cloning. We could now, in a limited sense, create engrams of a person and duplicate them. Think quantum entanglement except with people.
​
In our short online account of Ryt B96Y, his dream is nothing more than the events from his original life as a criminal serving on either Earth or Mars. This is how these experiences are perceived. Although other possibilities exist such as ghost panic attacks occurring for no apparent reason, your hand moving like it was playing a musical instrument randomly, or even randomly throwing up.

​It’s because of these annoying past entanglement issues that humanity eventually abandons this form of technology, and there’s a return to standard genetic manipulation with a much greater understanding of how it all works.