2028 Cyberwar WWW III
2028 Cyberwar WWW III - Movie Script
Part I: Attack!
(The movie opens with a shot of a theater-in-theater, a scene of a movie theater audience watching a trailer ending. The same trailer, that in fact, that just ended.)
(The house lights are down in both places, the theater and the scene of a movie theater shown from the audience perspective, i.e. picture-in-picture.)
(Music begins softly, The Blue Danube, by Johann Strauss, and slowly the camera zooms in on the theater-in-theater until there is nothing but black. During this zoom-in the music is getting louder proportionaly as the camera zooms in.)
(The screen goes all black as the zoom completes and "2028" and "Cyberwar WWW III" in a thick-line white font appears on the screen. The text "Cyberwar WWW III" is below the word "2028".)
(The movie title disappears and is replaced by what looks like a single star.)
(Again, the camera zooms in and the music grows louder. As we pan in the star appears to wobble and eventually rotate until the star fills 1/3 of the screen. It is in fact an obelisk of light, not a star, and the world "Millyways" is emblazoned upon within as a cheap flashing, pink neon sign from the 1970s.)
(The scene changes to that of a grand, majestic ballroom, a camera angle near ceiling taking in the entire room. The room is a simple huge square with lavish, curtains all around. In the center of the ballroom is a huge black circle. People dressed in all kinds of costumes are waltzing to the Blue Danube and staying in the black circle. In the four corners of the room are four smaller circles, half the size of the large circle in the middle, of colors red, green, blue and yellow. It is apparent that one of the circles is for beginners taking waltzing lessons.
Surrounding the dance floor are large 30ft wide walkways with buffet tables of food and then again tables of various countries and corporations. This is, after all, a diplomatic costume ball for all the countries in the world that wish to attend, although not all of them have tables.
There are curtains of respective Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow colors hanging on sliding rails such that they can be pulled to provide a barrior but at this time all curtains are tied together so as to afford maximum visibility. The room is truly one big room.
Dignitaries from all around the world are dancing and milling about. Special sashes have been provided for each dignitary to display their country colors and flags as they see fit.
The entire event is being televised around the world via four cameras mounted near the ceiling, where this camera is one.
An orchestra is playing taking up an entire hallway section thus presenting people from walking around the room but instead forcing them to double back in order to be received by all the countries present.
Despite the ongoing cyberwar the atmosphere is festive and room is loud.
Directly below this camera is a series of sound-canceling domes of which one of them has a longish receiving line beginning to form.
Underneath the dome is one cosplay, dressed, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, complete with faux pistols.
At the head of the receiving line is a lady dressed in a lavish gown of gold. She's holding a face mask in the shape of white bow with black border. In addition there is a rather large white chiffon bow on her chest. There is a sold gold elastic band/belt around her waist that is also tied.
The lady in gold approaches cosplay Captain.)
Cosplay Captain: Well, hello, as the captain I welcome you aboard Serenity, my ship/ballroom.
Lady in Gold: Hello, (flutters the mask as if a fan) I do find it odd and yet refreshing that westerners would allow some citizen with no country rank or title enjoy a receiving line.
Cosplay Captain: Well, it is not like they had much of a choice seeing as how we have the most secure network on the planet and I insist on meeting everyone who comes aboard my shippy ballroom.
Lady in Gold: So, you are saying you are meeting every one of these thousands of guests?
Cosplay Captain: well, no, ...
Lady in Gold: Excuse me, but we've only been afforded five minutes each to meet the great Cosplay Captain Reynolds and I do so wish to hear your tale.
Cosplay Captain: I got it! You're Lady Godiva! You're dressed like a box of fine chocolates!
Lady in Gold: You're making me blush, sir!
Cosplay Captain: I see you've done your homework. I'm defenseless against a good chocolate...or a bad chocolate. Hmmmm. I melt for chocolate.
Lady in Gold: And again!
Cosplay Captain: So is that very thin tablet looking device strapped to you're shoulder perhaps a gift card then?
Lady in Gold: Of course, my fine sir!
Cosplay Captain: May I?
Lady in Gold: And again!
Cosplay Captain: And if my hand were to, you know, slip? Would I be starting an international incident?
Lady in Gold: Trust me, the pleasure would be all mine. *fake blushes*
Cosplay Captain: Just kidding, my hands don't slip. (Signs the gift card tablet)
Lady in Gold: So, to whom did you make the gift out to?
Cosplay Captain: Wait, what? I just signed my John-Henry.
Lady in Gold: Why Captain, what with you being so observant I just assumed you knew to make out a to and a from?
Cosplay Captain: May I then?
Lady in Gold: Don't forget to slip!
Cosplay Captain: Are you flirting with me? You know this is a pretty clever diplomatic guest book here. We get to sign in on a pretty lady and include a "To:", perhaps getting people to expose alliances? Very good. Color me chocolate-box, gift worthy impressed.
Lady in Gold: You're too kind. And now your turn, Captain, please do tell!
(Camera shows Cosplay Captain to sign "To Kaylee: From: Malcom" and cut)
(Scene cuts to a data center. We meet Francesca, Cosplay Kaylee, who is in fact cosplay dressed for the occasion even though she is thousands of miles away making it not physically possible to attend the ball. Kaylee is an African-American woman dressed as Kay Winneth Lee Fry, ships engineer of the cybership Serenity.
Cosplay Kaylee is wearing a name tag as she is visiting this data center. She is being lead on a tour by a data center employee, Wing, a Chinese woman dressed in jeans and T-Shirt showing Godzilla. We open in the middle of a conversation about the technical specifications of the data center.
In the background are what appear to be two security patrol robots.)
Wing: I have to say, Francesca, how much I admire your work on the cold protocol and cold browser. It is so important that we can control our data and the cold technology has really boosted people's trust in technology. I'm also sorry about your Mom.
Cosplay Kaylee: I hate this war and what it did to my Mom. The 99% of computers that are not infected means the cyberwar is not affecting most people and not getting the attention needed. The cyberwar did not give my Mom cancer, but the slow down of the Internet and corruption of information caused the delay in scheduling my Mom's treatment and she died. I have no one to pin things on. I can't prove anything. I can't accuse any one person of murder. No one will be held accountable. The people or person responsible for those cpu chips burning out will never be caught. And even if they are caught they cannot be charged with the murder of my Mom.
Wing: You believe that they were deliberate sabotage?
Francesca (Kaylee): Come on, CPUs burning out daily going on two years? Wreaking havoc on systems worldwide? Causing networks to go down, database to go corrupt and ultimately resulting in a scheduling delay in Mom's treatment? You think this is a bug? Especially going on two years now? No way it is an accident.
Wing: But every country is affected, who would do this to themselves? No one can predict who's going to die?
Francesca (Kaylee): Hummph, well, the Captain believes this dance will lubricate the heightened tensions since people started dying and everyone started blaming everyone else. He thinks perhaps if people calm down we can get to the bottom of this and perhaps even name the people responsible, at least. He wants to see me have some kind of resolution.
Wing: Don't forget you also get to introduce the very fist cybership and cyberspace!
Francesca (Kaylee): There is that. This cybership gives me hope. So, please continue telling me about this data center.
Wing: Well, as you know, it is state-of-the-art cooling being built next to a river. (Francesca smiles.) This trend was started back with Google, Apple and Facebook building dedicated large company data centers next to rivers with no public access needed. Cooling and humidity are tuned to the ambient outside air such that our data center could withstand an entire blackout and not raise ambient temperature for six-months out of the year using surrounding airflow.
Wing: We have three 4,000 kilo-watt generators, one primary and two backup. We are not reliant on any other power source. Our backup generators are tested each month.
Wing: We have state of the art fire suppression that can, if no humans are present, completely remove all oxygen from the data center in less than five seconds, extinguishing all fires. Our state-of-the-art robots can perform most menial tasks such as swapping out drives, rebooting servers, and such in addition to providing security patrols.
Wing: A unique security feature is that all servers are moved by our robots to a random location after each visit such that no human knows the location except when both parties authorize.
Wing: We also have the latest DNA scanners.
Francesca (Kaylee): (softly crying)
Wing: I'm sorry, can we do something?
Francesca (Kaylee): This is the kind of place my Mom would have loved to visit. She would have asked to see a demo of the robot doing each thing you just mentioned. Can I see a robot replace a drive, please?
(Scene shows a robot going to a demo station and replacing a hard drive).
(We now go back to the ballroom with Cosplay Captain and The Lady Godiva).
Cosplay Captain: Do tell, eh? where do you want me to start?
Lady Godiva: From the beginning, when the first MGO was started, Chinese people are very interested in your telling of this. The MGO has so much potential to bring power to the people.
Captain Cosplay: I have to ask, though? Where are the chocolates? in your outfit?
Lady Godiva: In the box, Malcolm Reynolds.
Cosplay Captain: (faking shock) Well, I have to say, I certainly did not anticipate that comment from a Chinese diplomat! (smiles) you know I looked everyone up on the Biblioteca Desnuda who is here tonight.
Lady Godiva: (hard stare)
Cosplay Captain: I have yet to find a single person who approves of uncensored naked data. Everyone on planet Earth getting an annual, unadulterated, full body naked set of photos that is made publicly available for, uh hum, security purposes. Does it really improve security? I wonder. I wonder. Anyway, I also wondered about that mole I noticed on your upper, inner thigh. You might want to get that checked out. Round on one side, square on t'other. Could be malignant, at least half of it. Hmmmm, you know, now that I think about it, that mole is in the shape of a half-dome, like a chocolate truffle? So I guess the idea is someone has to be up to the challenge of climbing the El Capitan of your Yosemite, eh? Almost like you knew me and t'others would be have looked ..., wait does your government know about this? Approve? You including your Bibloteca photos in your Cosplay?
Lady Godiva: Why, Captain Reynolds, I have no idea what you are talking about (smiles greatly, fans face with mask).
Cosplay Captain: You know, you surprise me. A Chinese dignitary dressed in a blatant piece of western consumerism, and not just consumerism, rich people's chocolates, not people's rich chocolate, and then incorporating photos from the Biblioteca Desnude into your cosplay? My my.
Lady Godiva: Our five minutes is up and I never got to hear you tell the emergence of Irreni World Scale in your words...?
Cosplay Captain: I apologize, let me ask the next guest if they mind sharing their five minutes as we did take up quite the time getting to know each other.
Cosplay Captain: (waves to the next guest to join them.)
(A Sherlock Holmes dressed woman approaches carrying a red briefcase with one side as a monitor.)
Cosplay Sherlock: Permission to come aboard this, errr, ship.
Cosplay Captain: Permission granted, although I'm afraid I must insist on us sharing your time in the presence of Lady Godiva as I'm afraid I squandered her five minutes and now I must impose.
Cosplay Sherlock: Sure! The more the merrier! I'd like to introduce you to my partner, Dr. Watson! (Holds up the brief cases monitor side displaying a caricature face of a Dr. Watson.)
(Malcolm and Lady Godiva look at each other): IBM!
Cosplay Sherlock: Yes, of course, and we'd like to off Dr. Watson to both of you for no charge.
Cosplay Captain: We don't use AI.
Cosplay Sherlock: We know that is not true. We can assure you that Dr. Watson is more than just "sooped up data crunching" as you say.
Cosplay Captain: Great, and I hate to impose, but I was just about to give Lady Godiva my personal tale of the last ten years in five-minutes, do you care to join us?
Cosplay Sherlock: We do hope you consider our offer?
Cosplay Captain: I'll put that offer in front of Francesca, ship's engineer, best I can do.
Cosplay Sherlock: Good enough.
Cosplay Captain: Shall we?
Lady Godiva (fanning self): please, the People's Republic await the personal inventor of the future of our people liberation, MGOs!
Cosplay Captain: (humph) Well, in 2018 I wanted to save *Capitalism* from itself. Consumerism had run amok, plastic was clogging the oceans and we needed a fresh take on *Capitalism* for it to continue to grow.
Cosplay Captain: MGOs, or micro-modular governing organizations, are premised on the primary notion that either one is making decisions controlling ones life, or somebody else is. The fundamental problem with Democracy and Capitalism back in 2018 is that too many decisions were being made by too few people. We needed decisions to be dispersed back to the people such that government could get back to making the kind of decisions governments are suppose to make, our every wish. (grins) So, MGOs were conceived to bootstrap making decisions via a campaign called "Make 2018". The strategy was two-fold. First, mitigate AI putting people out of jobs by training people to make boutique things. Second, the individual things being made would reuse material already existing and thus eliminate trash, tossing plastic into the garbage. Instead we now toss plastic back into a 3D printer. Entire boutique capitalist markets were created to make all kinds of things that extended the life-time of consumer products, this eliminating waste, and further creating custom design markets to compete with mass production designs. Today over thirty percent of all products sold in the United States are reused, created by MGOs.
Cosplay Captain: The Make 2018 campaign would have failed without creating its own social network, however. Facebook was replaced with MGO sites. Specifically MGO sites re-introduced Americans to bartering, exchanging goods directly without money at all. At first this seems counter-capitalism but in fact bartering is now seen as capitalism booster. Re-use creates products with no market price set. Bartering goods directly is the most profitable way to exchange one-of-a-kind items of unknown market price. Bartering mitigates price gauging because people are lousy at pricing things. Bartering reused items allows the transnational capitalism markets to focus on information and strategic new products: things with the highest mark-up and profit margin. It is a capitalism win-win: material consumerism is slowly being replaced by re-use and profits are up selling information and necessary new things.
Cosplay Captain: In 2026, we received a government grant to start on a new effort to align public trust in data: cold data. Cold data is data that is never used directly from a network. Cold data never contains code. Cold data comes in containers of fixed sizes. The initial cold data implementation included a snapshot of the entire Internet. For a long time memory devices were sold by adversing there easy memory to hold the entire Library of Congress. In 2026 storage was so cheap we could snapshot the entire Internet as cold data. To be clear. snapshoting the entire Internet only refers to public data, data that requires no account.
Cosplay Captain: The cold data browser and cold data containers were released in 2026. Cold data enables a local network to unplug from the Internet. Or more importantly, to be side-by-side to the Internet. Cold data networks only use cold browsers that view cold data files. If the Internet is under attack or some such, one can limit oneself to the cold network until the storm blows over.
Cosplay Captain: At the same time the cold technology was released, the first massive, world-wide cyber attack ensued. Common cpu chips started burning up, this disabling computers using them. This included network switches, databases, and every other kind of computer. Most newsworthy is that critical health-care machines failed and people died. The affects were world wide, every country experienced a similar failure of about 1% of computing technology. One percent may not sound like much but when you consider the entire planet runs on computers the one percent is huge.
Cosplay Captain: Of course, since we invented cold technology using US government grant money then the cyber attack was blamed on us. Everyone immediately suspected the US government and our MGO. However, we have since been completely exonerated as none of our team had ever worked on cpu hardware. It would've been impossible for our small team to have introduced such a hardware bug.
Cosplay Captain: It was just dumb luck that none of our computing technology was affected by the one percent of cpu burn-out. Get it? 99%? Dumb luck? Anyway, we were uniquely prepared for the cyber attack because we had the single best cold network and we were constrained by the MGO protocol to a size of thirty people and corresponding technology capacity. The US Federal government has tried for two years to initiate a secure, cold network but has failed to do so because they are so large. So has every other world government. Leading people to believe this is more than just a bug, but war. And so here we are today, at an event hosted by yours truly because a.) I happen to own this ballroom and b.) we have the most secure cold network and this is a diplomatic ball to either stave off war or negotiate peace, depending on your perspective.
Lady Godiva: So what about communication? How you chat, stream video or even receive emails using cold storage?
Cosplay Captain: Easy, logs. We use a sophisticated set of servers to route all real-time data into cold files we call logs. Chat's, live-streams, anything on the Internet can be archived to cold logs. Every twenty-four hours the data is available after it is archived and analyzed by sooped-up data crunchers, not AI, for cyber attacks and other malicious content. Cold data is always a minimum of twenty-four hours old before it is made available for cold browser. This is analogous to beef being hung for thirty days. We age data to ensure it is disease free, if you will. If the Internet comes under attack we turn off all hot browsing in our MGO. However, real-time data can be requested, it just takes twenty-four hours to process. Further, we have established a trusted network of MGOs. These MGOs archive ongoing cold-data of various Internet traffic. These cold data files are then exchanged.
Cosplay Sherlock: How have you been enable to ensure your hardware is not susceptible to burn out like everyone else? The US government? IBM?
Cosplay Captain: We don't really. We buy only pre-burn cpu hardware and upkeep what we have. As a small network we're pretty easy to maintain. But we are playing the 99% lottery the same as everyone else. It is just that being small we can avoid the 1% loss. There are lots of secure, cold MGOs we just happen to be the inventors of the technology and large operations like corporations and governments are not. Plus people erroneously think we have special powers to prevent cpu burn out and we don't dissuade them. It's good for business. Further, at this point no one believes this is truly a bug. This is a deliberate attack. Small MGOs are not worth infiltrating. We have not changed team members in the last two years.
(Cosplay Captain hears someone speaking in an ear piece he is wearing) (Cosplay Captain steps forward slightly to introduce ambient noise into the earpiece and slightly mask his conversation, ballroom background noises appear.)
Cosplay Captain: Excuse me ladies, this will just take a second.
Cosplay Captain: Go ahead Wash.
Wash: Captain, we're under attack.
Cosplay Captain (slightly annoyed): Aren't we always under attack?
Wash: Sir, we are under attack, you know, attack.
Cosplay Captain: Ohhhh, attack, why didn't you just say so.
Cosplay Captain: Pardon me ladies, someone is attacking our physical secure facilities. If they manage to shut the power down then we are off-line and this ball has to end. As part of the International agreement to host this event we were not allowed to have redundant physical servers.
Cosplay Captain: So, what is Francesca recommending?
Wash: Well, sir, that's just it. The attackers have guns.
Cosplay Captain: What? Why? Who would someone be stupid enough to attack a data center with guns? That doesn't make any sense, you just disable the power and game over? No one gets caught?
Wash: So what do you want us to do?
Lady Godiva (eavesdropping): You do realize if there is a military attack then your military will take control?
Cosplay Captain: Good point. Wash, has the military weighed in?
Wash: Not yet. Francesca is in there and there is only way way out. They jammed all cell signal, I don't think she can call out. I'm worried about her.
Francesca: I'm here. They did not block me. I'm using the WIFI phone capability with the data center network. They have not cut off the network feeds yet. Anyway, I've been busy uploading the signal to the NSA. They are analyzing the profiles of the soldiers at the front door. There are ten of them in full body armor? Like we are going to fight back? For some reason they have not disabled cameras or the network feeds. The NSA is analyzing all data trying to identify the infiltrators.
Cosplay Captain: Okay, ladies, the NSA is on it, nothing to worry about.
Cosplay Sherlock: You should be using Dr. Watson. The NSA will feed the physical parameters of height, uniform, arms, and so into its database of the entire worlds armies and possibly identify the soldiers just from this limited information, up to and including electronically rounding up teams world-wide that fit the profiles, but that takes weeks. Dr. Watson has to ability to do more than pattern matching and can create suppositions with weighted odds in real time.
Wash: Sir, the Pentagon has officially taken over the facility. They are allowing us access to their live feeds but we are now officially ordered to monitor only.
Lady Godiva: What's happening?
Cosplay Captain: The Pentagon just took over.
Cosplay Captain: Wash, put me on intercom here in the ball room and put whatever feeds you have from the Pentagon on all the screens in the ballroom. We wouldn't want our international friends to think we are not being forth coming.
(All for large screens now display the multiple camera live feeds of the ongoing data center attack. Sixteen different cameras are displayed. At this precise moment the soldiers rush the door with a battering ram and knock in the front door.)
Cosplay Captain: Well that was too coincidental. And what's with the guns?
Wash: I'm worried about Francesca!
Cosplay Captain (over intercom): Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please. One of your respective agencies has launched a military attack on the data center hosting this event. It appears this is being staged for your benefit as they waited until this video went live here before they knocked down the data center doors.
(Soldiers with guns pointed move into the lobby of the data center. Everyone in the data center has already evacuated the lobby and moved into the server room.)
Cosplay Captain: Francesca, talk to me.
Francesca: I don't understand, why haven't they cut they power? Why are they here with guns?
Cosplay Captain: I think this war just escalated from cyberspace to real space.
(Soldiers round the lobby to the server room doors and break through them down. Two security robots are still in the same position as they were previously and not moving as they have no weapons or military software.
Soldiers open-fire and gun down the robots.)
Cosplay Captain: Holy s**t. Francesca get out of there!
Wash (screams!): There is only one way out.
Cosplay Captain: Where is the military?
Wash: Twenty minutes out. No one anticipated an armed assault on a data center. Makes no kind of sense.
(All the soldiers are now in data center server area, lined up in a row. Robot pieces are everywhere.)
Cosplay Captain: What are they waiting on? Shouldn't they be doing public executions to piss me off or something?
Wash: We got incoming.
Cosplay Captain: What?
Wash: Pentagon is saying there is a missile incoming, 30 seconds.
Cosplay Captain: Unbelievable! What kinda missile?
Wash: Not a good one?
(Ballroom goes silent.)
(All cameras on the four monitors go blank, except one, a satellite camera where a white mushroom cloud appears).
Cosplay Captain: My God! Did they just nuke the data center?
Wash: Francesca!
Cosplay Captain: What just happened?
Cosplay Captain: They just nuked their own soldiers? Who does that?
Wash: China. North Korea maybe.
Cosplay Captain (looking at Lady Godiva): If my understanding of Chinese culture is correct, white is the color one wears to a funeral, and that's a pretty large white bow and mask you have on there Lady Godiva.
Lady Godiva: Lots of people here are wearing white, Malcolm. Excuse me, I must now join the other Chinese delegates.
Wash: Pentagon is saying it was a nuke of limited payload. That data center will be off limits for years! We'll never find Francesca. My God!
Wash: Who would want to hurt Francesca?
Part I: Attack!
(The movie opens with a shot of a theater-in-theater, a scene of a movie theater audience watching a trailer ending. The same trailer, that in fact, that just ended.)
(The house lights are down in both places, the theater and the scene of a movie theater shown from the audience perspective, i.e. picture-in-picture.)
(Music begins softly, The Blue Danube, by Johann Strauss, and slowly the camera zooms in on the theater-in-theater until there is nothing but black. During this zoom-in the music is getting louder proportionaly as the camera zooms in.)
(The screen goes all black as the zoom completes and "2028" and "Cyberwar WWW III" in a thick-line white font appears on the screen. The text "Cyberwar WWW III" is below the word "2028".)
(The movie title disappears and is replaced by what looks like a single star.)
(Again, the camera zooms in and the music grows louder. As we pan in the star appears to wobble and eventually rotate until the star fills 1/3 of the screen. It is in fact an obelisk of light, not a star, and the world "Millyways" is emblazoned upon within as a cheap flashing, pink neon sign from the 1970s.)
(The scene changes to that of a grand, majestic ballroom, a camera angle near ceiling taking in the entire room. The room is a simple huge square with lavish, curtains all around. In the center of the ballroom is a huge black circle. People dressed in all kinds of costumes are waltzing to the Blue Danube and staying in the black circle. In the four corners of the room are four smaller circles, half the size of the large circle in the middle, of colors red, green, blue and yellow. It is apparent that one of the circles is for beginners taking waltzing lessons.
Surrounding the dance floor are large 30ft wide walkways with buffet tables of food and then again tables of various countries and corporations. This is, after all, a diplomatic costume ball for all the countries in the world that wish to attend, although not all of them have tables.
There are curtains of respective Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow colors hanging on sliding rails such that they can be pulled to provide a barrior but at this time all curtains are tied together so as to afford maximum visibility. The room is truly one big room.
Dignitaries from all around the world are dancing and milling about. Special sashes have been provided for each dignitary to display their country colors and flags as they see fit.
The entire event is being televised around the world via four cameras mounted near the ceiling, where this camera is one.
An orchestra is playing taking up an entire hallway section thus presenting people from walking around the room but instead forcing them to double back in order to be received by all the countries present.
Despite the ongoing cyberwar the atmosphere is festive and room is loud.
Directly below this camera is a series of sound-canceling domes of which one of them has a longish receiving line beginning to form.
Underneath the dome is one cosplay, dressed, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, complete with faux pistols.
At the head of the receiving line is a lady dressed in a lavish gown of gold. She's holding a face mask in the shape of white bow with black border. In addition there is a rather large white chiffon bow on her chest. There is a sold gold elastic band/belt around her waist that is also tied.
The lady in gold approaches cosplay Captain.)
Cosplay Captain: Well, hello, as the captain I welcome you aboard Serenity, my ship/ballroom.
Lady in Gold: Hello, (flutters the mask as if a fan) I do find it odd and yet refreshing that westerners would allow some citizen with no country rank or title enjoy a receiving line.
Cosplay Captain: Well, it is not like they had much of a choice seeing as how we have the most secure network on the planet and I insist on meeting everyone who comes aboard my shippy ballroom.
Lady in Gold: So, you are saying you are meeting every one of these thousands of guests?
Cosplay Captain: well, no, ...
Lady in Gold: Excuse me, but we've only been afforded five minutes each to meet the great Cosplay Captain Reynolds and I do so wish to hear your tale.
Cosplay Captain: I got it! You're Lady Godiva! You're dressed like a box of fine chocolates!
Lady in Gold: You're making me blush, sir!
Cosplay Captain: I see you've done your homework. I'm defenseless against a good chocolate...or a bad chocolate. Hmmmm. I melt for chocolate.
Lady in Gold: And again!
Cosplay Captain: So is that very thin tablet looking device strapped to you're shoulder perhaps a gift card then?
Lady in Gold: Of course, my fine sir!
Cosplay Captain: May I?
Lady in Gold: And again!
Cosplay Captain: And if my hand were to, you know, slip? Would I be starting an international incident?
Lady in Gold: Trust me, the pleasure would be all mine. *fake blushes*
Cosplay Captain: Just kidding, my hands don't slip. (Signs the gift card tablet)
Lady in Gold: So, to whom did you make the gift out to?
Cosplay Captain: Wait, what? I just signed my John-Henry.
Lady in Gold: Why Captain, what with you being so observant I just assumed you knew to make out a to and a from?
Cosplay Captain: May I then?
Lady in Gold: Don't forget to slip!
Cosplay Captain: Are you flirting with me? You know this is a pretty clever diplomatic guest book here. We get to sign in on a pretty lady and include a "To:", perhaps getting people to expose alliances? Very good. Color me chocolate-box, gift worthy impressed.
Lady in Gold: You're too kind. And now your turn, Captain, please do tell!
(Camera shows Cosplay Captain to sign "To Kaylee: From: Malcom" and cut)
(Scene cuts to a data center. We meet Francesca, Cosplay Kaylee, who is in fact cosplay dressed for the occasion even though she is thousands of miles away making it not physically possible to attend the ball. Kaylee is an African-American woman dressed as Kay Winneth Lee Fry, ships engineer of the cybership Serenity.
Cosplay Kaylee is wearing a name tag as she is visiting this data center. She is being lead on a tour by a data center employee, Wing, a Chinese woman dressed in jeans and T-Shirt showing Godzilla. We open in the middle of a conversation about the technical specifications of the data center.
In the background are what appear to be two security patrol robots.)
Wing: I have to say, Francesca, how much I admire your work on the cold protocol and cold browser. It is so important that we can control our data and the cold technology has really boosted people's trust in technology. I'm also sorry about your Mom.
Cosplay Kaylee: I hate this war and what it did to my Mom. The 99% of computers that are not infected means the cyberwar is not affecting most people and not getting the attention needed. The cyberwar did not give my Mom cancer, but the slow down of the Internet and corruption of information caused the delay in scheduling my Mom's treatment and she died. I have no one to pin things on. I can't prove anything. I can't accuse any one person of murder. No one will be held accountable. The people or person responsible for those cpu chips burning out will never be caught. And even if they are caught they cannot be charged with the murder of my Mom.
Wing: You believe that they were deliberate sabotage?
Francesca (Kaylee): Come on, CPUs burning out daily going on two years? Wreaking havoc on systems worldwide? Causing networks to go down, database to go corrupt and ultimately resulting in a scheduling delay in Mom's treatment? You think this is a bug? Especially going on two years now? No way it is an accident.
Wing: But every country is affected, who would do this to themselves? No one can predict who's going to die?
Francesca (Kaylee): Hummph, well, the Captain believes this dance will lubricate the heightened tensions since people started dying and everyone started blaming everyone else. He thinks perhaps if people calm down we can get to the bottom of this and perhaps even name the people responsible, at least. He wants to see me have some kind of resolution.
Wing: Don't forget you also get to introduce the very fist cybership and cyberspace!
Francesca (Kaylee): There is that. This cybership gives me hope. So, please continue telling me about this data center.
Wing: Well, as you know, it is state-of-the-art cooling being built next to a river. (Francesca smiles.) This trend was started back with Google, Apple and Facebook building dedicated large company data centers next to rivers with no public access needed. Cooling and humidity are tuned to the ambient outside air such that our data center could withstand an entire blackout and not raise ambient temperature for six-months out of the year using surrounding airflow.
Wing: We have three 4,000 kilo-watt generators, one primary and two backup. We are not reliant on any other power source. Our backup generators are tested each month.
Wing: We have state of the art fire suppression that can, if no humans are present, completely remove all oxygen from the data center in less than five seconds, extinguishing all fires. Our state-of-the-art robots can perform most menial tasks such as swapping out drives, rebooting servers, and such in addition to providing security patrols.
Wing: A unique security feature is that all servers are moved by our robots to a random location after each visit such that no human knows the location except when both parties authorize.
Wing: We also have the latest DNA scanners.
Francesca (Kaylee): (softly crying)
Wing: I'm sorry, can we do something?
Francesca (Kaylee): This is the kind of place my Mom would have loved to visit. She would have asked to see a demo of the robot doing each thing you just mentioned. Can I see a robot replace a drive, please?
(Scene shows a robot going to a demo station and replacing a hard drive).
(We now go back to the ballroom with Cosplay Captain and The Lady Godiva).
Cosplay Captain: Do tell, eh? where do you want me to start?
Lady Godiva: From the beginning, when the first MGO was started, Chinese people are very interested in your telling of this. The MGO has so much potential to bring power to the people.
Captain Cosplay: I have to ask, though? Where are the chocolates? in your outfit?
Lady Godiva: In the box, Malcolm Reynolds.
Cosplay Captain: (faking shock) Well, I have to say, I certainly did not anticipate that comment from a Chinese diplomat! (smiles) you know I looked everyone up on the Biblioteca Desnuda who is here tonight.
Lady Godiva: (hard stare)
Cosplay Captain: I have yet to find a single person who approves of uncensored naked data. Everyone on planet Earth getting an annual, unadulterated, full body naked set of photos that is made publicly available for, uh hum, security purposes. Does it really improve security? I wonder. I wonder. Anyway, I also wondered about that mole I noticed on your upper, inner thigh. You might want to get that checked out. Round on one side, square on t'other. Could be malignant, at least half of it. Hmmmm, you know, now that I think about it, that mole is in the shape of a half-dome, like a chocolate truffle? So I guess the idea is someone has to be up to the challenge of climbing the El Capitan of your Yosemite, eh? Almost like you knew me and t'others would be have looked ..., wait does your government know about this? Approve? You including your Bibloteca photos in your Cosplay?
Lady Godiva: Why, Captain Reynolds, I have no idea what you are talking about (smiles greatly, fans face with mask).
Cosplay Captain: You know, you surprise me. A Chinese dignitary dressed in a blatant piece of western consumerism, and not just consumerism, rich people's chocolates, not people's rich chocolate, and then incorporating photos from the Biblioteca Desnude into your cosplay? My my.
Lady Godiva: Our five minutes is up and I never got to hear you tell the emergence of Irreni World Scale in your words...?
Cosplay Captain: I apologize, let me ask the next guest if they mind sharing their five minutes as we did take up quite the time getting to know each other.
Cosplay Captain: (waves to the next guest to join them.)
(A Sherlock Holmes dressed woman approaches carrying a red briefcase with one side as a monitor.)
Cosplay Sherlock: Permission to come aboard this, errr, ship.
Cosplay Captain: Permission granted, although I'm afraid I must insist on us sharing your time in the presence of Lady Godiva as I'm afraid I squandered her five minutes and now I must impose.
Cosplay Sherlock: Sure! The more the merrier! I'd like to introduce you to my partner, Dr. Watson! (Holds up the brief cases monitor side displaying a caricature face of a Dr. Watson.)
(Malcolm and Lady Godiva look at each other): IBM!
Cosplay Sherlock: Yes, of course, and we'd like to off Dr. Watson to both of you for no charge.
Cosplay Captain: We don't use AI.
Cosplay Sherlock: We know that is not true. We can assure you that Dr. Watson is more than just "sooped up data crunching" as you say.
Cosplay Captain: Great, and I hate to impose, but I was just about to give Lady Godiva my personal tale of the last ten years in five-minutes, do you care to join us?
Cosplay Sherlock: We do hope you consider our offer?
Cosplay Captain: I'll put that offer in front of Francesca, ship's engineer, best I can do.
Cosplay Sherlock: Good enough.
Cosplay Captain: Shall we?
Lady Godiva (fanning self): please, the People's Republic await the personal inventor of the future of our people liberation, MGOs!
Cosplay Captain: (humph) Well, in 2018 I wanted to save *Capitalism* from itself. Consumerism had run amok, plastic was clogging the oceans and we needed a fresh take on *Capitalism* for it to continue to grow.
Cosplay Captain: MGOs, or micro-modular governing organizations, are premised on the primary notion that either one is making decisions controlling ones life, or somebody else is. The fundamental problem with Democracy and Capitalism back in 2018 is that too many decisions were being made by too few people. We needed decisions to be dispersed back to the people such that government could get back to making the kind of decisions governments are suppose to make, our every wish. (grins) So, MGOs were conceived to bootstrap making decisions via a campaign called "Make 2018". The strategy was two-fold. First, mitigate AI putting people out of jobs by training people to make boutique things. Second, the individual things being made would reuse material already existing and thus eliminate trash, tossing plastic into the garbage. Instead we now toss plastic back into a 3D printer. Entire boutique capitalist markets were created to make all kinds of things that extended the life-time of consumer products, this eliminating waste, and further creating custom design markets to compete with mass production designs. Today over thirty percent of all products sold in the United States are reused, created by MGOs.
Cosplay Captain: The Make 2018 campaign would have failed without creating its own social network, however. Facebook was replaced with MGO sites. Specifically MGO sites re-introduced Americans to bartering, exchanging goods directly without money at all. At first this seems counter-capitalism but in fact bartering is now seen as capitalism booster. Re-use creates products with no market price set. Bartering goods directly is the most profitable way to exchange one-of-a-kind items of unknown market price. Bartering mitigates price gauging because people are lousy at pricing things. Bartering reused items allows the transnational capitalism markets to focus on information and strategic new products: things with the highest mark-up and profit margin. It is a capitalism win-win: material consumerism is slowly being replaced by re-use and profits are up selling information and necessary new things.
Cosplay Captain: In 2026, we received a government grant to start on a new effort to align public trust in data: cold data. Cold data is data that is never used directly from a network. Cold data never contains code. Cold data comes in containers of fixed sizes. The initial cold data implementation included a snapshot of the entire Internet. For a long time memory devices were sold by adversing there easy memory to hold the entire Library of Congress. In 2026 storage was so cheap we could snapshot the entire Internet as cold data. To be clear. snapshoting the entire Internet only refers to public data, data that requires no account.
Cosplay Captain: The cold data browser and cold data containers were released in 2026. Cold data enables a local network to unplug from the Internet. Or more importantly, to be side-by-side to the Internet. Cold data networks only use cold browsers that view cold data files. If the Internet is under attack or some such, one can limit oneself to the cold network until the storm blows over.
Cosplay Captain: At the same time the cold technology was released, the first massive, world-wide cyber attack ensued. Common cpu chips started burning up, this disabling computers using them. This included network switches, databases, and every other kind of computer. Most newsworthy is that critical health-care machines failed and people died. The affects were world wide, every country experienced a similar failure of about 1% of computing technology. One percent may not sound like much but when you consider the entire planet runs on computers the one percent is huge.
Cosplay Captain: Of course, since we invented cold technology using US government grant money then the cyber attack was blamed on us. Everyone immediately suspected the US government and our MGO. However, we have since been completely exonerated as none of our team had ever worked on cpu hardware. It would've been impossible for our small team to have introduced such a hardware bug.
Cosplay Captain: It was just dumb luck that none of our computing technology was affected by the one percent of cpu burn-out. Get it? 99%? Dumb luck? Anyway, we were uniquely prepared for the cyber attack because we had the single best cold network and we were constrained by the MGO protocol to a size of thirty people and corresponding technology capacity. The US Federal government has tried for two years to initiate a secure, cold network but has failed to do so because they are so large. So has every other world government. Leading people to believe this is more than just a bug, but war. And so here we are today, at an event hosted by yours truly because a.) I happen to own this ballroom and b.) we have the most secure cold network and this is a diplomatic ball to either stave off war or negotiate peace, depending on your perspective.
Lady Godiva: So what about communication? How you chat, stream video or even receive emails using cold storage?
Cosplay Captain: Easy, logs. We use a sophisticated set of servers to route all real-time data into cold files we call logs. Chat's, live-streams, anything on the Internet can be archived to cold logs. Every twenty-four hours the data is available after it is archived and analyzed by sooped-up data crunchers, not AI, for cyber attacks and other malicious content. Cold data is always a minimum of twenty-four hours old before it is made available for cold browser. This is analogous to beef being hung for thirty days. We age data to ensure it is disease free, if you will. If the Internet comes under attack we turn off all hot browsing in our MGO. However, real-time data can be requested, it just takes twenty-four hours to process. Further, we have established a trusted network of MGOs. These MGOs archive ongoing cold-data of various Internet traffic. These cold data files are then exchanged.
Cosplay Sherlock: How have you been enable to ensure your hardware is not susceptible to burn out like everyone else? The US government? IBM?
Cosplay Captain: We don't really. We buy only pre-burn cpu hardware and upkeep what we have. As a small network we're pretty easy to maintain. But we are playing the 99% lottery the same as everyone else. It is just that being small we can avoid the 1% loss. There are lots of secure, cold MGOs we just happen to be the inventors of the technology and large operations like corporations and governments are not. Plus people erroneously think we have special powers to prevent cpu burn out and we don't dissuade them. It's good for business. Further, at this point no one believes this is truly a bug. This is a deliberate attack. Small MGOs are not worth infiltrating. We have not changed team members in the last two years.
(Cosplay Captain hears someone speaking in an ear piece he is wearing) (Cosplay Captain steps forward slightly to introduce ambient noise into the earpiece and slightly mask his conversation, ballroom background noises appear.)
Cosplay Captain: Excuse me ladies, this will just take a second.
Cosplay Captain: Go ahead Wash.
Wash: Captain, we're under attack.
Cosplay Captain (slightly annoyed): Aren't we always under attack?
Wash: Sir, we are under attack, you know, attack.
Cosplay Captain: Ohhhh, attack, why didn't you just say so.
Cosplay Captain: Pardon me ladies, someone is attacking our physical secure facilities. If they manage to shut the power down then we are off-line and this ball has to end. As part of the International agreement to host this event we were not allowed to have redundant physical servers.
Cosplay Captain: So, what is Francesca recommending?
Wash: Well, sir, that's just it. The attackers have guns.
Cosplay Captain: What? Why? Who would someone be stupid enough to attack a data center with guns? That doesn't make any sense, you just disable the power and game over? No one gets caught?
Wash: So what do you want us to do?
Lady Godiva (eavesdropping): You do realize if there is a military attack then your military will take control?
Cosplay Captain: Good point. Wash, has the military weighed in?
Wash: Not yet. Francesca is in there and there is only way way out. They jammed all cell signal, I don't think she can call out. I'm worried about her.
Francesca: I'm here. They did not block me. I'm using the WIFI phone capability with the data center network. They have not cut off the network feeds yet. Anyway, I've been busy uploading the signal to the NSA. They are analyzing the profiles of the soldiers at the front door. There are ten of them in full body armor? Like we are going to fight back? For some reason they have not disabled cameras or the network feeds. The NSA is analyzing all data trying to identify the infiltrators.
Cosplay Captain: Okay, ladies, the NSA is on it, nothing to worry about.
Cosplay Sherlock: You should be using Dr. Watson. The NSA will feed the physical parameters of height, uniform, arms, and so into its database of the entire worlds armies and possibly identify the soldiers just from this limited information, up to and including electronically rounding up teams world-wide that fit the profiles, but that takes weeks. Dr. Watson has to ability to do more than pattern matching and can create suppositions with weighted odds in real time.
Wash: Sir, the Pentagon has officially taken over the facility. They are allowing us access to their live feeds but we are now officially ordered to monitor only.
Lady Godiva: What's happening?
Cosplay Captain: The Pentagon just took over.
Cosplay Captain: Wash, put me on intercom here in the ball room and put whatever feeds you have from the Pentagon on all the screens in the ballroom. We wouldn't want our international friends to think we are not being forth coming.
(All for large screens now display the multiple camera live feeds of the ongoing data center attack. Sixteen different cameras are displayed. At this precise moment the soldiers rush the door with a battering ram and knock in the front door.)
Cosplay Captain: Well that was too coincidental. And what's with the guns?
Wash: I'm worried about Francesca!
Cosplay Captain (over intercom): Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please. One of your respective agencies has launched a military attack on the data center hosting this event. It appears this is being staged for your benefit as they waited until this video went live here before they knocked down the data center doors.
(Soldiers with guns pointed move into the lobby of the data center. Everyone in the data center has already evacuated the lobby and moved into the server room.)
Cosplay Captain: Francesca, talk to me.
Francesca: I don't understand, why haven't they cut they power? Why are they here with guns?
Cosplay Captain: I think this war just escalated from cyberspace to real space.
(Soldiers round the lobby to the server room doors and break through them down. Two security robots are still in the same position as they were previously and not moving as they have no weapons or military software.
Soldiers open-fire and gun down the robots.)
Cosplay Captain: Holy s**t. Francesca get out of there!
Wash (screams!): There is only one way out.
Cosplay Captain: Where is the military?
Wash: Twenty minutes out. No one anticipated an armed assault on a data center. Makes no kind of sense.
(All the soldiers are now in data center server area, lined up in a row. Robot pieces are everywhere.)
Cosplay Captain: What are they waiting on? Shouldn't they be doing public executions to piss me off or something?
Wash: We got incoming.
Cosplay Captain: What?
Wash: Pentagon is saying there is a missile incoming, 30 seconds.
Cosplay Captain: Unbelievable! What kinda missile?
Wash: Not a good one?
(Ballroom goes silent.)
(All cameras on the four monitors go blank, except one, a satellite camera where a white mushroom cloud appears).
Cosplay Captain: My God! Did they just nuke the data center?
Wash: Francesca!
Cosplay Captain: What just happened?
Cosplay Captain: They just nuked their own soldiers? Who does that?
Wash: China. North Korea maybe.
Cosplay Captain (looking at Lady Godiva): If my understanding of Chinese culture is correct, white is the color one wears to a funeral, and that's a pretty large white bow and mask you have on there Lady Godiva.
Lady Godiva: Lots of people here are wearing white, Malcolm. Excuse me, I must now join the other Chinese delegates.
Wash: Pentagon is saying it was a nuke of limited payload. That data center will be off limits for years! We'll never find Francesca. My God!
Wash: Who would want to hurt Francesca?
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