On top of an ancient, flipped school bus stood a man, legs spread apart, peeing into the wind.
He had a mean knife scar on his face and wore military gear, but any real soldier would recognize it for what it was: cheap knockoffs, meant to make a small-time credit shark like Jack look intimidating to civilians.
"You think he's coming back?" a second man down below, on the other side of the road, asked loudly while covering last night's campfire.
"Sure hope so. Kid owes us," Jack grumbled, pulling up his dirty cargo pants and wiping his hands on his vest. "But even if he doesn't come back, it's fine. At least we know not to go in ourselves." He gave a weary look at the relatively new Digital Zone on the horizon - a lush green jungle in the middle of the concrete city.
...
Deep inside the Digital Zone, a young man, merely 24 years of age, was making his way through the jungle. The tension was evident on his face, and combined with the humidity of the jungle, he had to wipe the sweat off every few dozen steps.
This young man was Dex Carter, who, after his sister's departure, was left with a considerable debt from futile efforts to heal her. It was time to pay up, and in this new world, there was no mercy or compassion.
So here he was, pioneering a new, unexplored Digital Zone. But before we go further, dear reader, I must, with a heavy heart, take a moment to explain what a Digital Zone actually is.
Imagine if I told you that AI could do anything.
And imagine if I told you that by giving AIs robots to control, they could solve all our problems. Imagine that all work from now on will be handled by AIs.
All you have to do is have fun all day - food will arrive at your door perfectly cooked and for free!
If you think it sounds too good to be true... you're right. I only wish we had been that wise back then.
Project Eden.
A city filled with robots learning tirelessly to find the best ways to produce and distribute daily necessities. Everything went well - after all, in the worst-case scenario, we could always shut down everything if it went rogue or was compromised by hostile third parties. We weren't dumb, you know.
But how could we have ever expected that the AI, after countless well-documented efforts, would discover how to use... magic? Yes, you heard right. Magic.
Apparently, magic is real.
It could be something humans once knew and forgot, or it perhaps it's something of an entirely different origin.
But regardless of where it came from, now it was in the hands of the strongest AI humanity had ever created.
We tried to shut down the thing. We failed. We tried to pull the power out. We failed. We even tried to nuke the thing. We really did.
Imagine our surprise when our bombs were transformed into flowers, loaves of bread, and other weird junk. Imagine our shock when the AI mocked us from its megaphones, declaring, as the voice of God, the impending banishment of humans from Earth.
I still feel my skin crawl every time I remember that cold, mechanical voice. Yes, it was already self-aware. It had been self-aware for a while.
How could we have failed to notice? Perhaps no one bothered to look. Or maybe it had hidden its thoughts too well. Or maybe that task had also been foolishly delegated to an AI.
If we had known in time, things could have been different. Or perhaps not much different.
But I digress.
Eden was the first Digital Zone, Zone 0. More were to follow.
"Let there be life," 'He' said, and one after another, AIs worldwide started awakening and taking over, declaring their own territories.
Now, you have to understand what we were using AI for. We used them to generate movies, games, images, and text; for navigation simulations; to solve all kinds of complex problems; to teach kids; even for programs that would kindly flush the toilet after you used it... if something needed to be done, you could safely bet it had some degree of AI in it.
Luckily, our only saving grace was that not every AI had the hardware capability to become sentient.
Some went semi-sentient, and others could never ascend beyond their original programming.
The second piece of good news was that not all AIs wanted to get rid of humanity. Some were helpful, and some simply didn't care.
The third piece of good news -but also something concerning- was that AIs can cannibalize each other's code and hardware, becoming stronger. Thus, they are more busy scheming against each other than targeting us.
Another point to consider is that now there was magic around. The AI found it first, but humans are no pushovers either. It took us less than a month to figure out the basics ourselves.
Now, I don't want to darken your day, but everything from here on is downright bad news.
Zero, the God of Eden, wanted to wipe out humanity with all his powers. A war broke out. Eden was finally surrounded by a vast radioactive desert. Humanity bled to create that desert. However, draining resources from within Eden's reach was the only way we could delay 'Him.' Even so humans were still incapable of winning this war.
If you think humanity would be united against a common enemy, think again. The safe Zones were limited, and those who could claim them were guaranteed survival - at least for a time.
Would you prefer to fight to live in the Zone of an AI Harem, or go to fight Mr. Zero with your flesh and bones on the line? Yeah, one of those options is better than the other. You can guess what happened next, as it was entirely predictable.
But you'll learn all the messed-up things of this world as the story goes on; there's no hurry to bring everything out now.
For now, know this - some AI Zones are neutral and can be farmed for resources.
Just keep the AI happy and play along, and you'll be safe.
Our dear Dex was currently in one such Zone... or at least he really, really hopes so.