Trapped... In Cyber Hell..
Trapped… In Cyber Hell…
Peter Hunter
Four in the morning - in a few hours another dawn to curse as I've done for a week now. The insomnia I hoped would be temporary - now part of my life - waking me two hours after midnight - mind churning, racing at lightning speed, the mental anguish of considering, imagining the horror of it all…
Tonight was worse than usual - rising at 1.30 am, making tea then typing this hoping the Internet would allow me to send it - my preferred target, the editor of Mensa magazine, hoping for attention from anyone intelligent or knowledgeable enough to help.
Assuming anyone cares…
Not a timid man - most of my life I've been an adrenaline addict - courting danger, often crashing fast racing cars, having accidents on powerful motorbikes and most stimulating of all, writing off a small aircraft in a horrendous crash that had the ‘plane turning over, ripping itself apart in an orgy or tearing aluminium.
To me, a ‘high’…
Now seventy - a decade of ailments, three strokes, hospitalisation - side-effects from numerous drugs, until the doctors got it right - now supplementing my pension, writing articles and stories.
What's happening seems totally unfair - frustrating, I am unable to prevent it, haunting me to the point of seeking irrational solutions…
…to escape this cyber hell I'm trapped by?
Two weeks previously I'd e-mailed a summary of a book written twenty years before.
The plot predicted economic breakdown triggered by computer viruses, plus conventional terrorism. I had written; Much of which I conceived as fiction 20 years ago is becoming terrifyingly true; ‘aircraft flown by s*****e pilots’) - e-petitioning - millions spent avoiding malignant computer viruses, despite knowing they already attack us, causing power blackouts and cash droughts, desperately played down by authority. There are more examples, but they're all ‘explained’. Read between the lines - search out stories like mine, which are difficult often to track down, as our secret computerised censorship stops them being seen…
I hadn't used the word containing asterisks in my previous messages. I repeated it in another e-mail and was immediately blocked from sending, apparently for ‘inappropriate material’…
It continued all day - then permitted five, then ten messages, then a complete block again - a situation now permanent.
Even after changing the message I'm still blocked - I wasn't even able to send my notes to my Kindle so I could work on it in front of a warm fire.
This was denied me…
An ‘escape route’ - using my mobile ‘phone to receive a code to discuss the subject was denied. It gave me the number but never issued the text. I cannot re-input as the computer no longer allows me to modify or it try again.
It gets worse…
1.30am - new Years Eve - as usual now I couldn't sleep and desperate to contact someone, any one - feeling much like a radio operator on some electronic Titanic, transmitting, hoping my May-Day will be read by someone who could help - perhaps offer a helping hand - then in the middle of the night, when communication should be quiet, I received the dreaded message;
We noticed some unusual activity on you account…
The previous day I resorted to the old-fashioned telephone landline in an attempt to get attention…
Those I managed to contact didn't want to know. The four or five I spoke to weren't sceptical - instead indicating I was naive in not knowing this was happening. One spoke of a friend in the ‘animal rights’ movement equally cut off - unable to do anything - desperate, lonely and frightened…
None wanted to become involved. All were scared something might happen to them - such was their faith in our freedom of speech in 2012…
My only hope was my friend, an airline captain flying for a USA airline, Paul - he has no landline only a mobile. I had mislaid his number - only an e-mail address - I tried to send, the inevitable happens… again… and again…
The sleepless nights are growing into bad daydreams. Orwell-ian, Kafka ‘ish - I can't decide which - like something out of 1984, yet we didn't have the technology then…
God knows what horrors Orwell would have imagined - the Internets processing power has increased exponentially since the fifties…
I found I couldn't even open my e-mail account - it wouldn't accept my password even when I had entered it ten times...
It had never done that before...
Is this what is becoming of our ‘free country’? Millions under surveillance? Our words watched and monitored - electronically controlled without anyone admitting it?
Something worse than ‘big brother’ is already controlling us…
I tried again - sending this story to a magazine hoping its readers might be braver - more lateral thinking. The same result when I clicked ‘send’. Finally one desperate - one final try…
No success!
Trapped…
Now, 4am and I've written this piece. My mind churns, not with rational thought - just the voice of Leonard Cohen singing;
It’s four in the morning the end of December
New York is cold but I like where I’m living…
I make yet another attempt to send, again without success. I'm trapped - electronic walls surround me. Obviously, other methods of communication are available - old fashioned letter post and word of mouth until voice detection scans my calls… within twenty four hours it will be 2012 - the future - one transiting to complete electronic communication. Monitored, censured - and with the power to ex-communicate…
Anyone listening - anyone out there? Sleep will not come. All I look forward to is another dawn to curse.
Hoping for help - rescue …
End
© Peter Hunter 2012
