It all started, not with a bang, but with a whimper…

Times are good. The Soviet Union has crumbled and the old enemies are long gone. Regions and states that were such flashpoints, like Libya, the Middle East and Africa are quieter than at perhaps any time in their histories. It hardly makes sense to maintain a large standing army anymore. So, responding to popular demand, politicians began reducing military expenditure and started automating their defenses. In order to keep dictators and terrorists from taking advantage of the situation, all tactical planning in each region has been given over to a computer. The system has direct command and control over the remaining troops and automatically controlled weaponry such as missile silos. Potential conflicts can also be solved by the computer alone. A total of 29 such systems were installed over a time. For many years, things could hardly have worked smoother. But in the rush to utilize new media, the Internet grew dramatically, bringing the world ever closer together, and becoming so complex in the process that nobody had an overview any longer.