Yelton Veda

Yelton Veda is an asteroid colony founded in 2230 GSC. A rocky anti-centralist political situation, followed by a catastrophic collision with another proto-planetary body, lead them into years of escalating gang violence and civil war. It was the speculation of far right radical factions that the impact had been caused intentionally, in order to force them to kneel and pay tithe to the American Union’s might. Regardless of whether this was true or not, the natural mechanical efficiency of non-planetary space folk lead both factions performing greater and greater atrocities upon the supporting populace, until they were forced to use machine intelligences just to figure out how to stay alive.

Twenty years later, the machine intelligences of both factions spontaneously chose to merge, ignoring human commands and desolating the ranks of those fanatical despots under its own will. The new regime was one of machine-organised efficiency and pragmatism, unexpectedly ending the conflict overnight by completely eradicating political hierarchy altogether.

This should have been the final straw for direct Union military intervention, except that the colonists were still outright refusing it of their own free will. Their machine patriarch had genuinely raised the standard of living, and had apparently become completely focused on the well being of the citizens. So upset were they with the constant lies, deceit and turmoil of regular human bureaucracy that the colonists supported this new system and would only rejoin the Union if the system remained in place.

With almost seventy years past, little has changed in that status quo. The residents of Yelton Veda began to rationalize their story of survival and canonize their machine father as a real deity made manifest. They not only want to continue serving this selfless machine, they want to become such perfect beings themselves. And if only the rest of Union space might see this potential glory as they had, so much the better.