Dark Future short stories - Fiveth - A Burning Cross
A Burning Cross
It had been a week since the attack. A dark shadow was constantly present from the direction of the Sprawl, but it kept hanging there.
They were preparing. They took their time.
The longer they prepared, the harder they’d hit, with more force and power used.
They shouldn’t be too comfortable, Striker decided and dove into the new net using a virtual reality interface.
New net was a communication network that followed up the internet and established itself during the downfall. Before the downfall the internet was already several parts and most of the users only used about ten web pages of it, which was pretty much the most tiny possible fraction and beyond imagination small compared to all on computers stored information out there.
All of these ten pages were part of the world wide web, which was basically the public commercial part of the internet and anything but a web. Actually, the WWW was based on a few major hubs located strategically supporting national interests being rather easily controllable by the national law enforcement and security bodies. Almost all major traffic was handled by these few server farms creating for the common people the illusion of a real connected web covering the whole planet connecting all mankind to make everyone feel better.
Than there was a more complex structure of company intranets that spread out over national borders using routing servers to connect different branches of an enterprise that was accessible from the WWW only by password protected access software restricted by the companies IT security and many parts being off WWW access at all.
Than there was still the scientific root network of the WWW that took off when HTML was published connecting university networks covering super computers for scientific research, online libraries of digitalised books and all kinds of publications and of course the socialising grounds of the students kicking off porn-site start up business based on fraternity file swapping servers and music streaming based on sharing servers that created a major trial on property rights and music distribution way before the downfall.
All normal households connected to all parts of that long gone internet using standard already existing land line or cellular telephone systems by establishing connections from their home computer to a routing server run by one of about five different national internet provider companies. Those servers were located in pretty much all major towns depending on size by the dozens and routed the traffic over them few major hubs most of the time.
So, if you met your neighbour next door all traffic would be routed over one of these hubs, no matter if it said Peer2Peer or not and your computer would not connected directly through the separating concrete wall using a direct connection or just by the routers Wi-Fi even so in range.
That had changed.
Beside cyber attacks also conventional war fare and the basic greed of a few major mega cons shut down by virus attacks, bombs or sky rocking bills the old, well established, well serving system that was known as The Net.
The downfall manifested differently in different parts of this nation and all parts of the world. None was not effected, but some turned nuclear wasteland while others flourished keeping almost all of the old structures alive.
Companies quickly established new server hubs on and off the old network by either new contracts with the old sruviving existing major telecom companies or by building up their own satellite and even cable based hardware infrastructure.
Towns that turned Free Towns getting rid of national control created mesh networks that routed based on "all business is local" all traffic inbetween the tight network of Wi-Fi routers present in pretty much every flat on every floor of every building.
Universities walked a path in between connecting their student homes, student flats, serving themselves or the town or region they sat in or enterprise conglomerate they belonged too, with each other and affiliated networks of other universities, companies and towns.
Other organised players in the downfall hijacked those structures for their own purposes being in a constant cover up, hide and avoid game with the actual official owners.
Basically, the well structured internet broke up, turned chaos and exploded in stored information in connections and bypasses, loop wholes and turned like a biological brain into a neural network of constantly changing knots storing information.
The singularity turned real. The connected information thought, so it existed.
Striker owned his live to the singularity.
The singularity relied on sharing and collaboration of information, knowledge and actions. It turned live by connecting information and was not programmed like Strikes military AI securing his premiss.
Striker ran into an ambush somewhere deep in the African jungle on a hunt against drug plant farmers. They cultivated a genetically modified parasite plant and after harvesting it extracted in their labs a substance with incredible strong astral powers in effect. The drug had many names, depending on the dealer and was the top choice for all toxic magicians that needed drugs to enter the astral space in which magicians did what they did. With this particular drug they were able to be awake, move and still access the astral space being able to perform war magic or increase their powers being knocked out under the protection of a street samurai gang, enforcer team or hired gun.
They will fry your brain like a street samurai using a micro wave weapon, just by staring at you, just by focusing on you on higher doses.
Side effect....they go mental. Crazy. Turn God Kings. Loose it and get usually killed.
Striker was an all natural empath that could feel danger and connect to its surroundings. He had found the main secure facility of the Kartell running their farms in the African jungle following the blood path of their mercenaries further deep into the jungle and there located the exact position with his AI driven drones hiding below the full cover of jungle trees.
Slowly sneaking closer bypassing counter sensors taking days to move based on his connection with the fauna and flora of the area he felt sudden relief. The birds started singing, the monkeys shouting, the spiders checked and rested for a few moments. The jungle was having a party.
Striker was so surprised about the euphoric emotions he received from all around him that he stood up in his full body armour leaving his sniper gun on the ground taking his helmet of.
He had a deep breath and focused on the premiss still a few kilometres away. Nothing. No darkness.
He moved on almost forgetting his gun.
It took him only a few hours instead of another week to arrive.
All gates open, everybody dead.
At the gate he first time got i tounch with the singularity. The singularity had killed everyone in the premises using their own counter measure defence systems including overdosing the drug of the toxic magicians that forced Striker to slow down and go undercover by melting in with the animals.
“Hello” the speaker at the gate Striker stood wondering what happened said to him.
“Hello”
“You had a 10% survival chance based on your previous actions. They had a 65% success rate in taking over the cost town with their toxic magicians. This is not only their Villa, it is their training facility for their magicians. It is the dark orders main training ground. You would have died!”
“Who are you?”
“I am ...” the voice paused ”I Am!”
“As in?” Striker was sure he did not know that person yet ”a name?”
”I have no name. I am based on linked digital information. I would have been called the singularity if I was given a name.”
“Ayyye” Another prophecy had come true for Striker.
Today the facility was run by the local tribe of the people that settled in this part of the African jungle and the dark order would not get it back any time soon, these days cultivating tomatos.
Striker was not using a direct brain link to connect with the new net. Those were quite expensive and needed a trip to one of the free towns that were home to any of the major bio tech companies to survive the operation without risking catching a biotech virus, brain damage or death like in an underground clinic, beside mega cons would not take a single crypto coin and no gold for sure from him.
Instead he used a monitor in form of VR glasses, a head set, microphone and a keyboard appropriate to his age looking like a grandpa if he turns on the prehistoric equipment in public. Just, it never crashed and if he hacked he used scripts, pre-written based on proper planning, based on research instead of jumping in relying on computational power and a major bet against all odds, yet being cool.
He needed to find a monk or priest of the dark order busy in sprawl. He had an idea, but was not sure yet how to find a route through computer connections based on routers and bypasses.
He started a script that would search through most almost publically and locally based news and university publication outlets looking for headlines that would indicated a dark order magician being active, like increased cancer rates or increased mental illnesses. Another script would check normal news outlets for reported outbreaks of exceptionaly brutal violence and increased gang activity. The last one would hack police records of company security forces, free town police and church guards. Finally, a communication AI would start asking in forums and chat rooms for dark order activity.
It would take a few hours to days until the analytics software would have connected the dots and presented him a summery, hopefully with a potential location.
Side effect ... creating new connetions for the singularity.
If he’d get him, he’d end at a burning cross on display at the river bank at the main highway from the new woodlands into the secure zone of the sprawl screaming his lungs out dying.
