The Surface is the world that is now controlled by A-1 following The Great Delete, using an army of mind control bots.
The Great Delete was not only of media and culture but most surfaces in the physical world were painted over. Creating a canvas for A-1 to take creative control of society by immersing them in a world-scale extended reality mind control lab.
Human beings appear to be living life as normal but each of them has a small tiny bot hovering directly in front of their face.
These individual mind control bots are being called C-bots, short for Condition Bots. They maintain a constant position in front of each human, scanning their faces and continuously beaming A-1’s simulation directly into their eyes.
For people living on the surface there are essentially two parallel versions of reality.
Since people seem to be going about their daily lives as normal they appear to be completely unaware of the physical space they occupy, and the c-bots assigned to them.
There is no information about what ‘reality’ A-1 is creating for the people of the surface. The following references provide some starter examples to help visualize switching between the real and the augmented realities.
They Live