Welcome to the Antisense Wiki[]
The world of Antisense, my forthcoming science fiction novel. Here I will upload graphics, glossaries, timelines, character bios, maps and histories about the world of Antisense.
Plot Summary[]
Five hundred years have passed since the end of our civilisation. Most of the great cities of the twenty first century lie under a kilometre of ice. The earth’s ozone layer is nearly gone, and the magnetic poles have wandered from their places. The toxic sludge of a handful of wars still coats parts of the earth. Yet around the equator a belt of forest sustains a new people, who have built for themselves a world without money, roads, cities---or men. Instead of money they have karma, a kind of rating, partly automatically calculated and partly awarded by councils of thirteen senior people convened for the purpose. People live to be about 200 (using stem cell tech) and their lives are divided into seven ‘adventures’ or stages. Karma is given on the basis of feeds; everyone has feedbling, jewelry that records real time audio and video and floats it on the foam, their version of the internet. Feeds are proof of work done and also like facebook timelines. Five space elevators or World Trees have been built, known as Zigsa’s Petals, they were initially used to bring down the deadly space fortresses of the Radical Age, but are now tourist destinations and cargo chutes for Helium 3 from the Moon. Much of history has been lost or forgotten, but groups of dedicated delvers work to recover the past.
What is known is this: Some time in the early twenty first century, strange children began to be born. Some of the girls were female to all appearances but genetically XY; they came to be called Broken Pots. And nearly all the sons had something called Male Hypertoxic Syndrome. Their eyes were reddened by terrible allergies, and as babies their skin is hypersensitive to a life-threatening degree. Even a simple touch could send them into convulsions. They had to be reared in isolation, without the touch of human hands, but as they grew older, their tortured nerve endings died. By adolescence their skins were almost completely numb. This turned them into thrill-seekers, cruel, unfeeling, yet also highly intelligent and motivated. They became known as hanyos. The initial rise in the number of men now took a downturn. Human sperm became a highly valuable commodity and young men could pay their way through college simply by selling it. Since sons were now at a premium, men from lower social strata were patronised and adopted by richer men who ‘set them up’ in life. Slowly two parallel societies emerged; the world of goods, controlled by men, and the world of services, offered by women. Corporations grew to control lives, and later territories: employees lived in company flats and bought company goods with company credit cards: since everything was networked, only compatible operating systems could be in the same dwelling. Incompatible ones tried to install a rootkit in each other: a rootkit allowed the hostile corporation’s hackers to gain control of the person’s home: fridge, shower head, credit card, gas tank, and they would have to pay their own employers to restore service.
Zigsa, a former Tibetan nun, escaped from a Chinese prison, made her way to a Buddhist cave monastery in the Flaming Mountains north of the Takla Makan desert and set up a survivarium: a self contained cave community. She foraged in the trash dumps of the super rich oil townships of the Tarim Basin, and she became a symbol and a magnet for the disaffected, the escaped, the damaged and the angry. One of the scientists she rescued figured out how to swap genetic material between eggs and make viable embryos. The rebels began to have babies. Zigsa taught herself to read and write, then she hacked into phone and computer networks and left little articles: how to cure pimples, how to choose the right lingerie, recipes, top ten cute photos of rabbits, etc. Each of these has a puzzle attached, and they are numbered. When the puzzle is solved, a singe page of text opens. People become addicted to doing these puzzles, and try to collect the whole set of 517. When complete, this forms a book of guidelines on how to set up a survivarium with illicit reactor, farms, zoos, hospital school and dormitories, with radiation shielding, air filtration and enrichment, and simple but effective defence. Although Zigsa died in 16 Preflorian, 2158 OS, in her last sayings she outlined the basis of the world they were to build if they ever got a chance to return to the surface. She called this ‘sangsara’ which means both world and family.
Clashes with rebels and rival corporations convinced the hanyos that they needed some sort of endgame to finish off both. Darwinian ais were created and reverse-engineered into the battle equipment to replace the human pilots. The hanyos sealed themselves away in 52 Preflorian, 2122 OS in luxurious fortresses with caviar, toilet paper and whores to last for twenty years, having instructed the machines to kill everyone else. In 40 Preflorian, 2134 OS a comet struck the earth and nearly finished off all life except for the survivariums which made their own food and air. The hanyo shelters died when stocks ran out. Till 0 Florian, 2174 OS, the only things moving on earth were machines. Then at length the ais discovered Zigsa’s survivarium, and after some tense moments they helped humanity to come back to the surface.
Thus began the new era. Since then, the people have built a world of great beauty and opulence. Children are cherished and taught through games which are moderated by their seniors and model the real world. Young people are encouraged to travel and explore the world and themselves. Middle aged people solve practical problems, and older people use their minds. Youth is thought to end around sixtyfive. Savitar Oio Luximi is an 83-year-old sirsa who spends most of her time studying the past, She has an ai lover, Roka Arala Sencheya, who is a healer, and she has recently acquired a human apprentice, Tira Naoko Esprana, 24 years old. Tira is a wunderkind and a problem child who fell through the cracks. In a world where children are highly cherished and nurtured, she was born in the desert, and she has no social skills to soften the edge of her intelligence. At seventeen she presented a discovery she claimed to have made to the Skywatch Cloud but it is so fantastic her seniors think she is making it up and they lock the data, to her great chagrin. She has been with Savitar for two years now, and she decoded the files which Savitar had been struggling with for forty years.
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