When the internet as invented, it was an astonishing marvel that created a technological singularity that advanced humanity beyond its basic limitations. Cancer was cured, rocket-science became public transportation and global warming didn't stand a chance. As the population boomed and robotics became as advanced as they were, the solar system was suddenly met with a new challenge; overpopulation. Planetary colonization made this a less urgent issue, but at the rate the population soared, the strain humanity put on their resources made it inevitable and it would cause a downward spiral for the quality of living for most of mankind.

With this growing problem, the human leaders and AI came up with an unorthodox idea. A controversial, absurd, incredibly unorthodox idea.

After Venus was tractor-beamed into the goldilocks zone of the solar-system, it took less than a few decades to speed up the molten planet's cooling process and artificially convert the deadly gases in its atmosphere into just the right amount of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide for human habitation. Robotic laborers quickly began to construct Project M.O.T.H.E.R. Using various ores found in Saturn's rings, the machines constructed one massive, continuous city meant to house anyone who chose to come.

While it horrified many, Project M.O.T.H.E.R. was enticing to those who were unable to find a place in society. Most labor jobs have been replaced by machinery. Most inquiry and innovations were also automated, leaving most of mankind as mere spectators while machines did everything for them. Project M.O.T.H.E.R. was the name of an incredibly advanced interactive virtual reality simulation. An advanced automated world that was created to adapt and cater to those who entered it.

However, such an advanced system came with a few caveats.

The kind of processing power needed to create such a miracle would require a computer system so powerful and complex, not even the most advanced AI could create one from scratch. By jacking directly into the human brain, the person who experienced the simulation could provide the processing power while being able to fully-immerse themselves into it. With such a delicate system in-place, the procedure was a one-way trip. The moment you enter the simulation, you would be there permanently, living on with more than a third of humanity inside the simulation.

The city on Venus was not a place where they lived. It was where they were stored, their bodies kept comatose as their minds lived on in M.O.T.H.E.R.

They shaved your head before they surgically implanted the dataport to the back of your neck.

The procedure was shockingly cheap and quick despite how complex it sounded. Basically what they did was they surgically implanted a plug jack into your nervous system, allowing the human brain to be able to interact with computers and hardware. If done incorrectly, it would have paralyzed you for life, but with the invention of medicare AI and a mixture of laser and nano-technology, life or death procedures were as easy as making breakfast.

You lied back, having stripped naked so that all of the hairs and pores and hair follicles on your body were cleansed with pin-point lasers until your entire body was smooth and free of as many contaminants as possible. Once the lights on the robotic arms ceased, you sat up, trying to maintain your modesty as the androids that worked there gently led you down the hall.

The room was filled with pods. Thousands and thousands of pods. They were all egg-shaped, and each of them had at least one person in them. Sometimes there were couples. You briefly saw one particular pod; it had a boy - somewhere between nine and eleven - his body completely free of hair with a cable in the back of his neck, a breathing mask over his nose and mouth, suspended in a vat of clear goo as he slept peacefully. In the pod next to him, there was an adult man and an adult woman, both of them asleep together in a similar state. You only presumed they were the boy's parents.

You and the androids eventually found a pod that was empty and open. Holding your hands, the androids helping you into the pod as you lie back in it. One held your head up as they plugged a wire into the jack in the back of your head. Your entire body began to shiver, as though the cable was injecting your body with a steady flow of electricity as the synapses in your brain adapted to this new, alien method of stimulation.

As you made calming breaths, the second android placed a respirator mask to your face. Three tentacles suddenly invaded your mouth and both nostrils, the soft-robotic tentacles choking you briefly before they reached your lungs and began pumping oxygen into them.

As you slowly allowed the machine to breath on your behalf, the cable attached to your neck began to pump data into your brain, commanding it to release the right cocktail of hormones to calm you down. The top of the pod you were lying in closed itself. You felt the pod you were lying in begin to fill with a clear amniotic fluid, engineered and produced to seep essential nutrients directly into the skin. As you relax in the warm gel that enveloped you like a return to the womb, the cable in your neck finished loading what it needed to load into your brain. Your sight was blurry as you looked at the robots that escorted you, your vision blurry in the fluid as the cable lulled you to sleep.

Your life in reality had officially ended. Now you will be taken care of in M.O.T.H.E.R.