This first book in the series opens on a nearly barren world in the year 2394. It's now a century and a half after the unchecked greed of the elite populace of this planet over the preceding two and a half centuries had lead its planet to the brink of destruction.
At the end of the twenty first century the supercharged egos of the elite along with certain advances in technology had allowed those with wealth to manipulate the money markets of the world using them to exploit the common person as had never been possible before in the past.
These factors led the elite to believe they had the right to do anything that their minds could dream of in order to expand their wealth and power. This greed and hording by those in power ushered in the way for more rapid development of technology and an unchecked, rampant use of this ever expanding technology with little or no responsibility for the long term outcome considered. These factors along with haste and a developing fear of and competition with all other living things, caused humans to disregard the contribution other life forms had been providing to a healthy balance in their world.
After the disparity between the wealthy and the poor had grown out of control, the working class children had become the only defense of the common person in fighting off their despair. This unrealized desperation in the common people that for hundreds of years had been ignored by the ruling classes had fostered overpopulation which eventually became the all consuming threat to this planet's survival.
As shortages of resources developed the common person became convinced that any means to replenish their waning resources was justified. This mindset led their world on a path of exploitation of their world's people and environment. The compromised environment, along with and exponentially growing population combined with poor planning further degraded the living conditions of the people on their world and created abuses that paved the way and eventually brought their world to the brink of environmental destruction two centuries later.
After the disaster which was ultimately responsible for taking the life of the majority of people on the planet and nearly ended the existence of their entire world, all the human survivors were drugged to assure the surviving peoples' psychological and emotional continued existence. In the beginning, the drugs were administered to stop the fighting and emotionally shelter the survivors from the shock and trauma of all the death and destruction of the past and the new harsh environmental condition that had arose from the disaster. Later as the elite died off they left their Android protectors behind and had tasked them to rebuild their crippled world as best as possible.
Now in the year 2394 in this post Apocalyptic World, for the past century the remaining people have been altered and genetically modified to enable their survival in their new brutally changed environment. After more than a century and a half of being drugged and under the control of the Androids who were unwittingly left in charge, the people have been artificially changed to adapt to their new world's climate. During this time the Androids also took drastic measures to rebuild the planet, attempting to make it somewhat more livable. After manipulating the people and their world to assure survival of its dwindling human population the Androids are now dying off and the human survivors are now waking up from their drug induced coma to a severely changed and newly semi-terriformed world.