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Appleseed
The year is 2131. A non-nuclear war has left the earth barren. Deunan Knute roams the badlands, one of the many soldiers who, with lines of communication cut, continue to fight, unaware that the war has ended.
Deunan is never one to take things lying down: a highly trained soldier with police and SWAT experience, she is prepared for nearly anything—but not for the heavily armed helicopter that assaults her without warning. Before she realizes what’s going on, Deunan is losing consciousness: her last thought is a hazy realization that she’s been hit by a tranquilizer. Not only that, but one of the perpetrators is her old love Briareos. He has arrived with the beautiful Hitomi to intercept Deunan and take her back with them to the enigmatic utopia, Olympus.
Deunan, now safe in the futuristic city, is awakened by the comforting voice of her ex-lover. But Briareos is not as she remembers him: indeed, he is now hardly human. He tells her the sobering events that occurred in her absence: after suffering a grave injury on the front lines in North Africa, his only chance for survival involved a dramatic surgical process – or more accurately, a full overhaul that involved a replacement of all his broken parts. In other words, he became a cyborg—in his case over 75% mechanical. And the city of Olympus—Deunan soon finds out—is now the head of a new world order. When the non-nuclear war ended, and no single superpower came out on top, the orderly, utopian city filled the role of leadership in the ensuing political vacuum. Globally, the status of Olympus is now such that the “unsupervised countries” actually depend on its assistance to survive.
The next day, Deunan files her immigration papers, becoming the most recent arrival to the oddly serene city. Hitomi insists on taking Deunan to the legislature, and shows her the sights of the city on the way. When Deunan sees the contented looks on the faces of the citizens of Olympus, she feels tranquil, even at peace. But the sensation is quickly interrupted by Hitomi’s matter-of-fact revelation: that over half of the “model citizens” that inhabit Olympus are precision clones called Bioroids, of which Hitomi is one herself. The Bioroids were purportedly created for the benefit of humankind, “to encourage stability in human society,” but nevertheless, the alarming news plants a seed of doubt within Deunan.
When Hitomi and Deunan arrive at the legislature, they are greeted by the members of the Council: seven sage-like elders whose ongoing conversation with the supercomputer Gaia collectively forms the “will” that controls Olympus. But effectively, Bioroids are in political control, and they are quietly advancing a plan that could affect the fate of the human legacy.
Add to this the fact that Briareos, despite his romantic past with Deunan, now hardly gives her the time of day, it’s no wonder that Deunan feels a little nostalgic about life in the badlands, despite the utopia right around her.
Why has Briareos changed? Can the Bioroids be trusted? Does Olympus represent an ideal, or a nightmare? Deunan must face her own tortured past, and overcome the disorienting present, in a battle over the future of humanity itself!
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