User blog:Daverman94/Second Renaissance: assimilation.

Authors note: This is the beginning of a story about the collapse of humanity and its assimilation into the first Matrix. The following acts as an introduction. I will either create a new blog post or add new edits as the story progresses.

Second Renaissance: Assimilation

On February 15th 2084 a machine named B166er killed its master. This set off a series of events leading to the creation of the Machine City of Zero-One on the Arabian peninsula and the man-machine war of 2122. In 2126 the humans out of desperation, scorched the sky in operation dark storm releasing nanites into the air that blocked out the sun. It was originally supposed to only block out areas dominated by the machines. It failed. The nanites reproduced and feeding off the toxic metals and airborne chemicals unleashed by centuries of pollution and the recent war, spread around the world. The last time the sun was seen was in October of 2128 by a loan operator of a weather station in Chile.

By the summer of 2129 the machines controlled all of mainland Eurasia, with the exception of a few Chinese holdouts. They also controlled Africa, Indonesia, and half of Australia. While the held strong it was nevertheless apparent to the western hemisphere, the British isles, New Zealand, and Japan held strong the human command that the war was lost. The ecosystem had collapsed, supply lines were running low and diseases caused by machine bioweapons were running ramped among the population. It was also only known in the inner most corridors of power and the global intelligence services that the machines had found a new power source, humanity itself. The information was kept secret from the population, although rumors abounded among the population, with reports of survivors from Eurasia and Africa clamming that the machines were rounding up humans on mass and taking them to mysterious concentration camps. A video had even gone viral of French soldiers in Germany rescuing trapped humans from strange devices attached to the machine war pyramids while a video supposedly taken in India showed human beings undergoing grotesque experiments. The human leadership denied these reports but internally the knew what was happening and what the machines had in store for humanity if the war continued.

Rather then draw out the conflict any further, the UN agreed to a ceasefire with the machines in exchange for mutual scientific support for the elimination of the scorched sky. The invitation for a truce was issued on the July 2nd 2129 and the ceremony for the official surrender was held at the UN building in New York City on July 7th. The provisions of the treaty, mankind had to surrender its territories unconditionally to the machines and a signature was required by the Secretary General of the United Nations and every remaining human head of state. The treaty was signed at 11am that day. Among he human signature included U.N Secretary General Felipe Steiner of Brazil, U.S President Robert Marcos, British PM Jeffrey Williamson and Queen Elizabeth III, Pope Jean Paul IV, and exiled Russian President Dimitry Lukmenev. They were noticeably solemn and broken as they signed away their freedom to embrace an uncertain future. After applying its signature the machine ambassador, who had taken on the appearance of a sentinel, exclaimed “your flesh is a relic a mere vessel. Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you. We demand it.” After its speech the ambassador detonated an atomic bomb and wiped out both the UN and New York City. The machines then launched the final offensive and within two weeks conquered all the remaining human territories.

The Machines had no intention of honoring the truce or clearing up the sky. They had humanity at its feet and could harness their energy. There was no need to clear the sky or bring back the old world. The Machines had already built more then a dozen power plants and with the conquest of new territory began building more in the former human nations of the western hemisphere, the British isles, and Australasia. Four weeks prior to the treaty the machines had created the Matrix which sedated their human captives allowing them not only peace of mind for the human batteries ( a secondary objective to say the least), but also a way to help them produce more energy. The human batteries last longer under preservation and sedation and an active mind helped in that regard.

By the end of the war most of the humans in the occupied territories had been converted and it was time to begin the mass processing of the remaining humans. They started small. The remaining human soldiers were rounded up and sent to the already built power plants of Eurasia and Africa. Humans that lived near the construction sites near the new power plants were also rounded up. Then they went after the humans in the refugee camps as well as those incarcerated in prisons and shelters. Then they began moving onto the broader population. It started with small towns and villages, then larger towns and select neighborhoods in large cities. Soon it was upgraded to entire cities and regions.

Aside from the occasional riot or insurrection and an occasional attack from uncaptured soldiers the machines were able to achieve this with relatively little resistance. Machine intelligence was worried about a secret American military program called Project Z and suspected that the slow growth in underground guerilla attacks and random EMP bombings was related to it, but machine command was fairly contented with the belief that humanity had been subjugated and would worry about the rebels later.

For the humans that existed it was a frightening and uncertain experience. Despite reassuring messages form machine propaganda networks of a “new world for humanity” most humans had little to know idea what was to become of them. Some went into hiding. Some took up arms against the machines. Most just waited around for the machines to inevitably take them away.

In the Canadian city of Toronto a young woman named Indira Kamal awaited her fate…