Zeatuna | Enter the Dark Age
Inspired by the concept of The Network State & The Digital Dark Age
It begins with a dream.
I heard them talking about something.
They want to remove all proof that the NS1729 country ever existed.
I don't have time to find out who they are.
Everything is saved in the cloud, and I just need to get the information.
I'm sitting in a dark corner with a faint light on my face, and I know I need to be quick.
"Who are you?" Suddenly, they appear in front of me out of nowhere.
I haven't had a chance to reply.
They destroyed my computer and shot me in the head.
"Ahhh!" I woke up suddenly, taking a deep breath.
Thank goodness, it was just a dream.
I asked Alexa to raise the curtains, but she didn't respond.
"Alexa, what time is it?" I asked again, but still, no answer.
I removed my eye mask and got out of bed, feeling my way through the dark toward the window.
When I pulled the curtain back, it was pitch black outside.
"What's happening? Where are the lights?" I wondered aloud.
The only light came from the full moon and scattered stars.
I stumbled into the living room and tried to turn on my mobile phone, but it showed a red out-of-power sign.
I grabbed my computer and opened it; it had only 17% battery left, and there was no Wi-Fi connection.
The time was 12:19 a.m.
"Who turned off the power?" I lit a candle and carried it with me to the doorway.
It was eerily quiet, with only the sound of my breathing and the flickering candle.
I had an intense desire to scream, but the soothing lavender scent from the candle calmed me down. It was late at night, and I didn't want to wake up my neighbours.
My logical thinking told me to go back to sleep and that everything would be okay tomorrow. But a voice inside my head kept insisting that something was wrong, and I needed to investigate.
Summoning my courage, I went to each neighbour's door and rang their doorbells, but there was no response. So, I started knocking on their doors.
After a few minutes, only one door opened. A guy rubbed his sleepy eyes and impatiently asked, "Who are you?" His voice sent an electric shock through me because it sounded exactly like the voice in my dream.
I was momentarily stunned but managed to explain that I was his neighbour and asked if he had noticed the power outage. He said yes, that's why it took him a while to answer because it was too dark.
I then asked if I could borrow his phone to call my friends, but his phone had no signal, and the battery was at 19%. He didn't seem concerned and wanted to go back to sleep.
I thanked him and considered going back to bed, waiting for the morning. As he was closing his door, I glimpsed a bright light in the background, similar to the computer screen reflection light from my dream.
The door suddenly slammed shut, extinguishing my candle. My instincts told me something was unusual. I shook my head, returned to my apartment, and lay on my bed.
The voice inside me kept urging me to uncover the mysteries of this world. In fear and frustration, I screamed, "SHUT THE F*** UP!" and tried to go back to sleep.
I had no idea how many hours took me to fall asleep.
I woke up to the sun's rays shining through my window. I asked, "Alexa, what time is it?" but got no response.
I got out of bed and opened the window, looking down. There were many people gathered on the street. Some were trying to start their Teslas, and others were talking with each other.
To check the time, I opened my computer; it was 7:29 a.m., and my battery was at 12%. I left my 29th-floor apartment and joined the street conversation.
It was a unique sight because the residents here rarely talked to each other, but now they were all coming together. No one seemed to know why the power was out or how long it would stay that way.
In my 27 years of life, I experienced a power outage only once, and it marked the loss of not just my parents but also my homeland, Zeatuna.
It all began with a sudden and unexpected winter storm that struck my country, causing a prolonged blackout lasting several months. This crisis left millions of people without electricity during freezing temperatures, leading to tragic consequences like deaths due to cold, starvation, lack of water, and social chaos.
The official record of this disastrous blackout noted it lasting for 129 days, but some individuals remember it lasting even longer. As the situation grew dire, people sought refuge in the concrete buildings of the central business district (CBD) because the traditional wooden houses couldn't provide adequate warmth.
Desperation led to fierce competition for limited food supplies in grocery shops and supermarkets, resulting in conflicts and violence.
Many days passed, and the streets became littered with bodies. My last memory of my parents was when they placed me in a secure warehouse, urging me to hide from the chaos, before they ventured out armed, searching for food.
After several more days, a group of people in military uniforms found me and the other surviving children. They informed us that the United Nations had sent them to investigate the situation in my country. Remarkably, among millions of citizens, we appeared to be the only survivors.
Even these seasoned military personnel, accustomed to witnessing the horrors of war, were visibly shocked by the devastation they encountered in my homeland.
That memory of my country, filled with corpses, blood, darkness, chaos, tears, tanks, bombs, and a wounded landscape, was the last one etched in my mind before I boarded a rescue aircraft.
Zeatuna, my beloved homeland, is a remote island situated in the far southern reaches of the Earth, secluded from the rest of the continents. With its steep mountain slopes, endless golden sandy beaches, mangrove forests, rushing rivers, tranquil lakes, and thundering waterfalls, it had been a magnet for specialized tourists from around the world.
Tourism was the primary pillar of our local economy until a global pandemic changed everything. The Prime Minister of Zeatuna took the necessary step of closing our borders to control the virus. However, with the absence of tourists and a halt in inward migration, our locals suffered from a severe economic downturn.
A few enterprising entrepreneurs in the tourism industry, facing the brink of bankruptcy, decided not to wait for a solution. They heard about Bitcoin and blockchain technology and initiated crowdfunding campaigns to establish hydroelectric power plants, with plans to host digital mining computers.
Their efforts paid off, attracting international cryptocurrency miners seeking clean energy and reliable internet connections. Zeatuna soon emerged as one of the rare countries benefiting from the pandemic by embracing digital transformation.
My tiny country found its place on the map, particularly within web3 communities. This period of growth spanned a decade, but then nature, in all her might, demonstrated the consequences of human exploitation. A once-in-a-century snowstorm struck our country, causing widespread devastation. Our nation teetered on the brink of extinction, having already endured civil unrest and overdevelopment.
What remained were mostly underage orphans with little real-life experience but a wealth of online knowledge and skills, having spent the majority of our lives in the digital realm.
After lengthy discussions, the United Nations (UN) reached an agreement to grant the surviving Zeatunese children co-ownership of Zeatuna's land. Our country was not in a livable state at that time, and we were too young to make decisions about its future. The solution was to wait until we all reached the legal voting age to determine what we would do with the land.
We became the subject of the most captivating reality TV show in human history. People eagerly followed our journey and awaited the fate of the 79 surviving Zeatunese children, aged between 2 and 17. The world had to wait for at least 19 years until the youngest among us grew up to see the season finale.
While the UN worked on this arrangement, various bitcoin and blockchain communities that had used our country's mining services provided us with humanitarian assistance. They volunteered to help clean up and repair the buildings, or they offered to become our foster families.
At that time, a new type of community, highly aligned and capable of collective action, was emerging. NS1729 was the most successful of these communities, with hundreds and thousands of members worldwide. It reached the point of crowdfunding to gain diplomatic recognition from existing states.
My assigned foster family was part of the NS1729 community, as were many other Zeatunese children's families. Some mainstream journalists came up with a conspiracy theory that NS1729 wanted to take over Zeatuna as their physical territory. Their strategy supposedly involved raising Zeatunese kids and subtly influencing their decisions to sell our land to them. I was too young to understand this theory; all I cared about was finding a safe place to live.
Even though the UN had implemented witness protection measures to shield our identities, we had nowhere to hide in the age of citizen journalism. One by one, we were adopted by our new families. The oldest girl among us, N, suggested that we have a yearly reunion in Zeatuna. She also created a Discord channel to help us stay in touch. I had looked up to N since I was a little girl, and I learned how to code, write, and draw from her because our families were very close.
Her parents had gone out hunting for food on the same day as mine. I stayed with her the entire time, waiting for them to return with food, but they didn't make it back. N went out in search of them, and a couple of days later, she returned with some familiar shreds of cloth.
"They're gone, S. The bomb," she told me. I was too hungry and tired to cry out loud, so I let the tears quietly flow down my face.
"S, stay strong. You'll be fine. Never forget me and our country. We'll find our way back home together one day," N said as she bid me farewell and left with her foster family.
However, through all those years, we didn't get the annual reunion as N proposed. Coordinating 79 families to go to one place every year is challenging. Some kids developed PTSD and followed the psychiatric advice to completely cut their ties with Zeatuna to embrace their new life.
As time passed, about 20 of us actively wanted to return to Zeatuna and participate in rebuilding our country. Most of us were around N's age and had received education promoting a sense of national identity before the catastrophe.
I personally had never felt a strong connection to Zeatuna. I was born during the rapid development phase when hydroelectric power plants were being built. My memories of Zeatuna consisted of more construction sites than lush green lands and forests.
If it weren't for that storm, my parents and I would have been planning to emigrate to other countries the following spring. However, life often unfolds more quickly and unpredictably than we anticipate, casting uncertainty upon our ability to witness the dawn of a new day.
Two days before my 21st birthday, my neighbourhood was already swarmed by journalists and influencers.
According to the agreement, when Zeatuna's kids turn 21, they can leave their guardians and forge their own paths. The world was eager to uncover my destiny, given that people had been following me on this Reality TV show for 12 long years.
Growing up with my foster family, I'd been through numerous interviews and paparazzi scrutiny. During this time, my interest in journalism and writing blossomed. I felt a constant urge to document my own narrative and uncover the truth. Moreover, I found myself captivated by my new parents' discussions about decentralized media and the innovative concept of a nation they were shaping.
Numerous other network unions emerged, driven by the expanding freedom of becoming sovereign individuals in the era of digital nomads and remote work. They rebelled against the established order and committed themselves to forming new, like-minded online communities, and then pursued physical territories.
Zeatuna had become an attractive destination for these online communities due to its unique attributes: power plants, natural resources, and recognition by the UN as a legitimate country. Whoever could negotiate with Zeatuna's future leader to acquire its land would be the first to establish a Network State.
NS1729 had become the target of both existing states and other network unions. Established nations feared this novel form of governance, knowing that if it succeeded, more would surely follow. Meanwhile, other network unions saw NS1729 as a formidable competitor, with communities and unions around the world striving to be the FIRST to prove the viability of constructing a Network State initiated by an anonymous individual.
On my birthday, I bid farewell to my foster parents and returned to Zeatuna to reunite with the others.
It marked my first time setting foot in my homeland in 12 years, and the transformation was astounding.
My hometown had become akin to a better version of Chornobyl, deserted by humans but revitalized as one of the world's largest nature reserves and ecosystems. Despite the destruction wrought by the snowstorm, it had inflicted far less harm on the local ecosystems than human development had. As humanity was expelled from the area, Mother Nature began her own recovery.
Out of the 79 children who survived the catastrophe, 2 had succumbed to accidents, 27 renounced their citizenship, and 29 were out of touch. The remaining 21 kids, including myself, were actively engaged in our online community.
I happened to be the 17th to come of age, and we still had to wait for seven more years until the rest reached adulthood and the final vote could be cast. But I already knew the outcome. N was the natural-born leader, having prepared herself to be the governor of the New Zeatuna. Naturally, she would receive all our votes.
The only question lingered: What came next? How could she rebuild our country, rejuvenate the economy, and foster a new national identity?
N confided in me that she had a meticulously crafted plan and wanted me to join her as her assistant in executing it. I agreed, eager to document N's story and witness the rebirth of New Zeatuna firsthand.
However, things would prove more intricate than I had imagined, and I would soon be taken aback by N's plan and the darker aspects of her character.
Would you be willing to employ any means necessary to attain your objective?
N's response would assuredly be affirmative.
I returned to my apartment after conversing with the people on the street, only to feel that strange sense of unease creeping back in.
The nightmares replayed relentlessly in my mind.
"What's happening to my mind? Could the power outage have triggered my childhood trauma?" I pondered, shaking my head in confusion.
I tried to contemplate what I could do during the day without the Internet.
The answer was disheartening: nothing.
I couldn't reach out to friends or visit them without GPS and a car.
My sole glimmer of hope was praying for the power to return.
But who could I pray to?
In our decentralized digital society, we take established infrastructures for granted.
We seldom considered who to turn to when essentials like water and power suddenly vanished.
As I meditated on the floor, a barrage of questions flooded my mind.
"Why haven't people learned from Zeatuna's lessons to prepare for power outages?"
"Why didn't Zeatunese, including myself, take the initiative to educate the world on dealing with the catastrophic consequences of prolonged power outages?"
"What if the Zeatuna tragedy were to happen again?"
I broke into a cold sweat and stood up to fetch a drink, realizing there wasn't much left in my fridge.
Should I prepare for the worst and stock up on food?
Given that we were already in a cashless society, how would I pay for necessities during the blackout?
Descending downstairs, I witnessed people already in a state of panic.
Crowds gathered outside the supermarket, some attempting to break in to secure food and water.
My heart raced in the midst of the chaos.
"Not again. No," I whispered to myself, but it was clear that nothing was under my control.
The riots unfolded at night, history repeating itself.
Once more, I found myself standing alone amidst the flames, this time without parents or friends to shield me.
The chaos persisted for three long days, and then, as suddenly as it had vanished, the power returned.
When the streetlights flickered to life one by one, the entire neighbourhood erupted into applause, with fireworks illuminating the sky as though we were ushering in the New Year.
It seemed as though everything was swiftly returning to normal once people could coordinate and communicate online.
However, I soon came across news that the power outage had been caused by a cyber attack.
"A cyber attack?" I exclaimed in disbelief.
My immediate instinct was to open Discord and check the NS1729 server, only to find it had vanished.
"Shit!" I cursed under my breath, panic rising.
I grabbed my phone and attempted to call my foster family, but their contact information had all disappeared.
Desperate, I searched for NS1729 on Google, but the results showed nothing related to the first Network State, just some random products and irrelevant information.
Fearing the worst, I dashed out of my apartment and knocked on my neighbour's door.
"Maybe it's just a problem on my end. Let me try on other computers," I mumbled.
My growing desperation drove me to continue pounding on the door, each blow more frantic than the last. However, the eerie silence persisted, with no response from within.
Returning to my apartment, I immediately set out to retrieve any NS1729-related data. My fingers raced across the keyboard, navigating my computer with feverish urgency.
In the background, I heard my neighbour's door creak open, and the dishevelled figure of the guy emerged, his appearance hinting that sleep had been a stranger to him for days.
"May I use your computer to search for something?" I implored with a sense of urgency in my voice.
"What for?" he inquired, his brows furrowed.
"Please, could you search for NS1729? It's of utmost importance, I beg you!" I pleaded.
His eyes flickered with a glimmer of recognition, and he nodded in agreement.
He promptly returned to his apartment, retrieved his computer, and entered mine.
However, as we scoured the web, the outcome remained unchanged.
There was nothing to be found related to the NS1729.
"What are you trying to achieve?" he asked me, his curiosity piqued.
"I'm attempting to retrieve any data that can prove their existence," I explained, my frustration mounting.
"Can you?" he smiled.
Suddenly, I felt something cold and metallic press against the back of my head.
Instinctively, I turned around, only to find the guy pointing a gun at me.
His whispered accusation cut through the tense air, "Traitor."
The deafening gunshot that followed plunged me into darkness, and my world ceased to exist.
Here is N's intricate plan.
Once she secures her position as the elected leader of Zeatuna, she intends to strike a deal with NS1729, selling our land to them in exchange for their superior resources.
Then, when the opportune moment arises, she plans to gather all the tech-savvy Zeatunese and launch a cyber attack of epic proportions.
This attack will be aimed at erasing all traces of her agreement with NS1729, effectively regaining control of the country.
I was utterly stunned by the audacity of her scheme, which led me to make the difficult decision to leave Zeatuna.
I couldn't bear to expose her plot to the world because she was like a sister to me. On the other hand, I did warn my foster parents about the looming threat of cyber attacks, although I could never be certain if they took my words to heart.
Given that an overwhelming amount of the world's information is stored digitally in the cloud, it would be relatively easy to use the proceeds from selling the land to fund and assemble a workforce to target the servers.
These efforts could disrupt server maintenance and management, effectively erasing critical historical records. As history has shown, human memory is often short-lived, but the narrative crafted by the victor endures throughout time.
In 213 BC, Emperor Qin's act of burning books and burying scholars obscured the true history of events that occurred prior to his reign. Similarly, when N called for the cyber attack to obliterate servers and data in 48 AS, it was likely that future generations would be deprived of the stories of the first Network States' founding members.
Despite possessing the technological means to record everything on chains and enhance the potency of microhistory, we, as human beings, remained susceptible to the laws of physics that could plunge us into a digital dark age.
As I closed my eyes in peace, I found solace in knowing that I had played my part in crafting my own history.
Though my contribution might have been brief and straightforward, it remained honest and consequential.
THE END.
Ah ! hahaha of course, very clever and inventive
It does not matter, Zeatuna, sounds like idyllic place to spend time there. And I want to know more about that place, the back story, the daily lives, the work, the leisure and what they do to pass the time ... OK maybe I write about such a place you have given an idea hahaha
Hi Camellia, another great inspired story, thanks for posting.
For sure, your dystopian story is very real that could happen to a Network State given now we have AGI; machines to make decisions fast - they almost show consciousness some researchers in AI have said, but they can never be human, so we need to set up International laws for Human protection.
Zeatuna sounds magical, too bad for the storm damage, I would of liked to have visited and photographed the Island