The Singularity and You

The depiction of the Spindowners site is meant to represent a post-singularity environment. However, in many ways, the people living in the substation are the people left behind. Although post-human compared to people living in the early 21st century, even the most intelligent, wealthiest, and most privileged are little more than mites compared to the minds that continue to transform themselves throughout the galaxy.

This is of little import to the people on the substation, of course. Such observations barely warrant notice even at the breakfast table, and the study of 'sumini' are of interest only to a small minority of scholars.

Humans, and their similarly limited alien or robotic counterparts, live on the fringes of civilization, considered a pest at most to the sumini who even deign to notice them. For the most part, habitats once considered most prized to biological life, such as Earth, are now strictly off limits, or even non-existent, as inner terrestrial worlds are dismantled for the raw materials required to create star-straddling computers to house the minds of Sumonid life forms.

Life is not bleak for most humans in this era, however. They still live with wealth unimaginable before the singularity. Hunger and disease are words that have vanished from the modern vocabulary. Aging and permanent death have been banished from the species. With a spoken word, gesture, or even thought, nearly any creature comfort will materialize for the benefit of a person.

Economy has been transformed. Energy is cheap. Through the technological magic of femtronic engineering, matter is as cheap. Gold, once considered a 'rare earth', can be created through the transformation of other raw materials. The elements themselves are no longer immutable. With hints and foreshadowing even before the singularity, national and global economies were already disengaging themselves from any physical measure such as gold or silver even as early as the twentieth century.

The economy of spindowners, as for any human in the galaxy, is based on energy. This is a crude measure by the post-singularity sumini culture, which defines its currency on concepts barely understood (if at all) by humans. However, energy is a relatively accurate measurement for the needs of the lives of most people.