WELCOME TO THE FUTURE
A (W.T².F.) Sunday Series

–Short Story Time–

Andy rubs his eyes and looks up to the holographic clock above his desk. Only four hours remain until he has to be up for work. He squints his eyes to ease the strain of looking into a bright screen in the dark room.

“NAIT, run test on new data input,” he commands.

After a short silence, NAIT replies, “Twenty-percent increase in efficiency reported.” The number is significant and Andy lets out a sigh, the late night justified.

He checks in with his pal, Thing One, who’s leading the project from Tokyo, and receives a thumbs up reply. They’re almost set to bring NAIT out of beta and into the new age world wide web. A couple years of double shifts to bring NAIT to life was so worth it.

After the big five comm. companies, with the backing of the top .coms, announced their deal with the government to take over the management of communications infrastructure and distribution, netizens around the world banded together to protect what they believed should be a free and open WWW.

Action was swift and the netizens who led the project received funding and support to create a platform to sustain and monitor the internet. Such a vast project required a great amount of assistance, and through careful programming, NAIT, the network AI technician, was conceived.

When NAIT fully matured, the hardworking netizens could take a step back and the Internet would be a self-sustaining and self-monitored system available for all. A neutral net would develop under coded guidelines, and any abuses to its uses would be reported. From here, matters would fall into the hands of the UN as humanitarian issues.

The journey ahead would be a bumpy ride, but the alternative that could have formed was a chilling thought.

“NAIT, the world is in your hands!” says Andy, and he switches his computer off for a few hours sleep.

A (W.T².F.) Series

By @scifiannemarie