Few hours later, newscasts all over the world reported the appearance of unidentified flying objects above the major cities, destroying sites of any political or military importance. The Air Force was dispatched, but in every case, the aircraft disappeared, exploded or just stopped working even before reaching visual contact.
There were also reports of computer monitors exploding and creating tall pillars of energy, from which the flying objects appeared. All computers involved were running the same operating system: OS12 Second Edition.
In Washington, the President was giving a speech to the population, inviting people not to panic. The speech was abruptly interrupted when the carrier that was floating above the White House shot a sizzling heat beam at it, destroying it.
In North Korea, the military decided to launch a nuclear attack against the invaders. Missiles were fired from selected bases, but their engines abruptly switched off when the carriers hit them with their pulse waves. The missiles, now inert, plummeted to the ground, where they totally failed to explode. In retaliation, the carriers fired their heat beams at the bases that attacked them. Those exploded.
In Russia, a group of pilots managed to capture a lightjet and flew it toward a carrier, in the desperate attempt to start a counter-invasion. As they landed, they were immediately discovered and executed.
In Italy, the Prime Minister appeared on the six television channels he controlled, asking the population to be tolerant with the new immigrants and not fall prey of irrational xenophobic feelings. He was decapitated in front of the cameras by an elite Black Guard, who addressed the viewers ordering them to swear eternal allegiance to Clu.
Most Italians rejoiced.
In Lybia, after finding next to zero resistance, Clu's Sentries and Black Guards were busy capturing the local people and escorting them on recognizers to lead them to rectification.
Some villagers decided to react in the only way they knew: they built an explosive device that one of them strapped to himself. Yelling "ALLAHU AKBAR!" he ran toward a group of programs, then released the dead man's switch he was holding and blew himself up, causing one of the programs to partially disassemble into translucent cubes that were launched in every direction.
However, just after passing the apices of their parabolas, every single cube inverted its direction and the program came together again. He turned toward another program.
"Curious" he said. "This user just helped us."
"Peculiar indeed." replied the other program.
All over the world, programs were now marching the streets, while the people they met were either led to rectification or killed. The destroyed buildings were gradually replaced by structures in the same architectural style that could be found in the Grid. Rectified citizens were given identity discs and program outfits.
With a single government for the entire planet, there would be no more wars. With everybody's physical structure being available as easily modifiable code, there would be no more death, old age or famine. With digitization technology available for everyone, people could appear anywhere around the globe, and so could programs. With everybody's thoughts under Clu's control, there would be no more freedom.
The Pax Tronica had officially begun.