CLASSIFICATION: METHUSELAH — CENTURIES OLD
THE
METHS
"They live above the weather. Above the law. Above the concept of consequence."
WHAT IS A METH
CENTURIES OF WEALTH. CENTURIES OF POWER.
A Meth — short for Methuselah — is a person who has lived for centuries. Not through magic or biology, but through money. The technology of Cortical Stacks and sleeve re-assignment means that death is optional for anyone who can afford the maintenance. The Meths can.
They maintain off-site backups of their Stacks — stored in secure facilities, updated regularly. If their current sleeve is destroyed, they are restored from backup. The gap in memory is an inconvenience, not a death. Real Death, for a Meth, requires the simultaneous destruction of the Stack and all backup copies. It is almost impossible to achieve. Almost.
ABOVE THE CLOUDS
ORBITAL MANSIONS
The wealthiest Meths do not merely live in expensive neighbourhoods. They live above the atmosphere. Orbital platforms — vast private stations positioned above the cloud layer — serve as permanent residences for the ultra-rich. They are, in the most literal sense, above the world they own.
The symbolism is not accidental. A Meth in an orbital mansion has physically separated themselves from the consequences of their decisions. The pollution, the poverty, the violence — it is all below the cloud line. They can see it if they choose to look down. They rarely do.
GEOGRAPHIC NOTATION
Orbital platforms above Bay City — altitude approximately 35,000 metres. Access by private shuttle only. No public transport. No law enforcement jurisdiction above the cloud line.
THE CASE — LAURENS BANCROFT
THE VICTIM WHO HIRED HIS OWN DETECTIVE
Laurens Bancroft is over three hundred years old. He is one of the wealthiest men on Earth. He maintains multiple off-site backups and a fleet of premium synthetic sleeves. He has, in every meaningful sense, defeated death. And then someone killed him anyway — destroyed his current sleeve and the last forty-eight hours of Stack data before the most recent backup.
Bancroft was restored from backup. He has no memory of his own death. The official verdict is suicide — but Bancroft refuses to accept it. He has purchased Kovacs' release from storage to investigate. The case that follows reveals everything wrong with a world where the powerful can buy their way out of mortality.
"I did not kill myself. I want to know who did."
— LAURENS BANCROFT
THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION
WHAT CENTURIES DO TO A PERSON
BOREDOM AS PATHOLOGY
After two hundred years, what is left to want? The Meths have consumed every experience available to a human being. What remains is novelty — increasingly extreme, increasingly transgressive. Morgan implies that immortality without wisdom produces not gods, but spoiled children with centuries of resources and no concept of consequence.
EMPATHY EROSION
The poor age and die in decades. The Meths watch generations of servants, employees, and dependants cycle through life and death. After enough centuries, the short-lived become abstractions. Not people — resources. The Meths are not monsters. They have simply lived long enough to stop being able to imagine what it feels like to be mortal.
THE ACCUMULATION PROBLEM
Wealth compounds. Power compounds. Influence compounds. A Meth who was rich three hundred years ago is incomprehensibly rich today. The economic and political structures of the world have been shaped by centuries of Meth intervention. The system does not merely favour them — it was built by them, for them, over centuries.
Nightcall
Kavinsky