возможность: Part III - Blackout.

July, 2056 – Moscow

… 178 meters: Moscow Premiere Bank host computer in the New-Arbat district. 202 meters: centralized digital holdings of International Daruka Consortium, Moscow Chapter. 139 meters: Electronic Crime Department wing, MSA. 225 meters:…

93 stories above the all but totally obsolete streets, Ksana uses her internal unit to scan the city of its most important and vital network hubs. She triangulates the digital web to find its signal center. There, she can reach almost all of them. The personalized marketing firms, the www-drug dealers, the digital sport and motor leagues, the simu-companies. Zooming down to the pavement all she sees are delivery trucks in front of police transports, behind courier cars and HCS repair vans. An occasional slanderer of the new, or a drunk and/or drugged urbanite, strolls in the synthetics; with them the collective dimensional grid of Moscow exhales, as if the plastic boot of so called “progress” had been lifted only for a tick. It’s been holding it’s breath for too long. Tonight Ksana opens its lungs to the remaining fresh air of Earth, if only briefly.

Exiting scope mode, she opens her right eye; her left zooms back to 1.715x, her apartment balcony. Focal neutralization point found: alleyway behind 14k2 off Prechistenskiy. She moves back inside, the door closes behind her. Dmitry and Ninel brush themselves on her shins, soft tails bob in the air. Pills in hand. One yellow and black, the two others transparent with a homemade mixture of elements inside. Sensory enhancers. Transhumanism had become accepted as the next stage of human evolution in her lifetime, which in fact makes Ksana one of the most powerful humans on the planet; but she never needed or wanted body modification, her unique birth-gift seemed to be enough (her left eye modifications, bordering on vintage, withstanding).

When Ksana was born, the doctors thought her mother died: the monitors flat-lined across the board. The new mother only passed out upon birth; every instrument in the room and three rooms over on all sides did the same thing. A man sitting at his pregnant daughter’s bedside, a room over, died when his pace-maker inexplicably shut off. Lights flickered, patient files copied themselves. Computers buzzed with sudden random processes, or rebooted all together. As she grew into womanhood, Ksana’s ability to psionically interact with technology streamlined immensely. Her digital reach grew to several kilometers, multi-functional simultaneous processing became second nature, and she increasingly took on more and more protected networks, hubs, and databases. Her country evolved into something similarly foreign throughout these years. Century 21 finally bloomed. Power shifted, and Russia became an amalgam of movements and culture which never before co-existed. There was a sudden flock to the city-scapes, insects buzzing to the nearest and brightest light. Wealth blanketed the lot. Money markets. And with a population more fit for a brother of the Soviet Age, GDP soared. The EU, China, India, Japan all took notice. International investments were flowing in. Was this mother-land greatness finally?

Ksana didn’t bite. Day by day, year by year, she grow more weary and cynical. The Mighty West lot. A shiny, attractive trap, but a trap nonetheless. Her homeland morphed into everything it’s been avoiding for centuries, everything it’s sworn off. It sickened her to no end. Still, nerves abound. Sharp prods pit at the inner walls of her stomach. The blueprint she obtained from her high-rise balcony screamed “NO turning back!!”.  Staring into herself now, that spite filled reflection. Natural eye gleaming a beautiful green; artificial sister shifting with a tiny triangle and star in place of a pupil. She slams her head into the mirror, cracking it, splitting her forehead open a bit. “[Shitte]!”, she yells to herself, “[fuckin'...]“, cleans the wound at the sink. This is to be Ksana’s most significant digital-terrorist act since ever realizing she was special. “[Jus' got to wish death upon no one, girl. Focus.]” She leaves her apartment and locks her doors mentally, heading for 14k2 Prechistenskiy Ave.

EPILOGUE

Ksana simultaneously shut-down thousands of commercial networks in the span of minutes; but no lights, car CPUs, home computer systems, personal service electronics, or the like. The event would come to be known as the Moscow Blackout Of ’56, or the Moscow Computer Blackout. Since the source was organic, authorities didn’t catch her for almost 4 years. However, in 2059 an anti-piracy technological breakthrough provided police with advanced tracking software which finally caught Ksana, who had been continuing her vigilantism. After a very long and public trial, it was deemed that Ksana would forever be a threat, even from behind bars. Capital punishment hadn’t been used for over 50 years though, the president could not politically risk such volatility; instead, Ksana was placed into a constant state of hibernatic-vegetation until she died approaching 105 years of age in 2123.

-Sonny