Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 Pearl Publishing
WebWar
It was the Fundamentalist Christian Channel that made the first break from the pack. They were considered a fanatical segment of society, but they made enough waves that it started a chain reaction. They demanded total loyalty of their viewers and shamed them into a tunnel-vision mentality that decreed that watching the other channels labeled them as egoistic God-usurpers and abortionist-murderers.
The Women's Network Channel retaliated by encouraging
their viewers to close ranks and boycott all of the religious
channels and then the Christian Men's Prayer-Group Channel forbade
their subscribers to allow any of the female-dominated channels
into their homes.
The Women's Network Channel used this situation to organize twelve
of the seventeen female-oriented channels into a coalition that
launched their own relay-satellite, refusing access not only to
male-oriented channels, but also to transmissions originating
from any country they designated as culturally restrictive to
women.
The quantum-leap towards disaster came when governments got involved and tried to use the newly discovered power of the airwaves as a political tool.
The Trade Wars had started around this time, based
on the geographical national boundaries of the time, with the
Big-Stick threats of punitive action (against other geographical
areas) consisting mostly of import restrictions and trade embargoes,
and with the World Monetary Fund acting as the umpire and trying
to call the plays in favor of the fat cats behind the scenes.
Then some "thirty-five grand a year desk jockey" in
Washington, DC (the Capital of a major geographical alliance known
as the United States of America, or USA) decided that, given the
current levels of emotion being generated by the Channel battles,
he could tip the tides of an ongoing cattle-embargo dispute with
their Canadian neighbors to the North by adding the threat of
channel restrictions to his bag of tricks.
Canada had, for years, a Canadian Content law aimed
at preventing their culture from being swallowed alive by their
much larger (numerically) southern neighbors, the USA. The Washington
'desk jockey' used this law to justify adding channel-restriction
threats to the cattle-embargo trade battle and the shit hit the
fan.
The Canadians, faced with loss of the North American Weather Channel
(thus threatening the success of their bountiful farming industry),
banned the USA's Country Music Channel from their airwaves. Canadian
wheat farmers and cattle ranchers, united in their stance against
the cattle-embargo, fell into dispute over losing their beloved
country music. Outlaw cable companies sprung up overnight, supplying
the contraband CMC programming to this newly created assemblage
of 'video subversives'.
The Canadian government then created a paramilitary organization
aimed at cracking down on the outlaw programmers. The USA countered
their move by smuggling illegal satellite dishes into Canada via
an airline company operated as a covert front for their National
Security Agency.
The Hard Rock Channel, a minor subsidiary of the Hard Rock Cafe Corporation, seized the opportunity to add their Receptor Codes to the outlaw dishes, causing a further split between the Canadian factions (the rockers vs. the shit-kickers), and alienating the Canadian Women's Network because of the lyrics of a Mental-Metal outlaw named Fyodor Yarochkin which they deemed 'sexually demeaning towards women'.
The Canadian Women's Network formed an alliance with the US Women's Channel Coalition and used their satellite to jam Canadian transmissions of the Northern Nookie Channel, the most popular world-wide broadcast in the joint history of the CBCC (the Canadian/British Channel Collective). The British took offense to losing their 'Nookie' and blasted the Women's Coalition Satellite out of the sky, officially denying it, and blaming it on the IRA (the Irish Republican Army).
The IRA retaliated by blowing up the Muslim Fanatic
Channel's main transmission station, blaming it on Israel (at
the same time convincing Israel that the Les Nessman Hog Futures
Channel was the real culprit, and was hoping, in the resulting
confusion, to reintroduce pork products to the Middle East).
The IRA protagonists of this operation woke up from their drunken
stupor the next morning, remembering little or nothing of the
previous day's activities, and were mystified as to why nations
around the world were suddenly at each other's throats like rabid
hyenas.
Actually, the preceding is what used to be known as historical 'faction', a cross between fact and fiction, way back in time when there was actually a difference between the two.
The details of my description of these events may
be far from the truth-it was a long time ago and there was too
much international subterfuge to tell what was really going on-but
my point is this:
With the advent of the 500 Channel DarkFibre Cable System (an
antiquity compared to today's technology), the expanding sphere
of global inter-communication made a sudden and drastic alchemical
change into Information Overload and society fractured at the
seams, splitting into narrow factions grouped around increasingly
smaller orbits of manageable Information/Reality.
The geographically-oriented world leaders of the time totally
misread the true state of affairs and they actually gloried in
the events that would quickly lead to their demise.
Shortly before the advent of the 500 Channels, the United States, rallying other nations together with a cry for a "New World Order", had watched ecstatically as the new Fascism, Corporate Power, spread throughout the world, crossing national and cultural boundaries. Pepsi in Moscow, Burger Kings in Romania. Then, suddenly and for no discernible reason, the Corporate capitalists' main nemesis, Communist Russia, turned over like a busted flush, offering hope of a new social structure based on 'franchise territories fueled by capital gains'.
The Corporations had squeezed out the multitude of 'little guys' by using advertising, TV ads and a stranglehold monopoly on InfoMercials, in order to lure consumers into an ever-narrowing 'name-brand' collective mindset, never suspecting that they were sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
When the 500 Channels made their debut, being hailed
as a progressive breakthrough in 'information access', it blew
fuses in the brain matter of people around the world and the Channel
Giants quickly seized the opportunity to convert the populace's
'name-brand' communal mindset into 'channel community' mindset.
Taking a cue from the Oil Cartels of the previous decades, the
500 Channels organized together to collectively set severe limits
on total advertising time and charged exorbitant rates for the
few available slots. They effectively took over the InfoMercials
market themselves, practically overnight.
The real secret behind their success, however, came from their control of 'Digital Commerce', having had the foresight to fully develop secure digital monetary transaction mechanisms from the safe harbors of small Caribbean islands while those still stuck in a geographically-oriented mentality continued to squabble over 'standards' and territorial concerns. Thus, while digital commerce was theoretically available to all, only the 500 WebTV Channels actually had the technology to support large-scale digital eCa$h transfers for the public-at-large.
The Corporations screamed bloody murder and lobbied for new anti-trust laws aimed at breaking open the Channel monopoly. The world's politicians, however, were busy currying the favor of this powerful new organization, realizing the advantages to be gained by being the first to jump on the 500 Channel bandwagon.
By the time of the 500 Channels' jointly-announced declaration of the 'Channel Revolution', the Corporations had already been heavily drained of their assets and the geographically-oriented world governments discovered, much to their dismay, that 'National Pride' had lost serious ground to 'Channel Loyalty'. The 500 Channels had, de facto, already carved up the populace into 500 variously sized slices of 'consumer pie'.
The world's politicians then compounded the seriousness
of their situation by listening to the advice of the hard-core
military leaders who recommended striking at the heart of the
500 Channel system. They knocked out the Game Show Channel satellites
and destroyed the Soap Opera Channel Coalition's transmission
station.
This was a big, big mistake.
The Industrial-Military Complex was fully prepared for the masses of screaming citizens that stormed government offices around the world, and regarded them as but little threat, but the Big Brass were too far out of touch with the average GI Joe to realize that there were thousands of 'little guys' manning Nuclear Submarines and Missile Silos around the world whose only link to sanity and the outside world was "The Days of Our Lives", "As The World Turns", and "Jeopardy."
email message: Top Priority
From: silo37CA.dod
To: [email protected]
Subject: Final Jeopardy
"Alex, I'll take 'Nuclear Warfare' for $500, please."
A city, near a river, that won't exist in twenty minutes if Vanna White isn't back on the airwaves by that time.
"I'll take a wild guess on this one, Alex.
"What is Washington, DC?"
The Channel Revolutionary Committee had a secondary laser-feed in place in less than a half an hour, with their spokesperson, Arnold Schwartzenager Jr., apologizing for the delay and assuring ordinary GI Joe's-in twenty-seven languages around the world-of the 500 Channels' commitment to their loyal viewers. "Our little family", he called it, assuring everyone that the Channel Revolutionary Committee would fight to the bitter end to maintain 'broadcast continuity'.
Tokyo was the only city to take a direct hit-by one of their own missiles, of course. Their missile-silo operator had trashed his TV when reception went out and he was not aware that transmission had been returned to normal. He thus, inadvertently, became one of the 'Heroes of the Revolution'.
The United States was the last holdout, not officially conceding defeat until over 72 hours after the announcement of the Channel Revolution, but it is pretty much established through historical records that the signing of the Armistice was purposely delayed by the Home Shopping Channel due to record-breaking sales figures from loyal viewers who figured that if they were going to 'buy the farm', that they might as well 'buy the farm', so to speak.
Computer records verify that the Armistice Agreement was signed mere minutes after the Shop'ers had sold the last of the 'Fat Elvis' porcelain figurines that they had been unable to move in previous offerings.
I still have mine.
The most noticeable feature of the 'changing of the guard' was that there was nothing notable about the whole process. The 500 Channel Transition Committee came to the Armistice table with the all of the world's assets and resources already listed and divided amongst themselves-down to the last penny. Every living human on the face of the earth seemed to be already listed in their database, ready to be assigned citizenship in the Channel Government of their choice.
Even the major movers among the Channel Revolutionary
Committees were perplexed, and a little nervous, at the ease of
the transition and by the completeness and accuracy of their world-wide
database. The wiser among them suspected that they had gotten
help from an anonymous source, and it unnerved them to a certain
extent.
The Old Guard at the Pentagon suspected that the Hackers or the
CypherPunks had helped out, but when none of the InterNet factions
seemed to receive any special consideration from their new rulers,
nor even the slightest hint of reward, their suspicions abated.
The InterNet insiders knew better. They knew, beyond shadow of a doubt, that the perfection of the data transfer undoubtedly had to have come from within their ranks, but they were mystified as to the 'who, what, when, where' (and most important of all-the 'why?') of the anonymous, covert assistance that had been surreptitiously given to the Channel Revolutionary Committee by some anonymous faction.
The volume and complexity of the pre-revolution data-transfer
was monumental. The Net'ers found it completely beyond belief
that their own hasty, last-minute efforts were responsible for
the flawlessness of the CRC's new world-wide database.
The only 'rational' explanation put forward was that the
'Circle of Eunuchs' had to be involved, but that didn't make very
much sense-for two perfectly sound reasons.
First of all, in every account of the legendary Magic
Circle, from the most scholarly volumes of historical researcher
down to even the smallest reference scratched onto an outhouse
wall, the Circle of Eunuchs was undeniably the supreme arch-enemy
of Gomez and the Dark Allies (who were obviously the driving force
behind the Channel Revolution and its leaders). No-how, no-way,
would the Circle ever aid and abet, in the slightest way, the
Evil One's quest for world domination.
Secondly, the legendary group was exactly that-legendary. The
'Circle of Eunuchs' did not exist…they had never existed.
The U.S. Defense Department, the National Security Agency, even
Gomez and the Dark Allies, had squandered a mountain of resources,
searching the world for any sign of their existence and they had
all come up empty.
The origin of the myth of the Magic Circle had been traced back to an inconsequential manuscript, entitled "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre", which was written under the nom-de-plume 'Son of Gomez' but was eventually discovered to be the work of a mentally deranged lunatic who committed suicide in a bizarre chain-saw ritual in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police closed in on him, purportedly to take him in for 'questioning'.
The manuscript would surface from time to time in some small corner of the world and catch the fancy of impressionable college kids or hackers on the fringes of cyberspace, but their interest would soon die out and they would go on with their uneventful lives, usually dying mysteriously a short time later, anyway.
The Circle of Eunuchs had never been proven to be anything more than a myth but the Net'ers kept a vigilant eye peeled for them just the same. And now the Net'ers were nervous…very nervous.
Chapter 9 - WebWar