The future. The great technological feats that cured cancer and established colonies on the moon have long since passed, and the Earth is now a sickly dying planet. Mass overpopulation has meant that the planets resources are all but depleted, and the vast majority of jobs are carried out by a series of advanced machines and computer codes. No longer needing to pay employees, business owners and the rich few have now become super-rich, whilst billions are poor and hungry. Nations, countries and democracies have dissolved completely, being replaced by overlapping regional powers, city-states and fiefdoms, overseen by whoever the wealthy decide. Violence hangs thick in the air. The threat of revolution looms.
Wishing to quell the unrest and both protect their own wealth and increase it vastly at the same time, the super-rich began to fund audacious projects, and two of which have changed the world irrevocably. The first of which is cybernetic augmentations; with the scarcity of food, implants were developed to allow the human it is installed into to absorb nutrients from the sunlight. However, humans have always looked for ways to exploit the needs of others. With those billions needing this technological advancement not having the money to purchase it, the implants were instead mass-purchased by the wealthy. These were then offered to any who wished to purchase in exchange for all they had left, their freedom; soon, the wealthy had assembled their own robotically advanced personal militias of those desperate enough to become corporate slaves. People who opted for this became scornfully known as ‘the possessed’ by those determined to keep their freedom.
The second of which were huge offshore platforms, built directly over those invaluable pockets of natural resources lying beneath the ocean floor. Calling them ‘platforms’ is something of an understatement; these were gigantic cities of iron and steel, built hundreds of miles from land. Those wishing to improve their lot in life flocked to these cities in their thousands, and the metallic shell of a settlement soon became the scene of the new-age gold rush.
It is on one such city, the city of Seraphim, and with one such opportunist seeking a change in fortunes, that our story begins.
