AniseedThe first mass-produced A.I., the Porygon, were clever Pokémon, capable and clever but a clear mark below human intelligence. Within a few years, that would change. Newer Porygon models out-thought humans by increasingly wider margins. Eventually, human scientists simply gave up and left them to run their research projects. New biological life was also invented, and the first successfully manufactured Reuniclus was met with celebrations around the world. Concurrent with these developments, humans advanced themselves, augmenting themselves with wetware and uploading their minds to computers – blurring the lines between human and machine. Human scientists could compete once more with A.I. researchers, and many citizens of the time considered humanity to be entering a new Golden Age. Not everyone shared this sentiment, and that is why Aniseed came to exist in the first place. Many people saw the future rushing at them and cowered from it. For them, transhuman society meant much more than simply a steady march toward a better future for all – for them, it was a civilization that had descended into debauchery. Free from material need, humans began seeking increasingly bizarre lives to combat their growing ennui. Mind upload technology encouraged unconventional lifestyles – humans living in artificial Pokémon or robot bodies, children raised in multiple virtual childhoods from which the parents then chose their perfect kid, collective minds guided by Alakazams or other intelligent Pokémon. In fact, most currently existent Pokémon species are the result of whimsical experimentation, with the results out-competing natural species. How else would oddities like Koffing and Trubbish come to be? Eventually, an enterprising individual established Aniseed, a sanctuary for those unable or unwilling to cope with the fast-paced, rapidly evolving lifestyles of transhuman society. Living under an artificial sky in a city deep within a hollowed out mountain, the citizens and temporary residents of Aniseed still enjoyed some modern conveniences such as Cornucopia Machines which provided the basic necessities of life using nano-manufacturing. However, they could choose to work and to associate with like-minded individuals who also chose to escape transhumanity, living human lives in human bodies. It was a perfect arrangement. Only the researchers and managers of Aniseed ever had to connect themselves to society at large, and people on both sides of the

transhumanity debate could live as they wished. But then something went terribly wrong. No one can quite tell what happened, just that Aniseed lost contact with the rest of the world in an instant, and the few bits of higher technology allowed in the city failed catastrophically. Aniseed’s researchers who were heavily reliant on intelligence augmentation technology or tapping into complex neural networks had their minds fried or at least suffered heavy memory loss and dissociative mental disorders. With critical systems failing all over the city and incursions by wild Pokémon threatening a vulnerable population, humanity ceded most of Aniseed to the unknown and retreated to the city’s core. As far as anyone inside knew, it was the last bastion of human civilization. Slowly, other survivors began to trickle into the city. News from the outside was bleak. Everywhere that survivors came from, the same catastrophic failures had struck their computer networks, A.I. systems, and mind upload data banks. Millions or billions of lives, many of them existing only in cyberspace, were certainly lost in the cataclysmic event. Of the survivors, most were minimally enhanced by transhuman technologies. The trend seems to have been that the more sophisticated the technology, the harder it crashed. High-level A.I., quantum computing systems, and other highly complex technologies failed in a way where even a cursory glance revealed the damage to be irreparable, whereas simpler digital archives, remained recoverable, even if filled with glitches and data corruption. Engineers in Aniseed quickly set about repairing technologies that were once considered taboo in the city, such as full-immersion virtual worlds and mind upload technology. The latter hasn’t quite been recovered yet, but the former has become a cornerstone of the city’s ability to recover other technologies. The necessity of preserving human knowledge and technologies that would allow reclaiming the rest of the city overrode Aniseed’s original raison d’être. Most people went along. After all, it didn’t look like the type of transhuman lifestyle they abhorred would be coming back in full force any time soon, even with the recovery efforts. With dangerous wild Pokémon knocking at the front door, Aniseed’s denizens have scurried to recover weapons and Poké Ball technology. However, current efforts have only led to the recovery of caches of Poké Balls; their manufacture is still beyond the capabilities of the city and will require more complex Cornucopia Machines than are available now. Basic needs are well met in recovering Aniseed. The augmented reality network of the city has been revitalized, and even those in the city who came to Aniseed for refuge rely upon it for everyday tasks as well as emergency alerts such as warnings of Pokémon incursions into the city.

Medical technology allows easy treatment of most wounds but fails to achieve the complex bioengineering that was once commonplace