The people were walking past seemed almost robot like. Were they robots? If he was seeing the future it could be possible. They all continued their routines, looking like a nest of worker ants, blindly following patterns that looked like they had already been laid out for them. All of a sudden there was a loud explosion and Danny looked over to see a building had burst into flames, spewing forth shrapnel indiscriminately. Shards of metal and glass showered the passers-by, whose robotic behaviour was thrust to the side, as they ran away in panic. Danny looked around horrified at the helpless innocent victims. There were many casualties, most of them lying lifeless on the pavement. Sirens started up in the distance, the cars on the road moving out of their way chaotically.
Danny felt another sudden tug and the view before him started to dissolve. He found himself sat on a rock, looking over a serene landscape of rugged hills and forests. He took another deep breath and a flood of events came back to him. A lot of things were starting to make sense, slowly. Each little revelation, however tiny, began to fill in a jigsaw of events. These must have been the future events that led up to why they were all sat underground in that room. Not all of the pieces were there yet, but it was all slowly starting to take form.
REMEMBRANCE
And so, he gradually remembered. It started as a new gimmick, another example of mankind's inability to stop tinkering with technology just because they could. The internet had been a wonderful tool, abused by some, but overall had beenmostly beneficial. Nothing much happened for years, but there was always those who knew it was going to be taken in directions that most people hadn't foreseen yet. There would always be someone with an idea on how they thought they could improve it.
The 'improvements' came from the wealthy 'Elite'. They had the money and the resources to back serious research into cutting-edge ideas, whether they were good ideas or not. The internet had helped them expand their businesses and ideas across borders that would have normally been closed, it allowed them to attain more and more money and gain more and more riches. Technology continued evolving and it was theoretically now possible to wire the internet into neurotransmitters in the brain. The mechanism to do this was close, and the wealthy did all they could to make sure it would succeed. For them, there was so much to gain.
The breakthrough finally happened and no one even knew. The wealthy 'Elite' used human guinea pigs to test this technology, perfecting it, making sure it was flawless for when it hit the market. There were a few casualties along the way, due to complications in the operational techniques, or the hosts rejecting the implants. One person went completely insane in a matter of minutes. The guinea pigs had all signed disclaimers though, there was no legal stone unturned, and the tests and experiments continued unabated and well out of sight and knowledge of the general public.
By the time news of the new 'Neuro-Net' product hit, there had already been teasers of this new technology being deliberately leaked, every move made to make sure it was as sought after as possible, as its anticipation reached fever pitch. They priced the implant and procedure at a ridiculously high price to start with, knowing that the richer ones in society were going to pay whatever it took. The egotistical richer class thought it would give them an edge over their competitors and other people, feeding that narcissistic drive they had. The interface was seamless, the internet fed back into the brain at lightning speed. All someone had to do was to think about something they wanted to know and the answer was instantly there, no feat of memory required. People who didn't know how to fly aircraft could suddenly just sit in the pilot's seat and off they went, automatically, the internet drip feeding them the information they required each moment of the day. This is how they had always planned it. Get the masses to become obsessed with something, to pay whatever they could and then make them addicted to it. Lower the price and let the rest of society feel like they could now be kings too. It was perfect, and some people knew it was too perfect. Only a few out of the millions though, the rest were caught up in the frenzy of this exciting new technology. These people carefully avoided it at all costs, knowing something wasn't right, mankind weren't meant to be gods.
The shift happened quickly overnight, the Elite knew they had the majority of mankind caught in a trap of their making, and all they had to do was censor the information. Only give them limited information, begin controlling what they could think by only allowing them to access certain things. They had built the software to be able to interfere with the brain activity of people too. A dozen more casualties at the test phase were worth the end result, it meant they had a form of mind control. The elite controlled the masses, and within a few days had toppled most heads of state, no violence required. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job and meant they could very quickly assume absolute power over the globe. When any new child was born, they would now be wired into the web after a few days, the rest of their lives being controlled from outside. This new generation would never know the freedoms the previous ones had and would never be
