The Plight of Mods in a Dystopian World
In the desolate future of my upcoming sci-fi novel, “THE END OF THE WORLD”, the remnants of our Earth—shattered by an ancient cataclysm—suffer beneath the oppressive, alien reign of the Technocracy. Mods (short for ‘modified humans’) exist as a bleak symbol of humanity's enslavement.
Gen I Mods: The Dawn of Desolation
The first mods were still largely human, with a few modest augmentations. For instance, some had nanobots implanted for improved healing or prosthetic limbs that doubled as weapons. There was no standardization of form or function, and their minds remained their own. However, craving full dominion over their human subjects, the Technocrats began experimenting on ways to subjugate the human will…
Gen II Mods: Specialized Slavery
The Technocrats’ ambitions soon gave rise to the Alphaknot, the great mind that controls the Technocracy’s psy network and links all tech into a single collective consciousness.
From this abomination’s creation, there arose a need to standardize and control the Technocracy’s tech. Thus, a second generation of mods emerged. Control shards were implanted into each mod, shackling their minds to the Alphaknot. However, this control remained imperfect, and the second generation suffered frequent 'malfunctions' due to their hosts’ minds resisting control.
Three types of mods emerged from this generation.
War Mods: The Bound Warriors
War mods are the Technocracy’s elite soldiers, humans re-engineered for unparalleled combat prowess. Animkii, one of my protagonists, is a war mod who struggles to regain her humanity. Keep an eye on future posts for artwork depicting these fearsome constructs!
In the timeworn ruins of a Junkyard encampment, a young girl cowers, her breath muted in the cold embrace of shadow. Through a narrow chink in a rusty wall of twisted metal sheets, discarded tech parts, and tangled coils of wire, she anxiously watches the monstrous sentinel’s approach. Any remnants of its humanity are shrouded within a gleaming, steel exoskeleton, its augmented limbs bristling with weaponry. Despite its imposing form, it moves with eerie silence and swift precision across the desolation, its steel wings carrying it seamlessly through the sky in search of fresh recruits for its masters’ remorseless experimentations. Its face holds no hint of sentiment, its once-human eyes supplanted with twin orbs that radiate an unsettling white glow. As that mechanical gaze sweeps her sanctuary, the passionless orbs blink to life, and the girl knows her freedom has come to an end.
Technologist Mods: The Shackled Minds
Technologist mods are stolen from the brightest minds of humanity. Each tech mod is optimized to best perform its assigned tasks. For instance, a mod specializing in performing surgeries might have special hands grafted onto its body to do more precise work or eyes implanted with microscopic capability. However, the stims that all tech mods rely on cause a surplus of neuron growth, and as a result, the brain swells, leaving them with their signature oversized heads. Their human brains cannot cope with the speed of evolution, and most tech mods die within twenty years of their modification. Their high intelligence and shortened life expectancy make them the most volatile of mods, and they require more maintenance and reconditioning than their brethren.
Pictured below is a tech mod preparing a biosteel heart for transplant.
Overseer Mods: The Watchful Enslaved
At first glance, an overseer mod may be mistaken for a full human—until you gaze into their unnerving silver eyes. These orbs grant them exceptional surveillance capabilities, allowing them to capture and process minute details, while their auditory canals have been replaced with advanced listening devices capable of picking up a whisper from yards away. Unlike other mods, overseers are hand-picked for their loyalty, making them ideal for their role as administrators over the Technocracy’s vast bureaucracy. Minimal in modification but vital in role, their devoted vigilance fortifies the Technocracy's dominion over human life.
Gen III: The Final Evolution
Though bound to the Alphaknot and its masters, Gen II mods at least retain a small, struggling remnant of humanity. Not so with their Gen III successors. The Technocrats have recently unveiled a new means of controlling their machine slaves: biosteel. Once implanted into hosts, this insidious pseudo-metal consumes them, body and soul, transmuting them into lifeless automatons, fully in thrall to the Technocrats' cold machinations. To learn more about biosteel, see my previous post: Thoughts on Substack...and a Book Teaser.