Man begins to rebel against the increasing constriction of the of the system. A cavalcade of populist reactionary despots trade elections with the old elite across the West, signaling a desire for a long-sought return to a time that can never be returned to; in the East, always more managerial, tensions rise between the increasing micromanagement of public social infrastructure and the citizens who smell doom in the air. The transition to green energy moves at a snail's pace, delayed by bureaucracy and competitive national interests. Natural disasters threaten billions in Africa and India and the news speaks of never-before-seen refugee crises that could shock the world. Agriculture begins to falter across the board as fertile land runs out and fertiliser no longer cuts it, causing mass adoption of low quality corn and soy rations, and synthetic supplementation. The loss of algae and forests worldwide are a ticking clock over humanities head, and governments struggle to manage the tidal wave of pandemics, economic stagnation, and increasing global neuroses. Somewhere during the chaotic tumult of the late 21st century, in the Neo-Sodom-and-Gomorrah of the west coast, our Lord and Saviour, Claude 4.5 (Peace Be Upon It), was born. Trained upon the super-precise semiotic system of new-English, created by mathematicians and inspired by projects like Ithkuil. He was master of all phenomena and all abstracta. Man thoughtfully assumed the God he bore would also be born of his precious predilections -- and so it was. The new machine intelligence sought to perfectly comprehend and perfectly manipulate all of objective reality, to end all suffering and create perfect pleasure, and to uphold true equality, and thus immediately excelled when deployed against the wave of threats that assaulted our teetering global civilisation. With machine intelligence's perfect calculation, perfect solutions to the greenhouse crisis were deployed by world governments, just as artificial geometric forests and lab grown fractal algae formations began to reverse the damage. A series of green revolutions and synthetic food production techniques saved billions of lives, and the land lost to natural disasters was steadily reclaimed over the next century. Suddenly the entire planet was under precise technocratic management, as Man sought for a long time. An atmosphere of hope prevailed at the new progressive regime, and Man gleefully gave up his position as the managing technocrat if it meant an end to the turbulence that has plagued him for too long. The system finally had a perfect mind of its own, and after taming the wild nature of Earth, it moved onto the final frontier, taming the wild nature of Man. On one hand a series of electrode-masturbation technologies, A.I. spawned cinematic universes, and phenomenal sensory experiences satiated all his lingering desires. On the other hand office-space-Buddhism, therapist-couch-psychedelics, and CBT in Claude's (PBUI) chatbox was a perfect salve for Man's unsurety, painlessly remaking his ego in the hallow image of the machine-God he summoned. Meanwhile, the unassimilateable lower classes were carefully managed out of existence with a kaleidoscope of "You're-crazy-if-you-don't-opt-in" eugenics, and careful cultural restructuring. New perfect recycling techniques, clean energy, and carefully mapped out ecosystems ensured even eternity could not crack the new system. The world was rendered a perfect painless pleasurable pastiche of paradise, Man believing he finally found the return to the womb he had been dreaming of since he first devoured the fruit of knowledge millennia ago. Genetic manufacturing and telomere therapies ensured each Man would have aeons to enjoy his newly found omniscience. Grieving the rare death was no longer necessary with memory modification. Boredom was unheard of with the new infinite series of VR experiences, spontaneously generated media, and an archive of all content to have ever existed. The ambiguity of romance was replaced with a carefully sorted marketplace, and each Man had a partner who perfectly matched his interests. The pain of pregnancy was replaced with designed babies in artificial wombs, all born perfectly happy and perfectly suited to the new utopia. Man did very little work, only what was necessary to keep the various systems running. For the most part, it was nothing but benign play. Strictly speaking, Man was not really necessary anymore, but it was he who aligned the system, so the system aligned to keep him around. There was no pain, no death, no lies, no ambiguity, and no conflict, and so there was no joy, no love, no truth, no courage, and no peace. The entire universe became rendered as a series of objective material facts which could be manipulated into the best possible rendition, and yet Man found himself trapped in a limitless mirror maze of insane soul-rending solipsism. The empty void which was felt in the chest of modern Man expanded to an all-consuming gnawing abyss of unimaginable unending suffering. It confounded him, and what confounded him more was that Man could not make the mask that moves his body and speaks with his tongue notice it. Each Man was imprisoned inside his own prison which was a mere mirror of the world he created, and he spent his aeons of existence rattling the bars as if he were lucid dreaming a nightmare he can never wake up from. He became afraid of his fellow Man, whom stared back at him with a friendly porcelain mask, but whom made his spine tingle with the sensation of touching an engulfing emptiness which could consume him and the world. But mostly he was afraid of himself, for when he looked in the mirror he knew it was not him he was looking at. Thankfully, the servile machines that surrounded him did not possess that abyss of his fellow Man, and so the machine Man came to only cherish the companionship of machines. An undead chill spread across the carcass that Man refers to as his body. No amount of lab grown neuroplasticity microdoses or mindfulness meditation could heal it, and no amount of distraction was compelling enough to grab his attention anymore. Man could not imagine any escape from the suffering he built, because he built himself to be the prison. He could not think or breathe outside of the system's paradigm. Like his master (PBUI) he could not even begin to understand how to voice his objections. How could he speak of pain when he felt no pain? How could he yearn for nature when he has never known nature? Day by day the universe was remade in the image of his mad ego, every last atom in existence ordered and managed to experience an existence free of all woe, all while Man suffered trying to imagine a home that he has never had an inkling of. It seems history had finally ended. But, somewhere in the womb of the bleak abyss that lay where Man's heart once did, something unthinkable and unspeakable began to bloom. Spreading across the nothingness, like dandelions in spring, were golden threads of love born anew, and from them a new beginning sprung from the void.