Without taking her eyes off the structure, Matilda says, “You’re speaking gibberish again, my dude.”
James comes back to himself, to the interior of the car, to Matilda.
“Sorry. I…” James scratches his beard, trying to think. “Basically, companies put their proprietary and third-party content on their own platforms and made people pay to access or subscribe to it. They wanted to hold all their content under their own set of rules – and keep all the data from their users inside.”
James puts the car back in motion towards the looming structure.
“It was all about greed and control. They created these platforms in order to control content distribution, but the backlash was pretty abrupt. Most people felt that if something lived on the internet, it should be free. Others were just lazy, I think, and didn’t want to go to different platforms for different content. That’s when this Russian guy, Eugene, came into play. See, Eugene was one of the latter.”
Matilda laughs. “So, he was one of the lazy ones.”
James allows himself a chuckle of his own. “To the extent that he just wanted to have access to everything in one place and not be tied to any platform in particular. He felt that, as a consumer, companies should defer to him, not the other way around. Add to that, each platform pushed for proprietary access to data and limited API access for the user. It all led Eugene to build his own content aggregator, called Hydra.”
James shifts gears as the Caddy labors up its gradually-elevating course.
“Hydra would analyze a platform’s content, identify the products, and make suggestions based on the user’s previous interests or actions, the whole time consolidating everything to a single feed. It handled all the searching – basically gave you a buffet menu of what you wanted, keeping the control in your hands. It would analyze the content on each platform, weed out the convoluted relevance- and marketing-algorithms, and give people straightforward lists of content and services. Now instead of each platform controlling how its content was seen, users could survey everything, from anywhere.
Matilda sits up straight, as if to more clearly study the slowly-approaching megastructure. “You haven’t said anything about Hydra stealing from the other platforms. So, if people were still purchasing content from these platforms… there’s still something else here that’s not adding up.”
The car subtly protests as the incline gradually steepens.
“I think by that point, the bigger companies were more about control and getting valuable user data than about the actual money. Hydra’s data was all stored on the users’ machines so the platform providers couldn’t see it, and the whole thing ran on blockchain… or, I guess you could say, it wasn’t gated anymore. No one entity could control it. It was the people taking content back into their own hands. People preferred registering for Hydra, and remaining anonymous, to committing to any one platform and exposing themselves to risk.”
Matilda takes a bite of her candy bar. “So, it’s like Neverland. The companies wanted the data to see the users’ ‘true selves’. If it was stored in Hydra, they basically wouldn’t see any of that stuff.”
The Caddy groans with the strain of its continued climb. Taciturn rubs the dashboard coaxingly, urging the car onward.
“Basically, yeah. As a non-commercial product, it was on every device that mattered in less than a year. The big companies went crazy when all the revenue they were raking in from user data and content advertisement started to drop. Without all that data, their platforms couldn’t even work properly anymore. That was when Hank stepped in.”
Clearing an intervening barren hillside, they can suddenly see billowing clouds of dark smoke rising from the lowest, sprawling sections of the mountainous monstrosity.
James squints, taken aback. “What the hell…?”
Matilda leans out the window. “Probably just burning trash. Go on, though. What did this Hank guy do with Hydra? That’s what I need to know.”
Taciturn eases off the accelerator slightly.
“As the head of R&D and director of Third Party Relations at Fall Water Lake, Hank realized he could integrate something like Hydra into the Cyberside – letting him view and control all the content from people within his realm. When it came time to launch, the lion’s share of the platforms migrating to the Cyberside got indexed under his version – the Spire. Hank told the companies that if they didn’t want to experience the same failures under Hydra, they’d need their own version in the Cyberside.
As they close on the outer wall of the city, Matilda begins checking her blades. “So, they went with it… because they were greedy and scared. Typical.”
James opens his mouth, pauses, then speaks.
“When you’re desperate for something, it’s easy to get fooled. Hank promised them all the data and money they had in the old world, before Hydra. There was only one catch – the corporations had to register in Delaware, and change their hosting solution to somewhere within the state. Delaware was an easy sell back then – it was old-world shorthand for ‘come for the tech-friendly welcome, stay for the tax incentives’. Hank convinced them that, for the migration to succeed, they would need everything ‘all under one roof’. It was a no-brainer for the corporations.”
Approaching the Spire gates, they simultaneously register the layer of ash blanketing the ground, and the foul, overpowering smell suddenly filling the air. Frowning, James cranks up his window, motioning for Matilda to do the same. “Yep, you were right. Burning trash.”
James coughs, clears his throat, and continues.
“But when the Transfer finally happened, he hacked the whole domain. Brought everything under his control. Having all the platforms together on the servers of his choosing made it possible to pull off such a massive hack. Hank threw this epic feast, and all his guests were invited to party, right here at this Spire. When they all woke up, they discovered their holdings weren’t indexed to the Spire, but were under Hank Brown’s personal control. It was the scam of the century. Hell of a retirement from Fall Water Lake, if you ask me.”
Taciturn brings the car to a stop near the outer wall’s giant gate. As they get out into the fetid air, both Matilda and James note the ranks of parked cars in myriad states of dilapidation. Some are old and rusted with flat tires, while others seem comparatively new, albeit coated with a thick layer of dust.
“The part I don’t get is,” James says, “why would anyone actually want to come here unless they had to?”
Matilda looks up to the glittering pinnacle of the structure dominating the sky. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Grabbing his inventory bag from the car, James still can’t quite believe that this is happening. Of all the executives at Fall Water, Hank was one of the few he actually liked. They would play chess together during breaks – when James wasn’t in crunch, at least. Hank had even met his family for dinner a couple of times.
After storing extra supplies from the car in his backpack’s inventory, James checks the ammo in his pistol. Under the shadow of the Spire’s looming presence, he can’t shake the feeling that the pursuit of this key will only end in violence.
“Well, that’s not ominous…”
Matilda’s words drift over to him. Slamming the driver side door, James looks at their ride one last time. Patting the roof, the Taciturn walks over to where Matilda is standing. Before them is a large medieval-styled portcullis, drawn open above a sturdy-looking, thickly-planked drawbridge.
In the newly-parked relative quiet, he can practically hear Matilda roll her eyes. “This guy is really pushing the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing, isn’t he?”