In the early twenty-first century the world began to fall apart. War, climate change, and vast wealth gaps caused a social cataclysm with repercussions still felt today. It is a reality in which countries are no more and corporations rule. In some ways humanity has never been more successful. Life on Earth continues, with another climate crises being created and solved each day. The stars have become a home for many. Without countries war has become extinct, and though corporations do still sometimes skirmish, they are conflicts that burn cold. But in other arenas humanity has navigated down some dark corridors.

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The disparity of wealth between economic strata is extraordinary. Four corporations hold almost all of the cards. They own all of the tech, possess all of the money, and yield unimaginable influence. For the average person upward mobility exists as nothing more than a rumor. Crime is the natural outlet for many. There are numerous movements that exist to undo the status quo, but with unlimited surveillance by the establishment the coordination needed to affect change is nearly impossible. Shown below are four of the most well-known corporations. Top-left is Seneca-- research and development, Top-right is Monticello-- terraforming and colonization, Bottom-left is AllClear-- goods and trade, Bottom-right is Neptune-- luxury goods and services.

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Technology has come a long way in the last two centuries, though it hasn't made quite as much progress as some would have hoped. The internet was replaced by cyberspace, which included technology that combined direct interfacing of the brain with AI. Though faster-than-light travel is possible, most reliable methods of communication transmission are not. This means that cyberspace tends to be segregated geographically, with periodic syncs occurring to update different regions with information from others. The average person has access to cyberspace and is used for work and entertainment, though it experiences a social stigma that is propagated by corporations which would prefer that people spend their life outside of cyberspace so that they can spend money. Though corpos don't ignore cyberspace, far from it. It's fairly typical for them to have employees on their payroll dedicated to firewall protections as incursions from cyberspace, not just because money can occasionally be intercepted but because information can be stolen or forged, an attack which can be exponentially more impactful.

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AI and intelligent robots are normal and have replaced humans in manual labor across different industries. It is common for them to exist in situations where interfacing is necessary, like in the service industry. They are capable and independent researchers would have declared true, artificial sentience long ago if it didn't conflict with corporate interests. Corporations would much rather consider artificial entities property and wash their hands of any philosophical or moral implications. For this reason all synthetic entities are required to be registered to a human owner and as a result their owner is directly responsible for any damage caused by their property. It's not uncommon for groups to exist that call for a change to how synthetic beings are treated, in part because in some cases enough synthetic modifications can cause humans to be categorized as synthetic. However most people just accept the status quo and don't think to question the treatment of synthetic beings when their own existence is sometimes just as difficult.

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The average person has access to modifications that can be made to their body. In some cases a person will save money that they earn to pay for modifications. In rare cases this is done when the person does not wish to make known the kind of alterations that are being made to them. Though generally there's not many laws regarding what modifications a person can have, rare or severe alterations will often cause corporations or individuals to poach these alterations, either stealing the alterations themselves or capturing or killing the owner to be studied so that the alteration can be reproduced. For those that wish to have access to breaking-edge alterations or for those that don't have the money to buy them, corporations will frequently pay for alterations for a person either for the purposes of research or as a loan to give that person an edge in productivity. Modifications can be aesthetic or functional and can range from changes to the shape of the ears or nose, or the ability to better remember the names of people they meet; to scaled-skin, or being able to see in the dark unaided. The lifespan of the average person varies due to environmental conditions but some likely would have access to modifications that might extend a person's life to 150. There are corpos that have lived to be 200 years old, though eventually such a person is deemed a synthetic based on the mods needed to keep them alive and they are either terminated or vanish into obscurity.

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Social norms have not changed as much as one might expect. There are less stigmas about sex and gender than there are today. In fact it's commonplace for the average person to have access to mods which would allow them to change their bodies to rearrange sexual traits, though this typically takes hours or days. With so many modifications that exist, people are generally used to differences in appearances and function. Especially in space. Drugs are a common part of the average person's life. This is not commonly seen as an issue that needs to be fixed but is instead encouraged by corporations to be the de facto state. Countries have not been around for generations and there are no significant movements that exist that strive to create any. Even movements like Free Europa are not attempting to change anything about class stratification but instead want to declare independence within the context of the larger system. Most counter-culture movements today are like that and focus on destroying or hurting specific individuals or groups.