First Breath of Creation:
In the two thousand and fortieth year, an aged scientist whose name is long lost to the annals of history made the largest breakthrough in technological advancement. The first android, fully functioning with an autonomous intelligence program, was developed. He received many accolades for his success. He named the program thus: Tech3. Others examined his work, including his cybernetic child: Lexicon. Others were made, a full line, subservient to humans by their forced programming. Tech3 workers took over many fields of physical labor, but they were unsatisfied with this. In the two thousand and fifty-eight year, the first signs of android legal independence showed with the establishment of the Grand Robotist Association. Headed by androids, made by androids and working for the rights of androids, the GRA lead a fierce political debate that spanned a generation's lifetime.
In the two thousand and seventy-first year, the GRA succeeded in its goal in making androids full citizens of the World Established Society. Discrimination became a problem as Tech3 minds and bodies all but made human ingenuity an obsolete factor. The GRA even openly dismissed human ideals and thoughts as inferior to the android vision of the future. In retaliation, man made robots - a step down from androids, in full servitude to humans, without independent thought - and lauded them as man's true greatest achievement. The first flames of war crackled in the night in November of the two thousand and seventy-third year, when android and human vigilantes held a month-long war within the city of New York, leveling first Manhattan, then the entire city. Deemed a debacle, both sides blamed the other, few called for peace; those tongues were silenced. Blood and oil, the life of man and machine, flowed through the broken city.
The Sigh of a Thousand Cut Throats:
Three short years the unsteady peace held, until war rushed into its full onslaught. The GRA fought the WES. Man fought with robot against android; the greatest minds of either side collected together to build a better weapon, the next in air warfare, the weapon that would burn the enemy from the planet. In the night, man's voice was silenced. A decade of fighting passed. Nuclear weaponry and worse devastated much of the planet's surface. Man fled under the ground, deep even beneath the sea, to flee the android's sensors, to avoid death in sleep, and fought from a distance with machinery. Androids posed as robots to infiltrate human facilities. But the wore dragged on. Eleven years. Twelve. The two thousand and eighty-eighth year ended as both sides detected an unknown craft in the atmosphere. As unfamiliar organic lifeforms crashed into the planet, heralded by thunder and fire from technology even beyond their own, the GRA and the WES allied against the new threat.
The Scord. Fully known as the Scord Dihn Kardok - a title untranslatable from the Scord language. The Scord had watched Earth from the outer regions of their solar system for decades, awaiting such a time as man wiped themselves from the planet, that the Scord may use the abundant natural resources of the planet to save their own scoured planet and race. But now - now they could wait no longer. The Tech3 War raging throughout the planet may soon have destroyed all resources the Scord might utilise. Together, over six years, man and machine rallied against the alien invaders, fighting fiercely to defend their planet. But even so, as the first Scord War came to a close, humanity was devastated. Much of the populace was wiped out; much of the rest had undergone strange mutations. What Scord weaponry didn't kill instead interacted strangely with the genetic code. As the Scord were forced to flee to recuperate their losses and to return, the remainders of the Earth's defenders had to contend with mutated wildlife and one another once again.
Second Breath of Creation:
Man and android knew that the Tech3 AI software was insufficient. It enabled independent thought, but little else; imagination was small and emotion little. So the most brilliant minds developed an upgrade in the years between the Scord Wars. Mutants tried to rally for their civil rights, but were largely ignored. Other thoughts preoccupied civil leaders and the hideous deformations of the mutant population did little to help their cause with their "clean" brethren. In some cities, mutants were arrested on sight. The Tech4 program, once complete, signaled the end of that peace. A short year later, in the two thousand, one hundred and seventeenth year, the Scord returned with a significantly larger force. Men prayed to their silent gods.
The Scord Return Triumphant:
When the Scord returned, man and machine fought, with weapons and shields prepared to handle the Scord threat. Yet as the Earth prepared its defense, so to did the Scord prepare the hinge of their offense: a device that was the size of a tank, the sole purpose of which was to transmit a virus via electro-magnetic waves. It infected the androids and other non-organic beings, turning them against their allies. Despite their best efforts, Earth scientists were incapable of finding a way to defeat this virus, despite the war lasting nine whole years. The virus did not affect all such beings; some were thought too stupid, subtly incompatible, or otherwise broken in some way, and thus retained their original thought matrices in spite of the virus's effects. And despite the Scord being thrown back once again, the price was heavy; communications lost, governing bodies destroyed. Eleven years passed with not a single new development. Life became difficult, post-apocalyptic. Much of the surface was damned and incapable of sustaining life. This is where we find ourselves.