A longer sequel to Bamba's Wall, and another social entropy story:

Between 2020 and 2040, Earth changed more than during all the preceding centuries. Mankind became a different species, and not a moment too soon.
The human mind is an immense flowchart, but the top level is straightforward, if illogical.
A handful of colored pills unlocked the true potential of our brains. Only a few holdouts claimed everyone else was turning into zombies (actually they used the term 'zimbos'), but the truth was more complicated.

Social Integration Drugs required three stages:
The first stage was the 'Decider', itself split into three parts. The user entered a deep reverie, rejected their old life step by step, and became aware of new options.
The second stage was the 'Connector'. The user began to form social links and assumed new responsibilities at a staggering rate.
The final stage was the 'Maintainer'.
In time, users transformed themselves into dedicated specialists, with a few intense life goals and interests.
SID drugs required elaborate social networks to ensnare users.
No one could imagine how stable these would turn out to be.

We call it 'the Endless Now'; the 'Dreamtime', the 'Human Empire'.
The Stasis Book and the Final Law have prevented mankind from destroying itself by messing with new technology.
To all appearances, technological progress ended centuries ago, but that's just an illusion. Progress has simply moved to a higher plane.
In the past million years, the base level of human technology has been optimized. Daily life has improved in every way, but to an imaginary visitor from the distant past things would still seem strangely familiar, like a sanitized memory or a lucid dream.
Our highest technology is too diffuse for any individual or group to control or even understand. The Union is the sum of all human potential. It needs us as much as we need it.

The price for species immortality is that each individual life must end.
Billions of c-ships have settled our galaxy, but each world obeys the same Law, even if it takes them 150,000 years to exchange a message.
Society has become supremely stable. Everywhere is the same place.
A city of a billion people can expect to have dozens of two-kilometer-tall skyscrapers, adjusted for standard gravity. The Central District is a forest of steel and glass.
A city of a trillion people will cover its planet, and its core district will reach for space.

Sometimes we go too far in preserving the status quo. Then there must be a reaction.
The Stasis Cycle Plan which has spread across the Galaxy in the last cellennium is such a paradox. Thanks to cloning and mind feedback, the same people are now being born and reborn each century. They end up living very similar lives, in an unauthorized form of immortality.
This is irrational; a parasitic adaptation. We've become too smart for our own good.
This new technology can not be allowed to advance.
The Union will slightly increase error and variation tolerances, and reduce replicator fidelity an equivalent amount.
In the coming year, roughly 1% of the Standard Law will be suspended. Restrictions on personal behavior will be relaxed.
The destructive diversity will follow soon after.
Enjoy your temporary freedom.



The best hard SF novel ever: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
The inspiration for the 'Anonymous' character
Buy the book
Read the chapters