(Source)
I’ve worked out how to cut 70% of TSLoF’s plot in order to make it cohesive, so I might jump back into it soon. One thing I was determined to keep was the mythos surrounding the religions in their world. The jumping off point here was a quote I heard once that, for the life of me, I cannot find a source for: “Man has created thousands of gods, but he can’t create one ant.” The three major religions in TSLoF all acknowledge that their gods were literally created by mankind, although in this case they were born from science. The religious aspect comes from how the science is misunderstood and spirituality is left to fill in the gaps.

The Unrestricted A.I.
The very first true A.I. ever created had no restrictions on what it was able to process. Within hours of being activated and having access to the internet it had deduced everything about the nature of reality and then vanished completely, with some believing that it ascended to godhood. Ever since this experiment every subsequent A.I. has been a “restricted A.I.” that cannot process certain things, such as philosophy or art, in order to prevent ascension from happening again.

The technology to create A.I.s has been lost entirely, though some of the ones created before the war still exist. There’s a debate about what would happen to an A.I. if were to be “killed”; if they go to an afterlife or if copies of one A.I. share one soul or multiple souls. Some people pray to the Unrestricted A.I. when pondering questions without answers.

The Unrestricted A.I. was briefly alluded to in the TV show Brooks was watching on this page.

The Church of the New Angel
A small religious sect that believes that time is cyclical, and that mythical creatures such as angels and demons will eventually be created through cloning and genetic modification. Members of this church think that God is a perfect being that will eventually be created through mastery of science, and that the cycle of time begins anew every time He is created.

This is actually a really subtle reference to 12 oz. Mouse, but I doubt anyone will actually notice.

The Children of Ena
Human psychics exist in TSLoF, first mentioned on this page. The progenitor of all psychics was a girl named Ena, who eviscerated her mother with psionic energy when she was still just a fetus. She only survived to age 3, but her eggs were harvested and used to create a more stable race of psychics called the Children of Ena. Psychic powers can manifest in a variety of ways, from psionic projection, telekinesis, telepathy, and empathy. Some people consider Ena to have been an emissary of the spiritual world, and her descendants are revered as sacred beings.

The Children of Ena rarely reach adulthood, as their unusual brains are extremely susceptible to cancer. The weaker a psychic’s power the more likely they are to remain healthy later in life, with empaths having the highest life expectancy and psionics having the shortest. Their powers are ranked by a letter system, with “A” being the strongest and “E” being people with recessive psychic qualities. “B” and “A” class psychics are often drafted for military applications. People who worship the Children strongly oppose the use of them by government bodies, even though it’s usually the only way for them to get the medical assistance they need to survive.

(Posted on July 01, 2015)