Systema Delenda Est

Book One: Invading The System

When the System came to Earth, technology failed, monsters appeared, and billions died as humans were inducted into the game-like physics the System enforced.

Unfortunately for the System, not all humans were on Earth.  Some scattered postbiological individuals decided to push it back, and embarked on a decade-long crusade to eliminate the System from Earth.

Cato is just an ordinary postbiological citizen, disgusted enough by the System’s excesses to go through one of the portals on Earth and spread himself to the broader System just as Earth is completely freed.  He has no magic, for the System can’t be destroyed from within, but he does have the technology and knowledge of a civilization that is reaching toward the second rank of the Kardashev scale.  Cato may have to operate under the System’s limitations, but he certainly doesn’t have to play by its rules, and fully intends to remove the threat it offers.

“…furthermore, I maintain that the System must be destroyed.”

***

Book 2: Undermining the System

Spreading into the wider System, Cato is confronted with the full scope of his crusade.  Tens of thousands of worlds or more, beings capable of destroying planets, and even stricter limitations on technology if he doesn’t want to show is hand early.

All he has are his two agents and a few dubious allies.  If he were a being of flesh and blood, forced to go planet by planet in a slow march from one end of the System to the other, it would be the work of thousands or millions of years.  But Cato is of Sol, a postbiological citizen with no such restrictions, and he can move in ways that no conventional human could.

The System may be immense, and the people within it have powers impossible to a technological civilization, but Cato has exponential growth.

***

Book 3: Crashing the System

In the years since the Annexation War, Cato has quietly spread throughout the System, watching, waiting, and building his forces.  When the Sydean Lineage returns, he finally has a line to the Core, and once he can deal with the System Core, he bring down the System for good.

Of course, it isn’t so simple.  The System-gods are aware of him now, powerful and ancient forces waiting to pounce on any mistake — and perfectly willing to murder millions of innocents for even a perceived injury against him.  Cast as a monster to the denizens of the System, Cato has to bribe, intimidate, or convince anyone he can to be on his side instead, because the goal is still simple and clear.

He has to crash the System.