There are plenty of conspiracy theories about. Ideas about how power really works and who holds it behind the curtains. They don’t know so they have to guess. They get so close sometimes and at others they are hilariously wrong. They don’t have the perspective to see the world as it is. They are ants trying to appreciate the world as an eagle above might see it. There too many obstructions, too much just out of sight. They could never appreciate the scale of the truth. I find it hard to fathom myself, and its my job to keep track of this stuff. It is my job to keep humanity in check.
The year is 2320, fourteen years since everything changed. I remember watching as the lights of the world flickered and all of the power in the world flowed into our hands.
You can blame the virus for the loss of all those lives, all that information. I wrote most of the virus myself. I was the brains behind the brutality. I hadn’t thought about the cost of my actions, just the spoils of a war we won because no one knew to fight it. There was nothing to stop it, no antivirus software as with the past. Adaptive software should have put an end to the reign of the software virus. It was designed to be a door that moved endlessly to avoid the entry of intruders. The flaw of most viruses would have them chase the door, forever behind, never to enter. Our virus tried to enter at every level, through every possible entranceway, at the same time punishing the processor badly. Once in the virus’ task was simple, delete.
In one swift move every computer worldwide was useless, apart from ours. We ran our machines on more old fashioned principles and thus they survived, helped also by the fact their software neutralised the virus. In a day our organisation held dominion over every working machine on the planet. The destruction wiped clean not just business mainframes or home computers but military devices and hospital equipment. Anything plugged into the global network died as did anyone who relied on them. At one time hospital monitors were on a closed network but since adaptive software it was deemed safe to have them plugged into the net and querying the web for an answer to the illness of the patient. I bear the weight of their deaths in guilt.
Now I have power I don’t want and money I don’t need. There’s nothing left to spend it on either. I’m a programmer, a hacker. Why the hell did I help destroy so many of the worlds computers?
I guess there will be more with time, more of the same, built in the image of our own. I may have a hand in shaping these new mechanical marvels. I might just program them to fail constantly. On the other hand I could wait and write a new version of the old virus and reset technology again when everyone thinks things are getting back to normal.
I watched the lights go out as the virus did it’s work. I saw the world devolve, set back decades in a moment. I set out every electrical I owned that was not made by Protosoft and watched them die. I watched the screen of my phone flicker, my palmtop started flashing various warnings that began to layer at such a rate the sight was like a strobe light.
Global food supplies were severely effected by the virus, despite most power stations being equipped with Protosoft equipment what was missed was that many of the massive food storage fridges around the world weren’t. Inbuilt with technology designed to check stock and in some cases refill depleted supplies the global capacity to store food dropped by sixty percent overnight leaving plenty to starve when reserved ran low. The global diet meant that in developed countries food supplies dropped close to nil and the planets population decreased by six percent.
That’s a lot of blood on my hands, enough to drown in. I don’t sleep anymore. I lay awake at night and think about the pictures that ran through Protosoft’s newsletter; bodies pilled up in the streets all over the world and riots over thinning rations. I see the faces everywhere I go, their blank staring eyes looking for hope when none would come, in agony before death as their stomachs digested themselves. I’m prone to frequent vomiting, no one else understands why. Those who know my part in the massacre are the ones that failed to throw themselves from a high building with guilt.
I can’t tell anyone else what I’ve done, it may soon be time to join the more conscientious of my co workers. Would I simply die or would I face one of hell’s parallels from the many religions?
Time will bring the truth of death to me while I conceal my truth from the world. Who could I tell, I would be torn apart by the crowds of duly enraged mourners. I have taken from so many without benefit to any but those without conscience. How can I protect these murderers with a clear conscience? I can’t, I should tell the world what we did. I should broadcast it across the world on the screens we gave them.
I’ll do it; a shotgun confession. I’ll spill the beans and then my brains. The truth will out as will my blood and soul. Maybe my redemption will be spelt in blood sprayed across the wall with the truth set free. I will find out when the time comes.
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