The year is tenthousandone. There are seven hundred billions people living on Earth. Promises of space travel proved false: although humans mastered light-speed travel - this was never enough to actually reach that special other planet where they could settle in their lifetime. Actually, they did not discover any life in Universe besides their own in a radius of 100 light-years.
There is only one ecosystem: human ecosystem. All surviving plants and animals are part of the human food chain. Spotted owls and rain forests, though, are readily available in 3-d animated holographic worlds on demand. There are no resources any more: oil, coal, uranium and most of other metals and minerals have been digged out from the Earth's crust long time ago. Fertile land and smelly cornfields are available only in sophisticated computer renderings.
Food is produced from the oceans. Water is extracted from the ocean, too. Electricity is prouced in fusion plants (which are also located in the oceans). Industry is automated and it's based on recycling. Iron ore is extracted from the magma (mines are at the bottom of the oceans).
Still, there is not enough food or energy - or SPACE - for all seven hundred billions people to live on the planet at the same time. The life expectancy climbed to about 300 years (320 for women), and humans still procreate. There are no diseases any more (humans outlived them). The art of war was outlawed a few thousands years ago, and it is only available as a part of a coursework in history.
In fact, the food and energy production is able to support only one billion of humans living on the planet at th time (not counting those who live in so-called "sealed areas", the world knows less about them than about people living ten thousands years ago). Most of people are reduced to information.
In year 3500 a young scientist discovered and developed hardware and software necesarry to download a person to a computer. Two centuries later a reverse process was developed. People were able to save themseleves as a file and retreive themselves up on demand when they wanted. In virtual state people consumed no food and just very little energy, and a person took up less than a square inch of space. It was also better than dying forever. For years later, however, the process was too expensive, so just the richest used it. Then around 4200 a group of software developers came up with programs which enabled people to actually live in the computer. Thousands of virtual worlds were developed. Two thousand years old games were adapted to be played by real people inside the computer. Those who tested the system were beging for more. Living in on the other side of life became hip. The hype slahed the prices gradually. Around year 5000 even the poorest people were able to take their daily trips to some othe world and come back to their ever shittier Earth later.
Two thousand years later, people finally overcrowded the planet, and scientist saw the starvation, polluted environment and possible new diseases finally reducing humans to the fate of dinosaur. Security Coucil of United Consortium of Corporations decided to put an old proposal to a referendum: instead of living on the planet and taking trips to the virtual worlds, people would be offered choice of living in the virtual world of their choice and taking trips to the planet when they want. That was supposed to save the human race from the inevitable, scientists argued. Trips to virtual worlds already became cheaper than having breakfast - and there you did not need breakfast. Renting a space in a computer was at a fraction of the price of renting a real apartment. And most jobs were done from inside the computer anyway. So, the idea was widely accepted.
People moved into computer. Billions of them worked there and lived there afterwards taking trips out only on weekends and holidays, chosing their bodies to suit the occassion, as they'd choose ties or jackets in times before. The trips costed a hell of a lot of money. And that's where middle class savings went: to pay for two days of being human again. "Blue collars", those who had to maintain wires and hardware, would come to work to the real world every day - a corporation would pay for the transfer and for recreating of their always the same body (so a worker would be able to perform his job for almost two centuries, since his body would age only when in use), but they would live in the computer. Usually they wouldn't have money to take trips outside, maybe just once or twice a year. The really rich half a billion of people never had to transfer their lives to the computer. They had enough credits to pay 100$ for a loaf of bread and $100,000 for monthly rent. Now the world was finally nicely arranged for them.
Few billions or so people crammed inside so-called "sealed areas" were a dump of human race. Sealed Areas were initaially designated desserts and wastelands were unrecyclable and unusable garbage was dumped. Slowly, people who could not afford the rising costs of living in the World, and who steadily refused to move to the Computer (or were refused by the Computer for their lack of skills or useful knowledge), moved there - together with other saprophitic animals like rats and roaches. They all lived from what the world dumped on them. Sealed Areas were officially "sealed", so officially NOBODY lived there, and there was no services over there (no water, sewers, electricity, communications, health control, fire department or police). Only rats, roaches and Morlocks lived there.
Those who live in the computer fear for their life every day. If they don't have credits to pay for their rent and energy - they are deleted, which lives them in the memory for a while until others slowly take their space nibbling them out. A horrifying death of a lost file.
Prisoners are just put off-line, which makes them sa good as dead, only their space can't be claimed by anybody else in the meantime. The actually vegetate in absolute sensory deprivation for the time of their punishment.
A guy from a sealed area breaks into a resort where middle class cyberserfs take vaccations to the reality. He attacks and steals from one couple. Couple's bodies are severely damaged. Police materalizes and neutralize the guy (who'd be put back to the sealed area in the next shipment of unrecyclable garbage).
A kid watches the scene. Kid who took trips to virtual world to play games but never had to live there, since his father owns one of the cybercorps (his mother however is never discussed and it is believed she was a c.o. - conscientious objector to the "Move to the Computer" movement, and went to live in some of the sealed areas). The couple's female scream how they planned this trip for weeks, how they saved credits for months, to be able to take it. She was desperate. Her body was already in late fifties. She wanted a child. And children could be conceived only in the real world. She would get a nine month of real world life supported by Social Services, after which her childs genetic structure would be imprinted in computer. Child would live in a real world for a few years until it is ready to be transfered. Mother would go back immediately after she gives birth.
Policeman calmed down the woman assuring her that insurance would cover the accident and that they'd be allowed to take another trip for free. Policeman was compassionate. He also lived in the computer and came to the real world every day just to do his job, slipping his soul in his already pre-uniformed body, he was retreived from the computer every morning like a file and saved and closed every evening.
On the ground there was a little primitive picture, something like printed on plastic. Obviously from the sealed area. After everybody left, kid picked it up and took it home. At home he gave it to the computer to analyze it. It was an old credit card, thing that people had used in the past, before the voice, fingerprint, retina and dna recognition, as the method of payment. It was still working, and it might be uset to open some old gates. This is probably how the guy came to the city.
He decided to go to the sealed area and search for the guy and give him back his lost piece of plastic, and perhaps learn something about his mother. First he went to the computer to research sealed areas. Computer drive him through them in simulation, but it couldn't transfer him there, since there were no matter-energy converters in sealed areas. Rather an old-fashioned physical travel was required. Kid found a young girl who moderated an interest group for sealed areas, kind of a hippie community of atomized entry level employees who thought it was inhumane that some people were left in those areas. With knowledge of directions and a new special friend in his brain, kid returned to the real world to start planning a travel. She promised to be constantly on-line with him and watch him from the sattelite above the sealed area.
Kid left and got into trouble in the area (where a body damage meant injury and you had only one life). His dad went mad, found the girl and condemned her to cyberprison. He located his son, but even he couldn't get official response (i.e. police to go in for a rescue). He had to hire a private research analyst to do that.
PRA-s charge a lot these days for tough outter-world actions like that. This would cost kid's dad a fortune.
A hacker friend of the imprisoned girl decided to commit an uspeakable crime (should he get caught for that he'd get a life off-line). He hacked the code on the system level and in time when PRA was to materialize in the real world he got the girl back on line and transfered her as a file to the PRA's real-world body, while directing real PRA's file to the off-line status (prison). Kid's father couldn't tell the difference, since difference was not visible in the real-world. Hacker transfered the briefing file and the skills subroutines from the real PRA to the girl kind of like shared library files. Only the controlling PRA's file, that represented his ego, was left off-line. It was her soul in his body.
In a PRA's body she took off in VTOL plane to search for her lost friend in the sealed area. The whole world was watching it as a real life soap opera of the 101st century.
to be continued...