Prologue

In the year 2043, privacy has become the luxury of the few while the many have fully embraced “civic transparency” and all of the convenience it brings. The Biological Surveillance Act has mandated the implantation of Smart Lenses in all persons above the age of twelve after a chaotic decade of unregulated market driven consumer products that led to the need for heavy regulation or a total ban on the technology. Addicted to the capabilities of the tech, the people of the world demanded the continuation of the use of the technology. Having fomented this very scenario, Big Brother made them an offer they couldn’t resist. In return for for full access to these retina cameras, the Commission offered citizens advanced AI and augmented reality assisted living. They were promised no human would ever be able to access the Lens or interfere with the data gathered through them, instead it was to be fully monitored and trawled through by secretive AI programs. With complete environment recognition that could be interacted with through an AR HUD, citizens became immersed in this new existence, losing themselves completely in a single generation to the mission creep of the technology and the minds behind it. This new man of the future has become defensive of his extra sensory abilities and the comforts they bring, demonising and attacking those who speak out against the use of the technology and its potential to hand the Commission a blank check on what they can or cannot see.

After the Biological Surveillance Act was passed, it was immediately followed by constitutional reform that provided protections against the use of augmented reality for purposes of deception, policy implementation or behavioural change. Believing that the technology was now secure and the intentions of the Commission of Global Affairs were benign, this new man of the future proceeds obliviously into the void. Unable to identify the potential threat to the reliability of his eyes, he stands idly by as the powers that be begin to play God with reality. The institutions of the world slowly weaponise the technology to augment the world around him.

Dissidents are breaking ground, finding ways to destabilise trust in the technology, even using it in creative ways against the general public and agents of the State. The State itself is failing to resist temptation, succumbing to ever more depraved uses of the technology. Having taken part in generating an entirely fabricated event designed to demonise opponents of the Commission, a pair of Operators in the AR program known as Oculus, seeing the reprehensible direction the Commission was taking, hatch a plan to disappear off the grid and bring with them a back door into the Sea of Eyes. Using their unique position in the program, the pair plot to fake their own deaths. As they plot a course out of the program, others are desperate to get in. Susan Grimes, a serving police officer and victim of a Lens involved attack, has been selected to become an Operator. Seeing her situation as a kind of cat out of the bag scenario, Susan decides that a return to normal life would be unfeasible, choosing instead to let curiosity take the reigns.

Behind the scenes of all this secret chaos is the group of sociopaths who head up the Oculus program. This group of young research associates are dedicated technocrats and this led to them being acquired by the Commission following their work in the field of Augmented Reality. Although the group is overseen by the Central Intelligence Bureau, they see themselves as the founding fathers of the next great leap forward. Not content to be mere employees of the State, the group sets about the expansion of their surveillance programs and with it, their control within the Commission.

Meanwhile, beyond the state-imposed limitations of mans own eye, a new world struggles to be born.