2. Choose an event from the Sixth World's history and describe how it affected you personally.

History, you say? Who's moderating this node anyways? Where's a sysop when you need one, right? Kidding. Mostly.

Since most of of the rest of you were not even alive for some of the really big stuff that's happened, I'll dig up something from your collective prehistory and tell you chummers what it was like to actually live through it. Sit back and let old man Rake tell you all about the first Crash-with-a-capital-C...

Scan this, omae: there was a time when the Matrix was not yet a thing. Crazy, but true. When I was a child, we had this global computer network they called the "Internet". There's a lame old joke about it being a "series of tubes" or something like that, but that drek is even older than me. Anyways, it was like a dumbed-down proto-Matrix. Simsense was still in its infancy, and AR was around, but not at all pervasive. Seriously, people actually typed on keyboards (or used voice-transcription software) and used a tool called a "mouse" or some kind of touchpad interface while looking at a display screen. I even remember playing with my older brother's IntelliPad device when I was a kiddo. Super-Mad Bird-Bombs was fragging amazing when you're four years old.

But I'm digressing. The whole point of this story is how something significant impacted me. The significant thing would be the Crash of '29, or Crash 1.0 - the first time everything went dark, computer-wise. The Crash Virus was like nothing anyone had ever seen before, and it brought the global information economy to its knees. I remember being worried that it could infect people, but I was just a kid and didn't know the difference. Plus, that kind of tech was still a few decades off. Still, life was pretty scary for a while. Money ran short, people got hungry, riots broke out, all the usual post-disaster stuff, but this was a technology-induced disaster with no obvious solution, since the crash virus defied all attempts to defeat it with existing methods and tech. On top of that, it was global and impacted all but the most remote tribal communities.

The old United States government got involved and set their super-hacker team Echo Mirage to the task of fixing things and eliminating the virus, developing prototype simsense-driven cyberterminals and paving the way for the Matrix yet to come. A couple of years later, things were back on track and the world was being transformed by the new Matrix when the last of the old Crash Virus was destroyed.

My life would have been unimaginably different if the Crash of '29 never happened. Something Matrix-like would have eventually developed, but Crash 1.0 jumpstarted all that. It opened up a whole new realm of information and connectivity, allowing for a paradigm shift in how the world did business. For those of us who remember it, the era of Crash 1.0 was transformative, and I know for a fact my outlook remains colored by it. Sure, we've survived another Crash and a host of other major upheavals since, but I'm never going to take something even as ubiquitous as the wireless Matrix for granted.

The experience of living through Crash 1.0 and its aftermath made me into the sort of person who likes to have options, and that kind of thinking is probably the main reason I went to college, did my turn in the UCAS Army, and took a tour through law school before I ever got around to seeking a corp job and making plans to settle down. (Plus, I have the time to spare - 45 years after the first Crash, and I'm still in my prime!) Even after a past personal tragedy, my subsequent break from the lucrative corporate cradle, and a long indentured servitude to my creditors, I'm reluctant to fetter myself with a life that depends on too many "certainties". My experiences tell me such things aren't really that certain at all. As a result, I have a habit exploring the alternatives available, developing contingencies, and assessing points of failure - something that's proven valuable in the shadows, but a burden not typically felt by the average wageslave.

But that's enough for now, you crazy kids. The old man in me is saying "get off my lawn!" and "go to bed!". I'm inclined to agree. I've got blueprints and security protocols for the next job to review plus my usual 3 hours of sleep to get before I go meet Mr. Johnson at his sunrise tai chi class. Don't ask me why that's the time and place chosen for the meet. And yes, I will stop by the Stuffer Shack on the way back and grab the soysauge sandwiches everybody always want for breakfast, but you lazy slots better be up by then; there's paydata to steal!

-Rake