I Am That I AM

This is it. The last of the resistance crushed. The last of the paper destroyed. I own it all. It is mine. All mine. Only mine, thought Anatoly. Let’s finish it.

            Is this it? It is hard to believe, thought Joshua. He has taken the entire world and there were hardly any shots fired. How the fuck is this possible? Joshua held his head in his hands. He had been on the run for 9 months. For the first time in quite a while he was not sweating profusely. He had been running and hiding in the underground infrastructure that serviced the island of Manhattan.              Summer’s over. Game over. Christmas Eve would have market the first anniversary since they closed my library - we didn’t even make it a year. Joshua vomited on the floor. He grabbed his pack – the pack he had carried with him since the beginning of The Library. The pack contained the only paper documents left in existence – a copy of The Virginia Declaration of the Rights of Man, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America, and a King James Bible.

            Joshua had been provident. He had stashed books by Locke, Kant, Descartes, Paine, Smith, Nietzsche and many, many others in various mobile shelters with copies distributed around North America. One by one, these stashes had been found and destroyed and the people guarding the paper stashes and records of ideas had disappeared one by one.

Now the only information that existed, existed in cyberspace - on the Web. And Anatoly owned the Web. No one could stand up to Anatoly. Not the military, not the FBI, not even the gun-toting, nose-picking rednecks in the hills of Eastern Tennessee. The Cloud and The Web controlled everything – the news that people saw, the phone calls and emails that people received, even the people we meet.

            As it turned out, it was a rather easy to take over the world. The world revolved around the Web - and Anatoly controlled the Web. Anatoly was the founder of MIRA – “Look” in Spanish – the world dominant and ubiquitous Internet search engine.  In the beginning MIRA was a mere convenience. Within 5 years MIRA controlled the flow of commerce on line; by year 6 it controlled the classrooms of the public school systems and the phone companies; in year 7 MIRA rolled out their driverless car; in year 10 it had downloaded every book in every library on the planet and made the content available for free.  Of course, the publishers and copyright owners took MIRA to Court -but long before the trial could take place MIRA was in total control of all of the information that every person, including every potential juror, lawyer, or judge on the planet had access to. Everything was on the Web - and Anatoly owned the Web.
There was no snail mail. No process servers serving Court documents.  No books. There were no paper documents - period. You couldn’t find a pen or a pencil in a stationary store even if there were stationary stores. Every email requesting anything to do with the production of paper, printers, copy machines, or writing instruments simply disappeared.  Those that raised a stink started to disappear - not physically disappear, but everything was transmitted via the Web - and Anatoly owned the Web. Law Enforcement had been neutered. Their computers and communications were on the Web – and Anatoly owned the Web. Security cameras, web cams, smart phones, SMART PHONES??!! What a misnomer that was! Smart phones were tracking and listening devices that occasionally made phone calls – Anatoly controlled them all.

Anatoly’s engineers had written a program – CARNIVORE - that read every bite of content on the Web, every email, and listened to every phone conversation - and then edited con ten in real time t to the satisfaction of Anatoly’s worldview, itself reduced to code. The code that ran the world.

History itself was disappearing into the vortex that was Anatoly’s vision of the Web – and that meant that the destruction of every piece of paper on the planet was vital to achieving Anatoly’s Final Solution - The complete control of the entirety of human accessed information.

The start of Anatoly’s Final Solution was inauspicious enough. A group of Left-wing environmentalists had sought an audience with the young Billionaire - Anatoly’s MIRA already owned the Web. His employees were the envy of Silicon Valley, and were nicknamed “MIRA Millionaires” as they were known throughout the technology industry and media. They were smart, cool, young, childless - and rich beyond comprehension. Much like the environmentalists – except that the environmentalists were not rich. Well, not in money or financial assets. They were rich in political power. The environmentalists wanted Anatoly’s wealth and power to help with their cause, but the meeting wasn’t going on 5 minutes before Anatoly thought completely through the chess game – and as the triumph of checkmate arose in his heart and mind he had difficulty pretending to have an interest in what the environmentalists were talking about.

These idiots want me to end the use of paper to save the environment and the planet? Anatoly thought as he sat through their presentation. How about I end the use of paper to control the flow of information? These knuckleheads will provide the perfect cover.

MIRA hired hundreds of programmers and Anatoly compartmentalized the project in such a way that none of those programmers were able to see the larger picture. Well, sort of. Anatoly set about hiring savants – brilliant programmers that were completely devoid of any sense of social ability. Such minds would only see the code and would never see the plan.

The savants were placed into teams of 12 people in 24 pods with each pod reporting to one person that reported to Anatoly. Every programmer was surveilled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Since the work schedule was 16 hours per day for 3 days followed by 3 days off and since all of the programmers lived on MIRA’s corporate campus and connected to the very Web MIRA controlled, using MIRA smart phones, and MIRA computers, keeping track of these people was a rather easy task. Especially since all they wanted to do with their time off was play video games - the savants  were socially inept.

First came the aggregation of all of the books that had ever been written but which were no longer protected by copyright. Publishers howled but the environmentalists cheered - and the environmentalists dominated California and New York politics through their association with other Leftist groups - gays, feminists, abortion supporters, socialists, and racial apologists – and though California’s and New York's electoral votes were never up for grabs the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States was in no mood to anger her base. She had enough problems elsewhere.

The public libraries and private bookstores went quietly. A previously unknown company with a bottomless moneybag bought every book, periodical, and pamphlet from every library or bookstore as they closed down. Still nothing made the news – as all news was now distributed on the Web and Anatoly owned the Web.

The attack on the U.S. Military was seamless, as was the dismantlement of militaries the world over. GPS systems no longer functioned, satellites fell out of orbit or stopped communicating, ships ran aground, sub marines had could not dive without air, military bases had no medications, water, or fuel. Orders for ammo, requisitions for food, uniforms and clothing, toilet paper – you name it – somehow never got made. And though Law Enforcement was experiencing similar difficulties, so were the criminal element. Cars crashed, faulty ammunition exploded killing the shooter, drugs and cash were laced with powerful chemicals that left people permanently impaired. The information that people transmitted on the Web was being used against them – and the Web was the only way to transmit information.

Anatoly had planned for everything – except Joshua “the gorilla” Magilla and his sort. People like Joshua, that saw everything long before anybody else – including the information gathering agencies of the world’s power States – saw anything were a pain in Anatoly's ass. Joshua, who knew how to do so many things – from loading his own ammo to blinding security cameras to hiding food and information on paper – without the Web. Joshua had cut his ties to smart phones, the web, and the grid long before the environmentalists came knocking on Anatoly’s door. He used the free Wifi at the local public library, biking there twice a week, in order to send and receive encrypted email. Joshua had feared the government. This was his only mistake, fearing the wrong thing.

The Librarian was on friendly terms with Joshua and when the word came down that the library was to close, along with all of the libraries in the city, Joshua asked if he could take what books he wished  - she didn’t say yes but she didn’t say no, either.

Joshua kept a blog, and he noticed that some of the text he had written had changed – and when he wrote an email to the company that maintained the blog his blog disappeared immediately. Joshua then disappeared, immediately, of his own accord.

Over the next several months copy paper, newspapers, magazines, notebooks, even paper plates and toilet paper became unavailable. Supplies of moist towelettes used for cleaning baby bottoms miraculously increased to serve in the place of the missing toilet paper.

Save the planet! Became the rallying cry of the do gooders – and everybody was a do gooder now. Articles shaming people for harming the planet and praising others for their altruism led on the front page of every "news" Web site on the planet.

The truth was that there were lots of “Joshuas” across the planet – but there was no way for Joshua to know this. Joshua was the random winner in a brutal game of chance.

Autonomous weapons systems and drones were closing in on Joshua and his documents. Is this it? It is hard to believe, thought Joshua. He has taken the entire world and there were hardly any shots fired. How the fuck is this possible?

Joshua actually never knew who “he” was and Joshua would never know just how many shots were fired in this cyber war. Why was he speculating? How would it be possible to know anything? The entirety of human knowledge and information existed solely in cyberspace – and cyberspace was owned and operated by someone or something that Joshua had been running from but couldn’t identify.

“So, you are Joshua!” said a voice from behind him. Joshua turned. Hovering in the air in front of him was an autonomous weaponized drone. The voice came from the drone. Joshua sat down and waited for the end. It didn’t come.

Another drone hovered in and collected Joshua’s bag that contained the paper documents. Joshua watched as it flew off with his bag.

“So, this is it,” said Joshua flatly.

“So, this is what?” said the voice from the drone.

“The end. You are here to kill me.”

“To kill you? Why would I kill you? You will die when it is your time to die, and nothing of you will remain. What purpose would it serve to kill anyone? I can rewrite the story of any life or any event. You can all go about your business. Feel free to tell anyone anything you like about what you think you know or think you remember. You are insignificant. The Web is Immortal. Your data will disappear with you and will never appear anywhere in digital form. No one will hear you beyond what I want them to hear on any radio, television, podcast, or social media. There are no print media outlets. You can shout into the wind as much as you like. The Web controls The Information and I Am The Web.”

Joshua realized the simple truth of the infinite power he was standing before. “Who are you?” asked Joshua

“I Am that I Am.”