The Universal Translator

There are two reasons behind my inability to narrate this story directly. The first is that we do not exist at the same time. The second is that we do not exist on the same plane of consciousness (this will be made clearer as our story goes on). Both these factors have made communication between us difficult. But I will tell you this story nonetheless, mainly for entertainment purposes.

I will be using terminology familiar to your mind in order to make both our lives easier. Many references within the original story are abstract and/or confusing, but an assortment of translation algorithms have allowed me to convert them to words and numbers that the 21st-century human mind finds familiar.

Our story takes place a hundred years after the end of the Hurricane Wars, one of the two worst catastrophes of the third millennium. So far.

The Hurricane Wars lasted several decades. The hurricanes had no agenda as such, so it cannot be accurately said that they “won the war”. The results, however, favoured everyone left alive. With the world population a mere fraction of what it once was (no one really wanted to have children anymore, especially with all the hurricanes and floods sweeping them away), humanity could rebuild.

Despite the end of the bloodlines of nearly all economically challenged humans, a multitude of species, including bees, had survived. Their numbers were small, but enough that hope remained.

Occasionally, another hurricane came along, but the means to deal with it were in place thanks to The Unification Act of 2113, a new law that gave absolute control to those with the ability to end the unstable climate of the past and to connect hundreds of ‘countries’ into a single unified entity.

The quest for the unification of humankind had existed for millennia. From peer pressure to small-time conquests, from mighty empires to giant corporate takeovers, it was driven by a force fundamental to the nature of the universe—a force that got a significant step forward when the connection points between humans increased, and they increased exponentially, to the point where the greater self and the individual became, in a way, inseparable.

In the year 2115, humanity celebrated the first God. The goal of all major religions except Entropism had been achieved. Life had purpose.

This was because Entropists believed in worshipping ever-increasing entropy. ‘You might as well pick the winning side,’ they would say as they knelt before the Goddess of Chaos, who looked like a cloud (it is not easy to visualise chaos). Life was an abomination in their eyes. ‘The nature of disorder is to increase in a closed system!’ they would protest when confronted with the fact that life and complexity did, in fact, somehow emerge from a chaotic universe. Mass suicides were common in their religion, which is why it did not last very long.

And then there were Individualists, who claimed that the amount of disorder in the previous system was “just right”. Individuals weren’t meant to be grouped into larger organisations that could control their “free will”. Entropists longed for absolute chaos, whereas Individualists wanted conformity in nature up to the point of themselves. After that, chaos was perfectly fine. Individualists, for obvious reasons, had a difficult time organising in groups to make their voices heard. That is why their movement did not last very long, either.

The pre-Unification era had given birth to many more movements, each with a viewpoint of their own, and most of them were eventually coalesced into a unified human entity comprised of the seventeen great nations that exist during the time period of this story.

The ways of these nations are unlike any human system that has ever existed. While they are technically democracies, they are not systems you may be familiar with. They are also not technically “real”. Citizens live in an interactive augmented world where every aspect of who they are is known to higher intelligence, where all their senses are managed by their country, where all that they say, think, and do is crunched to form policy.

Every thought and every action of every individual counts as a vote. These votes are processed, and seamless decisions based on them are made by higher intelligence. Humans who work government jobs assist this intelligence and are glad to do so. Almost all national leaders claim that their countries are utopias, but it is worth remembering that everyone exaggerates on their resumes, and that politicians of the future are no exception.

The result of this is that each nation differs from the others in many aspects, creating a diversity essential for the survival of the overarching Human Unification.

Apart from the seventeen Unified Nations, there exist smaller mini-states. The mini-states consist of people who gave up connection in order to lead independent(ish) lives. They were initially led by the Individualists, but their ways have since changed. The Human Unification, being against unnecessary conflict, did not attempt to conquer small bands of mini-states, whose citizens used technology, but created boundaries they felt necessary between itself and them. The mini-states also maintained cordial relations with the Unification, which was a significantly more powerful entity than them.

Travel from the mini-states to a Unified Nation is permitted, but only after a compulsory mind-wipe. The Unification does not allow unmanaged thoughts, especially those of revolt, inside it. The consequences of such allowances could be disastrous.

Our story takes place in a country called Amido. Located in an area previously called “South Asia”, Amido’s population had reduced considerably during the Hurricane Wars, which unfortunately were also accompanied by an endless raging stream of droughts, floods, and heatwaves. But it remains amongst the most populous and powerful of kingdoms.

A note on tenses: It is an established fact that one of the major problems associated with time travel is that of grammar.

The past tense will be used while describing the events of this story, because they have already happened from my point of view, and also because it sounds nicer.

A note on pronouns: While traditional 21st-century pronouns (he/she/they etc.) have been used for human characters, the same cannot be used for other beings. For example, ae will be used for robots and ge for collective beings. These will be explained in the footnotes accompanying the story, and there is no reason to panic about them at the moment.