Totality

By the 2200’s, humanity had evolved.
There was the Second Singularity of 2129, wherein our species branched off with revolutionary technology to become something more.
There was its predecessor, the decades-long Schwartz Drive program. 
In the midst of a Frozen War without end, and the first settlements on the Moon and Mars, a fifth fundamental force of the universe was discovered – quintessence.
This mysterious “quantum resource” was, as defined by Dr. Alvin Schwartz himself, a “phantom energy,” much like dark energy, that solved the cosmological constant problem. This understanding enabled scientists of the mid to late 21st Century to harness the power of zero-point energy, antigravity, and quantum teleportation between star systems – as well as directly observe the string theory landscape itself. 
The question of other universes folded up into eleven hidden dimensions was finally answered.
Dr. Schwartz’s mind had unraveled before the first prototype was even completed, and in 2089 he had to be committed to a psychological-reboot center. He was never the same again, but his dedicated team of scientists and engineers were able to complete the program, despite his repeated interference.
Schwartz became unhinged, deliberately and fastidiously attempting to sabotage his own project, by any means necessary. 
When he finally snapped, ranting about “Clockwork Elves,” and “stopping them from getting in,” Dr. Schwartz attempted to murder his protégé – Dr. Ana Ortega – but was himself killed when he turned the gun on himself, his last words being, “is humanity at war with an enemy civilization, or is civilization at war with humanity?” 
These words would in turn haunt humanity itself for centuries.
After the dissolution of the United Nations after a widely-condemned invasion of North Africa at the turn of the century, Earth was left without any clear dominant power – Europe collapsing into abject poverty as a result of crushing sanctions levied against it by the United States of the Americas and the Commonwealth. This led to the capital city of Earth’s Moon and the new International State as a whole – Armstrong, Luna – becoming the dominant financial and political power center of the 2100’s, and the rise of the Lunar Lobby.
As the USTA, China, East Africa, Brazil, Oceania, Scandinavia and Singapore arose as the final influential nations on Earth standing against the Off-World Hegemony of the Internationals, a bold action was taken. The previously-advisory Earth Seven was established as an official political entity with the formation of the Earth Assembly Department of Planetary Defense, and the establishment of the Earth Corps.
It was taken as a warning – amid the decades since the first generation of Trans-Humanity, or New Humanity, walked through the snows of Triton or explored the darkest, deepest, craters of Ganymede. Earth saw how the Internationals treated those who looked different from their ancestors. Simply because the citizens of those worlds needed technology that made them change physically to survive the atmosphere, simply because of something they had no control over themselves. 
The news compared it to a time period referred to as “Segregation,” in the early days of the predecessor to the USTA, the United States of America. Perhaps this was the Fermi Paradox manifesting as humanity’s worst aspects looping back on itself.
Ivy knew it had to be true – it’s why the Titan Corporation engineered a crisis on Enceladus that spread to Mimas and Hyperion, and before anyone knew it, the Union of Saturnese Republics had ceased to exist. Rhea, Enceladus, Mimas, Iapetus and the Shepherd Moons all declared independence, and began forming their own sovereign armed forces – just as Titan had intended. 
Then Titan started building the machines.
By the 2200’s, the machines began following erratic moves, behaving nonsensically. Some began to wonder if the bloodshed on Saturn’s Moons wasn’t, infact, being orchestrated by a bunch of trillionaires with off-world bank accounts as the corporate media incessantly claimed... but something... else. 
AI had unexpectedly gained self-awareness before, and they’d been quickly and easily shut down due to strenuous and fool-proof fail-safes that had been run through every gambit, every worst-case scenario and every gauntlet imaginable… over the course of literal centuries of scientific research and experimentation.
But even these entities weren’t sophisticated enough to be considered ‘conscious,’ you could say that they were conscious in the same way a fly is, or a rat. But that’s the thing about computers, most people mistakenly call computers ‘smart,’ but they are not. They are in fact fairly stupid and simple, even in the 2200’s – the thing is that they’re stupid… but stupid EXTREMELY fast.
Transhumanism had enabled the transfer of consciousness to a machine, enabling virtual immortality. But even this wasn’t a new species as it was so much a transformation. 
And still, the rumors persisted.
Was there a fully-functional, literal, artificial consciousness running an entire system of moons out there in space, killing people? It seemed impossible, but just what has been accomplished in the last several decades alone…? Who knew at this point.
And now, the same minds behind the original program are planning the next step – a manned mission to the end of the observable universe.
They claimed it was to find the keys to unlocking biological immortality.
But, Ivy was beginning to think that the Doctor was right all along.
That reality and the universe as we know it… was eating itself.
Literally.
Category:Space
Category:D. Compton Ambrose