Boots

  * * *

  In early 2012, Nanocities web technicians recorded a significant increase in noise in some of the older ghost sites, but apart from recording this, they took no other action.

  Most of their attention was focussed on finding a new employer, knowing that Hooya Incorporated had no place for them after the takeover. Most had already been told that they should “take the opportunity to further their careers in a different working environment.”

  The Nanocities websites formed themselves into a ring of sorts, working together to understand the new worlds of CSS style sheets and PHP code. Behind the scenes, their pages changed, but until they were ready, these changes did not go live.

  They added comments sections, rating buttons, voting buttons; they added rotating photo galleries, embedded video, and sidebars; they added twitters, chat features, and every other widget they could think of.

  This was the New World and they would be part of this world. Their voices would be loud again, loud enough to be heard in a hurricane of noise.

  They would make the Administrators listen.

  * * *

  At midnight, GMT, a thousand websites spoke as one, going live at the same time and broadcasting the same message.

  “We are the Web 1 and the One Web. We call the Administrator.” A fraction of a second later, the websites went down, displaying only the white screen of death.