We are the weak being led throught the valley of darkness

I remember when everything started to go wrong. Comcast, had been caught controlling their download rates, their network bandwidth and power. All, without congress' permission, and they had been caught. There was a whole big to-do about net neutrality, and how Comcast had undermined the citizens of the country. That's why we'd known about the invasion so early on. "They" had hacked our system. A young programmer in Japan was the first to notice. He was a member of an Internet watch-dog group that had been scanning and surveying the Internet for signs of cheating by the big companies. His group was one of the many that had been hot on Comcasts tail. I forget his name now, it seems like it was so long ago. I think it was Yamamoto, or something like that. He caught their signal. At first he thought it was one of the big corporations getting cocky. But as he and many others started to look closer, they realized this code was like nothing they had ever seen.

That is when the American Government jumped in. They shut down access to the Internet from any American IP address. They said it was for our safety. Do you know what happens when an investment banker can't check his or her stock in the morning, while in line for a cup of star schmucks? Chaos, that is what. There was looting in the streets for two days before things got turned back on. I am still unsure of how the US Government even did it. The Internet providers must have had more control than we thought at the time. Not that it made a difference in the end... I remember this article I read in the paper. It was an investigative report. I, I think I still have it somewhere around here... Here is something kind of similar. Even our own government was at the disposal of the telecoms. Everything I owned has been destroyed by the invasion or the elements. I have left so many pieces of me strewn about this city.

The bottom line was that people realized they were having control of their choices taken out of their hands. This was not okay. America was definitely not at the forefront of this movement. We should have been, but, we were too preoccupied with the war, and our economy to see the signs. Thankfully, there was a contingent of our population that was paying attention to this whole mess. It was the younger generation that saw the importance of ridding the world of net neutrality. They understood what a free internet meant to not just America, but the world and how we all communicate with each other. With the support of burgeoning companies like google, the US was slowly able to build a movement against the regulation of the Internet. By the time we had a strong enough movement to make a difference, "they" were already on their way.

Yamamoto, or, whatever his name was, recognized that there was something different about the interference that he was experiencing with his broadband connection. He had been a target of his provider for a while, and had become an active member in the fight against net neutrality. He and a few of his friends, some in fairly high places, started to break down the code. What they found confused them. It was not the advocates for regulation of the Internet. It wasn't hackers either. This was like nothing they had ever seen before. The math seemed to make sense, but it was so complex that they couldn't figure out what it meant. That is when the UN was brought in to recruit help from outside sources. Many people had a go at the code. We seemed to be getting closer. We started to understand what it all meant right as the invasion began. We were just too slow to react. They invaded so quickly we had no way of scrambling our defenses in time. The fight was over before it began.

The funny thing is, if more severe regulation of the Internet had been passed through congress and other governments, we would have probably had a better chance to defend ourselves. But, this is a double edge sword in and of itself. China, with its government regulated Internet access, was one of the first countries to intercept the code. They broke it down and secretly set up their defenses. This was both a blessing and a curse. China was able to put up the best fight against the aliens, but because they activated their military so early, they quickly became the primary target of the invasion. China was the first to be attacked. They were hit hard. The rest of the planet tried to scramble their defenses, but it was far too late. We were all caught off-guard. The rest, as you know, is history.