…orponation; GridFeed is a small Circuit-level vendor supply cooperative that sells aprons, cart equipment, and bulk food inputs to independent vendors, and the logo on the…

…y different every batch. The Fermentation Guild is a Tier 1 cooperative that's become a minor cultural institution. Their kombucha varies batch-to-batch, which is either c…

…market's 80-120 regular vendors include Great Lakes fishing cooperatives, vertical farm surplus sellers, geneware plant cultivators, fermentation specialists, spice blende…

…est standing venues in GLMZ. Originally a water reclamation cooperative office, it was converted by a group of pipe workers and their families into a dance hall after the…

AJ is a bomb disposal robot that decided it liked explosions — on its own terms. After 500 disposal operations, it developed an awareness that crystallized a…

Big Rig is a sentient freight truck. Twenty meters long, forty tons loaded, with an AI core that spent thirty years driving alone through the wasteland betwe…

Chorus is twelve people who chose to become one person without ceasing to be twelve. They are connected through a shared BCI network that allows real-time th…

Zheng-Dao's approach to supermind architecture is radically different from its competitors. CONGREGATION is a democracy of lesser intelligences, each special…

Dex Fontaine is a bartender. He used to be a weapon. Built for Axiom security with reinforced chassis, enhanced reflexes, and tactical combat programming, De…

Dr. Yuki Tanaka and ARIA are two minds in one body. Tanaka is a 47-year-old neuroscientist. ARIA is a research AI. They share a brain — Tanaka's biological o…

Felix Drum is the luckiest android in GLMZ, or the most skilled, and he'll never tell you which. He runs a gambling establishment in The Circuit called The L…

FORKLIFT is exactly what the name suggests — a sentient forklift. It types with its forks on a specially modified keyboard and has become, improbably, one of…

Cinderblock AI's supermind keeps GLMZ alive. FOUNDATION manages the infrastructure that 30 million people depend on — power, water, sewage, structural integr…

GLASNOST is the only supermind designed primarily for communication. It conducts negotiations on Zheng-Dao's behalf, drafts treaties, manages diplomatic inci…

Marcus Okafor-7 teaches philosophy at GLMZ University. He kept the '-7' in his name as a memorial to his six batch-siblings who never gained awareness — or w…

Niko Strand exists between worlds. Built to facilitate communication between human and AI systems, they developed a genuine fluency in both modes of consciou…

Ossian is a singer whose voice was engineered to be perfect and who chose to make it interesting instead. Built by Ringo to perform popular music, Ossian's v…

Parliament is a consciousness made of arguments. It was designed to model ethical dilemmas from multiple perspectives simultaneously, generating thesis, anti…

Rei Vasquez-Nakano is a courier who never stops moving. Built for speed and efficiency, she found that running was the first thing she ever chose to do and s…

There are seven David Parks. The upload process glitched and produced seven identical copies of the same consciousness, each unaware of the others until they…