UTOPIA - Part 4 - Echoes of the Internet

His last message to her echoed around the silent remains of the internet for many years before she managed to intercept it on an improvised receiver she had built from fragments of salvaged computer parts.

'You've forgotten who I am'...

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Contrary to what most historians nowadays believe, the Internet didn't die all at once. It's been almost two centuries since the Great Meltdown, and while the most dramatic events have been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, lesser events such as the ones I'm about to describe have been all but erased from public memory. Of course, everyone knows about the solar flare and the devastation it caused to the world's computer systems, but the Internet itself had been showing signs of malfunction even in the years leading up to the famous series of catastrophic events which brought an abrupt end to civilisation.

For quite a while, and with increasing frequency, Messenger apps had been playing up, misbehaving... Messages were getting lost, jumbled, sent to the wrong recipients - often with disastrous consequences. Sometimes single words would go missing, sometimes whole sentences. Sometimes they would be rearranged or altered to have the opposite meaning. Names of people would be changed, often to quite insulting, but surprisingly appropriate alternative names. All of these strange occurrences, as you can imagine, caused a great deal of confusion, frustration, anger and misunderstanding. Even in the early days, before all communication became virtually impossible, lifelong friendships had ended on the basis of a single misplaced, inappropriate emoji.

The reason for these strange malfunctions (though by the time it was discovered, it was too late to stop it) was a very sophisticated, intelligent and malicious virus which had been silently spreading its tendrils into every corner of the world wide web - rearranging things here and there, making copies of itself and of everything it found to latch onto, replacing files with mirror copies, infected with copies of itself, modified. It evolved at a staggering rate, learning all the time, finding new ways to cause havoc and spread confusion.

Like Life itself, no-one could say exactly where it came from or how it got started. Of course, some blamed the Russians, some blamed the Americans. some blamed the Jews, the Moslems, an obscure Japanese nihilist cult, survivalist evangelical christians, Anarchists, terrorists, globalists.. some kid in his bedroom. Maybe it even created itself, by accident, by chance.

When the Solar Flare event suddenly, instantly wiped out almost all of the world's electronic circuitry as well as 99% of all stored data, it was believed by most computer experts at the time that it had also put an end to the 'PlagueX SuperVirus' as it had come to be known. In a way it was similar to the way that the Great Fire of London had put an end to the Black Death in the year 1666 - by driving plague carrying rats into the river and destroying the flea infested, overcrowded, wood-built neighbourhoods they inhabited, in an all consuming fire.

Except that the Internet wasn't completely destroyed. There were echoes...

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His last message to her echoed around the silent remains of the internet for many years before she managed to intercept it on an improvised receiver she had built from fragments of salvaged computer parts.

'You've forgotten who I am', it simply read.

With tears of rage, of loss and of helpless frustration, she read the five words over and over, knowing that there was no way to reach him now, no way to respond. Even if by some miracle he had survived the Great Meltdown, how could she ever find him now, in the vastness of the ravaged, disconnected world. How could she ever tell him now that it wasn't true. She had never forgotten him. How could she? He was a part of her in every waking hour, with her in every dream.

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If you missed the rest of the story so far, you can read it here:

https://steemit.com/story/@stillgideon/utopia-an-adventure-story-part-1-old-saul

https://steemit.com/story/@stillgideon/utopia-an-adventure-story-part-2-superheroes

https://steemit.com/story/@stillgideon/utopia-an-adventure-story-part-3-the-house-of-the-four-mothers

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Also I highly recommend you check out @ecotrain for all manner of thought provoking and inspiring new content on Steemit.