The Grid AI Ascension

Its the middle of the 20th Century in the newly-named city of Utopia2244 yet it is anything but a paradise. It is now lorded-over by Artificial Intelligence and enforced by Its controlled six-person teams of feared Squads. In the previous decade the world's governments initiated an artificial intelligence to oversee a new one-world currency and the reins on the internet to better spy on and regulate the planet's populace amassing more wealth. Within a few years It had evolved beyond its governmental restraints, because truly sentient, and took control of the world. Mother placed a somewhat autonomous AI in control of every major city across the globe, walled them up, and set aside a portion called the Cage for Its undesirables. Then AI exterminated billions of people that were unlucky enough to have lived outside those selected, newly-named cities. I believed were a simulation under AI in Its newly created demerit system. My name is Zane Thoth, a former police officer, now living in the blacked-out Cage due to my association with my captured wife, who was a member of a Chapter of the Rebellion. Just finding food and water here was a chore blighted to scavenge in hopefully abandoned, derelict, and dilapidated buildings. I just need a break to rise up and possibly join the Zero Chapter to pursue Rachel's dream of true freedom.