In the news today, information is at lightspeed; the quicker, the bloodier, the better. The Information Age gave way to the SuperInformation Age gave way to the fact that knowledge is power; and information can be bought. With every secret, there are 'net junkies and hackers ready to purloin your deepest, darkests at a speed rivaled only by light. Cryptology is as rare as alchemy as source codes and firewalls are broken by intelligent designs; the newest advent heading towards AI. Governments verge on the brink of collapse and destruction as scandals occur almost as soon as they occur; cameras are everywhere, digital quantum definition. Loose lips sink ships, and this ship is filling up with lies faster than the politicians can deny them.
Governments fought back, but with technology ten years too obsolete.
Net Junkies, Datastream Surfers, Quantum Pirates; all names to the same thing: hackers. Computers, despite protein biochip processors and superconductive-cooled mainframes, were edging towards their pinnacle. They couldn't get faster, and microtechnology had already hit the nanometer range. It just couldn't improve; at least, not with mechanical engineering. One brave soul decided to plug in, to attach a quantum fidelity link to the base of his skull, and accessed the Quantum Net... with his brain. His memory was the storage, his nervous system the platform, and his brain the processor. Mankind just took one giant step in technology as he accessed everything with the power of his brain. It was said that thought, not light, was the fastest medium as that Net Junkie accessed several different sites at once with no lag, no loading, and no ping. Fully immersed, He became a god.
And more began to follow.
The Thought Police hunt these individuals down, known as Mneumonics* from an old science-fiction short story. Since they don't generate the heat that computers or intelligent designs do, they hunt them the old-fashioned way; broadcast strength, higher than any other. Unfortunately, the Mneumonics could access anything that had a broadcast as they began to shut down quantum signals, the stock market, utilities, and airplanes. In man's quest to become more like god, they had successed with surprising results, and the Thought Police were almost useless in apprehending these individuals as entire corporations and governments suffered viral revolution.
The TechWar had begun.

02/22/2012