In 2347, Earth’s overpopulation had reached a breaking point, along with humanity’s technological advancements in medical science, including that of genetic manipulation, bionic grafting, cyborg implantation, and cloning. With almost 20 billion people living on the planet in one state of form or another, mutations, defects, and disorders reach an unprecedented level, as well as the levels of pollution, garbage, and radiation. Kyoto; the Global Government, reached a series of laws and sanctions to help with these pressing problems, during a time of a massive depression, food shortages, and huge energy demand. Corporations have taken on the global field, their decision rocking hundreds of millions of lives as they fight hard to stay afloat above other competitors, merging and buying out other businesses to keep themselves alive, like parasites.
And among all this, a wave of crime and death have risen to a level beyond human comprehension. The Black Markets, ran by an international crime organization known as the Syndicate, have made accessible illegal human modifications, weaponry, and death. For anyone who has the money or the ability to obtain it, the sky was the limit for those who lived at the bottom of a very long large barrel. Corporate and Global espionage is a rife as murder and mayhem, entire organizations hired in the prevention or exploitation of it. In an age where immediate access to any kind of information, no matter how secure is more priceless than gold, hackers and netfreaks have cut through their own niche in society, adding net modifications to their own body to speed up the processes by using their own brains as a server.
Yet the biggest controversy in this technological day and age is a concept that has been around since man invented the first weapon; who lives and who dies. Kyoto, in facing staggering overpopulation and food shortages, has reached a conclusion that the best way to solve the problem is to ‘limit’ who can give birth, and to how many children. Petitions must be processed, blood and gene tests given, and a wait period assigned before two parents are given a license to breed. The ‘Breeding Act’, established in 2334, was immediately protested by many throughout the world as a crime against humanity, and many riots ensued as the poor saw it as a way to exterminate and control them over the rich. A new set of enforcement was created to hunt illegal breeding, known as ‘Severity’; a group that will hunt down illegal children, and their parents.
Though all this, interest groups, extremist political wings, crime lords, hit men, masterminds, and green collars play their own games with the world, each rushing to whatever dreams of grandeur that they hold. Death is easy, life is hard, and everything in between is stranger than the previous experience. Drugs are a commodity, and the next breath of polluted air isn’t guaranteed. Guns are the way, and money is the universal language, with information the path. Freedoms are bought and sold as the world stands at the edge of a cliff, ready to fall off.
It is only a matter of time before someone gives it its’ final shove.

02/04/2012