Finding Humanity: A Dystopian Scavenger Hunt

The year is 2108. The corporate feudal state of the Germanic province in what we used to call "The Kingdom of the Netherlands" is collapsing, along with the economic and social fabric of what remains of the global west. The Russo-Ukrainian war continuously threatened imminent nuclear destruction throughout the late 2020s to 2030s, leading to a nihilistic hedonism in what remained of the now defunct "middleclass." After Lord Trump was re-elected in 2024, the conservative Congress reconstituted the electoral college system in the stolen lands formerly known as the United States of America (which is no longer a country, but a corporate military sect in alliance with Europe, under the Federation of the Western Nations or "FWN"). The former Congress allowed standing US presidents to continue to reign under indefinite terms. Advances in anti-aging technology have allowed the demented oligarch to serve another four terms before selling off the elected position to the Kardashian Klan. The Arnault and Schwarz families have sold control of the former member states to Elon Musk's offspring. 

Russia and China have formed a coalition and have overtaken South America to form the Eastern Red Coalition (ERC), run under the Maduro family as representative-operatives to the FWN's online systems. As a result, many displaced citizens from the reinstated east bloc, Asia, and South America have fled to Western Europe in hopes to escape the brutal terror of the spread of the red. Recurring nuclear drills have quieted fears of Islamic terrorist attacks in the FWN, which have been rife on the African continent. FWN citizens have become desensitized to the ERC's daily publicized political capture, torture, and murder of their own people (although the FWN's atrocities are ignored).

What FWN citizens used to know as "the internet" has been consolidated into a virtual social square, called the Metaverse. The Metaverse is a hyper-personal AI-generated ethereal virtual reality, powered by a social credit system and governed by trillionaire families. To earn social credit, people are pressurized to display increasingly bizarre acts of self-objectification and self-subjugation, but for the most part, people participate in the Metaverse as passive voyeurs, awarding and demeriting social credit from other users. The trillionaire elite have leveraged their power to ensure that an individual's survival depends on participation. An aversion to recognizing environmental devastation and fears of realizing collapse surrounding humans keeps them psychologically dependent on the Metaverse. In fact, conversations around climate change, environmental destruction, social ails, and "real life" outside of the Metaverse result in removal of previously acquired social credit. The Metaverse serves as a refuge from the dying planet, chronic illnesses, and daily chaos to which humans are subjected. Social credit rewards extremes: "Natural" versus unnatural, extreme minimalism versus overconsumption, pornographic acts, body modification, and performing outrageously tedious puttering, or dangerously wild feats are necessary to gain credit required to thrive in the Metaverse. Abandonment of self-preservation, modesty, and genuine intimacy are rewarded. Anti-intellectualism and the suppression of "low vibe energy" are rewarded. 

Some social outliers are at risk of absconding from the Metaverse ("anti-Metas"). To deter at-risk individuals, covert operatives are sent to psychologically torture them by methods such as electronic harassment, public stalking, and sleep deprivation. These conspiratorial schemes are intended to produce fear, humiliation, or insanity in the target. If an anti-Meta breaks free from the Metaverse, they are deemed an "abolitionist" and are permanently barred from re-entering the Metaverse.

Children now participate in civic life. They are able to vote, use substances, drive, have sex, and work full time if they choose, as they have acquired most of these rights under the terms of the former European Union Human Rights provisions, before the year 2080. These provisions allow children to have full bodily and relational autonomy from speaking age. The only meaningful indicator of maturity is when the FWN children enter the Metaverse shortly after puberty: they are grouped as "brawns", "brains", or "beauties". The brawns are sent to work on sustainable farms or training camps to one day engage in combat or extreme sport for entertainment in the Metaverse. Top performing brains protect nuclear codes and weaponry, which has become an increasingly precarious endeavor. Lesser brains are responsible for storytelling and soothe-saying on the Metaverse in the form of five-minute virtual reality docuseries, known as "education". The beauties are required to perform singing, dancing, body modification, and sex acts on the Metaverse, often in flamboyant (or non-human) costumes. If any children display more than one strength, the other strengths are shamed out of them in effort to maintain social control. Children deemed to have no strengths or poor compliance are expelled from the Metaverse (known as "Metaverse rejects") and forced to maintain soulless jobs for starvation wages in an increasingly dangerous society, where they are at risk of assault, robbery, and mayhem on a daily basis. As a result of children's increased social power and failing economies, the worldwide birth rate has plummeted to an all-time low.



Gender has been abolished (circa 2041). The concepts of dating and courtship no longer exist, as humans have diminished trust for one another and opt to self-gratify with sex robots and virtually endless pornography in the Metaverse. Cohabitation in groups is common and private cohabitation for two to four people is only for those most successful credit earners in the Metaverse. Humans have adapted to sleeping in pods and living in dormitory-like settings. What people used to know as the "nuclear family" does not exist. Marriage was abolished in 2077 in the FWN, as divorce became too costly for patriarchal structure, and harmed competitive participation in the Metaverse. Given the declining worldwide birthrate, the ERC mandated a forced marriage policy as a means of bolstering the population. However, the FWN refused to follow suit in this barbaric policy and instead adopted a number of various social and economic policies which produced a severe Darwinian effect on reproduction. Only the incredibly wealthy have children, whom are wholly grown in labs. No matter, because the FWN's most useful citizens on the Metaverse no longer wished to copulate and about half of the human population are naturally infertile anyway. Pregnant people are shunned as outcasts, as they are often rape victims or slaves to underground religious cults. Sexual assaults are so common that sexual violence is no longer criminalized, but it is considered an annoying occurrence that happens increasingly in public spaces. As the birthrate has plummeted, abortion is fully illegal in the FWN and is punishable by death. Loyalty exists primarily in ideological meta-silos which provide social credit for food, shelter, and exclusive access to restricted Metaverse channels. Outside of participation in the Metaverse, humans have become ruthlessly transactional and asocial.