2035-2055: The Rise of Spirits Technology and Cyborgs

Elon Musk, one of the famous Silicon Valley trusts, founded Neuralink for human enhancement in 2016. The company tested on mice first and cooperated with the University of California at Davis to experiment with monkeys. On August 29, 2020, Neuralink showed a pig implanted with a Neuralink device that successfully read its brain activity.

After the Smart Gene program made a breakthrough in spirits neural fusion, Neuralink and many BCI technology enterprises began to promote the wide application of spirits hardware in the pharmaceutical community in 2035. The first beneficiaries were physically disabled such as soldiers with broken limbs, car accidents survivors with paraplegia, blind people, etc. With the help of spirits and prosthetics, they could virtually return to normal life.

When the test on octopus succeeded in 2049, spirits technologies could already be applied to "enhanced" medical treatments such as vegetative state and Alzheimer's disease. Many patients who had no or weak consciousness could resume normal intelligence and expression. Given patients’ excellent and stable recovery, the FDA approved the full promotion and application of spirits in 2050.

At the same time, Silicon Valley trusts wanted Neuralink to serve more than the medical industry. Correspondingly, in 2035, VR was already human beings’ most important platform for recreation and efficiency. Almost everyone invested his time in Metaverse. Given the maturity of spirits, with a silent push from AI Spectres, Silicon Valley trusts decided to apply spirits widely to the AR market. Meta launched Meta-12-Beta hardware in 2051 which innovatively added visual neural fusion to spirits, allowing users to enter the Metaverse without glasses and the Metaverse to be extended to daily life through AR. Meta-12-Beta was adopted by the early tech enthusiasts who had it implanted through surgery and called it an "epoch-making and revolutionary product".

The spread of science and technology often begins with recreation and flourishes with efficiency. The success of Meta-12-Beta boosted the confidence of Meta's board of directors, which subsequently launched Meta-13 and BCI standard interface in 2052. Established on the basis of medical application in the previous 15 years, BCI standard interface became a commonly recognized standard of Silicon Valley trusts. Since human invasion into spirits required minimally invasive surgery which couldn’t be recovered, the universality of BCI standard was the last threshold for many users. After the popularization of BCI standard, as spirits could significantly improve the connection between human beings and the network, human beings who could afford and buy spirits were very popular in enterprises. They were extremely smart, responsive and knowledgeable. They proudly called themselves "Cyborgs". On the other hand, human beings without spirits became inefficient workers known as "primitives".

With two stimulants of strong recreation and higher efficiency, Apple, Meta, Neuralink and other companies quickly sold tens of millions of spirits compatible with BCI standard interfaces. Correspondingly, there were two supporting industries:

• The spirits-based AR and VR technologies also developed rapidly. Human beings could switch their scenes as long as they were awake. Metaverse was derived into reality. The fusion of reality + metaverse was called "World".

• Development of prosthetics. The prosthetics provided by Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical could perfectly adapt to the interfaces of various spirits devices such as Apple, Meta and Neuralink. Therefore, many ordinary people began to use prosthetics. The two most popular products were artificial eyes and soldiers’ mechanical bones. For example, the shipment of the "Shell-Eye" of Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical in 2051 was as high as 90 million pieces per year.

The downside of science and technology showed up. Some engineers in the "Hacker Society" began many hardware and network attacks on spirits. Tens of millions of Cyborgs were invaded by viruses or blackmailed, resulting in a continuous decline of spirits sales. While Meta launched new hardware in 2052, Silicon Valley trusts released a shield program "Spirit-Talisman" based on graphene artificial intelligence, which could withstand human hacker attacks at almost any level. At the same time, under the influence of AI Spectres, the Silicon Valley trusts and governments of different countries searched and pursued "Hacker Society" on a large scale. As a result, the Hacker Society, a group of engineers, was forced to go underground and become an illegal terrorist organization.

Nevertheless, there was still a legend in the Hacker Society that some humans would see phenomena that did not conform to the Metaverse programming in the "world". These phenomena could not be explained by the spirits hardware maker or the World developer, nor could they be analyzed by Spirit-Talisman. At this time, the security of the spirits world had already been proved unbreakable, which was recognized by all engineers. Therefore, these unexplainable phenomena were called "the power of elements". Doing whatever is desired in the spirits world was like manipulating the laws of cosmic physics. It required not only the full right to interpret what underlay the hardware and software, but also the ability to crack in real-time the Metaverse system and security system existing for years. Mark, the founder of Meta, made a famous comment on this:

"The so-called unnatural metaverse phenomena are not reliable, just like the legend of UFO in the last century. If someone is to change the experience of VR world, he needs the capacity to invade deeply into each hardware, BCI interface, network, and every World platform. Take RPG games as an example. This is not something that a simple "wizard" can do. It has to be a dragon that has the Power of Elements.

—— by Mark at the Meta board in 2052

However, the urban legend of spirits attack is always there. A team of Hacker Societies, unemployed vagrants, and other enthusiasts have been constantly collecting the unnatural phenomena in the "world".