The sky above the floating Welcome Habitat hums softly, as it always does. It's not a real sky, of course, but no one remembers what the real sky looked like. Overhead, vast holographic clouds drift lazily, shifting in patterns that suggest movement but never quite reach it. Below, in the center of the Welcome Habitat, a sloth lounges on a gravity platform.
The sloth’s fur, a gradient of dark brown and green moss, clings to their body in slow-motion ripples as s/he adjusts their position by a single inch. Their clawed hand hangs over the edge of the platform, which tilts ever so slightly to accommodate the new weight distribution. The sloth doesn’t notice.
The entire Welcome Habitat has been designed to be perfectly still. It’s the apex of human evolution, or so they say: a society built to embrace doing nothing. The Stillness Protocol governs everything, a whispering AI embedded into every structure and mind. The protocol ensures there is no action without purpose, and most purposes have been optimized into obsolescence.
The sloth is perfect here.