During the Americans First Period of the Era of Transition of the First Age of Humanity, was born Eduarda Martínez. A time when the U.S. was being hostile to southern immigration and both economic recessions and poverty racked Central America. She would grow up to be responsible for the second time in history for America to have a conflict with Mexico.
 
At eleven, her family purchased their way across “la pared” or the wall, as it was known. Both major US political parties had become entrenched in supporting anti-southern immigration politics and big supporters of the security of the American-Mexican border. By this point in time, big security construction contractors were involved in annual Congressional lobbying efforts for ongoing upgrades and repairs of the southern border. These same contractors would fuel national fears of waves of immigrants coming for the hard-earned American jobs, which were increasing in hourly pay rates. The contractors created deepfakes showing immigrants coming for the border. Pundits and politicians parroted these same deepfakes as talking points, reinforcing the messages to the American populace. As a result, there was a decline in using Spanish as a language in the U.S. There was also an uptick in violence against those of Hispanic origins, but there was also a lacking coverage of this violence by mainstream sources, so most people thought this was fake news.
 
The journey for Eduarda would end up in a tragedy she would never forget. Her parents and older brother were shot dead by the U.S. Border Patrol, and she was taken into custody, processed as an illegal minor, held in a detention camp for nearly a month where she was sexually terrorized by older boys there, and eventually deported back to Mexico to the custody of an uncle.
 
She would eventually earn a degree in law and become involved in a small party called El Partido Nacionalista Mexicano (PNM) or the Mexican Nationalist Party. At a young age, she quickly rose in the ranks of the party because of her popularity with the people. She got elected to Chamber of Deputies in the Congress of the Union. Eventually, she was elected to the Senate. She was a fiery Anti-Americano politician and pushed her party’s agenda of putting Mexico’s interests ahead of the U.S.’s anti-immigration stance. Her opponents called her La Putin de Mexico (the Putin of Mexico) for her popularity with the people after the historical figure, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and his popularity with the Russian people. In response, she said, “I welcome this name. What politician doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of such a grand master?”
 
Her party’s agenda was very popular with Mexico’s electorate during a time when the Mexican people saw America as hostile to them. A theme reinforced by popular news on local social media in Mexico.
 
In the Senate, she helped to form an alliance with China by being the chair of the President’s delegation to China. She negotiated with the Chinese high-tech manufacturing investments in Mexico, the securement of short-range tactical nuclear weapons, help for Mexico to continue to develop nuclear weapons and the building up Mexico’s military arms complex. This was in exchange for increased border access to the region by Chinese authorities. A move which politically shocked the U.S. and motivated some U.S. politicians to attempt peaceful negotiations with Mexico. All attempts failed, as neither side would compromise.
 
It would be after these events that Eduarda would be elected as President, and this is when she showed her true agenda. The PNM by this point was in control of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies that allowed Eduarda to reorganize the constitution making certain oppositional political parties illegal, allowing government censoring of the broadcast of media in Mexico on the internet or through other sources, the illegalization of specific sexual practices such as homosexuality, the political restoration of marriage to only between a man and woman, the elimination of religious freedom by banning all organized religions operating in Mexico (a broader restoration of the old 1940s laws), broadening the powers of the President to be more authoritarian, and extending the term of the President from its six years non-renewable term to a twenty-year non-renewable term. She did all this in the name of protecting Mexico from the American aggressor and restoring Mexico to its rightful place in the world.
 
Her first act as president included the appointment of 5,000 People Judges who went about the states of Mexico cleaning up the long history of organized crime. They did so by brutally acting as judge, jury, and executioner for anyone associated with organized crime. Eduarda saw this as righting years of a wrong inflicted upon the Mexican people by the Americano government for its war on drugs.
 
Through public speeches, she would remind her people of the brutal occupation of Mexico City by Americans in 1847 and the illegal taking of northern territories by a forced agreement with the Americans. She spoke of the years of how their brothers and sisters to the north had been used as slaves for the Americano capitalists, and how the Americano government purposely kept Central America in the economic dark ages. She supported selective alternative histories. For example, the idea that Central America would have been better off if the Americano South had won the Civil War and expanded control into the region. Eduarda showed this alternative history through the citation of the works by Silina Nessia Artemievna, a contemporary Russian historian whose writing speculated on alternative outcomes of major events. Eduarda would also use any major holiday, from Cinco de Mayo in the state of Puebla, to Mexican Independence Day on September 16th for large scale military parades.
 
During the early days of her administration, she was under attack by rebel media for scandalous stories of sexual excess involving two to three men at a time. Eduarda never married, and it was common knowledge she was an alcoholic and sex addict. Through her control of other media, she discredited the rebels and had them publicly arrested and incarcerated for life.
 
It would be her administration that established the Return to Mexico Movement in the U.S. The movement became popular with Hispanics and Native peoples who felt slighted by the current U.S. politics. The POTUS at the time saw this movement as a foreign sponsored terrorist organization and tried to remove it from American soil. This only strengthened the movement’s resolve to where, in California, a ballot referendum was to be held on leaving the union for Mexico. The referendum would fail by a mere 2,447 votes.
 
This gave Eduarda the impetus to move against America to help free California from the Intolerantes Americanos (American Bigots). According to her administration, the voting was rife with improprieties. She would mobilize the Mexican army to the 1,954 miles of the border as a show of force. The POTUS would counter with a similar show of force. This became a bitter standoff since neither side wished to use their nuclear weapons.
 
With the fear of nuclear war with Mexico, and increased protesting by the Return to Mexico Movement, riots broke out in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Washington, DC. It was commonplace to see people in Texas openly carrying heavy machine guns and other arms, as they organized into citizen militias. The U.S. armed forces saw an increase in those willing to volunteer to fight against Mexico.
 
Five years prior, the CIA embroiled Eduarda’s administration in a guerrilla warfare along the border of Guatemala. A group of CIA backed rebels, known as Amanecer Azul or Blue Dawn (the name is reputed to come from the CIA’s operation name) would do violent incursions into Mexican border territories. They would go across the border and terrorize the locals and burn down villages. Despite her relationship with Ricardo Alcocer, the strongman of Guatemala, his government could not root out the Blue Dawn rebels or stop the CIA. She suspected he was on the payroll of the CIA and plotted to have him overthrown and replaced. She would be successful at the same time as another major event occurred, the Tijuana Incident.
 
The Tijuana Incident started with a failed coup attempt against Eduarda’s presidency, which she blamed against the CIA and prompted her in retaliation to launch an offensive along the Tijuana border. The Mexican forces rolled across the border into Imperial Beach, successfully taking the area. This triggered skirmish fighting along the entire length of the Mexican-American border, with artillery being lobbed across the line. The border city of El Paso was devastated by the shelling. Eduarda made threats of using her Chinese tactical nukes against cities in Texas unless the Americans capitulated to her demands. The POTUS refused and put the American nuclear arsenal on high alert. The event would end with a thermite bomb explosion occurring in San Diego, California. Eduarda’s administration said this was a false flag event done by the Americans, whereas the Americans blamed the Return to Mexico Movement operating behind the lines. This bomb leveled a major section of the southern part of the city and could have triggered a nuclear response by the U.S. if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of the President of France, Marie-Pierre Pretre, in talking with the POTUS. It is uncertain what she said to the POTUS, but it’s clear that her call changed the outcome.
 
It would be Marie-Pierre Pretre, who would diffuse the situation between the two nations. She had made it her mission to see that peace would be restored between Mexico and America. It was an unconfirmed rumor that this only happened because the POTUS at the time was having an affair with the French President. This was information that Eduarda's administration was privy to and was used as political leverage in the negotiations.
 
The brokered cease fire and treaty resulted in the U.S. giving up parts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico in compensation for the invasion of Mexico City back in 1847. Lands along the 109th meridian, including the city of San Diego, were now part of Mexico and formed a new Mexican state called Tucson, with the capital being the former Tucson, Arizona. In exchange for the territory, Mexico agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program and remove its Chinese nuclear weapons in five years.
 
It would be shortly after the ratification of this treaty by the Congress of the Union that someone would violently assassinate Eduarda in the President’s mansion. A vocal but minority faction in the PNM saw the loss of Mexico’s nuclear capabilities as a shameful weakness in the Eduarda’s administration and were blamed for her assassination. Members of the minority faction were rounded up, put on trial, and found guilty of her murder. The government sentenced them to public execution.
 
After this, the PNM lost its grips on the Mexican political machine. The people elected a new coalition government which undid much of what Eduarda’s rule and PNM party had created.
 
The conflict between Mexico and the U.S. changed American politics concerning immigration into the U.S. as the Return to Mexico Movement morphed into the Immigrant Workers Party. While the party could not secure any offices, it would become part of the U.S. political landscape that helped to change American views on immigration and citizenship. Which would eventually help in the creation of the Naturalization Amendment, codifying the process of American citizenship at the constitutional level.

On March 17, 2022, Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a “nine-minute video message” directed to Russians talking about the War in Ukraine. DW News reported at the time that there were many “Whataboutism” comments dealing with the US’s involvement in Iraq and Syria in reply to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s post.
 
This social media war got the ire up of Razin Rustem Olegovich, also known as the Mad Russian, on YouTube. Razin always expressed he had no love of Ukraine, but neither did he love Putin’s government, which he saw going back on his claims of “stability” by constantly waging invasions into former Soviet territories. Not wanting to serve in Putin’s army is why he left Russia in the first place, and immigrated to the U.S. where he had a great uncle. In the US he started a YouTube channel. Razin’s channel was highly critical of both the left and right in America for their various positions as being hypocritical, which he claimed made him a focus of an FBI investigation.
 
After the Schwarzenegger post, he published a round of video rants countering the morality of the “Whataboutism” posts. He went comment by comment, calling out each commentator by name, called them a derogatory cuss word in Russian, and then proceeded to his rant in English. His main counter argument was if Russia could invade Ukraine, then the US is allowed to do conscription, bolster deployments in bordering NATO nations, and ramp up nuclear weapon production so it can destroy Russia into the next dimension all because Lenin caused the death of the Czar’s family and Russia preserved his body as a tourist site. Adding to this snarkiness he quipped in one video, "Well, if you believe Putin is right that US-NATO expansion promises were broken, then you must also believe that Black Americans are owed unpaid promised reparations." Which was his way of being both serious and sarcastic at the same time.
 
Weeks earlier, he did rants about those complaining about the West pulling Russian State media sources, noting that most Americans didn’t have enough smarts to tell the difference between propaganda and truth since they think everything from their own Government is propaganda. He cited Nixon as responsible for this belief in America since he wanted investigative journalism dead to ensure his political party can get away with crimes. As Razin noted, “Who knows what crimes Obama or Trump did in office? But it doesn’t matter ‘cuz no one would trust honest investigative journalism about it.”
 
It was shortly after his Schwarzenegger rants he stopped posting. Several months later, other YouTubers speculated that either the FBI or Putin took him out. Some said YouTube cancelled him.

I’m finding it hard these days with Russian-Ukraine War taking place in Europe to write anything for Rosella Tolfree’s World. I predicate a lot of her world on current events and extrapolating them into the future. But I do not know where this war is going. I see multiple possibilities from a negotiated peace and cease fire for the next ten to twenty years to Putin getting everything he wants to all out thermonuclear war (which in theory is the least likely).
 
While many think-tank pundits thought the War in Ukraine was inevitable, for me, it was a shock. The invasion of Crimea was back in 2014, but it didn’t make a dent in my consciousness, unlike the COVID-19 pandemic and the events of 9-11. And I was old enough to pay attention back in 2014, but clearly it wasn’t a big enough thing in our nation to leave an impression.
 
As a fiction writer using current events, I’m simply going to wait it out. Work on some other projects for a time. If we all don’t get blown up from a nuclear holocaust before then.

During the late 1st Age of Humanity, but before the formation of the Social Media Net, humankind was increasingly incorporating cybernetic components into human biology. Most cybernetics were focused on cybernetic limb actuators and specific organs being replaced, such as eyes with cybernetic eyes. But the idea of directly connecting the mind to the internet had always been a goal of many in the cybernetic field. It wasn’t until Samuel Conner, a cybernist specialist, had developed the cognitive interface processor (CIP) did the idea of “jack’n” (a cybernist colloquial phrase for connecting to the internet) become possible.

The CIP allowed the compressed data stream of the internet to be processed by the human brain at a rate that allowed for comprehension and control. Then it would send out the instructions to the internet in a way that commands could be executed. By simply closing one’s eyes, it was now possible to surf the internet with your mind through visualizations and voice commands.

The Experiment

Conner was a firm believer in experimental ethics and refused to test his invention on animals or others. Instead, he surgically had himself adapted to use his own device.

His first dozen attempts were uneventful, but it was after that he suffered from mental problems when removed from the CIP. He suffered from periodic blackouts finding himself in unusual locations; he suffered from intense mood swings and outbursts around friends and co-workers, and many times he would find himself in mid-process of destroying his apartment’s furniture.

The breaking point was when he was arrested on charges of aggravated sexual assault but recalled none of it. He couldn’t even remember the time he waited in jail pending the trial. The Court found him competent to stand trial, and the jury acquitted him. Determined not to see Conner again in her Court, the judge ordered Conner to seek medical and/or psychiatric treatment for his condition. It was discovered that Conner’s personality had been shattered, and he had lost control of his own identity because of the experiment. The official diagnosis was he was suffering from an internet induced form of dissociative identity disorder. Psychiatric scholars speculated the CIP couldn’t filter out the vast amounts of personal information available on the internet. At least enough to ensure one would maintain identity cohesion. What literally happened to Conner, according to these scholars, was the neural pathways that formed his identity were re-written by the direct access to the internet. They speculated it was done via a maladapted form of neuroplasticity caused by the CIP itself.

End Results of Conner's Experiment

Conner’s financial backers urged him that the best course of action was for him to be placed in cryogenic storage while being permanently “jacked in.” In doing so his mind would still be active despite his body being in cryogenesis. Keeping the mind active through stimulation was seen as key to survival in cryogenesis. At least this was the operating theory at the time. The hope was that this issue with the technology could be resolved, and they could revive Conner later. Conner agreed with his backers.

After Conner was put on ice, it became apparent to Conner’s staff that the information of the internet was too much for the human mind to handle, despite the CIP’s ability to buffer it. They couldn’t come up with a solution to the problem and they shelved the idea. They left Conner in permanent cryogenic storage.

The result was that cybernetic technology continued its path through the cybernetic augmentation of the human physical form without direct mental connection to the internet or artificial intelligence. Only briefly did humans attempt to augment the human mind with artificial intelligent processors, but societies quickly outlawed this around the world after an extremely violent incident in Los Angeles, California.

Later, humans attempted fully converted cybernetic bodies with the human brain still intact. Thus, creating a true cybernetic organism. This caused the full cyborg to lose their humanity via a condition known as cyberpsychosis, where they would become increasingly intolerant and violent against flesh-based humans. The net result was the global banning of this procedure.

Humans then turned their attention towards manipulating the human genome and androids for its technological solutions in these areas. This still hasn’t stopped a political dissident group operating in Europe, during Rosella’s time, from trying to merge with android technologies and become fully cybernetic.​