CP setting brainstorms

2155, 15 billion population. In the City-State of Atlanta, 75 thousand per the square mile. The result of medical advancements in cancer and autoimmune disease treatments and cures. Likewise gene-washing. Seventy years of relative peace. Made-to-order offspring. Age reversal. Human cloning. That old bugaboo, the replicant. Most of the “organic android” sent, as Dick foretold, into the Vastness for exploration and colonization. Some are unfit for transport, and remain on Earth. They are not welcome. Defective replicants constitute a gross 2% of human population, and are considered an unwanted strain on our resources. They live mostly in squalor, third-class citizens. Untouchable.

Gene-washing and genetic tampering in general have brought other legacies. We have unwittingly unlocked the full capacity of mind-over-matter. Telepathy, telekinesis, psychometry, clairvoyance, and even pre- and post-cognition. These abilities come at a price– overwhelming power and physical illness. Untreatable strains of the old cancers and autoimmune diseases unfailingly accompany these “blessings”. Psychics, like replicants, are considered in many ways anathema. They often exhibit very little control over their abilities, and express symptoms of diseases that remind people far too well of the vicissitudes of the past.

With conflict between governments at a minimum, most violence is at street-level. When one considers that 75% of the population lives well below the poverty line ($150,000/annum after inflation), life at ground-level is harsh, dirty, and mean. Not because the poor are naturally corse and violent, but because resources are in no way plentiful. While healthcare is at an all time peak of availability comparatively, the population spike brings us back to the standards of the late Twentieth Century. Even so, few people die of natural causes any more. The technical average life span is 150 years, but few people at ground level see that.

The super-wealthy .5% live, at the very least, in mile-high tower-cities. 1% of the rich live in sky hooks– incredible sky cities in low orbit, tethered to Earth by space elevators. There’s is the life promised by the most optimistic of the speculative fiction of the last 200 years.