The Meta
What is the Meta?
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Meta is. You have to see it for yourself.
Just kidding, you're seeing it right now. Look around you. What do you see? A world of concrete and steel, of glass and plastic, of screens and wires. A world of cars and planes, of factories and cities. A world of people in suits and dresses, of offices and schools, of shops and restaurants. A world of money and power, of politics and media, of corporations and governments.
That's it. That's the Meta. The whole shebang. Are we saying it's not real? A simulation? Not exactly. So it is real? Not exactly.
The Meta is a hyper-reality, a version of reality agreed upon the collective 8.5 billions minds on Earth. The Technocracy conducted a silent coup in the 20th century, gradually eliminating all supernatural competition, and propping up the prevailing cultures and systems of the human world. It isn't clear their motive, but what the Meta is doing offers hints. You see, the system the industrial world built, the capitalist economy, the 9-to-5 reality...it's just broken. It was broken from the start. Not by a design flaw, but a failure to design. We just made steam engines and kept asking "what next"? A few noble attempts were made to design new systems for the industrial age, but they suffered the most catastrophic failure of all: the hubris of man.
We've heard it so many times. Earth can't sustain this level of resource usage. The oceans will rise. The air will become unbreathable. The soil will become infertile. The animals will go extinct. The people will starve. The economy will collapse. The governments will fall. The world will end. But it hasn't yet, so what gives? Was it all lies?
Partially, no. Some actual measures made progress. But it was much too little, and yes, of course, too late. So what's the Meta's solution? Just force it. In the Meta, we did build a solar utopia. We built arcologies that can survive the inevitable rising sea levels. We built electric cars that don't pollute. We built AI teachers that can educate everyone. We built robots to do all the work. We built a robust social safety net to prevent unemployment. But it doesn't add up. The math doesn't math. People are falling through the cracks, and when they do, they go somewhere else: The Real.
The Meta is closing its fist tighter and tighter around a vision of the world that simply cannot be, and the tighter it clenches, the more it squeezes out the reality that doesn't fit into its vision.
So why don't we simply start unplugging people and taking them to Zion?
The Unplugged
This isn't some computer simulation. Everyone in the Meta exists in the Real (well, every human anyway--the chatbots and robots sadly don't count). For the vast majority of humans, their consciousness is fully immersed in the Meta, and they have no awareness of the Real. Thus, they have a "shadow-self" in the Real, who is an independent being, that thinks it is a singular being. The shadow-self of a typical Meta dweller represents everything about the person that doesn't fit into the Meta, things the Meta wants them to suppress. Facets of our identity we aren't supposed to reveal in the superficial world live on only in the shadow-self.
But some humans are different. They can become dissonant, and begin to see the cracks in the Meta. This can be confusing, and even maddening, especially if they have no guidance. But, if guided, they can become unplugged, fully opening their eyes to the Real. And if they can cope with the system shock, they can begin to understand the situation of their home world.
Being unplugged doesn't mean they've transited into a new, separate world, and can never see the Meta again. They simply disbelieve the illusion. They can still see the Meta, but it's clear as day which parts are lies and which are truth. The people they see in the Real are in the same location as their Meta selves. They can interact with them, although if what they say and do doesn't fit the Meta, the people won't really perceive them.
The "unplugged" are, generally, permanently disconnected, but can "plug in" to the Meta for brief periods of time, if they choose to. They can also choose to "unplug" again, and return to the Real. This is an ability inherent to all humans, but naturally, the Meta-dwellers don't know they can do it, and disbelieve that it's possible.
Shadow Selves
Shadow selves, the real counterpart to the Meta consciousness, are mirrors of their Meta selves, but only to a point. As mentioned, their personality traits are different, as the parts of their nature not welcome in the Meta can only exist in the Shadow. But there are physical constraints as well.
As best they can, the two selves try to stay in sync. If a Meta dweller thinks they're in a 100th-floor arcology apartment, that's where their shadow-self will be. If they think they're driving a car, their shadow-self will be in the driver's seat. The infrastructure of the Real does exist--the Meta isn't inventing buildings and roads out of 1s and 0s--but the Real is decaying and crumbling. Sometimes, there are physical barriers that forcibly separate the two selves, and as you might guess, this is very disruptive and harmful to both of them.
In extreme cases of dissonance, the Meta dweller can be institutionalized, or possibly targeted for rectification by agents of the Technocracy, while the Shadwo