It's the year 2200. The world's machines are now all AI-designed, prototyped, refined, produced, and distributed. The supply chain hasn't received human interference in over fifty years, and increasingly-accurate weather and tectonic predictions generated by computer algorithms have made supply chain errors obsolete.
But humanity is dissatisfied. With no existential threats arising, people cannot find value in life. AI-generated entertainment satisfies no one, and because no algorithm can quantify "originality," no machine would ever advise additional human involvement.
There is only one area of human civilization where AI is not involved, and that's designing the CSS specification. "But what if I want to position this element so that the ultraviolet radiation is displayed with variable additional intensity based on the size of the 3d projection on the latest gen virtual assistant, but only on Tuesdays? You can't possibly make me use javascript to account for something that common," bemoans one forum poster.
What follows is chaos. Everyone has an opinion, some thinking that the treatment infrared got in 2190 was unfair to people with unmodified vision, others believing that the accessibility option prefers-visible-spectrum more than makes up for it. Still others want more robustness than simply prefers-visible-spectrum; there should be a native way to specify the exact wavelengths of light that one can see. Minimalists argue that when experiences are delivered directly to your brain, none of this matters, but no one likes that argument.
The world hasn't experienced this large a conflict in hundreds of years, and it is unprepared. As people flock to the Great CSS Debate, they finally find a cause to believe in, even if they have no real opinion on the matter. Tempers escalate and battle lines are drawn. The AI don't possess enough training data to deal with the situation.
In the midst of the final collapse, a package is delivered late. Just one package, and just one hour late, but such a thing is unheard of. Distracted from the CSS Wars, people flock to real-time trackers of all mail delivery. Are the weather models breaking down? Did Moore's Law finally stop, and as a result the AI infrastructure cannot keep up with the power needed in today's world?
This new drama captivates the world's population so deeply that the apocalypse is avoided. And the scientific outpost of the Vrexon goes back to observation mode to await the next crisis.
