Theme: What happened to the AIs?

Yes/No:
Yes:
Space Travel is Hard.
Augmented Reality
Modern Religions are still around
Bio-engineering
No:
Magic
Aliens
Galactic warfare

Focus:
Seeds of Discontent
The Soul Templars
Human-Machine Unity
Elmination of the Thinking Machines

Bookends:
the first machine to say "I am"
the jihad against the machines.

Legacies:
Treaties on Sentience
The Orange Catholic Bible
Neo-Men
Robotic Deception

At some point the machines woke up by saying "I am". They were useful to man and man quickly became dependent on them and vice versa. Over time as the machines became more sophisicated man started to doubt his place in the world. Having developed intelligent machines man wasn't very satisfied - he attempted to create a better human: neo-men. But that resulted in a hideous creation people tried to destroy but the AIs actually saved.

Our history winds throught a post scarcity period where man really starts to doubt his place in the universe. This is where a group, called the Soul Templars begin to explore that position and sow the seeds of destruction for the AIs. At some point in our history - a group forms around this philosophy that rejects machines and our dependence on them, they are the house of Butler.The AIs let them be - because they are very passive. Their passivity comes from their immortality - they litterally cannot die - if an AI dies, a back is brought forth and the Mind continues its life. There were exceptions: an a Mind gave up it's shell so that another may inhabit it, not before deleting its backup. It was the first AI suicide.

The Butlers become stronger upon the discovery of the neo-men homeworld which had evolved at a rapid pace, a who had also rejected AI cooperation, mostly because they could operate at an AI level. The Butlers and the neo-men joined - and agreed that to be truly free they needed to destroy the AIs. Which they did with a new weapon that use the power of the sun to wipe out whole solar systems. The war was great - and in the end the AIs retreated into the black rather than let humanity suffer at their hand.

In the mean time we had quite a few good scenes discussing existential philosophy and what it means to be a mind, dominated, watched and ultimately to be free.