It's the 51st century and man is at the peak of the technological age. Warp capability, sentient Artificial Intelligence, Interplanetary Relations...all of the things that have only resided in the imagination of people in the 21st century were walking reality in this age of technological virtuosity.
The latest development in technology had been made in the late 45th century. In what was touted to be one of the most brilliant discoveries of all time, the Doctor Kuro made possible the integration of human thought and machine.
The mind of a person can be transplanted to a machine, where he/she can now operate as if it was his/her own body. This is not in any way sentient artificial intelligence, it is more than that! It is a merging of an automic body and a pure human mind.
This was considered a breakthrough because even in this advanced age mortality has not been conquered. Even the advent of technology could not stop diseases from taking its toll on the population. As they come up with new cures, so too did new diseases come up, the next one more virulent than the last.
One particular disease was a potent hybrid of the old skin disease leprosy. Unlike its predecessor, this hybrid disease not only attacked the skin but the organ parts as well. Slowly but surely eating away at the person while he/she was still alive. This hybrid had surfaced in the late 37th century and could not be eradicated. The reason? The hybrid was not just a disease, it had sentient life of its own. It was intelligent and adaptable.
A potent drug could heal a person or two but as if the disease communicated with each other, all the others would adapt to the drug and evolve into a new strain. Its rate of adaptability was faster than the rate by which humanity could produce a cure. It was decimating the universe's population.
The name of the hybrid disease? Victim.
With Kuro's discovery, the threat of this disease rendering people into vegetables were lessened. Not eradicated, for like all cures it had its limits.
Only children ages 12 to 19 are able to survive the transition of a human body to an automic one. And even then they had to possess a certain blood strain that Kuro identified as EX.
Brainships they're called, these few who are given the chance to live again. These children, more often than not, are boys, although a few girls survived, most notable of which was Teela Zain Elmes or TZE-001, the first ever brainship of project Zenoah, Kuro's special guide and partner.
These Brainships were contracted to the Goddess Integrated Systems (GIS), the Institution Kuro founded for the research. For a span of specific years, the brainship would work for GIS, as courier runners (usually to research digs who were trying to find Zion, the mythical cure for Victim.) until the price of his/her 'operation' was paid up afterwhich they could go free to do as they will.
Down the centuries, these brainships were treated warily, sometimes reviled. Though they had come from a human they were something more now, they could process more than a 100 times the rate the human brain can, equipped as they were by positronic chips that allowed them to multi-task. In effect they were less human or at least that was how they were treated. Organizations surfaced that formed rules on how brainships should act vis-à-vis a human.
A most unfortunate occurrence but something that could not be helped.
It certainly provided a wall between these brainships and their partners. See, brainships had human counterparts. Brawns, they're called. Partners to lessen the limitations of a brainship because even with a human brain, a ship is still a ship. It needed maintenance that only a physical body can give. Delicate operations that only human dexterity could handle.
Brain and brawn...this arrangement by theory worked well to compliment each other. They went through the dangerous runs of a courier together, shared the same experiences and in many events, the barrier of being a shellperson and a softperson are set aside. Tentative friendships formed.
Despite the camaraderie that is allowed between a brainship and its brawn, a lot of things are prohibited for these partnerships. One is to love or at least a variation thereof. The organizations against brainships came from an influential clan and they had declared that love between a brainship and a brawn was an abomination. That it was 'fixation'. That it could not be safe for the brainship and the human.
For one, a brainship had no physical body, they cannot fully realize the relationship which could lead to the brawn obsessing over what kind of face and body would go with the brainship's voice and thoughts. The brawn could be tempted to break open the brainship's "shell" and kill the brainship. All in all it was a logical and sensible assumption and Kuro could not move against it.
A brainship would have limited rights in society. They were in effect subservient to humans. A fact that the shellpersons accepted. Such is their desire to live that they disregarded this violation of their rights as those who once lived in human bodies.
This rule prevailed until the end of the 51st century, when one partnership of brain and brawn decided to challenge these rules and live their own path. And through the combined efforts of both came the almost legendary tale of not only the liberation of brainships from bondage but also the salvation of humanity from the Victims.
Disclaimer: Megami Kouhosei is owned by Wani Books and Yukiru Sugisaki Sensei whom we all worship and love. There. Can't sue.