June 22nd, 2042

June 22nd, 2042:

It’d been over three years since Travis was taken. Three years since we posted anything. Three years since we’d found the document that got our leader jailed. The stories never made the papers, but the bombings also didn’t happen. We may have been invisible to the public, but in private we were working. We were discovering new ways to secure the internet that were revolutionary even to us. We’d learned about taking down servers and disabling connections. We learned, in essence, how to privatize the internet with no one’s authority. We knew what our next move would be.

         Travis was in an isolated cell in a federal prison in Fairfax, VA outside of DC. We’d been able to communicate the exact time and date on which we would disarm the locks, shut off the lights, and give him the chance to escape. June 23rd, 2042. 10:15 p.m. The plan was for a few BlackNet officers to wait for him a half mile south car that would drive about 12 miles west to where one of our junior members lived. He would have access to a lumber warehouse. Underneath it was a dug out area stocked with water, food rations, and a server. We’d even sent some books to help keep everyone sane. I’d sent Travis my personal copy of Resurrection Man. The warehouse would serve as a functioning headquarters. No one would be able to come after us anyway because at 10:15 on June 23rd, 2042 we would completely disable the government and private sector’s access to the internet. Tracking devices would become paperweights unless BlackNet enabled them. We were going to be in sole possession of the most powerful technology in the world.

June 23rd, 2042
10:12 p.m.: I turn on music to ease the tension. One of my dad’s favorite old records by LCD Soundsystem. “New York, I love you, but you’re bringing me down...” starts to play. I can’t help but switch it up in my mind. “New York, I love you, but I’m bringing you down.”
10:15 p.m.: Power grid disabled.
10:16 p.m.: Federal servers infiltrated and wiped.
10:16 p.m.: civilian internet seized.
10:16 p.m.: GPS technology shutdown.
10:17 p.m.: Banks, Hospitals, Credit Card Companies, Airlines disabled.
10:27 p.m.: Travis Lothian reaches rendezvous and heads toward Lumber Warehouse.
10:33 p.m.: Message from Travis Lothian received by New York Headquarters “Good work Blacknet.”
10:45 p.m.: white male 24 years old climbs to the top of the statue in Columbus Circle and does a back flip off it. His friends say he thinks he is dreaming.

March 17th, 2039

       

2

   

           My name is (redacted) and I’m a member of an internet society known as BlackNet. The group was formed in 2022 when I was 12 years old. I registered my account in 2017 as a “Plebeian”, the lowest level user. Now at 29, I’m one of 300 Elite Officers who represent the second tier of authority. We began, innocently enough, as a prank group. We liked to highjack cooperate contests that asked for consumer participation. Coca-Cola asked users to select an artist to design the new logo to be featured on the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Havana, Cuba. The group was able to accrue 79% of the vote for little Bailey Bradley, the 2 year old son of one of our Elite Members who does the cutest finger paintings. The Wall Street Journal published an article called "The Youth of Our Country and Their Increased Monetary Awareness" which we linked here to this 27 year old blog. Once for an entire month we hacked into Fox News’ server every morning at 7 a.m and changed all the images to .gifs of kitties doing something silly. We left the text perfectly intact.
           My personal favorite is when we released a search history to the media of Senator Willard Thomson (R- South Carolina) after giving a haunting and condemning hate speech to the Senate asking for the repeal of gay marriage which had passed in 2014. Several party, family, and church members were shocked just to read the words “straight guys sucking cock” in print.
           It all started out in good fun but, a few years into it, things got more serious. BlackNet became a voice for those who had none. We felt we had the unique opportunity to empower the common citizen. We started releasing financial documents in 2030. It was mostly stuff that was supposed to be public record anyway but somehow got “lost” or “destroyed” when requested. We were nerds, hackers, security experts, ex-military, comedians, chefs, public servants, teachers and students. For years we remained a thorn in the government’s side, but there was no real way to make us stop what we were doing; until February 2029 when we officially became listed as a terrorist organization.
           Our Hacking and Security Breaching Team, which had grown 10 fold in both talent and numbers over the last 8 years, had discovered something that changed the entire landscape and made our mission clearer than ever. I’m sure there were members of BlackNet who wished they’d never seen what they did, but once it had been found we had no choice but to release it.
           A secret document written from the US Defense Secretary to the President explicitly outlined a plan to purchase and develop trillions of dollars worth of nuclear explosives. The order was pretty standard based on the ones we’d monitored before, but the usage notes for this one were disturbing. The highly secret plan was to drop a Uranium bomb on Telaviv, Israel, and smaller bombs on the outlying parts of the nation. It was to be done in mock Palestinian air crafts in utter secrecy. It was the United States government’s version of conflict resolution. Blow up your ally, make it look like your enemies fault and you’re able to seize funding the war. The letter also described in detail how they would pin the attacks on a Palestinian group whom the US already held in custody.
           Our leader, Travis Lothian, who founded the group, was to travel to our secret headquarters in the mountains outside Denver to release this information to every news outlet source possible. The rest of our higher ups including 22 in the New York City area were to remain stationed and in contact by email. I’d received an email at 9:55 p.m that Travis had released the information to our own site and sister sites.  9:57- The New York Times. 9:58- CNN and FOX. 10:00- BBC. We’d remained in group chat reflecting on the magnitude of what we had just done. Around 10:23 Travis abruptly signed off. After that we all just sort of sat. We knew what had happened. The house had been stormed and he'd been taken off in a Gov Hov. So we did the only thing we could do. We crawled into the earth and disappeared. We'd make them think they'd won this war, and we'd strike them when they least expected it.