Full Immersion

John Carabri attached the brain-computer interface around his brain. After decades of hard work, even against the impossible odds stacked against the Cosmists by the Terrans in the wake of the Artilect War, the first Artificial Super Intelligence had finally been created.

While Japan was one of the few nations still friendly to the Cosmists, The Artilect's greater-than-human intellect had already allowed for cybernetic modification never before dreamed of and helped the Cosmists to retake China and much of Australia from the Terrans.

Now the Cosmists were trying a new experiment. John Carabri was commissioned to fully put himself at the mercy of the Artilect in a new experiment aimed at fully uploading the human consciousness into machine. The idea was to enter into the firsttruly full immersion VR while certain cognitive functions were slowly exported to the computer he was connecting to. The conversion process would be overseen by none other than the Artilect itself.

"Well, John, here we are at last. Three years and five months ago marked the birth of the first Artilect, and now, finally, after nearly a century of developing artificial intelligence, we are at the crux of the transhumanist dream of uploading the human consciousness, and perhaps the true mark in history that will designate the technological singularity. This is an historic day, the day when mankind and machine finally merge to become one. November 11, 2064 marks the day when humankind finally breaks the shackles of biology to become it's own god." said Professor Galten, head of AI research in the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

For the past twenty years, the Institute had spearheaded AI research as most of the western world quickly grew hostile toward AI and cybernetics research. Largely beginning with the religious sentiments of western culture, the Terran movement really started out as a terrorist movement. However, in the late 2030s, it quickly gained political support particularly within the United States after a scandal involving the malfunction of advanced robots designed for manufacturing purposes in the Jalin Company where some of the robots reportedly became hostile toward their human overseers. The US was quickly followed by the rest of North America and the European Union.

By the early 2040s, the western world had shut down it's research into AI and cybernetics, leaving Japan as the most advanced country still engaging in AI research, so Tokyo quickly became positioned as the seat of the Cosmists.

In 2045, the first AI with equal intelligence to that of a human, an Artificial General Intelligence, was created.

In 2051, the UN had a conference called by the now Terran run nations that called for the global restriction of AI research and cybernetics. Russia, China, Japan, and India were the major powers in opposition while Australia took a neutral stance. Most third world countries were obviously too concerned with their own internal interests to be worried about scientific frontiers. When the Terrans won the vote however, two factions quickly emerged and the UN split. The Iron Curtain was back, but instead of a conflict of political ideology such as the one that defined the Cold War of a century before, this conflict was more fundamental in that it was about the future evolution of humanity. The only real similarity between the Cold War and the Artilect War was that both pitted the eastern hemisphere against the western hemisphere.

While the Cosmists had genetic research and superior computer technology with which to equip their ground soldiers, the Terran run United States ruled the skies and the bombs. While the East focused on the development of AI, cybernetic super soldiers, and biological warfare, the West was setting up orbital military platforms and by 2055, even established the first permanent colony on Mars.

Where the Cosmists could slaughter the Terrans in any ground conflict, the Terrans had the ultimate advantage in that they could strike from above and do massive damage without even needing to resort to ground confrontations until a city was so reduced that their sheer numbers overwhelmed the Cosmist forces.