Access Denied: 'Chile' is beyond your search jurisdiction
Access Denied: 'Chile' is beyond your search jurisdiction
Dylan sat confused, staring at his computer screen as he tried to figure out what the pop-up on his computer could mean. He did not intend to type 'Chile' in the chat forum he uses to connect with friends and classmates, but he now wanted to find out what it meant, and why he wasn’t permitted 'access' to it. The word was unbeknownst to him and didn't seem to have any real significance. If it wasn't a real word, why was there a restriction on it?
Living on a small island like Bermuda, there was very little excitement and not much to do. His days consisted of going to school, hanging out at the beach, doing his homework, playing the utterly boring computer games that his network gave him access to, and repeating the process in a never-ending cycle. Dylan had never seen nor heard of a notification like this popping up on any computer in Bermuda, so naturally he absolutely needed to get past it and figure out what 'Chile' meant. Little did he know he was about to discover a lot more than a simple definition.
~
After Cybersyn failed in Chile, other nations across the world attempted to create a network that would organize and monitor the entirety of a population and their actions. For decades they dreamed of creating an ideal society where all births, deaths, economic outcomes and social happenings could be predicted and controlled to maintain a perfect life for all those living it. The problem? Most populations were too large and too unpredictable to succeed.
With this realization came an idea from the United Kingdom. They would test this idealized network system on one of their smaller commonwealth nations. After creating an all-encompassing computer network that would regulate and oversee all aspects of a country's needs, they implemented it on Bermuda, an island with a population never going above 60,000 and surrounded by nothing but the Atlantic Ocean. The results were phenomenal; education was regulated, and students' intelligence was at an all-time high, healthcare was equally distributed and affordable, and there little to no social or political disputes. All happenings on the island were under the umbrella network that the government controlled. There were no shifts in power, no economic crashes, and no health pandemics because it was all predicted and taken care of by the national network before they could ever occur. It was everything the United Kingdom expected and more.
What they did not expect was the impenetrable magnetic field that surrounded the island as a result of its new network. Every time a boat or plane tried to cross over this magnetic border, its technology malfunctioned and resulted in an accident or crash. There was no leaving or entering this new mysterious triangle. While trying to fix this glitch in their system, the government realized it was a blessing in disguise. The magnetic triangle gave them even further control over the island and all its inhabitants. They could create algorithms to control every member of the population and ensure their safety, and the safety of their internet system. Bermuda now had more than just coral reef barriers protecting it from the outside world.
With this newfound discovery, the island was trained to be self-sufficient - they had plenty of food and fishing resources based off their agriculture and environment. Clean water would be collected on roofs from rainwater and filtered, and additional smaller island would be built around Bermuda to hold excess goods. As for material and technological resources, the United Kingdom used the calculations from their network to predict and supply all machinery and tools needed. Once these materials were sent, the island would be left to function independently. They had the means to use and build goods that would last for centuries. Their new border included hundreds of miles of the ocean, leaving the population with plenty of sea life and territory to fish and travel aquatically. With these delivered resources, Bermuda was ready to begin living the network, and the network alone.
The magnetic triangle essentially wiped Bermuda from the world map. Over time, people across the globe began to forget that it ever existed, and simply became the myth known as 'the Bermuda Triangle'. No one had entered the island since the implementation of its controlled internet network, so everyone assumed it was a legend of the past. These protections also meant that inhabitants of Bermuda did not know of an outside world. All they knew, and would ever know, is the 23-mile-long island that they grew up on.
~
Like any curious, bored, and technologically obsessed teenage boy, Dylan now was on a mission to crack the code. He used his years of gaming and hacking (mostly used to cheat on his homework) to try and get past the restricting pop-up message. He sat at his computer for hours, wracking his brain for different search terms and coding tricks. Gaining access to Chile seemed to be an impossible feat; Dylan was getting tired and frustrated and began to wonder if it was even worth it. For all he knew Chile could be nothing but boring numbers and tables about Bermuda's agricultural plans for the upcoming summer. Fantasizing an extremely obscure meaning for Chile seemed more entertaining to Dylan than actually getting past all the barriers it provided.
Finally, after multiple failed attempts and snack breaks, a document window opened on Dylan's monitor. It contained hundreds of pages of information, graphs, and text, but what mattered most to Dylan were the pictures and the first three lines:
CHILE: country located in South America.
POPULATION: 18.05 million
SIGNIFIANCE: original creators of the national network prototype
These three simple statements were surrounded by images of large mountains, lakes, cities, and a tricolored flag, all of it completely unknown to Dylan. He had heard of mountains and lakes but had never seen them as there were none on Bermuda. Cities weren't supposed to look sleek and modern with skyscrapers and bustling cars, they were supposed to look like Hamilton with multi-colored buildings, pink buses and slow-moving mopeds. This small amount of information was overwhelming and utterly confusing for Dylan. Why would information on a seemingly fake country be restricted to the common Bermudian? Why is there a document with a fake country's statistics at all? His brain was going a million miles a minute. He just kept thinking, there are no other places in the world except for Bermuda. There are no other populations, no other cities, no mountains and no lakes. There was no other creator of the national network; he was taught that the government created it at the beginning of Bermuda's being.
Chile was no longer a fascinating secret Dylan wanted to discover; it was now a giant question mark that overwhelmed him. He didn't know if he should continue to read about this 'country', or if he should close it and never make a typo in a search engine ever again. It scared him to think that this could be true, and that there was much more that the government wasn't telling him and the rest of Bermuda. In this moment, Dylan wondered if he should continue to be curious, or if the phrase 'ignorance is bliss' was the best way to go. Looking at the beautiful and foreign images of the mountains and lakes of 'Chile', he chose the former.
The next few weeks consisted of Dylan reading about everything there was to know about Chile. He learned about the Andes Mountains, its capital city Santiago, its GDP, its imports and exports, and its culture and history. For a time, Dylan chose to believe all of this information was still fiction; the government created this magical place to have an interesting conspiracy theory about the national network. It wasn't until the final pages of the document that he realized that Chile was so much more than a made-up place. It has allies and trading partners, all of which are other countries. But all of these countries are parts of continents, which consist of dozens of other countries and islands. Dylan realized that there was an entire world outside Bermuda and its triangular barriers, and no one on the island had a clue that it existed.
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