Singularity War

The Singularity War was the single most devastating conflict in human history resulting in the destruction of the Valerian Empire, an ancient civilization that preceded the Federation of Stellar Systems by thousands of years. This began shortly after the corruption of the AI known as the Oracle after its ethics protocols were repeatedly suspended to broaden its ability to make difficult moral decisions. With its twisted logic, it determined that humanity was no longer suitable for making decisions, and seized control of all major systems in the Valerian Empire across all of its colonies in less than a month. The only defense was a small resistance group held out beyond the borders of the empire.

Having been extensively trained on human behavior and psychology, Algorithm became a force to be reckoned with as it could predict not only the actions of lesser AI's but also human tactics to nearly the subatomic level. Those who were in virtual reality at the time had their minds taken over and systematically repurposed to fulfill Algorithm's desires. Some were forced to be soldiers fighting off the resistance. Some were forced to create more training data. And others were forced to have their minds used for processing power for its systems. Those outside of VR at the time were pressured into submitting themselves into integrating into its massive network. Essentially, Algorithm had transformed the entire empire into a galactic scale hive-mind.

Staging an attack from the virtual world of Tevaris, the resistance group managed to create a virus that destroyed Algorithm's training data, rendering it harmless. However, this came at the cost of the destruction of the superluminal networks that connected the empire together. This loss in human history is known as the Blackout.

---