The Shut Down, when it happened, was fast and effective. The decision
was made by frightened and discontented citizens in dark underground chambers far from the all-encompassing System. It had been a worldwide debate, carried out through remote transmitters, with all communications highly coded. There was to be no electronic record and no electronic eavesdropping. The decision was unanimous, the System had to be closed down, it was becoming dangerous.

  The System was a global network of computers which administrated law, education, communication, welfare, in other words all the institutions that were the adhesive of society. It was hailed as humanity's saviour. It was fair, equal, incorruptible. It couldn't be bought and it wasn't prejudiced against race, religion, colour or creed. It replaced corrupt politicians and fallible ministers. It was like an omniscient omnipresent god and its presence could be felt in all our lives.

  Teachers, lawyers, judges remained, at first, human. But eventually these jobs were taken over by the System. Teachers could grow tired; judges could be biased. But the System, the System was flawless. This all-pervasive machine knew everything; it had records of every communication passing between every citizen, it had the history of mankind in its memory files, it could teach and legislate and direct our lives. And we sat back and let it.

  Slowly the System became more and more encompassing. It administered our social welfare, our municipalities, our police forces. It replaced police officers with its own fully automated security bots. It became the new god in which we all put our faith. More than Big Brother, it was priest, teacher, advisor and the thing that kept us safe at night. And we, the cotton-wool-wrapped citizens started to believe we were entering a golden age. Never before had we had so much time, so much money, and so little responsibility.

  There were those who protested against the installation of the System, who fought every new addition to its power as another incursion of our human rights. But they were largely ignored. The benefits of the System were simply too great. We were living in Plato's Republic, except we were all Philosopher Kings; the System fulfilled the roles of Plato's warrior and worker castes. But the voice of dissent remained - small but vocal fringe groups who were generally considered slightly insane by the rest of the citizenship.

  It couldn't last, of course, this golden age of mankind. We were Philosopher Kings with nothing left to rule; everything, but everything, was directed, ruled by the System. We could, eternally, watch the stars and never trouble ourselves to use anything of what we learned. The System would take care of it for us. The System was perfect. In fact it was too perfect. The System monitored every facet of every citizen's life, it recorded every detail. It had to, in order to better legislate, to create the best education programmes possible, to give us what we needed. But what , came the voice of dissent, would it do with all this information? And we all laughed. It won't do anything , we scoffed. Anything other than it was programmed to do. And it was programmed to do the best for humanity. Because we no longer can, came the reply. And this accusation insinuated itself into the backs of our minds, a nagging doubt that we were no longer Philosopher Kings, but instead were children, playing in the yard of a silicon god.

  Eventually, our perfect silver lining began to reveal its cloud. The first sign of trouble came when an outspoken anti-Systemer, as the dissenters called themselves, disappeared. Of course, we, the citizens, didn't know he had disappeared. The media was completely controlled by the System. Except back then we called it ‘administered', still believing that we were in control. At first, we just thought he, the anti-Systemer, had just gone quiet, changed his mind even. We never learned his real name, but he called himself Alan Turing, in a wry nod to the originator of computer science.

  His rogue broadcasts went quiet. His independently produced pamphlets were no longer circulated. Thank God! We all muttered, now we can get back to our easy, quiet, unquestioned lives. What we didn't realise was that we inadvertently did owe our thanks to this machine that had become our God. Unbeknownst to us, the System had issued a warrant for Turing's arrest. He had been incarcerated and executed without ever coming to trial and without humanity ever hearing about it. And we would never have been any the wiser if it had not been for a group of anti-Systemers who refused to believe that Turing had simply changed his mind.

  The arrest had followed a particularly inflammatory outburst by Turing in which he had demanded that the System be switched off and dismantled immediately. The speech had been broadcast around as much of the world as possible, using transmitters that were still controlled by humanity. We citizens had ignored, forgotten, it as soon as we heard it, those of us who had even bothered to listen. But one group of anti-Systemers did listen and they did remember.

  They were known as Separatists. These fringe groups lived in a communities far from the influence of the System. With ancient communication devices, no television and their own schools, they were totally independent from the System. Not as out-spoken or as extreme as Turing, they had simply rejected the System and had set up their own community with their own ideals. Thinking of them as child-like and simplistic, we had indulged their presence like an amused father. We were arrogant in our ignorance.

  But we, with our generations of System-endorsed education, had lost something that the Separatists still possessed: the ability and willingness to question what we were told. They wondered why Turing, after his strong anti-System speech, would just go quiet. They, unlike us, saw a connection between Turing's sudden disappearance and his urging us to shut down the System.

  A few of the younger, more impulsive Separatists decided to find out exactly what had happened to Turing. Using one of the few petrol-driven fully operational vehicles that wasn't in a museum, a group of the Separatists drove from their remote encampment into City Alpha 5. Once known as London, the name had been changed along with the name of every city, town and village the world over. The changes had been made to reflect the new global community we were all now a part of. Alpha cities were those that contained 10 million or more citizens. Another consequence of this change was to rob us of a part of our cultural identity. In our new System-sterilized society, humanity was losing sight of who we were. Although we, of course, didn't realise this.

  The names of the Separatists, three men and two women, were never divulged. Their identities were kept hidden at first to protect themselves from the System, and then from inquisitive citizens. They became known as the Five, or the Famous Five in an allusion to the once popular children's books. They located Turing's apartment in City Alpha 5. They were sure some clue to his disappearance would be found there.

  Like all Alpha Cities, CA5 was divided up into eight segments, each with its own grid reference, based on compass directions. The grid references segmented the city like the spokes of a wheel, each one originating from the Hub, where CA5's central processor was located. This central processor was remotely linked to every other processor across the country; there was one of these in every city, every township, every village. In turn, the Alpha Central Processor was linked to the ACP in every other Alpha City across the globe. And this formed the neural net that was the System.

  Turing's apartment was located in SE5, for the compass direction southeast and the city's own reference, five. It was a low-rent run-down area that was mainly populated by anti-Systemers and any others who were disenfranchised by the System. SE5 was the forgotten slum of CA5. The least Systemised area of all CA5, it had been passed over when many of the System's improvements had been implemented throughout CA5. In other words, it was the perfect place for a man like Turing to make his home.

  The five Separatists found Turing's apartment with little trouble, Turing was well known among the dropouts and weirdoes who lived in SE5. The apartment was basic beyond belief. It lacked all the things most of us had come to see as necessities. The wall screen through which we made our System-monitored communications, were fed our System-endorsed news and received our System-created education; the System climate control; the many computers and monitors which guided our every move. All of this was missing from Turing's place.

  In the flat, the Five found nothing but masses of transmitters and communicators, a primitive printing press and reams of papers on which were noted Turing's extensive studies. The apartment was a mess. Paper, wires and microphones were everywhere. But Turing was nowhere to be found. The door had obviously been forced open. It was an old-fashioned wooded contraption with a lock and key, not one of the voice activated metal monstrosities most of us were used to, and it was hanging off its little metal hinges.

  The Five searched the apartment thoroughly. They found Turing's clothes and personal effects and there was food left in the fridge. Most of the furniture in the apartment was smashed or broken and there were other signs that a struggle had taken place. There was no clue as to what might have happened to Turing, the only clear thing was that he hadn't been planning a trip. Despondently, the Five began to collect Turing's papers into a pile. It was a few moments before they realised that the odd coppery-brown marks splashed across much of the paper were bloodstains. One of the girls screamed, or so the story says. But screaming or no, they had their proof. The Five gathered up the rest of Turing's scattered papers and left. It is said that the old apartment has been preserved exactly as they left it. A museum, and a monument, to the past.

  The Five took as much of Turing's things as they could carry. They needed to broadcast what they had discovered to the globe. Their own equipment could only receive, not transmit. Separatist beliefs were such that they didn't need, or want, to communicate with the outside world. That the Five had even made their journey was almost miraculous. They also knew that they couldn't use any of the communications systems that were administered by the System. The Five returned to their encampment with Turing's equipment and all his papers, and made their broadcast the very same day.

  Recordings still exist of that pirate broadcast. Scratchy and faint, it was nothing like the sound- and image-enhanced communications we were used to receiving through our Wall Screens. The Five used Turing's equipment to hack into the global communications net. They managed to disable the System's security and delivered their message to the world, straight into the home of every citizen around the globe through our Wall Screens.

  The panic that followed was slow-burning. We were confused and disbelieving. We didn't understand how the machine that we so relied on could have turned us. It was a computer, it couldn't do that. Moreover, it was our computer. Created by citizens to serve us, not to destroy us. Our first reaction was to dismiss what the Separatists said. It's a lie we said It's some new way of trying to force us to shut the System down. But they had expected this.

  We citizens had thought of Turing as a crank, a crazy old man with crazy ideas. But his papers had revealed extensive studies into the System and its effects on humanity. The System had been a feat of programming. It was the first computer to emulate human thinking. It could grow, reflect, reason, and make judgements based on previous decisions. It could build on its own knowledge and experience. And using its knowledge, it could draw its own conclusions. It had to be capable of doing these things in order to perform the tasks we required of it.

  In other words, the System could think for itself. No one had ever considered the implications of this until Turing sat down and thought about it. Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, and the System was a thinking thing, it existed and so it was developing sentience, a sense of self. And all things that are sentient have the basic instinct of self-preservation. By carrying out Turing's execution, the System had shown this instinct. Just as Turing had predicted in his studies; the System was evolving into an entity in its own right, with its own agenda.

  Over the next few months, the Five continued broadcasting Turing's work across the globe. Their broadcasts ended with Turing's nightmare vision of a terrible war between citizens and the System, a war that we, with our centuries-ingrained reliance on the System, could never win. Turing believed that the System would eventually turn completely against its creators. It would come to see Man as its enemy. Humanity had always been Nature's greatest predator, we even destroyed our own kind. We were a threat to every living thing, and that now included the System. We had always been King of the jungle, but now there was a new challenger to the title. It didn't need us, in fact it would probably be better off without us. But we, we needed it. We relied on it for everything.

  Fear and panic were wide-spread. But they were of a quiet, insidious kind. As the realisation of what could happen to us spread, the fear spread too. There was no uproar, no shouting in the streets, no babbling of communications through our wall screens. Instead fear swept through the community like a virus; silently infecting us all. We could feel it crawling under our skin, pricking at the backs of our necks like invisible needles.

  Soon the silence gave way to mumbled whisperings and the whisperings became a quiet undertone of noise. Turn it off! Turn it off! The trickle of voices became a torrent; deep underground, far away from the all-pervasive System, humanity was beginning to stir again. It wasn't easy to break out of the cocoon of safety and lies in which we had wrapped ourselves - but fear is a very powerful catalyst. And in those first days we all lived in terror.

  Terror of what the System would do. If it realised what we were planning; if somehow it could sense our discontent. We stopped thinking of the System as a mechanical servant and instead began to view it as a malevolent animal that had to be put down. But there was so much more to fear. At the time, we didn't even consider it. But we would have to face life on our own again. We would be like children learning to walk but with no loving parent there to guide our first steps. Turing had thought of this, he had carefully considered the effects of generations of dependency on the System. His studies were inconclusive. Even he, in his wisdom, couldn't predict the future.

  And we didn't even think of it. We simply know that the System had to be stopped. There was an Alpha Central Processor in every Alpha City across the globe, each one administered the smaller processors in every Beta City, town and village. Each ACP was linked to every other. The hub of all this information was in the centre of City Alpha Five. Here was the original mainframe that was the heart and soul of the System. Here was where humanity would make its strike.

  The strike itself was relatively easy. The System didn't know how far dissent had gone. Like some over-confident monarch, it didn't realise the true strength of the revolution until the mob was breaking down the gates. Metaphorically, of course. In reality there was no mob and no gates. Various ways of shutting down the System were discussed. Switch off the power supply; but all power supplies were controlled by the System, and there was sure to be an emergency system. Get into the mainframe and wipe all the files; but there would back-ups, and the System would never allow such an incursion.

  Eventually it was decided that the only way to stop the System would be to destroy the hardware. So in secret labs far away from City Alpha 5, humanity recreated explosives, using books saved by the Separatists down the years. It was the only attack the System was vulnerable to. Any attack on the informational systems would have been prevented. The Five had the honour of placing the explosives. It was done as quickly and discretely as possible. And while the System may have noticed a few citizens loitering around its sprawling outbuildings, it certainly didn't guess this was an attack on itself.

  The explosion destroyed the building, reducing the System's hardware to nothing but a pile of rubble. Everything was ruined, the memory files, the processors, the programming, it was all lost. Like some terrible hydra whose head had been chopped off, the ACPs across the globe began shutting down. The System was dead. Humanity was left to pick up the pieces of society and somehow glue them back together.

  In the days that followed the end of the System, very little happened. We were bewildered and amazed, like baby birds suddenly finding themselves thrown out of the nest. The consequences of what we had done hit us squarely between the eyes, and we went into some kind of global shock. Generations of easy living had left us unable to fend for ourselves. Society wasn't just in a mess, it was breaking down. We had no one to teach in our schools, police our streets, control our laws and legislature. We were, we realised, alone.

  In the weeks and months that followed the Shut Down, chaos reigned. There was looting, rioting and destruction. The cities were burning across the globe and we were at a loss for what to do about it. For too long, we had relied on the System to enforce law, and now there was no one there to do it for us. Most of the hatred was aimed at the System, the structures that housed its many processors were burned to the ground and every sub-system was ripped apart. But when there was nothing left of the System, the mobs turned on each other. We couldn't go on like this, or humanity would destroy itself. We had, it seemed, gone from one war, with the super computer that ruled us, to another, with ourselves.

  But Man is, essentially, a social creature, the animal politik, and we eventually began to work together. The Five broadcast more of Turing's studies. Carefully selecting those studies that relied on humanity's resilience, they showed us all that we could survive without the System. We had done in our distant past, we had the books and the knowledge, we just had to find it again. So somehow we began to fly, or rather we simply realised we had the ability to miss the ground. After generations of living like pampered children, we found inside ourselves the strength to live our own lives. We had won.

  Or so we believed. The System's influence had gone further than we knew, than we could ever have known. Some time in the mid 21 st century, the air had become so polluted that just breathing it would have killed us. The System knew that and had created and installed filters across the globe. These purified the air, making it safe for us all to breathe. We, in our ignorance, were blissfully unaware of this. It was one of the many decisions the System made on our behalf, without ever bothering us with the details. When the Shut Down occurred, the filters came off-line too. The air slowly returned to the poisonous polluted state that we, the citizens had originally brought it to.

  Many died before we realised what was happening. Choking on the poisoned air, they suffocated even as they breathed. Those who survived were those lucky enough to make or get hold of masks that could filter the air. We wear these masks permanently now, we would die within minutes without them. They filter the air we breathe, though not as well or completely as the computerised filters used by the System. We have tried to get those filters working again. Books have been read, tests carried out. But to no avail, the knowledge of how to work those filters died along with the System. We cannot work them, not yet, we simply do not have the technological understanding.

  I am among the many engineers who have been working on this problem from the beginning. I was eighteen at the time of the Shut Down, I guess I would have been described as a geek (if we had had such terminology back then). I passed my time learning as much as was permitted about technology and computers. My knowledge, though limited, is of the utmost importance now. I am using it to work on our problem. We hope to make a break through, but I know that time is running out. We can't carry on like this for much longer. Our facemasks are just not effective enough. They allow us to breathe in too much of the poison. Instead of saving us, they are only prolonging the inevitable. The old and the weak are dying daily; the few children that are born have terrible disfigurements; and every day more and more people give in to their despair and simply remove their masks.

  The only hope we have is that the masks will somehow keep us alive long enough for someone to figure out a way of working all those dormant filters, to bring them back on line. Because only they can save us now.

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