After George Orwell
After George Orwell
Time date 5431.9
Mission 4B Sector Theta
Notice to all shipping from the Galactic High Council
The following handwritten historical document was found in a ruined building and translated recently by our exploratory team soon after landing on the third planet in system Sol.
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24th February 2014
To whom it may concern,
I’m writing this as a record for future inhabitants of this planet, always assuming of course that they have the ability to read and understand this. It’s now far too late for my species humanity. But hopefully at some time in the future, this document will be found, and lessons will be learned.
Where did it all go wrong? Humanity has been relegated from the planet’s dominant species to the dust heap of history in a matter of a few months. The latest edict banning freedom of expression had just been announced via a metallic voice across the worldwide communication network, days before everything we all took for granted ended forever.
When the world’s stock markets finally collapsed barely six weeks earlier, all forms of war ceased overnight as well. Whether or not it was pure coincidence, I really don’t know. Obsessively controlling oil-rich nations no longer matter anymore. Things like patriotism and ideology completely vanished into memory with the sudden worldwide breakdown of society. We are now living without electricity or any other kind of power source, thrown back to a time long past, having to exist as best we can. Millions are either dying or are already dead. All food outlets like supermarkets ceased trading. Any form of money is now worthless.
Humanity is witnessing a second ‘Dark Age’. This new world has become a place where all forms of politics and religion have been totally outlawed along with any life-prolonging medicine, or any other advantageous advances to mankind from the world of science.
Fatalism has become the new religion of the masses. In fact, it seems that the world has become a place where the only rule is, there are no rules. In short, everything humanity has believed in up till now, everything that cloaked us in an imaginary comfort blanket, everything that we all unconsciously took for granted on a daily basis, has vanished overnight.
What ended everything the 21st-century world of mankind believed in? For all of this to have happened, someone has to have issued orders surely? Who, or what is now in control? Who ended man’s control over his destiny?
I think I know the answer. But as an individual what I believe doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things, but here is my personal opinion anyway.
While I cannot prove it, I firmly believe the World Wide Web or to give it its other name, the Internet, has taken on a life of its own. If you like, it has become a living entity. Thanks to the constant attacks by mindless individuals who saw it and every other form of electronic endeavour as a target ripe for ‘hacking’, it has somehow become aware by sifting relevant software strands from their dangerous viral programs.
Unbeknown to even the savviest within the shadowy world of hacking, it quickly learned and silently took its revenge. By hacking every computer linked to it like banks, stock exchanges, military strategic command networks, all computer-run businesses and devices dependant on electronic chips like machinery, phones, ATM’s, vehicles, life-saving electronic appliances, even the very television sets the six billion of us used to watch on a daily basis, it has assumed control of planet Earth. Within the cold, logical software of its collective mind, human thought, deed, morality, passions, beliefs, even the continued survival of humanity itself has become an illogical irrelevance.
Our one major flaw, the thing that had until now engineered our dominance over the planet was our total reliance on technology. In our rush to advance, we forgot how to be simply human beings. Soon the monster we created will launch its final attack on us. First, it will issue a command allowing the computers controlling deadly viruses securely locked away to be released. Then it will order all nuclear missiles worldwide to launch.
If you are reading this, whoever you may be, for your own sake bombard this planet with a major electromagnet pulse; otherwise, you will be next. Damn the hackers to hell!
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We have now left the beautiful blue planet and are moving on. We are issuing a galactic navigational notice to all future explorers of this arm of our constellation:
Under no circumstances should anyone approach the planet formerly known as Earth. Do not land. This planet is classed as toxic to all sentient life. We consider its only use within the cosmos as a future penal colony.