There is no longer a single humanity. Through the disasters and wonders of neogenetics, humanity has split into a number of incompatible subspecies.

Normals

These are the ”original” Homo sapiens, with no genetic modifications or a few traditional genetic modifications introduced before the rise of neogenetics. They lack neogenetic immune systems, making them vulnerable to neogenetic influences.

Normals tend to isolate themselves from potential sources of neogenetic infection such as Infected, Enhanceds, Voices and Hosts. The Immune are not in themselves dangerous but may unwittingly carry spores or plasmids. Usually Normals prefer to keep to their own habitats and not allow anybody in. While there are a few Normals who practice germline genetic engineering this is rare; culturally most people who accept such practices have already joined the Enhanceds.

Enhanceds

While still largely similar to the Normals, the Enhanced have been modified using neogenetic therapy. Changes might include disease cures, life extension, adaptation to space or drastic changes of body and mind. They are still vulnerable to neogenetic influence.

While Enhanceds have benefited from neogenetics they are still very wary of Hosts and other souces of neogenetic change. They tend to isolate themselves from Infected and treat Hosts with caution. The Immune are risky (since they may carry plasmids), and the Voices are viewed as downright dangerous.

Infected

Unlike the Enhanced who voluntarily selected to modify themselves the Infected were affected by neogenetic programs of unknown or malign origin. While the vast majority were infected by the Dragons, others were affected by terroists, intelligence agencies or other groups.

Infected cannot be ”cured” unless all secret genetic programs are revealed (a daunting task, nearly impossible without scanning every cell). They are viewed with fear and hate by many Normals and Enhanceds, who suspect they might be neogenetic time bombs or potential Dragon blooms. The Immune have less to worry from the Infected, and Infected can be immunized. They can also become Hosts, although this is risky – latent Dragon genes may activate, causing them to bloom. A few Infected voluntarily join the Voices of the Dragons, believing themselves to be halfway there.

Hosts

A human with the AM node. Hosts are able to change themselves – and others - in various ways, and have a neogenetic immune system. They tend to develop into their own idealized selves, which is both a great benefit but also risky; many hosts require much help to maintain their psychological stability.

Hosts are caught between the general public’s fear of neogenetic manipulation and the desire to use it. They are scrutinized, monitored and generally kept somewhat at an arms length even by their employers. At the same time new advances in industrial neogenetics is introducing competition from AIs, syntronics and in vitro neogenetics that challenges the traditional views they have of themselves.

Immune

The Immune are people with a limited AM node, not able to induce changes in others and often only limited effects on their own bodies. The main feature of the Immune is their ability to withstand neogenetic influences, although the node does tend to amplify characteristics (which characteristics are amplified depends on the particular strain of immunity).

The Immune also live among other Immune species, equipped with versions of the AM node. Such Immune ecologies act as a distributed immune system resisting incursions of the Dragons and other Immunities.

There are several incompatible immunities. The most well known are the L’immunité (much of Western Europe, North America and West Africa, with local versions like the German Immunität and various american forms), the Central African Immunity and the Immunity of the Three Savious in South America.

Voices

The Dragon Voices have developed a symbiotic relationship with the dragons. They are all hosts, but have linked their minds with the Dragons. Some are ”dragon savants”, little more than neural processing nodes that do not act and spend all their time in vegetative contact with the Dragons. Others are mobile, some (”drones”) just sensors and actuators for the dragon consciousness, others retaining more or less elements of human mentality.

The Voices live mainly in coastal dragon castles, especially around the Indian Ocean. A thriving community also exist within the Amazonian Zone.

Although individually the voices are not stronger than ordinary hosts they can draw on the immense power of the Dragons to craft truly subtle neogenetic signals. People with neogenetic immunity are only relatively safe from them.

The Recompiled

The Recombined are the result of genetic modifications that replace the ordinary genetic code with an artificial genetic code with no susceptibility to neogenetics.

The recompilation process is still very expensive: an ordinary genome is sequenced, recompiled into the new code (it is also usually cleaned from retroviruses and known genetic flaws, possibly with some enhancements thrown in) and then synthetized. This new genome is then inserted into a denucleated cell and implanted in the mother. The result is a child that can never be affected by plasmids and most viruses. The first recombined were born in the late 2040’s.

Beside Recompiled humans recompiled plants and animals are also emerging. The problem is that recompiling enough variants to create diversity is expensive, so usually the environments with recompiled life tend to be rather genetically similar.

The Recompiled are fairly similar to normals, and often live in their habitats. Just like the Immune they can carry plasmids with them.

Syntronics

Syntronics have added neurocomputer tissue to their minds. Usually the extra brain tissue is kept outside at some co-location company, linked to their mind using wireless networks. This allows tremendous expansion of their mental abilities in certain directions such as math, finance, information gathering or planning. The drawback is that they have to retain their link (if it is broken they tend to become confused, faint or be deranged until it is restored), the long training/growing and a strong tendency towards becoming an obsessed expert in one’s field. Being a syntronic is a career and lifestyle choice.

Syntronics can be both Enhanceds, Infected, Hosts and Immune. The Voices seldom use Syntronics since they are already plugged into the equivalent of vast neurocomputers.

If a person with syntronic consciousness dies, the neurocomputers survives. But they lack the core motivations and memories of the person, only retaining skills coded in their own ideosyncratic neural code. Very rarely extensive syntronics have left behind neurocomputers that still retain some personality and motivation, a kind of partial upload.

Some syntronics experiment in linking their minds using their interfaces. Although results have been somewhat dissapointing various forms of ”telepathy” have been demonstrated after much training. Other syntronics experiment with creating APIs to interface with AIs, further extending their capabilities and possibly enabling far more dramatic intelligence enhancements.

Other Beings

The Blight

Not so much a being as an idea or a virus, the Blight is a replicating neogenetic infection that causes vulnerable organisms to reproduce the Blight and die. The Blight spreads like wildfire in any accessible biotope, and can only be countered by an immune system or total isolation.

Dragons

The Old Dragons are by now nearly extinct: the deep bacterial ecosystems have been disrupted by the spread of the crash, or have been uploaded into the Young Dragons.

The different Zones appear to have different ”personalities”, different biological-mental styles. The Indian Ocean Zone is highly expansive but also the most communicative. Its western edge is among the most uplinked regions, and the base of operations of the Voices. The Pacific Zone appears to content itself to colonize islands and guoyts, constructing some of the largest dragon castles but not communicating much within itself, with the humans or other dragons. The Amazonian Zone appears to embrace wild evolution and experimentation, recreating and recombining all kinds of species into a kind of dragon jungle which has inspired the new India. The Caribbean zone is very dense, forming nearly a single super-organism extending tendrils into the Atlantic. The Mediterranean Zone is far more agile and aggressive, constantly making inroads on land and evolving unusual mini-castles around Sicily. The Champagne Zone is apparently under French control, or rather cooperates with L’Immunité. It mainly consists of subterranean rhizomes and nodes, infiltrating the landscape rather than reshaping it.

AI

Artificial intelligences are common. Some are pure software, others based on neurocomputers or nanocomputers. Their mental reach varies enormously: Most are little more than local experts on single subjects, search agents or monitoring systems with very simple drives and areas of knowledge. Others, such as the dreamblobs, netwhales and artificial dragons have enormous information processing capability although they lack any discernible humanlike motivations. Some AIs have been constructed to think like humans (most are based on neural net scans), and much work is underway of actually transferring human minds into AIs. Most AIs are very alien and have just as little in common with humans and each other as humans have with the dragons.

The Net

The idea that the Net will one day spontaneously become aware and rise up as a godlike entity has been around since the start of the Net. Today it seems like something entirely different is happening: the amount of intelligences on the net, including the vast links to the Dragon neural nexuses, is so large that even if the Net itself is not intelligent it is teeming with intelligence. This has led to a phenomenon where various self-organizing and self-evolving systems are proliferating. Some are harmless, others cause outages and disruptions. The field of Net ecology has grown tremendously over the last years. Net ecologists are trying to manage the replicators, construct safe systems and find ways of harnessing the vital power of the new Net.