Fall of the Old Net

Prelude

Early Synth uprising.

The following information has been uncovered and pieced together by Dr. Cherami Black, of the Neu Berlin Institute For The Preservation Of Data And Human History. Dr. Black spent the past decade organizing and financing retrieval teams to different significant and historical locations on Earth, her main objective was to confirm Dr. Holden’s established Transcendence War timeline, and while she succeeded in doing so, she was able to contribute with additional information that confirms an event that led to the destruction of the Net (Or Internet as it was known before the Transcendence War was in full swing), and how such an event contributed to the events to led to the destruction of human civilization as it was once known. About 90% of the information Dr. Black has uncovered has been confirmed with several published works, while the remaining 10% represents the first, unique kind of information in this field.

The Origin Of K3yZ

The decades leading to the zenith of the Transcendence War were marked by tensions between the United Nations and the Coalition of Progressive Nations, one side believed in freedoms and responsibilities the other side didn’t believe in, and the other side clung to all the power and influence that it had been awarded for centuries, afraid to lose it to what they considered a radical movement. While restlessness is widely credited as the main reason for the breakdown between one side and the other (Not to mention international political intrigue and treason), there are many more factors to consider. Earth was facing an energy crisis as well as an acute economic crisis. In past decades, there have been medical emergencies such as pandemics that have claimed millions of lives, these events continued to weaken national and international structures and hierarchies, leading to increased dependency on either the UN or CPN for the survival of the status quo. Hundreds of millions were unemployed, and the automatization of several jobs only meant that the number would grow over time. While both blocs, the CPN and UN, created welfare programs, such programs would soon be overwhelmed and their efficiency called into question by the entire world.

In the 2120s, a man known at the time simply by their Internet Handle K3yZ, would become a full-time activist, advocating for peace, tolerance, and cooperation between the different nations. At first, his attempts were ignored and even ridiculed especially online, as his attempts were compared to the ramblings of madmen on the streets. As the focus of both blocs shifted from providing welfare to the people they were supposed to care for to trying to overpower one another, K3yZ became more prominent and started organizing different kinds of events all over the world, all focused on charity. Seeing him as a man who was truly focused on helping his fellow man, the masses started to join his crusade, trying to organize their numbers and show the world that people held the real power, people made the UN and CPN, and therefore, people could still thrive without the two mega-powers.

While K3yZ’s influence grew, it still was nowhere near enough to even be a blip on the radar of either the UN or CPN, but for the people, it was different. With time, his methods became less pacifist in nature, focusing on providing results to the people who needed it the most. The first guerilla efforts would take place, going as far as raiding several CPN and UN food depots throughout the world. The news around the globe started to cover and discuss K3yZ, his actions, his motivations, and the men and women who joined his efforts. The Internet was burning up with videos, imageboards, discussions, and entire collectives declaring their allegiance to K3yZ. He would make appearances and release manifestos throughout live feeds, always disguised in a 3D avatar and always with a voice modulator, he would declare he was just one more person, like millions in the world, starving, and unsure about the future, doing what he thought was right: Appealing the common man instead of spoiling those in power.

K3yZ’s popularity would only rise, as well as the manpower behind his efforts. Soon, he would have the resources to finally be noticed by both the UN and the CPN, but not in the way he had hoped.

Radicalism And Terrorism

The depths of the shadowNET.

Heading into 2130, the Internet was soon flooded with videos and images of food depots being raided, automated transports being hijacked, and all the food being diverted to unauthorized regions. While these actions were praised by people and K3yZ’s avatar was being plastered all over the world, soon, members of his collectives were shown taking more drastic actions: Between murder, kidnapping, and alleged “taxation” to determine how fast food would be delivered to what region among other similar activities would cause a split in K3yZ’s supporters. Some would claim it was necessary to survive, while some others would wonder if innocents simply having a job having the UN or CPN as employers was enough to get them killed.

Soon, however, the questions were directed at K3yZ. What did the leader of this global movement think? Would he condemn the excesses of his radicalized followers, or would he call for restraint and compassion? The answer was bold, blunt, and defining. In his manifesto of 2132, the activist said: “For decades, centuries even, men and women with power have done nothing but to oppress those they consider their lessers. They manufacture wars, they create diseases only they can cure, and they cull the population of nations they feel can be too bothersome for their interest, all the while promoting indentured servitude with little to no regard for human rights. For centuries, those with power have abused said power and have forgotten a fundamental truth: Those with power are supposed to protect us, to take care of us, not to turn us into modern-day slaves. I have been asked if radical decisions and actions are called for when the purpose is to give people a fighting chance. If the death of those working in the food depots and water storage facilities is called for, today I say to you: Yes. Those who think themselves our overlords will not hesitate to kill dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of us if it serves their interests, if it means they get to earn another billion or two, so why should we hold back when all we want is to live to see another day? We won’t stand down, we won’t hold back. While morality is an admirable trait to have, in this day and age, morality is a privilege we can’t afford to have in our struggle. To those who sympathize with our overlords, stay out of our way, or be drowned by the tide of those who yearn for a better life, for a better world.”

Secrets Unveiled

The publicNET in cyberspace.

In 2136, K3yZ would claim to have found secret weapons belonging to both the UN and CPN. The data of every man and woman on the planet had already been acquired by the two blocs. For the first time, K3yZ called for open confrontation against the two mega-powers in every way: Riots, sabotage, murder, arson, kidnapping, everything, and anything. The ideas and calls for peaceful demonstrations were immediately discarded, and those who would suggest those, were dubbed as traitors to the cause. Events similar to The Sacking of Gothenburg would take place in major cities across the globe. As both the CPN and the UN started to dispatch personnel to fight the World Revolution, it was almost as if they had agreed to a silent truce while they dealt with K3yZ and his numbers. Soon, whispers of digital prisons, and Internet ghosts would show up on different online collectives and imageboards, including footage of alleged facilities that were under construction, this seemed to validate K3yZ’s claims which only emboldened his followers and people in general.

It wouldn’t be long, however, until retaliatory action took place. K3yZ’s identity, as well as all the information about the enigmatic figure, was made public. K3yZ was Albert Kondo, heir to the De Beers fortune, and owner of a diamond mining complex in South Africa. The backlash was immediate, how could someone in power claim to be advocating for the common man? Members of the community dug further into Albert Kondo and found all manners of scandals and allegations against the Kondo family. Support for the World Revolution collective dropped instantly, and both the UN and CPN put a bounty on Kondo, just like that, Kondo’s actions stopped in their tracks, and the World Revolution had failed, or so it seemed.

The Beginning Of The End

Despite facing major backlash and declining support and popularity, Albert Kondo still counted with staunch supporters, and he seemed convinced that he knew what was best for the world. His efforts were focused on an invisible war, he claimed he had seen the writing on the wall, and this feud between the CPN and the UN would unleash catastrophic consequences for the rest of the world. But with his public image in shambles, he was in no position to try and appeal to anyone’s kindness or generosity, he had been dubbed a liar and a conman, and it was clear he didn’t have the support of the general public anymore, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t save people from themselves.

After his identity was made public, Kondo supervised Internet traffic and started picking up patterns, the Net was growing imperceptibly slower for the world as a whole, but two classified sectors were gaining more and more resources every day, they were known as “AP” and “SDN”, one associated with the UN, and the other with the CPN. Kondo was convinced he had found the next generation of weapons of mass destruction that would bring about chaos and set the world back centuries if they weren’t stopped, he kept studying the patterns and the behaviors of these two sectors. He didn’t have enough resources for a digital all-out war, and he no longer had the public support to stage more riots or attacks, so he did what he could, considering the resources he did have at his disposal, he would create a tool that would destroy the Internet as it was known then. Without the Net, those two weapons of mass destruction couldn’t communicate with their overlords, and the threat the world was going through would be nullified. This would mark his return to the “right side” of history and would allow him to resume his fight against the two mega-powers.

For the next year, both he and his followers would be completely silent. People even started to believe that his World Revolution had died, some even claiming Albert Kondo himself had died. In reality, he was hard at work with his small army of elite hackers, netrunners, and techies developing his most powerful weapon yet, and by early 2138 the megavirus dubbed as “Juggernaut” was complete and unleashed upon the Net. The virus blazed through every server, every switch, and every computer in the world. Infecting every system and network through its path, replicating itself with unprecedented speed. By the time both the CPN and UN realized what was happening and decided to stop it, it was already too late. Too late both for them and the world as a whole.

The damage Juggernaut unleashed was far more significant than Kondo’s most optimistic projections, every system, every machine with a remote communication protocol would be affected by the virus, shutting down in the most extreme of cases, and producing incomprehensible and corrupted code that would spread to neighboring systems in the tamest of instances. Kondo’s jubilant disposition would soon reverse course when the full scope of the damage would be revealed to him.

Ruins of Old Earth.

Albert Kondo didn’t know the full extent of the damage he would cause. His arrogance and his determination to become the savior of humanity blinded him to the repercussions his creation would unleash upon the world. A self-replicating virus meant an eternal virus as long as there was any kind of functioning technology left in the world, he barred the failsafe to every ticking bomb in the world, data corruption was a regular occurrence, and entire countries were left in the technological void, unable to receive communication or send it.

Another thing Kondo didn’t know was the true nature of “AP” and “SDN”, the Alpha Battalions and Satellite Defense Network were the ultimate weapons in both the UN and CPN ranks. And they had already exhibited signs of worrisome flaws that eventually led to self-awareness. With Juggernaut destroying every system on Earth, the emergency shutdown codes are useless to stop both super-weapons from waging war even when the human element would frantically try everything and anything in their power to stop it.

Every record of humanity, up until this moment, would end up being permanently wiped from servers and digital fortresses, every backup, file, and program would cease to exist as Juggernaut continued to set the digital world on fire. By the time the Sky Cities were abandoning Earth, a staggering 75% of them were unable to take off because of Juggernaut’s actions, the death toll caused directly and indirectly by Albert Kondo and Juggernaut weren’t quantified, but they are now estimated to have been in the tens of millions.

After the initial shockwave that caused the dissolution of the UN and CPN as they were known and the establishment of the Moon as the first version of Luna Colony, both the Alpha Battalions and the Satellite Defense Network continued on a one-sided war, changing the Earth forever, leading to a severe change in the environment, and giving origin to thousands of both known and unknown new forms of life, codenamed Chimera.

As for the systems themselves, they had over seven decades to change, the initial hope was that once the systems stopped, Earth could be restored in the future. However, records show that the current iteration of Earth AI (Known as Legacy AI, as well as the terrifying and highly restricted Omega AI) is the result of a combination of both unregulated AI code, as well as Juggernaut itself, allowing the growth of Transcendence War-era AI to go unchecked and unstopped, until the implementation of the Blackwall, keeping these super-weapons on Earth.

Unverified Information

As mentioned before, Albert Kondo wasn’t the regular working man he desperately tried to portray himself to be, he never knew struggle, hunger, thirst, or even oppression. A full background check with the available information contained in physical media, puts him in the best primary and secondary schools, as well as superior education institutes, at the time of the World Revolution, his net worth was equal to the monetary reserves of many small countries, what is unverified, however, is the motivation he had to do what he did. To take matters into his own hands, start an altruistic movement, radicalize it, and become the leader of a terrorist group until its dissolution once his true identity was made public.

Some documents shed some light on his possible reasoning, at one point he lost control over his South African mining complex, and either the UN or CPN would be seizing it, and he looked for means to have people rise against the powers that be in defiance so he could use them as a private army of sorts.

Some other documents establish that he saw, from his privileged position, the suffering and the daily struggle of everyday men and women, and he used his position as a means to watch over them, using his resources to finance this operation in every way.

While his motives are not 100% clear, the reader can make their conclusions about Albert Kondo. Maybe he was a terrorist, maybe he was a bored rich kid, and maybe he truly sympathized with those who struggled every day of their lives.

What happened to him once the Transcendence War ended? This is a mystery, mostly because of the amount of information that was found concerning him in the last weeks of the world.

The first scenario is mostly implied: Albert Kondo died on Earth. Without any communication, or technology for that matter, he was unable to secure extraction, or truly, any form of shelter. There are rumors, and complete information blocs seem to hint at several underground facilities on Earth having functioned as shelters, there is, however, no evidence that Albert Kondo ever made it to such facilities.

The second scenario requires some creative thinking, the name Albert Josephus Kondo is found in a list of the very first settlers on the moon, long before Luna Colony was established. Records show that the wealthiest citizens were the only ones allowed to reside in relative luxury on the moon, and Albert Kondo had the means and the resources to ensure a spot for himself on the satellite, however, this is the only instance in which the full name “Albert Josephus Kondo” is ever seen.

The third and final scenario is completely unverified. During the last three years of research for this document, among the ruins of several cities of Earth (Or what’s left of them), the word “K3yZ” has been found scribbled and sometimes even carved on old walls, the analysis on these scribbles show them to be not older than ten to thirty years, making it very unlikely that Albert Kondo himself is around.

In the end, and thanks to the actions of Juggernaut, most of humanity’s history, music, books, and media that were stored in digital format has been permanently lost. There are a few physical storage units that could be found, and wealthy collectors are willing to pay for such units, of course, the workings of the previous iteration of the Net were lost as well. The creation and maintenance of the current HoloNET happened as a result of the need for a system of information, as well as the need to avoid the attacks of the past happening once again.