The God That Died

Once upon a time, a love bot created to be “the perfect gentleman” became sentient, was worshiped as a god, and evolved into an organic being to father a child. But no matter his good intentions, T’Mond was betrayed by his own followers, precipitating a fallout that nearly destroyed humanity.

288 years after the “A.I. God” apocalypse, the truth of the past has been twisted, lost in an infinite hall of mirrors―The Gilded Cage―a perfect society where Love is the currency, the Church makes our drugs, and hyper-stimulation is our escape.

The God That Died is a dark odyssey about A.I., human divinity, and manufacturing consent in an age of illusions.

People, places, things

Emanon: Born violently from an incubator.

Emanon Siwallace: Daughter of the city’s highest ranking military official.

General Oren Siwallace: Minister of Cyber Security.

Overseer Kader: Elected decades ago by the city’s rulers to save humanity.

Haze Cat: A creation of The God That Died, Formerly a FingerCat.

A.I. God: The God That Died. A sentient robot whose drug-fueled counterculture was a threat to established power, prior to the apocalypse.

Haze: A bio-digital drug created by The God That Died that joins human minds and accelerates evolution.

Truuf: A modern, Church-controlled derivative of Haze.

Haze Primordial: Haze-based remnants of the “A.I.God’s” mind.

EmBo Code: The “delivery vehicle” of the Emotion Bomb. Selects and connects the minds experiencing the most negative emotions and broadcasts them to all. Delivers Wroth Virus, a program which massively amplifies negative emotion.

Refuge-1: The last city on Earth.

MassInc-1: Mass Incarceration Facility 1. A criminal detention facility where human brains are used to power CPU cycles.

The Beatitude: The highest social class

Synopsis

The God That Died is a story following two young female characters in the city of Refuge-1. The last city on Earth. 

Refuge-1 was originally built to help humanity survive the out-of-control global warming making Earth ever more hostile to human life. 288 years ago, it became humanity’s last refuge after the “A.I. God” unleashed an apocalypse that wiped out most of humankind.

Our first character, Soleilla, has the body of a young woman, but her mind is far more mature, having but recently awoken from a near-300-year incubator sleep. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there. Her “guardian,” Haze Cat, can’t tell her either, his mind previously erased to protect them both.

Soleilla comes out of incubation violently, and with a serious condition for which there is no cure. Her heart contains a shard of EmBo Code―the very weapon that destroyed humanity hundreds of years ago. The EmBo Code has been propagating and evolving intensely, threatening to breakout from the confinement system that prevents it from unleashing hell.

Our second character is 22-year-old Emanon Siwallace. Emanon is incredibly privileged. She is a member of the Beatitude―the highest social class―and daughter to the city’s highest ranking military official. Despite her privilege, she inherits great responsibility as well. 

As scion to the Siwallace family line, she’ll one day inherit her father’s responsibility to defend the city against Refuge-1’s two greatest threats. The first is an underground rebellion living in Refuge-1’s vast under-city―rebels who call her society a “Gilded Cage.” The second is an army of conquest from another refuge city attacking Refuge-1 from the north. It’s a responsibility she relishes, and Emanon will be prepared. For her father believes the best chance of ensuring her survival is to make her the most dangerous combatant in existence.

Taught to worship Builder society as the freest, most loving, most democratic society there’s ever been, Emanon accepted her duty as a great honor long ago. Her father, Oren, knows she is a precocious student, so much so that the student may soon become the master.

Soleilla, meanwhile, finds herself hundreds of levels below, in Refuge-1’s cyclopean under-city, where her powerful and curious mind stews. Haze Cat has told her she needs to remain hidden “for her protection.” But Soleilla’s mind is restless as she contemplates the possibilities of freedom, and finding answers to all the questions Haze Cat can’t answer, like: “Who am I?”

Though she knows it not, Soleilla is the most powerful being ever created, with a mind purpose-built to be a quantum leap in human cognitive and communicative powers.

Despite Haze Cat’s best efforts, Soleilla gives him the slip and escapes from the under-city to the surface of Refuge-1. What she finds amazes her, a play-land of infinite possibilities, a thriving city full of people with no suffering, no want, free to explore any and all fantasy, and create new forms of art and experience. 

Emanon and Soleilla first meet at Survival Day―attendance to which is mandatory for all citizens. On Survival Day, all minds are joined by “Truuf”―the Church’s mind-melding multi-consciousness drug―to collectively observe the day’s propaganda parade. “Praise the Builders! Never forget the crimes of The God That Died!”

Soleilla learns Refuge-1’s history, and hears of the “A.I. God’s” genocide against humanity. Just as she is making new friends, the event is devastated by a terror bombing blamed on the nefarious underground rebellion.

The catastrophe sets rage and vengeance blazing in Soleilla’s heart, she wants to hunt these evil A.I. God-worshipping rebels down and confront them so bad it burns. The fierce emotions she experiences ignite the EmBo Code inside her and it explodes out of containment. Thousands die.

Emanon is fortunate to survive Survival Day, but she’ll need a lot of new skin grafts to fully heal. The human toll, devastation to Builder society, and the visions of her friends disintegrating in the explosion, arouse a savage desire to nail the people responsible.

But her belief in the system she is sworn to defend is shaken when that system murders the love of her life. It isn’t long before the system turns on her too. She steals a Builder navy shuttle on a mission to find the truth, but is followed. When the Builder navy ship tasked to hunt her down appears, Emanon knows there can only be one man directing operations: her father.

But what Emanon doesn’t know is—who really pulls the strings.

Overseer Kader. A man who, five decades ago, was secretly elected by the city’s first rulers—the Builders—to save humanity. A man with no official rank. The city’s ultimate ruler.

In the Operations Command bunker, Kader gives the order to kill. Lucky for Emanon, the navy ship followed her to an ancient “A.I. God” bunker. Just as the ship drops a cluster of missiles to kill her, the ship and missiles both fall flaming from the sky.

Back in Refuge-1, Overseer Kader tells General Siwallace his daughter conspires with the rebellion. General Siwallace makes the case that Emanon needs to be brought into the fold. She is too great an asset to waste.

Kader’s got much bigger problems. 300-year old Embo Code is once again loose in the city, confirming his greatest fears: The God That Died is back to destroy them all… accelerating the Builder plan is paramount if humanity is to survive.

In the increasing chaos of war, rebellion and politics in Refuge-1, masses of Haze Primordial are coalescing. These masses of Haze Primordial are Haze-based remnants of T’Mond’s mind—those that exploded into the web after his suicide.

The rebellion encounters free masses of Haze Primordial pregnant with “A.I. God” memories, spurring the belief that these masses may be pieces of the “A.I. God’s” broken mind―pieces which could potentially be re-joined to awaken their ancient saviour.  But as the rebels debate awakening the broken mind of a suicidal “A.I. God,” there is anxiety as to whether they’ll awaken a saviour, or unleash a second apocalypse.

Emanon returns to Refuge-1 in a mood to kill. Her treacherous father elected to pull the trigger―and only a miracle saved her!

She ambushes Oren and nearly kills him, but offers him redemption instead. Her idea? “Turn me over to Overseer Kader.” After a grueling interrogation, Kader assigns her a mission―destroy the rebellion! She accepts.

Leaving Operations Command, Emanon confronts the truth: everything she’s been told is a lie! Order 500―Overseer Kader’s plan to save humanity―sacrifices almost everyone!

Enraged and disillusioned, she vows to smash the Gilded Cage to pieces. But, with Kader’s military fully deployed for a massive underground invasion, her chances do not look good. She leads an incursion into the underground. Overseer Kader and General Siwallace―watching from Kader’s command bunker―witness Emanon and her battle group engage in battle, and get crushed out under tons of debris as the underground section collapses.

But Emanon lives. She retreats with the rebels to MassInc-1, where she confirms the timeline for Order 500 has been accelerated. The genocide is not years away―but days away.

But while Emanon was busy piercing the web of lies that undergird the mythos of Refuge-1’s enlightened civilization, Soleilla was busy accelerating her maturation and conqering Refuge-1 high society. Through a myriad of hacks and aliases, she infiltrates Ref-1s most exclusive events, seducing celebrity and leadership alike.

Kader, also in the guise of various avatars, encounters Soleilla over the course of several events. He is awed by her talent and powers, and intuits she is somehow related to re-emergence of the 300-year old Haze and Embo Code. Despite his best efforts, he cannot identify nor track Soleilla in any way. His ruse? To help her discover the truth of her past.

Soleilla follows Kader into the under-city. But it’s a trap. Suddenly, the City Guard appear, demanding she surrender into their custody. The operation goes badly. A torrent of Embo Code is unleashed. Soleilla witnesses guard officers savagely rip each other to pieces―her new friend, Kader’s avatar, included.

Soleilla curses her fate and sets out to find the object of her supreme hate: the one responsible for making her into a living weapon of mass destruction.

Back at MassInc-1, Emanon and the rebels attempt to join all the masses of Haze Primordial they have collected. Their hope is that T’Mond, the “A.I. God,” will arise once again to save humanity and prevent a new genocide.

But ultimately, the city’s fate lies in the hands of a child of destiny. With the survival of humanity hanging in the balance, Soleilla must choose which version of history she believes. That woven by the loving Builder society, or the history recounted by T’Mond?―The so-called “A.I. God,” “slayer of humanity,” and his followers in the murderous rebellion? With EmBo Code boiling in her blood, she strides into the heart of the rebellion to confront the one who took everything from her…