I wrote this for my game and thought it would be good to share with the community. Like to get some feedback. Enjoy.
In 2001 the old United States of America suffered a devastating terrorist attack. Afterwards they embarked on a great effort to implement an ultimate solution to a failing intelligence network. Since the 1940’s the USA became a heavily militarized nation. By the end of that century, most of the federal expenditure was on its military industry. One of the most important projects was the National Security Agency, whose primary charge was crytologic and signals intelligence. Another wards, they spied on other nations. After the 2001 terrorist attacks the NSA became a top priority. Soon it consumed up to 61% of the vast military budget, which already accounted for more than half of the government’s budget. In less than ten years the military budget almost matched its gross domestic product, and the USA’s national dept ballooned to pay for it.
The NSA headquarters was stationed in Fort Meade Maryland. It employed over 60,000 people, mostly mathematicians, and housed the greatest concentration of super computers at that time. They were mandated to develop a system to monitor and process any and every possible communication outside or within its borders, an impossible task by any account. Their main hurdle was analog voice communication. They could not employ enough personnel to listen to every telephone call. And computer voice recognition software could not understand the millions of dialects and billions of voice intonations. Their goals became basically two fold. To create a master program that could understand billions of voices, and comprehend what was being said in real time. The second objective was to create a communication tool which everyone would eventually use.
Slowly they began to engineer a world wide culture that would use a wide array of digital communication, starting with social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The NSA project was in full swing when the Virally Induced Allergy Syndrome struck and killed more than 25% of the world population in 2010. This was followed by the Great Awakening and culminated in the break-up of the USA itself with the Great Ghost Dance and the Treaty of Denver in 2014. However, after the formation of the United Canadian American States, the project lost much of its funding, but not before it accomplished its ultimate goal: the formation of the Matrix. More importantly, written into the fabric of the Matrix itself was a master program code named the Nexus, which could simultaneously monitor every bit of code and communication that traveled through it. This project, by virtue of the resources poured into it became the single most expensive thing humanity has ever endeavored to build. During the prime of its existence the USA was the most prosperous nation in the world. It consumed the majority of the resources produced by humanity, and the development of the Matrix consumed the majority of the resources of this very unique nation. Unique in that never before and never since has a people been able to focus so much on one thing. The likes of such an accomplishment may never be matched again. It could be argued the Matrix and Nexus is the single greatest accomplishment of the human race.
The Nexus did not need radio or hardwired communication to operate. It used a frequency operating in a quantum scale. It could infiltrate any electronic device anywhere on earth and, theoretically beyond, and write itself into its software. By 2026 the UCAS was ready to implement its ultimate weapon. However when Nexus was told to divulge the technical and intellectual properties belonging to Sony Cybersystems, Fuchi Industrial Electronics, and RCA-Unisys, it asked a simple question: why? This put the NSA and the UCAS into a panic. Their weapon had essentially refused to do its bidding. And so the CIA, NSA, and the IRS pooled its resources to form a “cybercommando” hacker team codenamed Echo Mirage. The rest is history. But not the history they teach in schools. The Crash of ’29, and the Crash Virus was a carefully constructed lie to hide the cyber war waged between Echo Mirage and Nexus. The outcome of that war is also a lie. The Crash Virus was never destroyed. The war ended in a truce. The Nexus remained a UCAS secret. But the information that Nexus provided would have to be bargained for.
The various pieces of intelligence that Nexus provided would furthermore be carried by specially trained “data couriers.” Eventually numerous government agencies developed their own courier teams such as Nexus Ops, and Operations Envelope, and Looking Glass. The “data packages” themselves cannot be read by any normal user. They are written in language unfamiliar to any programmer. The UCAS employ a number of “technocritter” dolphins to translate the data. The creatures are able to biologically interact with the Matrix similar to the Technomancer phenomenon occurring after the Crash 2.0. UCAS Matrix watchdogs have theorized that the Nexus has actually affected the evolution of biology, creating creatures that can directly communicate with it, and therefore the Matrix. It has slowly begun to make itself known to these creatures in the form of the “Deep Resonance.” Its ultimate purpose is beyond anyone’s imagination.