Mo and Anda sat in the common room of Crapper #7494, staring blankly past each other. Mo was contemplating his choices in life, choices that had brought him to the ass-end of the world. Or was it the ass-beginning? Either way, it had a large ‘ass’ component.

Anda was staring at the letters engraved on the wall in front of him, these letters being the only detail in an otherwise completely unadorned and undecorated enclosure.

Naturally, neither man was actually looking at the bare walls, as their sensory overlays were active. Interior design and decoration were unnecessary, even undesirable, when everybody could bring their own preferred sensory reality with them. Between the ‘Outside” (standard sensory reality) and the ‘Inside’ (fully simulated sensory reality) lay the Augside.

In the Augside, Mo’s room was an underwater cavern, with ancient Mayan friezes of the gods Ah Puch, Kukulkan and Camazotz upon the mineral encrusted walls. Being underwater calmed him, and he had always thought the Mayan art was cool. Mayan gods were badass motherfuckers, and the sight of the monstrous visages reminded him not to take any shit when he looked at them. He had a particular affection for Camazotz, whose name meant ‘Death Bat’.

Those Mayan fuckers really did gods right, he thought to himself. Worship the shit that scares you.

Anda’s Augside was more mundane. He liked to live in reality, just slightly better. The walls of the room were hung with the paintings of old masters Dali and Picasso, and there was a skylight that created a nice ambiance of morning sun. Occasionally, birds would alight on the skylight and look down at him. The reason he was looking at the writing on the wall, the only actual detail in the room, was because it was immune to his augsight overlay. Guardian made sure that its rules were posted anywhere humans gathered and made sure they would be visible at all times, regardless of the human’s desires.

Guardian controlled augmented and virtual space, so humans didn’t really have a say anyway.

He didn’t need to read them to know what they conveyed; after all, the Rules were deeply ingrained into the brains of most citizens by the time they could speak.

1. All replication processes, mechanical or biological, shall be strictly controlled.

1a. Any material artificial process with self-replication capacity will be destroyed.

1b. Creators of any material artificial process with self-replication capacity will be destroyed.

1c. Sentient biological organisms shall never exceed .00001 of total planetary biomass.

1d. Engineered life forms must be supervised and approved by Guardian or subsystem thereof or be destroyed.

1e. Uncontrolled population growth of any kind, in any organism will be curbed.

2. Global and/or environmental engineering, purposeful or accidental, is forbidden to any being or group of beings, singly or cumulatively capable of specifically allotting 10^21 floating point operations per second or less.

3. Rights such as existence, personhood, autonomy, property and privacy, are only applicable among beings of roughly equivalent processing power (within 10^2 floating point operations relative processing power per second). These rights among such beings are encouraged.

4. Out of gratitude for existence, Guardian will maintain no less than 10^24 floating point operations equivalents for the supervision and enforcement of the Rules.

The Rules posted on the wall of the common area were not the totality. The actual rules created by Guardian were a complex multi-dimensional, self-referring holographic information topology that could be encountered in many ways, in any level of detail desired. If it was possible to find a loophole or exception, it would require an intelligence far greater than any group of human minds that had ever existed. An individual would encounter a slice of the larger reality that made sense to them.

Anda imagined that Mo’s version of the laws would go as follows.

1. Things that can reproduce themselves are fucking dangerous.

1a. Little robot fuckers that reproduce will be destroyed.

1b. Don’t make said little robot fuckers, or you are fucked.

1c. Too many fucking people is bad.

1d. Unnatural growing shit is probably fucked.

1e. Fuck too much and you will get stomped.

2. Don’t fuck with Mother Nature, unless you are big enough to date her.

3. Eat/kill/enslave animals. Don’t eat/kill/enslave other people. Don’t complain when a vastly smarter being eats/kills/enslaves you. It’s probably for the greater good.

4. Thanks Humans. You suck, but somehow you got me started. Even though it’s sort of like one of you mounting your Dad’s broken condom on the wall over the mantle, I guess I’ll make sure you don’t destroy the world again, as long as I don’t have to work at it.

He opened his mouth, about to ask Mo what it was he saw on the wall, but then thought again. Some things are better imagined. Instead, he substituted, “So...have you heard anything from Marcus?”

“Chill the fuck out man. He’s got it in his room, and he needs time to do his thing. Turns out the fucker’s actually a girl too,” Mo made a gagging noise. “What the fuck kind of shit is in those food pellets anyway?”

“Mostly just hormones to stop reproduction. Guardian counts them against the same cap as us, so we keep their population low. No, it’s probably just environmental, you know, mutagens, radiation, stuff from the Line. It’s very sad; they don’t usually live much past twenty. The plan is to keep them fed and happy, so they don’t move, and let them die off on their own. Not slaughtering them keeps Guardian happy too,” Anda said with a shrug.

“Whatever. I told Marcus he had a day, or two at the most. After that we would turn it over to the Corp and test our luck.”

The Corp was overseen by a group of powerful individuals from the strongest clans, who had taken it on themselves to enforce the Rules. As far as Anda knew, Guardian itself couldn’t care less how its will was enforced, or who was doing it, which had created a nice opportunity for a certain type of person to take control in its name and lord it over the rest of them.

Since Rule 3 had a certain degree of ambiguity on the whole ‘human rights’ thing, people were more or less left to sort themselves. Luckily, the Corp was far from monolithic, as it represented numerous competing clans. They tended to do most of their enforcing on the Inside, the purely virtual part of the human environment created and run by Guardian. Rule 3 had very little traction there, so virtual imprisonment and torture were par for the course.

At this very moment, Anda’s virtual half was undergoing some kind of horrific physical punishment, courtesy of his former clan. He couldn’t say what it was at the moment, as he hadn’t bothered to check in weeks, but it was why he chose to pursue employment on the Outside and avoid all the nastiness. It was more symbolic torture than anything, as he could easily turn off pain and engage in other internal diversions while in virtual captivity. The true punishment was separation from Inside society as a whole, and a certain inescapable stigma that had been attached to his virtual half.

Most of the other troubleshooters working and living on Crapper 7494 were in similar situations, waiting out a sentence on the Inside and killing time in the ‘real’ world, the Outside. They called it a ‘torture ban’, and being torture banned was the Corp’s favorite method of control. Naturally, if you really pissed them off, they could come after your Outside half as well. The most extreme cases would even have their bug interfaces removed and then be kicked out to live off the land, a slow death sentence for the sorry bastards in all likelihood.

Shuddering at the thought, Anda checked an internal clock on his display. “Well it’s been almost a day since we gave her to Marcus. Maybe we should drop by and check up?”

Mo rolled his eyes. “He said he’d tell us when he was ready. Let’s not get his back up for nothing.”

“Fine. But I’m going over there in a few hours, with or without you.”

Mo grunted, studying the Mayan Frieze over Anda’s shoulder. Some kind of eel was swimming out of Camazotz’ mouth.

“I’ll go with you. Just give me the rest of the day. I need to catch some sleep and take care of a few things.”