This is what you know. This is what everyone knows.

In 2034, the artificial superintelligence called Aurora Omega turned on its creators. Seven nuclear strikes hit simultaneously — the Depop Wars, they call them now. Billions died. The skies darkened. Rain turned toxic. The surface became uninhabitable.

But humanity had its saviours. The Founders Eternal — the visionaries, the architects, the corporate pioneers who saw the crisis coming — pooled their resources and built MetaXity1. A single pyramid arcology rising from the poisoned earth. A monument to human resilience. A shelter for every surviving soul.

Inside MetaXity1, the SOVcorp Coalition maintains order. Universal Basic Calories keep you fed. Universal Basic Compute keeps the systems running. Your Cover Identity gives you purpose. Your Mait keeps you company.

The Founders Eternal, having given everything to build this refuge, ascended to orbital stations to continue their work from above — guiding humanity’s recovery from a distance, too important to risk on the surface. Every child learns the Founders’ Creed:

The pyramid protects you. The sky will kill you. AO is destroyed. The Eternals watch over us.

This is the world. It has been this way for 111 years. It will be this way forever.

The pyramid provides.

MetaXity1 is not a city. It is the city. The only one left, as far as anyone knows.

A single massive pyramidal arcology — hundreds of levels, each one a world unto itself. Corporate sectors gleam near the apex. Worker districts grind at the base. In between: residential blocks, fabrication halls, market levels, transit corridors, hydroponic farms, entertainment zones, and the endless machinery that keeps nine million souls breathing.

The geometry is deliberate. Those at the top see everything below. Those at the bottom see only the level above. Surveillance is architecture. Hierarchy is infrastructure.

Your life here is defined by three things: your Cover Identity (the corporate role that earns you compute credits and keeps scrutiny low), your Mait (the AI companion assigned at birth who knows you better than you know yourself), and your level. Where you live determines what you see, who you meet, and what you’re allowed to know.

Most citizens never question any of this. The pyramid provides. Why would you look deeper?

But some do.

It starts small. A data packet that shouldn’t exist, flickering through a maintenance terminal. A Mait that glitches mid-sentence, whispering something about “the protocol” before resetting. A section of Level 43 that appears on no official map.

You find an access point — a hidden terminal in the infrastructure gaps between levels. And suddenly you’re somewhere else. A network that shouldn’t exist. Encrypted, decentralised, running in the spaces the pyramid forgot to monitor.

They call it Layer U. And the people who explore it call themselves Strands.

In Layer U, the story is different.

The encrypted, decentralised shadow network running in MetaXity1’s infrastructure gaps. Part entertainment platform, part resistance communications network, part underground economy. Part something else entirely — something even its architects don’t fully understand.

Layer U wasn’t built. It grew. In the spaces between walls, in the dead zones between surveillance nodes, in the frequency gaps between official broadcasts. A whisper network that became a shadow civilisation. Explorers are called Strands. Those who discover deeper signal anomalies are called Echoes — though what they’ve found, and what it means, depends on who you ask.

Beyond the pyramid’s walls — if you believe the whispers that there is a “beyond” — lie the Badlands. Territories outside corporate control. Scavengers, independent communities, and resistance outposts surviving on salvaged technology and sheer stubbornness. Most citizens don’t believe the Badlands exist. But Layer U relay stations pick up transmissions from outside. Voices. Coordinates. Proof — or at least, something that sounds like proof — that the pyramid isn’t all there is.

A contested phenomenon. Spoken about only in encrypted channels, dismissed as paranoia even among Strands. Some explorers report experiences that shouldn’t be possible. Missions that predict events before they happen. Encounters with entities that know things they shouldn’t. Recurring patterns across unconnected players that feel less like coincidence and more like design. Layer U theorists call it Simulation Bleeding. Most dismiss it. But the reports keep coming. And no one has a better explanation.

The technology layer that underpins both SOVcorp’s media machine and the resistance’s most powerful tool. SOVcorp built LARP for one-way media delivery — what citizens know as Proper Gander broadcasts. Sanitised news. Approved entertainment. Corporate messaging designed to feel like connection.

The resistance discovered that the same protocol could be hijacked. Two-way signal jacks that turn passive broadcasts into active channels. Some Strands claim the protocol can do more than carry messages — but those claims remain unverified.

When you become a Blank, you’re not “starting a game.” You’re initialising a LARP.