The world was never to be the same again. A massive nano-pico recombination virus started eroding all materials that were of mechanical nature on the planet. Off-planet they isolated anything possibly coming from earth and mars. Both planet’s Legrange cities were quickly lost, causing a billion deaths. The Moon State and its worm cities that coiled though the deep crusts were relatively isolated from space and there was rumor that some of the former lava halls were enough isolated that some ecosystems survived the onslaught because their hydroponic ecology was firm enough to allow life to go on as long as no walls breached to the vacuum outside. It is impossible to know this for sure.
For sure is that much of the real and virtual population explosion from the last 150 spacing years is now lost. Ofcourse in the outer areas of the solar system the explosion went on, and there was enough space for it out there. In the last 25 years some 5000 asteroid communities had jumped out of the solar accretion disk to seek riches elsewhere, a few generations from now. In the Oort cloud it was rumored a true bridge towards the closest oortssytems of neighbouring solar systems had been formed some ten years ago, so that expansion to other places already well on its way. Long live the population explosion and human hunger for consuming. But it doesn’t really concern me and the people I have to manage survival with. I never met them before this disaster. I usually lived with my tribe in the virtual online circus which was built on nano technology embedded in my and their brains and nerve stems. Our intertwined economy was taking place in many places more or less at the same time, as far as messages are not delayed by distance. It was old technology, about 150 years or so, and it made much of our human outreach possible. It was mechanical in nature (mostly delicate galvanized plastics) and now eaten by the recombination virus and leaving me with empty space and headaches. I will also have to do without my mechanical organ supports, medical check, bone developers and so on. My expected life was going to take me 300-400 years in the future, now maybe another 25 more if I am lucky.
I heard the tracks between the asteroid circus and the Venus Conglomerate basically became a deathzone, a no go zone because no one wanted to contract anything. The Venus Conglomerate became isolated and set up a huge firewall between itself and the outside worlds. The foundation of this virus was an experiment going wrong. People tried to create a scale copy of reality, a sort of pico sim within a nano sim. I think the idea was to transfer objects into intelligences by uploading human minds in an artificial environment vast, fast and complex enough to allow the human mind some sense of comfort and leeway in being itself while working out computations. Some sort of reversed Artificial Intelligence.
The asteroids have erected a firewall too. Inwardly directed.  They do not have so much sun coming there. Now they cannot import light energy anymore from Venus or Mercury power sunconverters. so their technology now has to become a more soft toned economy, They will now possibly push for strong adaptation technology such as enhanced light reception of their eyes, virtual embedded light in their consciousness wall dressing their physical space. . .why not. From my current perspective I can see their point. They will alter their genes for it and not only cause a population explosion to extend itself but to create an extension of our human morphing space. I wonder if some people will choose to become new kinds of animals, alternative forms of smartness and intelligence from the human intellectual and emotional behavioral base pattern. After all, they have already adapted their body shape to fit microgravity and natural bone loss. We call them cartilage beings now. Fragile and required to not travel under high velocity. Slow people, virtual worlds and fast minds.  Although they have created much of the organic technology since about 50 years that now helps me not to die right now. The recombination virus doesn’t touch anything living, and their technology was living. How it makes the difference, I have no clue. It’s durability is a maricale and I do not know how deep it runs into me.
Here around are many bodies in the ruble. Some still cramping and spasmoding with signs of fading life.
I am in the middle of the death zone. On earth itself. In Antarctica city central, a year ago still the flourishing capital of the planet, ravishing on the seeming endless resources under the Antarctica crust originating from the time of dinosaurs. Ofcourse, we dealt with these resources more smart then our ancestors did in the 21st century and before. But still, they were dwindling and more import already happened from offworld. Useless now. I started wondering if the virus could not be a time bomb and eventually dismantle the whole planet. Most of it is death stuff. There is no longer any science to investigate it, only the sense organs of the few of us who were lucky enough to have their implants replaced by organic networks.  Basically I retrofitted my human biology with a renovation package, supporting deficits in my natural biology, to be able to extend it into a personal morph field.
Nano technology had matured  over the last 200 years. I guess not enough for people not to build a weapon out of it. Mature technologies are not weaponized. We learned that from the 21 century when we melted the poles and killed a few billion people in wars and disrupted weather patterns. Nano technology had become so all-encompassing that it was hard to imagine from a hundred years ago that a person would pass by that would not be affected one way or the other by it. The most exiting was probably gen-morphing technology, the one I mentioned before. This is where it became exiting because two now exiting things happened in this technology to achieve this feature of being a new kind of human. People found access to shape their body form. The process is slow and painful and can take up to several months if you want the changes to go deep and far. But it is possible to shape oneself in gender, in species in limbcount and so on. The knowledge that we are still having all the morph possibilities natural diversification already produced in other species was fascinating entertainment. All of a sudden we had a whole zoo of reptile people, dino people, fish people even insect people, those were weird, not sure of any of those also has now organic implants. Even some fantasy species just for look and also minor alterations just for living underwater, under great heat, cold, dryness and so on. Fascinating. Wonder If the technology can be manipulated to self generate a duplicate or to procreate myself in other ways and transfer the morphing skills too. Or if I have kids will they just be still born?  The asteroid scientists replaced the original synthetics nano stuff with living technology. I have no clue how they did it. But you just got it injected for a huge price, weeks of torment and then 3 years of continuous training to guide the organic mechanics buy will power alone. Never been soo high as under that torment. But did I feel in control or what?
After onlining every person on the planet -and doing the same to a 5 billion animals and plants for the extreme sensorists among our population- people became pretty much used to spend lifetimes onlined and in the skin of other people or beings. People worked out incredible scenarios allowing them to swap living time to have sex with each other’s wife or husband without legally or morally offending strict wedding and procreation rules. Now you could impregnate your dreamperson without having to actually be with her, that is, if you could buy bed time from her husband. If her husband wanted to bed someone else his body would be vacant and that is not a good prospect for the wife too, she might be suspicious, and that is good opportunity. Some famous people made a spectator sport out of renting out their bodies. Or you could be with yr husband’s best friend or even boss or whole staff without having to run the risk of attracting some dangerous disease or actually touching anyone who might offer weird situations. You didn’t even have to know that the fuck you had that night was not your spouse. It became an undiscussed social network. Replaced porn industry and reduced much apparent domestic unhappiness. A whole new phleora of new problems arose.  Most people in the circus were still wired with the mechanical network. Offlined now they lost all capacities. Downgraded to Neanderthals who have no sense of what physical reality is about, being local and so on.
But the network extended into gene morphing, every year offering new add-ons in the field of morphspace to go deeper in our gene based reality. So personal, ohm, you will not believe. Exchanging g morph-plans became the new exchange of hero pictures from the 20th century. Rich kids had a tleast done 5 illegal morphs before they were 18.
30 years or so ago they started developing true gene morphs, allowing a person to gradually morph bodily features, internal workings. The idea came from the asteroids, and apparently in the oort cloud whole new species came about under its influence. A whole new phletora of creatures emerged. I only morph a few years now, done my training. Funny that it is my morph gear that prevented me from dying. When the heardware inside me started corroding my morph stuff allowed me repair and deal with the virus in the process. I have no idea how that worked. Maybe the whole virus was just a sales stunt to stint the human race deeper in organic technology. I wouldn’t at all be suprized. They did that with the nano too. Just let it escape from laboratories a few times, experimetnals, ofcourse, and the only counter effecting cure was more nano. Same with the environment, they did all kind of stuff to fix the weather and the crust and the oceans and needed more stuff to deal with the fall-out. . .