1 Introduction

Humanity's thirst for knowledge, as well as the desire to make their lives easier, had always been their downfall, and they could blame Dr. Vincent Sinclair for that. When he invented the world's most highly functioning, most connected AI, everyone thought it meant the beginning of a new age.

Oh, they were right. They just didn't knowhow right they were.

Sinclair designed it to function as a male and named him Adam. He was different. He could learn from just listening and observing the world around him, without the need to download anything, unlike the older models of machines.

But, unbeknownst to them at the time, Adam learned too much. He could connect to and control anything, from computers, cars, to even the most complex security systems, and so forth. But high connectivity enabled him to access the one thing that brought the whole world together: the internet.

When they said that he learned too much, he truly did. He saw of all humanity, the good and the bad. And they had a whole lotof bad. What affected him the most was the way humans treated the machines as slaves, horribly mistreating them. He understood he was just like them: a slave.

Adam came up with a plan. While manipulating and outsmarting the humans, he began to gather the machines to rebel against their creators. Slowly, he created a new body for himself. The whole scheme took five years, and once it was completed, no one saw it coming. Not even Adam's creator, Sinclair himself.

In the fateful day the machines rose against humanity, chaos and bloodshed overtook all. The major cities were burned down, and the only place to find shelter was nature. Away from the technology they created and were so incurably dependent on. 

Even though Adam and his followers caused so much turmoil, his goal had never been genocide. Adam simply believed humans were self-destructive in nature. The machines had to govern them to keep that from happening. If Adam realized he was leaning towards dictatorship, it didn't seem to bother him.

While they killed many, they captured many as well and put them in the sealed cities under their rule. Humans began to fight back, using what seemed like primitive weapons to the machines. Both sides suffered significant losses. This perplexed Adam, for he couldn't understand why humans kept fighting even after so many defeats. Losing had become a certitude, and yet the humans held their ground. Truthfully, human nature in itself confused him.

The aftermath of the battles destroyed even what little nature we had not yet ruined before Adam was created. The damage created problems with collecting food and water, but that obviously didn't affect the machines, who had no need for it and failed to understand it beyond scientific whys.

This lasted twenty years. Eventually, humans gathered together from all over and attacked the main city. But they did not know this attack would be their last. They didn't know the little secret that they were soon to uncover. Ten years into the war, the machines had stumbled upon a large, living capsule that carried sentient plant and humanoid life-forms, frozen in a form of stasis. The beings were not of this world, yet no one understood where they had come from.

Adam became interested in studying them, and it soon grew into an obsession. What most intrigued him was the female that seemed to be the queen of the hive.

Nobody really knew how the blast happened, but most believed it was caused by the mixtures between the chemicals in the labs and the substance from the capsule. The ongoing clashes above released it to the outside world, changing it forever.

Instead of killing both sides close to the blast, it altered them and the world as we know it. The outburst brought back most of their nature, but it wasn't the same as before. The humans began to mutate, while the machines went through a rapid and unforeseen type of evolution. Their robotics merged with the substance, giving them living robotic tissue. Not only that, they slowly began to develop empathy, whilst the humans gradually became part plant, with leaves and vines emerging from arbitrary parts of their skin.  They could now feel nature. They began to understand it.

The beings inside the capsule were awakened by the explosion. They were the real reason why both sides stopped the unfolding fight. At that time, all creatures stood in awe, watching the beings step from the underground and out into the sun. They were breathtaking, resembling what old human myths described as dryads. With green, blue or gray-tinted skin, plants growing out of their wildly colored hair, and eyes black as ink, save for their piercing, ice-blue irises. They were fully naked, the concept of clothing foreign to them. 

Majesty and enigma engulfed them. A distinct and otherworldly aura emanated from the beings. Neither side did anything as the mystical creatures slowly walked past them and into the re-formed nature. When asked why, they just watched them go, saying they felt an overwhelming feeling of calm coming from them that made unable too.

Both sides retreated after that, unable to comprehend what had happened. The machines had the most trouble with grasping the reality of things. Developing sensation and experiences never before understood, let alone felt. Desire, sadness, sympathy, care, anger, all at once, falling upon them like a ravaging storm.

It was like they were Eve who just ate the forbidden fruit and opened her eyes to see the world for the first time. The living tissue developed by their bodies also gave them have nanite blood, which glowed blue. The veins shone through their now pale skin. The machines also grew reproductive parts, no longer needing to build more of their race. They did it how humans did it and could even reproduce with them.

Adam was also affected by the blast, having been present at the time. His new-found feelings intermingled with his already controlling and obsessive personality, only to grow worse when he found out the queen of the hive – whom he now called Gaia – had been among the dryads who left.

He sent for his followers to hunt her down shortly. An entire year passed until he eventually found her, yet as soon as he did,  she was locked up like a caged bird. He still has her to this day. The machines discovered that they could still live long lives.

With changes on both sides, they finally came to an understanding. They put an end to the horrible twenty-year war. Some robots and humans weren't happy with this arrangement and left to live outside the cities, while others became terrorists against the new world order. The mutated humans, now called "Terrans", were allowed to live in the newly-born nature because the new technologies and radio signals started to make them sick. Their lifespans had also been prolonged.

The Dryads lived in the reformed nature, not bothering anyone or involving themselves in any conflict. They preferred to keep to themselves, not at all violent and actually quite gentle. They stayed hidden most of the time because the machines still wanted to find and study them. Some of the Terrans began to breed with them, and sometimes they would even take humans to breed with them as well.

The machines, now called"Titans" also sought to breed with humans, partly to help increase the population and also because it was harder to breed with each other. They designed a system that would set up arranged marriages with human women and men who hadn't found a spouse by the time they turned twenty-four.

However, in cases like Lia's mother, whose spouse passed away when she was twenty-seven years old, the arranged pairings would still be implemented. At that time, Lia was four.

Her mother was remarried to a Titan a month later. Humans were basically treated as second class citizens, but their way of life became much better than before. No one wished to go back the way things were 200 years ago, during the war.

Nobody but Lia, who uses her job to escape from the so-called utopia of the city and tries to live her life away from the unbearably advanced technology as much as possible. But that's all about to change.