Earth

It is 2238. The population has stabilised at 10 billion after the crash of 2050 when the population increase reversed and started decreasing over the following few decades. Many companies and governments also saw the writing on the wall and increased the odds of people at least having one child by establishing a multitude of local crèche and babysitting establishments.

The urge to find new technological solutions is as strong as ever and advances are coming thick and fast with new global patent laws that release patents after a decade if they’re not consistently used to ensure that scientific developments aren’t hidden by greedy corporations.

Nations still exist, but they have combined into various unions with practical appeal, and people have established several transnational lunar colonies and inhabited orbital satellites so that they can take advantage of those locations’ unique gravitational effects to develop new technologies.

Mines have been established on some of the satellite moons and asteroids orbiting Saturn using computer-controlled and entirely uninhabited machines and the ore is then processed on the moon before the raw product is shipped to earth. This is an expensive endeavour that barely breaks even but it allows for the development of further technologies. Unfortunately space travel has hit its limit in increasing shuttle speeds -- while it only takes less than a day to reach the moon, three months to reach Mars, and under two years to reach Saturn, it would still take a minimum of 50,000 years to reach the nearest solar system.

Humanity had to accept this limitation and thus looked elsewhere and found interdimensional travel and the world that would be Hope (see Wastelanders). While cybernetic augmentations have increased to the degree that they can do things that the human limb cannot, it is generally agreed that it is better to use wearable technology than to have your limbs severed and replaced.

Those who require an augmentation often select one covered in a synthetic fabric that acts and appears similar to human skin with painted detailing that makes it almost identical to the human eye. This synthetic fabric can best be portrayed by using a foundation a shade lighter on that limb and a slightly puckered line around where the prosthetic would attach to the limb.

Robotics have improved in leaps and bounds but androids that look humanoid still create an uncanny valley effect with a near life-look (but not quite) appearance. No form of true artificial intelligence has ever been created, and therefore these robots are poor communicators that rely on automated speech responses (i.e. they say “I’m well,” when someone asks it how it is). The robots are incapable of understanding the meaning or value of conversations or to develop their own dialogue independent of recorded scripts. They are unable to form their own opinions and are entirely dependent on their original programming.

Humans also have settlements on the moon and Mars. There are roughly 400,000 people living on the moon, typically in tourism and scientific research division. Mars has a smaller population of 95,000 individuals due to the difficulty of reaching that planet. While humans have continue to explore interdimensional space through the use of drones since discovering Last Hope, they have not found another habitable planet anywhere near the drone arrival points and so have not attempted to settle another planet. Humans have attempted to reestablish contact with Hope but their drones never returned -- until recently