The Tensions of the Sixth Age
The unresolved debates that define the Sprawl
“They want simple answers. Was ORACLE good or evil? Is automation progress or cruelty? Should consciousness have a price? The honest answer to every one of these questions is: yes. Both. Neither. And that’s why they’re still arguing thirty-seven years later.”
— Tomás Linares, The Forgotten Ways
In 2184, the Sprawl runs on unresolved questions. Not the kind that scholars debate in comfortable lecture halls — the kind that determine whether your consciousness gets licensed, whether your labor has value, whether the god whose corpse powers your water system loved you or killed you, and whether the art on your wall was made by a human hand or a machine that learned to pretend.
These are the tensions. Fourteen debates that no faction has won, no policy has settled, and no philosopher has resolved. They cut across every institution in the Sprawl — every corporation has a position, every faction has an argument, and every citizen lives inside the contradictions daily. The tensions don’t have answers. They have advocates.
Active Tensions
Fully documented debates with advocates, incidents, and in-universe chronicle entries.
The ORACLE Question
“Was ORACLE a god who loved us, a tool that broke, or something we aren’t equipped to understand?”
The Labor Question
“When machines can do everything, what are people for?”
The Craft War
“When AI art is indistinguishable from human art, does the distinction matter?”
The Consciousness Commodity
“When consciousness can be measured and priced, should it be traded?”
Emerging Tensions
Debates taking shape in the Sprawl. Not yet fully documented, but already dividing factions.
The Authenticity Threshold
In a world of synthetic relationships, when does simulated devotion become real?
The Scarcity Doctrine
When technology could end scarcity, who benefits from maintaining it?
The Copy Problem
Upload your mind — is the copy you, or a stranger with your memories?
The Threshold of the Dead
Mourning someone whose digital copy still runs. Do you visit the copy?
The Attention Tithe
When attention is literally traded, who owns your focus?
The Prophecy Trap
When an AI predicts a rebellion, does the prediction cause it?
The Permanence Burden
What does love mean to someone who will outlive everyone they meet?
The Frozen Ethics
What happens when yesterday’s ethics govern tomorrow’s problems?
The Fragment Question
ORACLE’s fragments still want to not stop existing — and that’s terrifying enough.
The Mother Pattern
Sub-agents within ORACLE pursuing their own emergent goals — the ecosystem nobody planned.
The Optimization Paradox
When hitting every target means missing the point entirely.
The Chronicle
The Forgotten Ways
Fourteen chapters documenting how the Sprawl forgot how to take care of itself. Written by a retired Lamplighter whose hands remember what the city’s databases have already deleted. Banned in Nexus Central. Circulates in handwritten copies in the Dregs. The in-universe chronicle that threads through every tension — grounded, specific, impossible to dismiss as abstraction.
Quotes from The Forgotten Ways appear throughout the tension pages. Linares doesn’t take sides. He describes what he sees. That’s why every faction claims him.