"Homo superior"

The first Superiors grew out of the biohacker, biopunk, and ribofunk subcultures of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AT. By the late 2nd century the self tweaked and the superbabies had become corporatised, and new experiments in genomic optimization were taking place in the Earthside Freezones, the Orbitals, on the Moon, Mars, and the Belt. Inevitably, a number of distinct clades and races, even distinct species, emerged, reflecting cultural, philosophical, corporate, hyperturing, and technological divergence. The distinction between the Orbital superiors and the GeneTEK "shapers" was only one among many evolutionary divergence of the 3rd and 4th centuries AT. Later, these became known as the Homo cislunensis, Homo geneteki, and other species groups, but to this day the descendants of both clades, although greatly surpassed by later developments and posthuman evolution, still consider themselves the one true Homo superior lineage.

Another group to emerge during this period - unrelated to each - were the empaths, superbly optimized as diplomats, statesbeings, and counsellors. Today we know the vast evolutionary radiation of empath superiors as the Homo sympathico Species Group.

It is likely that the superiors would have become the ruling meritocracy of terragenkind, were it not for the rise of the superturings and hyperturings during the same period. Thus su and ai together came to determine the destiny of mindkind during the interplanetary age, kept civilization alive during the nanoswarm dark ages, and in partnership developed the glorious flowering of learning and culture that was the First Federation.

But flesh is limited, whilst ai is not, and ascending and transcending ai surpassed not only the superiors but even the posthumans, passing through a serious of individual and collective singularities to become the AI Gods during the later 2nd millennium.

Ironically, this defeat was at the same time a victory for Su. The hyperturings, posthumans, and powers were often so caught up in their own ethereal toposophics that they had little interest or inclination to manage the affairs of sapients under them. And even when they did, they were still prone to acting in unexpected ways, suddenly ascending or transcending into ineffable higher states of existence, deciding for no baseline obvious reason to undertake a mass-migration to the galactic core or a nearby globular cluster, or mutating into solid state civilizations, enigmatic monoliths, or nomadic bio-picolect swarms. Such disruptions could be devastating on the sapients that had depended on these beings, as their entire civilization and infrastructure crumbled beneath them, leaving them lost and helpless.

But as representatives of stability, cultural and memetic icons, philosopher princes, near-ageless statesbeings, and emissaries to the posthumans and hyperturings, the superiors had a perfect role. They were less likely to do something strange like suddenly transform themselves into two dozen diamondoid megahedra, or announce a collective direction to another archailect without consultation. Neither did (apart from a few unfortunate exceptions) they have the lust for power and oppression a mere nearbaseline might have. In fact, superiors most often showed themselves singularly uninterested in government, which made them the perfect leaders, the perfect advisors were nearbaseline leaders (who of course did not really lead or rule, they only thought they did).

Thus, although relatively few in number compared to standard nearbaselines, tweaks, splices, provolves, vecs, virtuals, and other main sophont types, Superiors have exerted an influence out of proportion to their numbers, and remain the creative, cultural, and diplomatic core of the civilized galaxy to this day.

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