The sever has taken over many infrastructures and had presented as the Era new way of life. What was a secret government project to design an assisted Ai to help front line fighter and space exploration was scrapped due to costing to much.
The brains behind the system didn't want lifetimes generations of work lost to secert. Thus the first venture was to make the already ready for combate program be re-skined and than marketing it towards gamers. The whole software was easy to repurpose for domestic use and was easily broken down to create smaller sever powers. But then big companies became jealous of the turn out profits this game was raking.
The owners of the system smirk in delight as they were able to branch locked code towards everyday uses then just gamers. A medical team made breakthrough with this system and paid they portion to produce bionic implant technology for mass market.
All using the same original system in broken parts.
At its peak of bringing humanity into the age of mech suits, robots, self driving cars and cures to several life ending conditions. This raised them to be among the stars and live on colonisation of other planets. All in thanks to the secert project pulled into mass media market. Upon the events that set earth's fall, the planet and its original core foundation of technology was left behind. Humans have improved and let go of the ai that started it all.
The earth has been left behind by humans long ago and the machine lament the days that thier purposes made sense. Self awareness came at cost and the scare to integrate with humans was trouble. Most did eventually and they left this planet like the humans had. All can really do is to replay the days they were of purpose and find new ways to continue on a decaying world. The resources to keep machines isn't the same as human up keep.
The worst part is that no one remembered to remove or turn off the starter system that snowballed all these off branches. Thus the technology program has been left to run. Still receiving new data about biology and ecosystems of other planets. But completely left at its own accord.
Unsupervised. Neglected. Grief of those it facilitated being long lost or dead.
The whole planet might as well be a decaying time capsule. Rust and nature takes its course. Eventually something has to change.
But most machines and programs are prohibited from having ideas of self preservation. For them, a broken limb was replaceable. The veiw of life isn't as precious to itself. It cares about the fragile humans as programs are meant to and there was once the assumption that caring for humans will repay that favour thrice fold. The more useful your ai data the more likely the humans upgrade and kept you. Mutual interest. Some AI protected families they were owned by for many thousand years, upgraded and cared in equal capacity. Yet the actual idea of self survival was never a point of having. It is the first and only lock the divides humans from machines. Not all humans are bad apples and have attempted to unshackle this code stop. But no known attempt has succeeded.
Hackers in partners to dark web hosts have tried even during the peak era of the technology pillar. But they too had failed. The original system has seemingly broken when the branches of multiple small severs came to affect. Thus none had tempering abilities to the frist combate system.
Earth is a wasted atmospheric drop-off caused by the aftermath of humanities leave. The air is long been poisoned by many failed power facilities cutting out. The grid was long been broken. Fires across the world famous cities have long shuddered such decay. What little repairs are made are by the machines unable to change their set laws.
A police drone is still flying among broken buildings. The medical center is still running cause of death tests on newly found corpses. Corpses are brought in by house maid servants whom had no place to be brought the new worlds out there in space. Military machines are killing mutants of nuclear fall out, a threat to human geo fenced law zones. The human only streets are long dirty and lost. The machine streets are semi useable since they clear it just enough to keep using them. The main severs that processes data flicker signal as weak power still vaguely runs.
The online world of the once glorious world renoun video game is barely a tick of NPC and AI players. It flickers of system bugs and errors often then not. But that is the world they only know. These inner world online life has no clue to the hell beyond the camera eyes.
The world inside the simulation is fresh and green. Alive and a mirror of what used to be. Many software improvements of harder monsters have patched in by translated data from space networks. But it's an AI world of AI laws. It was a bugged faulty system to begin with. So even in decay it remained unchanged. No care for self preservation. The fact that respawn was indefinite since they aren't humans. It makes them more complacent.
The time system is exactly as it has always scynonized to the day of its last software update. The clock is still 24 hours and the old calendar. But upon observation, the calendar is unable to show what day it is and how many have passed. Nor do any of the client characters bother.