SORD’S FATHER ANTONIN WAS a physics professor at Durango’s university and a lead researcher at Prosperity’s Institute of Science. The Institute was a catch-all attempt by the young nation-state to establish a modest resurgence of scientific research.

In the previous few decades, none of the settlements of humans that evolved from the wreckage of GDII possessed adequately trained personnel or funding resources to resurrect anything like the degree of research that existed prior to the devastation. Prosperity’s Institute was a start.

Antonin’s parents, both of whom had just graduated law school in 2075, the year of GDII, named him after their least favorite Supreme Court Justice in United States history, one whom they felt greatly contributed to the erosion of the country’s social fabric.

For them, giving their son his name was a joke of sorts, a poke and prod at the presumptuous nature of human belief systems. At religious dogma and entitlement. At the presumed separation of church and state. At arrogance and hubris.

Inherent to the original’s Antonin’s construct of jurisprudence was his presumption that the Constitutional framers were faultless. It was a belief that the revered document’s doctrine, no matter how old, could withstand every test of time without ever adapting to the evolving circumstances of humanity. This belief system was adhered to even more rigidly as the doctrine’s underpinnings started to evaporate from the constant pressure of pervasively advancing, corrupting technologies.

Prosperity’s historians often argued about when American society started showing the signs of an irreversible deterioration. Similar to all societal failures in history, the smallest things, innocuous and slight, eventually gnawed at the basic principles of fairness intended in the underlying doctrines.

Antonin was one of the Justices who ardently supported the Citizens United case, a decision that greatly enabled the country’s politics to be overtly influenced and substantially guided by the proto-oligarchs of the early twenty-first century. This landmark ruling allowed the few in society with extreme wealth, often imbued with extremist religious, Randian, or Social Darwinist belief systems, to more readily integrate their belief constructs and self-profiting advantages into governmental policy via corporate structures. As a result, the ethics of fairness, kindness, and consideration in the once great nation were further subjugated for the benefit of the few.

Antonin was an ardent promoter and benefactor of a cult of self-proclaimed Constitutional purists that arose and prospered starting in the mid-twentieth century. They prophesied that by placing the founders upon godhead pedestals, by elevating these inviolable and wise beings as faultless and everlasting visionaries, the justice system could achieve a magical and most righteous consistency in the application of law for future ages.

The purist judges and justices only had one requirement: to impregnate themselves into the minds of their long-dead, irreproachable founders. By doing so, by strictly adhering to their blessed words, they could achieve a full and comprehensive vision of their sainted founders, thus preventing their personal biases from influencing the interpretation of laws and legal intent.

To the simpletons, this originalist, textualist philosophy seemed perfectly sensible. Why allow all that you had learned during your life to taint the sacred scrolls? Why allow your own belief constructs to influence the nature and intent of established law? As with most political obfuscations, however, this cultist dogma provided the perfect smokescreen for those who wished to inject their personal beliefs into every critical legal and ultimately societal decision.

With this simplistic approach, every decision could now be enshrined and embalmed as ‘the will of the founders,’ and the cultists were simply interpreting that will. Unbiased. Stripped bare of their own belief systems or predispositions. It would become purity, goodness, and virtue arrayed in the shining glow of righteous innocence.

As with all well-intentioned but self-serving efforts, it was good – in theory. Don’t legislate from the bench. Judge only based on the laws and their alignment with the original and most holy doctrines. Care not for what is ethically right or wrong in a decision, or its long term effects. Use not any situational judgment. Take into account no societal or technological changes, nor their effect on humanity. Care not for whether your decision might bind society together more fairly and cohesively, or tear it asunder. Abdicate your judgmental responsibility instead to lawmakers. This assumed, of course, that such bodies of government were even capable of legislating in a system long-corrupted by the monied interests they enabled through favorable jurisprudence.

These much revered, learned minds should have known. They should have seen the downstream impacts. Similar rationales for passing judgment had failed miserably throughout time, where ‘it is God’s law’ or ‘it is the will of the founders’ narratives were used to exacerbate societal imbalances, foment divisions and biases, and erode social norms.

Their efforts were ultimately a fool’s errand, at least as understood by Prosperity’s historians as they assessed why America lost its global standing and functionally unraveled as a working democracy by the 2030s. Society was rapidly evolving, becoming tethered to increasingly seductive, elusive, and often volatile and destructive belief systems advanced by social media companies and other media giants, purveyors of outrage that profited by eliciting and capitalizing on negative emotions – at least for a time.

Society’s de-evolution was also accelerated by multiple technological advances that occurred simultaneously and fed off each other. New methods of targeted gene splicing using CRISPR technologies grew rapidly, advanced by the widespread, instantaneous exchange of knowledge through networks.

Cost reduction in this tech occurred at a far faster pace than any Moore’s Law could have predicted, enabling over a million genetic engineering laboratories to exist worldwide by the early 2030s. Though many of these labs were created for commercial, academic, or medical interests, others existed solely for military or defensive needs.

And then there were the specialized labs funded or otherwise supported by the emerging proto-oligarchs and their many courtiers and profiteers. The purpose of these labs was not overtly exposed, but the well-positioned knew exactly why they existed.

They allowed the wealthy and powerful, the higher castes of beauty, advantage, and birthright, to actualize their Randian and Social Darwinist belief systems into the genetic realms. Not only could they now be born and bred into success by way of birth, luck, or intelligent access to fortune, they could also amplify their genetics to augment and enhance any desired capabilities or senses that might cement their superiority among others.

Such modifications could include something as simple as improving memory or math skills via genetics. Parents would pay handsomely for genetic augmentations to ensure their children were hyper-advantaged mentally or physically, or both. Others embraced enhanced physical characteristics via hybridization with mammalian, animal, or even plant DNA to achieve desired capabilities.

As each new technology supported and fed off the others, the pace of change was accelerated beyond anyone’s expectations. AI became the tool du jour for genetic experimentation. The geedee, or gene drive, community used AI systems extensively to concoct back room genetic infusions purported to cure any number of ills or enhance any sensory, physical, or mental skills that a purchaser felt needed enhancement.

Simply stated, too much technology happened in the time span of a few decades. This rapidity of change and the continuous nature of new discoveries and applications ultimately overwhelmed society’s systems, most particularly the legal system.

Who was at fault when an AI-controlled chipper committed a crime? The chipper? The AI? Both? How was an embedded chip in a person’s temple any different from an unaltered person using a cellphone to consume the same AI-inspired social network content that motivated the crime in the first place? Was the AI sentient and therefore culpable, and if so, must an AI be considered a discrete entity like a human? Were all appendages of an AI separate individuals, down to each computer monitor or networked printer? Did the AI consortium that just raked-in trillions via stock market manipulations commit any crimes, or was that just sensible business?

Did the citizens of a country largely controlled by a complex of AI systems have any responsibility for the outcomes of national policy, be they good or terrible? Who was actually running the country – the AIs, or the administrators? Could an AI be guilty of legal offenses, economic tragedies, wars, or oppression of minorities?

Should a metallic-enhanced gripper be given any special consideration because he pulled the leg off someone in a fight? Did he really intend to hurt the person that badly, or was his augmented component at fault?

How much human DNA must an animal contain before it is considered responsible for its own actions and therefore subject to the legal system? At what level does such a hybrid gain citizenship and voting rights? Conversely, how much non-human DNA must someone contain before losing voting rights?

Was the ten-year-old creator of the modified bacteria that sickened or killed millions even responsible for his actions? And who was liable for the accidental exposure of a pathogen that damaged the world’s rice crops and caused global starvation?

The ancient, well-intentioned, revered, and imperfect founders of the country’s legal structure could have envisioned none of this future. Citizens being overtly influenced, even brainwashed, by computer code in the form of social media algorithms. Chippers with direct neural links into AI systems, oftentimes becoming unintentional, endorphin-driven vassals to their social network masters. Clippers with enhanced mental or physical capabilities who argued, perhaps somewhat rationally, that they were superior beings over non-clippers. Human hybrids with embedded animal or plant DNA, or animals infused with partial human genetic code. Grippers with integrated, internal metallic components that might operate independently of their human minds. Social networks and AI systems with unlimited predictive capabilities, able to circumvent or subvert normal societal checks and balances. AI systems themselves that exhibited all aspects of being functionally sentient.

By the 2030’s, the world was an entangled labyrinth of radical technology changes and applications with unorthodox variants. Human. Animal. Machine. Hybrids. Levers. Concentrations. Unprecedented wealth and power at the top. Degenerations and corruptions. Rapid dissolution of the human social fabric. The intransigent, rigid dogmas of the world’s legal systems were simply unable to keep up.

Due to the zealots’ intransigence to change and insistence on puritanical interpretations of law, however, the once revered American institution of justice suffered immensely. Their belief systems, hinged on a presumption that only they could interpret the revered founders’ chosen and holy paths to social stability and righteousness, caused the nation to evolve into something far more insidious and dangerous.

Not intending to be intentionally evil, the zealots became something far worse: simplistic. Supporting their intractable, presumptuous cause as had every other failed cult. Clothed in solemn robes but fearful and unwilling to adapt. Drowning in the vomit of their own self-absorbed narratives.

Prosperity historians who believed in God would teach in their Stoic wisdom: ‘God gave you a mind and life experience to guide you. You, a group of the entitled, who should have been among the most wise and humble. You, who were given the opportunity to use your mind to elicit a greater country, a better world, a fairer and more just society for humanity in all its emerging variants. You, who should have helped the species adapt to the requirements of the time, technologies, and circumstance. But what did you do? You abdicated your responsibility. You pretended that your originalist, textualist interpretations of law were free from your own learnings and biases, when instead, they were utterly reflective of such.’

Those Prosperity historians who excluded God from the happenings of humanity would observe: ‘People in positions of power are almost always engorged with and enslaved by hubris. It comes with the territory. Offer them lifetime appointments, particularly in an age of eternal lifetimes, and you create the unintended beast. Give them originalist theologies, and they will always reshape those theologies within their own inherently biased belief constructs while using their doctrines as convenient cover to enshroud and obscure their dogmatic intentions. A theology is a theology, whether applied in religion, law, or any other field. Where the species stands now, after multiple self-wrought devastations, is adequate proof that these prior ways, rules, norms, and laws of humankind were not adaptable to the changing needs of society.’

Given the profession’s largely unsuccessful history in previous societies, no more apparently dysfunctional than that of America leading up to the first Great Debacle, Prosperity’s founders determined that laws must not become the primary basis for a long-lived and perhaps even perennial society.

Instead, they focused on developing and teaching underlying tenets that should have resided as the societal foundation of all norms, ethics, and laws. Fairness. Equanimity. Balance. Human consideration and kindness. Self-awareness. Local control. Elimination of concentrations and the networks that enable such. Technological advancement aligned with society’s ability to manage it.

***

It was a long evening for Sord and Becca. Hours at the hospital. X-rays. A confirmed shattered cheekbone. Police reports. Treatment for bruises. Social worker interfaces. Explanations.

Sord was not yet fully recovered from his own injuries, so he was glad to be back home after such a difficult day. He sat silently in his bedroom chair, unable to fall asleep.

It was a small room, typical of Prosperity’s unpretentious accommodations. Like his mother, Sord was a bit tired of staring at its bioplas consistency. But their apartment was adequate, like everything else in Prosperity. Nothing over the top, no garish differences between the wealthiest and poorest in society, and systems in place to rebalance such wealth to avoid the excesses that provoked humanity’s last two great debacles.

He couldn’t get his mind off his father. What would he think if he was still alive? Where would they be as a family? He was a scientist, after all, working in some very edgy areas of quantum physics. That’s what got him into trouble, if it was trouble that he ultimately encountered.

Nobody ever discovered or adequately explained what happened. And oddly, no evidence of flesh, blood, or DNA was discovered at the accident scene.

It was 2 a.m. and his head was buzzing. “I’m not even sure I said goodbye to him that morning,” he pondered. “Too concerned about my school day. Cripes. I need something to help me get sleepy. Crazy crap going on the last thirty-six hours. What’s that saying about raining and pouring? It’s pouring. Ah, yes, pouring. I’ll read something pouringly boring to take my mind off this day.”

He grabbed his pad and clicked on Greg’s tale.