Chapter 3 New Earth Recruitment Announcements

Director’s Screen Notes

     Depictions of the orbital society vessels housing 12th generation survivors within the inner belt of the Milky way are shown.  Supporting footage plays throughout, including mixed archival clips shared as supportive historical evidence.

…Months Earlier

      AI Billy Narration: (Ads flashing attention across Nomadians psy-verse and communications platforms)- “Be a part of the first colony to return to earth in more than 500 years.  Apply today! You will be notified Jan 10, 2524, if selected for the New Earth colony where the air is fresh, the water is clean and the land is ready for planting!”

Narration by AI10 from the year 3001:

    In the year 2013, Dr. Richard Slutkin observed violence operates like a contagious disease.  At the height of the corruption between 2024 and 2050, humanity rebelled and war ceased to be profitable as it became too widespread. Even redevelopment strategies that relied on conflict could no longer acquire resources faster than the destruction consumed them. Non-renewables nearly vanished on earth. The world had not heeded the warning and predictions of its leading scholars like Dr. Slutkin.

     In the year 2030, toxic accumulation and uncontained mass violence had pushed economic and ruling systems into cascading collapse. By 2050, Earth’s biomes became fully uninhabitable due to widespread contaminations.

     By 2075, nearly 80% of the population were hybrid humans with enhanced bio-machined capabilities and lengthened lifespans. Some augmentations were optional, while others were mandatory. This was impressive considering Nomadians were only into the first 25 years of orbital life. By the year 3001, Nomadians had discovered how to apply Black Hole science to slow time for humans at the cellular level, allowing the lifespan to increase to over 600 years.  

     The way people consumed information evolved as well. Eyewear, for example, became the size of contact lenses, yet these lenses do much more than vision support. They supported security functions, defensive tools, and other integrated systems.  Surveillance and transparency became necessities of daily life.

     After 2050, crime codes were rewritten to include regulated outlets for violence, including voluntary, safer forms that narrowed the scope of harm while still acknowledging primal urges. One example was virtual reality combat. People could fight, compete and win based on skills and decision making, not brute force. With controlled violence, damages were limited to protective equipment in a contained environment.

     The decision to embrace AI after its initial rejection came from the recognition that designing habitats that can support life, while staying within the limits of sustainable biodiversity is complex and constantly changing. This required the use of all available resources. 

     As the collapses became more evident leading to mass exodus, a growing consensus developed favoring the use of AI in orbital life. It was decided that life and death decisions should not be left to humans alone due to bias or error. It was agreed it was in humanities interests to use AI life-saving tools.  

     The Orbital Machine Age (post mass exodus) introduced automated decision-making through human and machine partnerships. Evidence-based protocols used technology and available data with redundant verification to improve decisions by as much as 60 percent in both accuracy and speed. These advancements greatly increased efficiency and reduced avoidable harm when compared to humans who were not augmented. 

     Placing the greater good before the self became necessary for survival in the Orbital Machine Age. Purpose, belief, and values were embedded into society from birth, then reinforced through mandatory training.

     Those deemed unable to adapt, along with those flagged for dangerous reasoning failures or unstable behavior, were recycled. Pre-2050, toxic accumulation was associated with widespread illness, including a rise in neurological and developmental disorders. Around 2100, the rate of recycling was reduced dramatically due to the orbital society improved rules, diets, lifestyles and other intense detoxification efforts. 

     Over time, as DNA was repaired and healthier offspring became more common, the need for recycling declined. By 2150, the first hundred years after mass exodus, the recycle rate of natural born Nomadians dropped to roughly one in ten births. Just 374 years later, the recycling rate was closer to 1 in 10,000. The reduction was attributed primarily to the rapid decrease of teratogens that cross the placenta barrier and healthier food and water supplies. Advances in AI driven repair systems and especially cognitive processing modifications are also credited as saving many lives.

     Humans fought against being error-prone by relying on contingencies, peer review, and robot guides that supported better decision-making. “Doing” became more respected than “saying.” Nomadians embraced ancient values that warned against unreasoned impulsive actions. Oral history especially remains prominent among the Naturals, the significantly less modified humans who make up 20 percent of society by the year 2524. 

     After the mass exodus of 2050, consistent behavior in support of the Nomadian Charter became a primary measure of character. Conformity was considered essential for social trust, stability, and security.  

     In pre-2050 industrial periods, profits often outweighed meager penalties for harm caused by the manufacture and use of products. Capitalist incentives favored accepting risks, absorbing damages and continuing productions regardless of observable harms. Technology was often used in ways that were exploitative and intentionally inefficient because inefficiency could increase profit due to the need for more products. Even when making products that were to result in destruction, extinctions, or death, those allegedly leading humanity prioritized profits over essential equilibriums needed to sustain life, with rare exceptions.  

     By 2524 standards, actions that threaten DNA were classified as the highest offense, labeled “arrogance to the ninth degree,” and carried an immediate death sentence when supported by sufficient evidence.  

     On Nomadia, choice and freedom were regulated within objective safe limits, with an emphasis on securing only acceptable non-life threatening risks. Any adverse impacts were expected to fall inside acceptable levels or otherwise be contained by the internal AI operating systems linked to the brains of over 80% of the population.  For Naturals, that remained link-free, AI droids provided any needed code reinforcements.

     The Universal Council found through experience when power is held collectively, including AI inputs, the incentive for opportunists to compete for control in waste producing ways could be greatly diminished. They argued that collective harmony and cooperation is healthier when gross exploitation and any human caused damages are controlled and/or rigorously monitored for. In partnership with AI, they built non-biased prevention and containment responses with consequences in place to improve accountability. This resulted in more honest and highly informed debates and better decision making.  The premise of the New Justice system was focused on reducing errors, preventing contaminations and reinforcing optimal outcomes using available tools and best practices. Unrestrained bias and exercising unreasonable punishments associated with the older forms of justice died with the birth of Nomadia.    

     Nomadias cultural emphasis on honest collective welfare eliminated earlier goal-seeking behavior such as profiteering. Industries tied to destruction and material or resource exploitation, including war and drugs, were targeted through reforms that prioritized new criterion for success central to collective survival. As disease waned, this reformed democracy eliminated hoarding, which had contributed to the great collapse of Earth 1. While humanity’s obsession with corruption appeared to be over, obedience remained a central survival mechanism. Over five centuries in space, many unhealthy habits were gradually conditioned out of our Nomadian culture altogether. 

     The valuation systems of the Orbital Machine Age are nearly perfect. The new justice codes, while extreme in some cases due to lack of tolerances for deviance, are defensible as tools of survival. Over time, one built-in bias emerged as a form of control placed on all human by Ai’s because humans were deemed to possess innate capabilities for destruction- including self-destruction.

     This bias, known as anti-destruct, was tolerated because it drove improvements in the design and use of AI.  AI had extinguished violence on Nomadia with very rare exceptions. However, in the year 2523 anti-AI sentiments have intensified in Naturals.  Attitudes toward AI and droids are created a potentially dangerous fracture in society. The door for a cultural shift in power sharing between AI’s, droids and Naturals was opening. AI3 determined that a coup movement led by the Naturals threatened to return power more exclusively to those who are not augmented with AI once earth was resettled. On the other hand, Ai analyst contended modern life has become dependent on technology and the probability of survival drops dramatically without maintaining the AI partnerships at reasonable levels. 

      Past research on human behavior dating back to 2012 found moral values contributing to human errors sharply varies among diverse groups. Appropriate rapid human responses to unique and unrehearsed emergencies were found to be impeded by doubt, shock and obedience. One researcher assigned by the Japanese Parliament following the Fukishima nuclear meltdown accident in Japan observed how obedience contributed greatly to problems delaying and preventing planned containment actions. In qualitative research, they found that instead of following the provided accessible printed manuals on disaster response, people opted to follow a chain of verbal command. Nuclear reactor experts actively ignored their own better judgement and knowledge, apparently expecting superior officers to know better.  They were wrong. Such observations supported the move to AI partnerships in security and disaster response because people are known to be unreliable, or not dependable, even when in possession of available facts or skills. This is true because many variables impact human behavior. 

     Traditions of science and technology carried humanity’s greatest achievements into space during Mass Exodus. Yet the culture that developed differed in many ways from life on Earth-1. Over generations, certain nuances faded, including relationships to animal life and land-based experience. Emotional adaptation also changed. Fear, risk and experimentation had once been shaped by open environments on Earth, but vessel life required restraint and predictability. 

     Closed space habitats were tightly controlled because there was little room for error. Emergency contingencies were built into daily systems and were largely managed through efficient AI oversight. Over time, augmented personalities adapted toward a more logic-centered society. 

     Five centuries of ship life also challenged earlier ideals of introspection and personal interpretation, since collective survival became the dominant value. Non-violence was mandatory. Disciplined minds were treated as resources, and safer alternatives were developed to redirect humanity’s primal tendency toward violence into controlled productive expressions. 

     Earlier generation’s beliefs in human superiority over nature were proven foolish. In the Orbital Machine era, arrogance, a trait tolerated only during adolescence, was considered anti-democratic. Arrogance in adults was even a criminal offense under Nomadia’s justice codes. Arrogance was treated as a threat to justice because it undermines symbiotic relationships, corrodes equilibrium and damages mutual reliance through selfish distortion. For that reason, strict limits on destructive behavior were implemented after 2050, ensuring that stewardship guided by the best science could greatly improve survival odds.

     One small rebel faction managed to preserve essential unaltered human intelligence, holding onto pragmatism and skepticism as independent critical thinkers. They were accepted as a necessary Natural class. The Naturals argued for peaceful diplomacy in service of the common good, while also insisting on greater individuality and diversity during an era defined by forced controls. It was a similar existential problem for Nomadia that Earth-1 societies had never resolved regarding identity and purpose. While we could explain how life was sustained in the universe, we still only had speculative un-unified theories for why. 

     Much of early human history was marked by discrimination and hatred based on race. The end result of ideological pursuits was domination, including rationalized violence, systemic discrimination, and hate-based messaging that divided and destroyed communities. In that context, racism functioned as an instrument of war. Historical examples show that discriminatory behavior tied to color or perceived color can be reinforced through institutions and state power. Records and legal cases also show that racism is enabled by power structures and can be enacted across different groups, rather than being confined to a single direction among a single race.  

     The riots that began in 2025 further exposed the instability of trans-national capitalist systems and accelerated public demand for new models centered on equality, justice, and appreciation for diversity. Discord and systemic collapse gave way to competing visions of a “New Dawn” era. However, entropy was already in motion, and it became too late to arrest the damage or restore equilibrium. The result was the Mass Exodus from Earth in 2050. 

     Post-Earth, it was agreed that myths of superiority would not be permitted to rest on class or race. Measures of rank were redesigned around aptitude and endurance, using measurable skills. The reward model for leadership also shifted, placing far less emphasis on materialism. More altruistic concepts of status replaced older habits, driven by necessity, limited resources, and the practical constraints of orbital living. 

     On Nomadia, the tyranny of greed was replaced by the tyranny of necessity. Poverty was eliminated and with it, the offspring of greed, ignorance, and terrorism faded into distant memory. 

Resettlement Dilemmas

     In 2524, with the resettlement of Earth pending, leading scientists questioned whether humans, placed back into a more natural environment, might regress or develop new desires that push culture back toward collapse, especially if reduced reliance on AI becomes implemented. The AI systems that helped stabilize Earth were poised to monitor human impacts going forward and remained a critical part of the planned security infrastructure. 

     Because much of the policing and recycling work was transferred centuries ago to AI, any significant reduction in AI support, as proposed by the Naturals, could have unintended consequences such as a rise in code violations. Less augmentation generally meant predictable higher error rates and more abnormalities in humans. This counterargument was presented by the Empirical Guard for consideration by the Universal Council in determining roles and responsibilities regarding the resettlement colony that would become known as Earth II.  In particular, the threat analysis aimed to inform decisions around the appropriate population rates of modified humans, droids and naturals resettling the earth as part of the first wave.  As the story of Earth 1 & II is told you will see the important lessons learned leading to the year 3001 with hopes we can continue to survive. 

     During the industrial revolutions human efforts to control violence and toxins were unreliable and attempts to protect wildlife and plants were often sporadic and desperate. They lacked the tools, discipline, and resources to effectively correct their own course as the rise and fall of industrial society demonstrated. Among the most dangerous flaws was a broad tolerance for dishonesty, a weakness that appeared across earths cultures and repeatedly undermined trust and survival. 

     By 2100, the science of harmonic sustainability and symbiosis was well underway in the Orbital Machine Age. Economic equity, fair access to influence, meaningful ways to contribute socially and consistent standards of fairness were promoted as foundations of healthy social development and as preventative measures against corruption -including violence. 

     In the year 2200 technology to shield against radiation was perfected moving beyond transmutation to full neutralization called Noraytope.  This was particularly useful as the Earth’s distance from the sun had lessened over the last 5 centuries causing earth to have higher than normal radiation exposure levels. Noraytope was added to the space stations that were in place to help destroy meteors.

     At the height of Earth-1’s corruption (pre-exodus), ten percent of the population hoarded ninety percent of the resources. This left the remaining ninety percent of the population to fight over what was left. 

     Looking back, we learned that power is not a solution to conflict. More often, the abuse of power reinforces violence, which is largely preventable. The age of dominance by force ended with the Mass Exodus and the birth of Nomadia. No one wins from contamination, nuclear destruction, or the contagious spread of disease- including violence. Disputes can be managed more safely and when defense is necessary, it can be carried out with greater responsibility. 

     A lack of accountability and the habit of hiding behind corrupt laws or misinformed ideas, is no longer tolerated as justification for death and destruction. This includes the alleged good intentions of the hoarder class, once mistakenly disproportionately rewarded as elites. Post-exodus policy was shaped instead by older and more durable values, including traditions of sharing and collective care drawn from the earliest and longest surviving earth-based civilizations. 

     In the next segment, let’s go back in time again to revisit 2524 as if we are there and get to know some of the historical characters we celebrate from this Orbital Machine Age.