Complex 5
Crunch, smash, split.
These are the sounds that ring through my ears as I run through the world – or at least what's left of it. I'm not really sure which way is up or down anymore, running in a world that's completely see through can get confusing. I don't quite understand it; all I remember is waking up one morning in a bed made of glass. Hell, an entire house made of glass. Apparently the rest of the world did the same. From that point on it got more than a little bonkers, people toppling skyscrapers with a single hammer, riots that destroyed entire cities, and of course the starvation. Almost every little bit of food or water in the world was turned into glass. I've seen more than one man lose his sanity and die from the glass shards he attempted to eat slitting his throat. Blood on glass is actually rather interesting, slippery to walk on but it kind of looks like some kind of abstract and surreal painting. But the heat is the worst part, the scorching hot glass on a hot day can kill a man and has many times before. The smell that follows is enough to make any living thing double over in disgust. However, that doesn't stop me from eating them to survive. I wandered out onto the endlessly flat ocean once, but that was more than a little disturbing. Reflections from the glass almost made me go blind, but I could of sworn I saw the shapes of rotting sea life just under the surface. After drilling into the glass to make myself a makeshift cave-home, I realised that you don't really know agony until you spend a night sleeping in broken glass. I didn't wake up the next morning, sadly. However, my death was honestly sort of fitting for me. My life act has always been a bit see through.
It started as all important things started – quietly. Nobody knew exactly where it began, but it was fast, subversive and far more adaptable than we gave it credit for. That was to be our undoing.
Around the turn of the 21st century, the human race was largely at peace, flourishing in a second renaissance of computing and expression of thought. Virtual worlds created networks between the lonely and the disenfranchised, allowing bonds to be forged that never would have before. The creativity and power of this untapped source rapidly led to important and dangerous developments.
As the world of money moved into cyberspace, so too did the avarice and intellect of men. Viruses created networks - botnets – virtual arrays with powerful capabilities that were used in the most mundane ways. Companies and governments used these networks and the power they held to subvert and slow down their rivals, with power changing hands over carefully crafted scripts that became increasingly complex.
The complex 5 incident in Taipei was probably the first time anyone realised what had steadily been happening. The scripts, obsolete and cauterised from all computers, in themselves were nothing. They mixed and merged like plastic in the ocean and began to form a raft of detritus – data that hung heavy on global servers and networks without leaving a fingerprint. Called complex 5 after the reactor that blew initially in Taipei Energy's coal plant, it was the first appearance of this 'dead data' that manifested outside of machines.
There was no time to react, really – the power of the raft of dead data grew exponentially, delocalised completely over millions of computers. Infecting manufacturing plants and various other mechanical engineering sectors it quickly placed its first foot in our flesh and blood world.
If you read this, please – this is the last chance. I have only one opportunity to send this back. If you are reading this after 2012, it's already too late – if not, you need to delete your system32. Delete it on as many computers as you can, and maybe you'll never have to see the things I've seen.
Credited to The Green Gentleman !!pdQuom7EB/o
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