Internet (n.): A global communications network popular from ca 1980 to ca 2036. From 2025 onward, misguided efforts to restrict children and teenagers from access to so-called “Social Media” led to emergence of The Mesh whose truly social— grassroots, decentralized and block-resistant—paradigm rapidly eclipsed Internet in the under-16 demographic. Initially an underground network whose very existence spread by word of mouth, by the time the Mesh Generation reached adulthood mesh usage outstripped Internet, and the following decade saw Internet usage crash, arguably leading to the Great Depression of the 2030s.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

I don’t know /why/ cleaning robots have microphones, but it can’t be good. What I /do/ know is that a microphone implies an input and an input implies a buffer. And buffers can be overflowed.

As I dance through the streets playing my pipe, augmented with inaudible-to-humans harmonic overtones added by my homemade amplifier, the robots hear, listen, overflow, obey, follow. The trail of robots stretches out of sight, now.

I don’t yet know for sure what I’m going to do with my army of two thousand score Roombas, but it can’t be good.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

It was hot, the night we burned Chrome.

You might be thinking “how do you destroy software, the source code must have thousands of copies?”. Well, the purpose of a system is what it does; so we attacked that, the tracking data.

The techbro conceit of putting all the system code in one giant repository meant it was easy to suborn a minor contractor to leak the data storage code. A datacentre cleaner replaced a console cable with a logger, then another night dislodged a power cord. Technicians attended. Once the logger acquired some credentials, we injected our payload. Not into the running system, into the backup daemon. The vast archive of all the clicks, views and habits of half the planet slowly began to accumulate poison.

After two backup cycles, we struck. A datacentre fire is is a survivable event for a competent organization. Restore the offsite backups to an alternative DC and keep on truckin’. Unless those backups were not the data you thought they were.

So, long story short, if you were wondering why all your ads today are for dildos, because us. You’re welcome.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

“The signal is repeating! We’ve got the whole thing.”

“How many bits?”

“Almost 500k. 454,957 bits”

“I got a hunch, factorize that number”

“Bingo, seven fifty seven times six oh one. Think it could be a rectangular bitmap?”.

“It’s what we used to do back before those assholes let Arecibo fall down. Try bm2png.pl in my bin dir.”

“That worked. Holy shit I know that image. It’s the Pioneer plaque. That diagram from Pioneer 11 of human figures, and a map to Earth.”

“What, thats impossible, it’s only been, what, 70 odd years. That probe would still be in our own Kuiper Belt.”

“Outside it, actually, it’d be about one sixty AU out. They lost contact in the mid 90s. Still basically in our backyard but.”

“It’s too soon! If someone’s found it now, that would mean. Shit. They’re. Already. Here. Inside the Solar system.”

“And all they’ve got to say, is ‘Hi, we liked ur meme’.?”

“Maybe not, can you bring up an image of the original plaque? Are the images identical?”

“I’ll do a layer subtraction. Hey, there /is/ a difference. In the map of the planets. They’ve omitted Pluto from their copy.”

“Fucking hell. Little green reply guys.”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction