THE NET
Speaking of The Net. I’m sure you’ve been wondering just what is The Net? The Net is just that. It’s a network. Albeit, one that spans into all corners of the universe at this point in time. But at its core, just a network like any other that may have come before it. The Net was designed by early human civilization, thousands of years ago, on the other side of the UNIVERSE, as a solution to a problem that cropped up overnight.
Their extinction.
On June 17th, 2127, while searching the sky from his backyard on an unusually cool summer night, a young man by the name of Randy Bines, noticed a twinkling blue star that seemed to be almost moving. The star drifted ever so slowly away from the outside of the solar system like a speck of dust caught in the invisible exhale of the universe. That star would later be identified as an asteroid, and formally named RB-851. This name was a combination of Randy’s initials and the amount of days before it would end civilization. Eight hundred and fifty one days. That was how long they had to save the human race.
The problem with RB-851 was that it literally came out of nowhere and just so happened to be aimed directly at the Earth with what seemed like intent to kill. I’m not sayin’ it was murder, I’m just sayin’ it’s not like a piece of the moon cracked off and accidentally bumped us in the head. But Anyway.
Once the asteroid was discovered by Randy that crisp summer night, scientists spent every waking moment trying to figure out two things. One, where the hell it came from, and two, how we were going to deal with it. The fact that the early defense system Earth splayed out across the Milky Way didn’t detect the asteroid was cause for concern. This system was designed to give humans more than an early warning of these types of dangers. Yet, it failed.
So there it was. RB-851, a universe sized equivalent to a bullet, piercing the night sky. Shot from an unknown assassin and aimed to be the perfect killing blow. I know I said I wasn’t saying we, as a race, were assassinated. But maybe I am. And maybe, some people think that makes me a conspiracy theorist. And maaaaybe some people are Taylor. But that’s neither here nor there. The damn thing was so precise in it’s execution shot that it was going to strike the middle of a major continent called North America, one of the most dense populations on the planet at the time, and the impact would be so great that it would literally shatter the continent into pieces like a skull shatters outward from a bullet wound. JUST SAYING. Spewing debris into the atmosphere and choking all life from existence, the Earth would then experience a millennia of darkness before any type of life could ever have the possibility of sprouting again.
Thankfully scientists scrambled and were able to come up with a solution to save the human race. That solution, Interstellar travel aided by your neighborhood (un)friendly black hole, of which was conveniently located somewhere within firing distance of Earth, only took a few days to work out. The plan was to shoot a ship straight down the throat of a black hole, whose exit was as close as we could get to a near Earth-like planet. However once we solved the problem of physical travel across the expanse, and where we needed to go, another problem arose. That problem proved to be the real issue.
While we could build ships sturdy enough to sustain the trip through the black hole, the fact that time was a complete variable once inside, meant we didn’t know how humans would cope with the trip mentally. Would we experience it as if we had just gone to sleep for a night? Or what was more likely, would we come out having experienced every moment within the black hole as its own millenia of sorts. Having spent millions of years with only our own consciousness as company, who knows what would happen. The question of how to effectively keep a brain stimulated, so the consciousness held within didn’t go batshit crazy, was more than a little hiccup.
Thankfully, preserving a body wasn’t something they had to worry about. In comes full immersion cryo pods. These pods would have a combination of chemicals deployed over the body inside, preserving it in what could only be described as a sort of human sized fossil preserved in amber yet smelled sort of like salty mint.
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The problem then was our consciousness. With no stimulus at all, a person would most likely come out of the other end of the trip having spent an eternity within their own mind. That person coming out of the pod once the ships reached Second Earth, would likely be nothing more than a bumbling, empty shell of a human being and absolutely worthless to the goal of saving the human race.
So, on April 12th, 2183, the leaders of every great nation stood side by side as they delivered the news of the fate of the Earth to the entire world watching at home. During this historic broadcast, all forms of transportation were halted. Planes were grounded. Trains were forced to dock in stations. Boats kept at bay. For two hours before and after, they brought the entire world to a standstill for this broadcast. There wasn’t even anyone walking the streets that night. The announcement had been scheduled two days earlier, and it’s severity was made clear. That day, every single human being alive watched that announcement through folded hands. All of humanity received the grave news of the end of their existence, together.
Before it finished, the leaders shared their plan of action with the world. They would put 100% of their resources into the plan for escape, of which they were optimistic. The hurdle of how to treat the mind was their only hiccup, but all of academia was hard at work looking for a resolution.
At the end of the broadcast, each leader led their respective nation in prayer, of which the entire rest of the world respected with absolute silence. It didn’t matter who you worshiped or didn’t worship, who you prayed to or didn’t. At that moment, humanity was truly united for the first time in all of written history. And they would need to be, because if they were going to solve this global problem and get humanity off that doomed rock and into the stars, it was going to have to be accomplished together.
Once the grave broadcast came to a close and the screen faded to black, it took 6 minutes. 6 minutes is apparently the amount of time it takes a 16 year old gamer, who’s name was Trinity Alexandria Smith, from a small town in the middle of nowhere, to find and look up the number to the National department of Security. When she finally got through and told the agent who answered the phone her simple solution for humanities largest looming problem, she was immediately patched through to the highest ranking officer on duty. When that man, Colonel Jake McConnely spoke to the young woman over the phone, he felt as if he was the dumbest man on Earth. And he was absolutely positive his colleagues would feel the same way too. And I’m just being honest, after you hear this next part, you’re going to be wondering the SAAAAME thing.
Ultimately, Trinity, simply suggested a game. Technology was to a point where we could almost completely trick a human into thinking a virtual world was reality. So why not occupy their minds with a game? Hook up the immersion pods, in conjunction with the minds of all the travellers, to a local network and give them a game to play. By keeping the mind occupied within a game construct, humanity could escape into the expanse of the stars without worry, and embark on the longest lasting LAN party in all of human history. Man, how awesome would it be to say you were there! Talk about hipster. “Ya, your LAN sounds fun. I mean, ya know, I was at the longest lasting LAN in history, but whatever.” Oh. Sorry. Maybe not?
How such a simple solution could have evaded humanities intellectual elite was anybody's guess. In fact, some thousands of years later, scholars would debate just how this could have been the case. Most agreed that they simply over complicated the situation to a point that using their more creative thinking was thrown out the window to give way for grandiose and convoluted plans as a sort of posturing. Thankfully, after the problem was solved by a 16 year old, the board tasked with saving humanity was sufficiently humbled. Moving forward, they allowed themselves a bit more open mindedness towards the rest of the project and were able to handle the next hurdle with ease.
That next issue which arose proved to be much simpler to sort out. The issue was how to keep the 12 ships crossing the universe in communication with a singular network while travelling through space and time. This was solved by The Neural Extra-cerebral Transmission system, or The Net for short. This technology would basically use a special mental energy enhancing serum that was directly injected into the cryo pods, allowing human brain waves to broadcast a signal that would communicate with a central network running the games software. That central hub would do all the processing necessary for the game and all we would need to do was connect with it via brain wave.
This was the birth of The Net. Pretty simple, right? Eventually, humanity would launch 12 colony ships into space aimed at the nearest black hole. The fleet was referred to as The Floatilla. The central ship, which carried the central computer server for the game, was The Alexandria, named after Trinity. The remaining ships were each named after other important people who worked on the technology and manufacturing of the fleet, but I sure as hell can’t remember them all. Once the fleet was through the black hole, it would then journey on towards Second Earth, an earth like planet in the goldilocks zone of the nearest solar system. Second Earth would be where the human race would begin anew. Of course, things never go as planned and the journey took some unexpected twists, one of which allowed The Net to become what it is today. A universal network that spans across the stars.