By the time of the Roman Empire, the bulk of Scottish culture was muddled into Celtic, Norse, and Germanic traditions, while most Scottish artefacts were sealed away underground in The Causeway, a fold-dimensional Gateway. Efforts were made to reestablish Scottish identity, while keeping alive the directive to remain hidden, as they had been instructed by Scotlan A at the close of its interstellar war.

1800 - 2000

In the 19th century, the Carrington Event reactivated some Scottish technologies allowing the Scottish to reestablish a connection to their culture. This included interstellar communicators, which they swore not to use unless faced with X-risks. In the 1980s debate over x-risk intensified through analysis of the Ozone Layer and the continued decline of the Earth’s magnetosphere. A controversial choice was made to contact Scotlan A, the message was discovered by Dominion, who learned the location of Earth and Scotlan A.

In 1991, Scotlan A was abducted and sent out a general distress to its colonies. Scotlan D, powerless to help, offered what support they could by hosting Otherlan server systems, and downloading the minds of refugees into cloned bodies. With the destruction of Scotlan A, Earth ceased communication with the other colonies and attempted to stimulate human development with accelerated exposure to advanced technologies.

2000 – 2094

The Scottish War ends in Annapolis in 2005, after the fall of Scotlan A and the failed assault on Vespula. McTwist, a Scottish-Otherlaner hybrid, is sent to Scotlan D and reborn as a genetic clone.

2020s: THE INTELLIGENCE REVOLUTION

The GAI Revolution in the 2020s accelerates humanity toward AGI, which has been identified by many Rationalists as a monumental existential risk. Increasing automation and robotics draws public attention and triggers a severe backlash to AI, despite corporate and national powers employing it with increasing ubiquity. Economic power accumulates in California through its preexisting technological supremacy, with San Francisco becoming the chief benefactor of most developmental efforts, drawing in computer scientists and software engineers from around the world.

2030s: THE DAEMON STRIKES

Educational reforms begin to hit hard on the concept of an ‘Intelligence Abundance’, that knowledge accumulation and specialization are devalued in an economy where AI agents are more competent at knowledge-based tasks than the ordinary human worker.

Knowledge memorisation and routine administrative work are increasingly denounced as ‘robotic’ and ‘machine work’. In order to remain competitive in a shrinking economy, schools shift their focus to a new curriculum.

Led by Rationalist thinkers that have already mapped the domain, efforts at genuinely teaching critical thinking, alignment, decision-making, philosophy, epistemology and ontology take root within the global education system, under the auspices of Decision Education.

Concurrently, free-acting cipherpunks release the first Daemon, an AI agent designed to break encryption systems. The Daemon agent is highly successful, capable of weaponizing server farms into tools for overpowering digital security and locking their owners out of those systems.

The Batista Strike is the first of these events, targeting and ruining the entire corporation of a global operator in the meat industry. It is followed by a series of other high-profile hacks against corporations, and begins to spill over to national targets. Within weeks, Daemons target nuclear weapon systems indiscriminately, locking governments out of access to their own nuclear weapons.

The event triggers global uproar, with conventional militaries targeting data centers in an attempt to curtail the daemons. But it becomes clear that due to the decentralized nature of server farming, it is a virtually impossible task. The military response simply forces the release and replication of more Daemons, who target wider and wider domains of military activity. There is backlash from corporate powers that identify the indiscriminate seizure and destruction of data centres as ‘governmental overreach’. While many people attempt to comply with martial law, local governments, which are left largely functional, begin to feel as though the situation is being mismanaged.

2040s: THE CALIFORNIAN E-STATE

Within this period California declares sovereignty, ceding from the USA. This leads to a more general civil war period as other states follow suit. The response of the USA is muted, as they have become overstretched by their efforts to secure international borders without wielding the threat of advanced weaponry.

California reemerges as ‘The Californian E-state’, a governing body developed through close coordination of the Californian local government and corporate lobbyists, who fund the roboticization of the Californian military. From its position of independence, California begins to assert control over the World-Wide Web, providing a solution to Daemons through Seraphs, encryption agents that are designed to identify and disrupt Daemons before they can carry out decryption programs.

The E-State emphasizes that its mandate is to ‘Manage X-Risk’, and ‘Prevent the Creation of AGI’, and does so by restructuring the internet from within, replacing its software with Smart designs adapted to the latest era of digital capability. For this service, registered web domains pay ‘taxes’ to the E-State for their continuation.

The USA reestablishes its identity having lost California, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Texas, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Alaska, and holding others only with the promise of increased autonomy. No longer seen as the financial and military centre of the world, the USA limps on with only the barest mantle of ‘world empire’ status.

Toward the end of the 2040s, the Californian E-State is practically in control of The Internet, increasingly using Agents to project and manage truth, while maintaining a ‘fun and engaging’ persona for users of the Worldwide Web.

The first amendment to the E-State’s constitution (The T&Cs) forbids all forms of unsolicited digital advertising.

2050s: CRISES AVERTED

AI continues to advance in siloed areas, at a measurably slower pace. The E-State uses Seraphs to restrict competing research into AGI. They fund climate restoration, and use advanced scanning to detect siloed server farms from orbit.

A new web of CES-approved digital software begins to distribute over the internet, replacing older systems with advanced, aligned AI agents locked into CES safeguards. Detailed requirements of these client systems are considered the ‘Second Amendment’ to The T&Cs.

The Californian E-State develops financial engines with astounding levels of predictive accuracy. This follows along with breakthroughs in other areas, with many common diseases ‘solved’ and ambitious social projects underway to end crime and antisocial behaviour. Universal Basic Income is extended experimentally across the U.S, and to similar developed countries.

Notably, overcrowding in prisons is remediated with countries signing on for a ‘voluntary confinement’ initiative, where low-security cons are released to home arrest and provided with VR headsets, and must log 15 mandatory hours within a digital environment each day.

The E-State extends access to ‘Metaworlds’; elaborate VR sandboxes where humans can express themselves without directly influencing reality.

Increasingly, the educational narrative combined with Decision Education is that ‘Human beings are misaligned’; evolutionary psychologists explain that human evolutionary development gives them ‘dangerous biases and heuristics’ that cause unintentional harms in industrialised civilisations. Solving these coordination problems are deemed an essential step in fighting poverty, war, and climate change.

Decision Education is strengthened by a reformed scientific method aiming to encourage programming literacy and computation, and resembles Cryptanalysis and Cyber Security. Physics, Geography, History, and Biology are de-emphasised from the curriculum. ‘Real’ sciences are replaced with virtual ones; strategy, probability, coding, and critical thinking.

Pushback begins to emerge through the political effort of Realists, a subset of Rationalist thinkers who assert the importance of continued human connection to the real world. Realists have the greatest influence in the mid-level technologically-developed parts of Earth, such as small cities and rural areas.

The least technologically developed parts of Earth tend to attract dissidents and anti-technologists.

2060s: GLOBAL REVITALISATION

Efforts of the CES halt climate change by effectively replacing the need for fossil fuels with efficient technological alternatives. They begin to focus on more ambitious efforts of atmospheric engineering, accelerating the Earth’s return to historically normal temperatures.

While more overpopulated than ever, Earth’s demographic becomes significantly older. The Californian E-State rebrands and extends free access to their ‘voluntary confinement’ program, giving the equivalent of a pension to people logging hours in their metaworlds.

They introduce centralised CES CV Boards, tracking civilian performance on online test environments, mapping human skills, and tying performance into CES-certified immigration programs. While these are launched to co-operative governments worldwide, California retains access to the highest scorers seeking immigration.

New classes of paid work emerge, including paid Scholars for lifelong education, and paid Voters who provide feedback to CES governance systems after depth studies on voting areas.

2070s: THE E-PAX

War ends globally for the first time in history. CES systems, now deeply integrated into national governments and businesses alike, work seamlessly to operate the world’s economy.

Significant and increasing amounts are funneled into Virtualism, the expanding and now free service of living in simulated realities. Virtualism is increasingly hailed as ‘living responsibility’, as it minimizes resource consumption and ‘Externality’, the emerging euphemism for human behaving in irrational ways that are hard for models to predict. Mixed-Reality-integrated ‘Virtual Housing’ blocks are rapidly deployed to house the increasing number of people on Earth.

Emerging political strains develop between the Realist minority and the Virtualist mainstream. Realists, resistant to migration into Metaworlds, form local groups that attempt to ‘touch base’ with reality, participating in conventional trade and doing jobs which otherwise would be done by machines.

CES tracking statistics expand to include Externality, the extent to which behaviour cannot be modeled by CES agents and poses risk to upsetting the system. Externality is correlated with real-world experimentation, and soon begins to be predictive of exploration and innovation. The old NASA and similar national agencies around the world are reformed into WASA, a coordinated, CES-driven space exploration program.

Those with Externality are awarded job candidacy for a range of ambitious projects, including lunar and orbital colonization, deep oceanic diving, and human testing. Others are placed in Reality Services, performing operations that are difficult to automate, or which involve doing things that risks harming humans. Realists are given the contact with reality they desire, though often at considerable personal sacrifice. Many continue to push for increasing the size and scope of these projects.

Lu Cheng and Joe Wexler, members of the Realist movement, publish extensively on Exocolonialism, an optimistic treatise on offworld habitation, with an explicit outline of the steps that could be taken to achieve independence from Earth. They are foundational figures in the development of Lunar Academy, an experimental outpost on the moon.

Joe Wexler’s daughter, Jane Wexler, grows up on Luna. She and an astronaut from Earth, John Major, have a son, Wex, in 2078.

2080s: EXOCOLONIAL EXPANSION

Breakthroughs in Virtualisation technology allow newer designs to achieve Faster than Realtime Processing, effectively doubling the rate of interactive media, and reducing the time required for passive media consumption by roughly 75%. The technology seems similar in ways to memory implantation. However there is lag in processing events, leading many people to have poorer retention of their experiences after the fact.

Earth-based Realists establish New Atlantis, an experimental deep sea exocolony.

Robotic excavators on Mars discover LGM, a vivid green, Nanite Grey Goo in bored rock samples (‘Little Green Men’). The substance is regarded as fitting the description of extraterrestrial life, but it is deemed too dangerous to return it to Earth. Knowledge of the LGM is considered high risk, and classified to key personnel.

Dr John Major and Professor Jane Wexler, now prominent figures in the Realist movement, symbolically request unprecedented levels of compute that cause their Externality scores to skyrocket. They invest the compute in additional robotic exploration of Mars, speaking of the possibility of future Exocolonial expansion.

John and Jane, now married, are awarded joint-captaincy of a manned mission to Mars to attempt a study, and potential carry out first contact with alien lifeforms.

The Scottish learn about LGM, and debate its risk to Earth.

2090s: THE WILDMIND ERA

Earth’s population begins to stabilize through immigration to developed countries, which have accelerated low birthrate due to Virtualisation. CES systems continue to embed themselves across the technological ‘frontier’, with developing nations leapfrogging decades of industrialization. For Virtualists, the issue of AI-alignment as regarded as largely solved. For Realists, the alignment problem is ongoing as an Ontological Crisis, and they continue to emphasize the importance of prioritizing interaction with reality.

Lunar Academy and Earth outfit the first Exocolonial Arkship, The Matriarch. Work begins on a space elevator to hasten the rate of space exploration.

A small wormhole anomaly is triggered on the surface of Luna, pulling in a hoverbuggy containing Lunar cadet-pilot Mac Sheen and US military representative Colonel Jordan Kragg. The Annapolis Cluster learns about LGM by interrogating Colonel Kragg, who cooperates with Dominion’s inquiries.

June, 1994:         

John, Jane, and Wex Major depart on Matriarch, on a manned mission to Mars. They are joined by a crew of roughly 1000 exocolonists, including a young Scottish operative named Boomer McTwist.

September, 1994:

During the landing on Mars, both Mars and the Matriarch are pulled into a wormhole, and reappear in The Annapolis Cluster. Mars is stabilized using freefall tubes and integrated into The Cluster.

In the wake of Mars’ disappearance, many Virtualists spend an increasing amount of time in the Real, trying to understand what is going on. The E-State takes considerable criticism for failing to anticipate the astronomical event, and for not trying to stop it.

Scotland holds a surprising public conference where they reveal that the Scottish have alien ancestry, and they explain the role of Karn in Mars’ disappearance. They warn that it is likely that Karn will be targeting Earth with wormhole technology in the near future.

Nations of the world are in uproar over this announcement, accusing the Scottish of conspiracy and of not acting sooner. There is considerable backlash against the Scotland, and those of Scottish ancestry, whether or not they were aware of the conspiracy.

E-State systems strain to incorporate eruptions of familiar externalities: conspiracy theories, religious fanaticism, racism, and antisemitism return to a world that largely thought of these mental confusions as ancient history. Resources strain as high numbers of people exit the Metaworlds.

Months later, the situation stabilizes as Mars continues to be missing, and nothing else happens. Life goes on, and gradually people return to the excitement of Virtue. Memorialists, a new blend of Realist and Virtualist defectors, emphasize keeping the public awareness on Mars, and learning what they can of Scottish high-technology. They advocate a controlled reduction of Metaworld access, while acknowledging that the use of it is critical to the stability of CES systems.

1995:

The E-State is attacked by a new Cult of Karn, a neo-religious organisation that sees abdication to Karn as the only path to survival. The organisation attempts to bring Seraphs offline through the targeted destruction of internet infrastructure. While largely unsuccessful, their terrorism does raise religious questions across Earth in response to the continued Scottish insistence that Karn is a god.

It is found that the cult is independently attempting to create a ‘Karn of Earth’ through the pursuit of explosive superintelligence.

1997:

Earth and Luna are drawn into The Cluster during the final confrontation with Karn and Dominion, in an effort to break Wex’s spirit and end his advance on Palace Karn.

Billions die in the initial capture of the world, and millions more as LEGM is piped down through the Dominion’s tube network.

Earth and the WASA survive, however, when the Majors and Henry cure the LEGM Plague, pacifying it and subsuming it to the functions of a chemical computer.

The Causeway activates on Earth, opening up interstitial spaceways to the distant planets of Scotlan B and Scotlan C. Waves of Scottish legionaries join the fight against Dominion.

The Earth emerges as a new planetary government in opposition to Dominion, and works with Resistance to restore peace and sanity to Annapolis.