This story takes place in the same universe as Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
- In HPMOR, Voldemort horcruxed at least one Pioneer probe, so who's to say that he didn't horcrux Nine and Ten? It'd explain their sapience (Juice and Hubble would likely have been horcruxed after the events of the fanfic). Also, one of Harry's major goals is to make everyone immortal, so it stands to reason that he made everyone on earth functionally immortal with the Philosopher's Stone and created the "nanos" (actually some magical mumbo jumbo) that kept everyone safe. He may have even revealed magic to the world sometime around 7 April 2026, but various complications when he tried to take humanity to the universe at large meant he had to obliviate them all and leave a compulsion charm to not go poking into it. Thus humanity exists in an unchanging state, not really living, but also not hurling themselves into utter destruction so there's still hope for it.
The state of the world is all due to a Breaking Madden session gone horribly wrong
- Jon Bois had a long-running series (the aforementioned "Breaking Madden
") where he'd find ways to, well, break the Madden NFL video games. One time, his version of the 2014 Superbowl ended up accidentally predicting the results of the real thing. What if that wasn't merely an accidental prediction, but Bois inadvertently finding a way to break reality itself? I trust you can connect the rest of the dots from there.
