Somebody Figured It Out.

It started as a flood of spam and then a computer virus. Not a very malicious one, at first. In fact, a lot of people thought it was fun. And, of course, that's why it spread. IT administrators tried to block it for all the right reasons: bandwidth issues, employee time wasting, fear of trojans, etc. But then, a series of studies showed that people who played the simple little word games not only got smarter, they also became better workers. And, after a flurry of two or three days of pretty constant playing, players settled down to no more than 15 minutes of play per hour or an hour or two a day. A few played more. When kids played the games, their test scores, grades and behaviors improved. So, nobody fought it. They just left it alone.

They called it Digital Fun and Games, DFNG or The Game. And then dagame. One word. And the irreverent called it DaFuckiNGame. It was driven by some kind of phenomenal learning engine algorithm.

Sure, there were reports: About how it had seemingly come from nowhere, invented by a couple of marginal fringe types who eschewed any publicity. There were various stories about who they were, mostly conflicting ones; young, old, male, female, racial and ethnic hybrids. Various media personalities speculated about their motivations, good and evil. No one really cared until it was apparently too late. By that time, it came out that money generated from advertising on the little games had purchased significant shares in almost all of the big corporations in the world. Almost every industry had a one or two firms owned by DFNG. Eventually, many of these companies, particularly Internet and Media companies, came to be owned outright by DFNG. Strangely, as this process continued, these companies all got better. They didn't just have better products and services, they became better corporate citizens. Many of these DFNG owned companies started giving away their products and services, the result being that somehow they made even more money, which they began to invest in all sorts of humanitarian ventures. Feeding the poor, researching in health and aging, funding projects that helped people to overcome all sorts of emotional and social problems, including mental illness and pollution. Almost every industry transformed with the innovations that these DFNG influenced businesses brought. Murder rates plummeted. Most people, even most who played the games didn't really think that much of it. After all, lots of this kind of thing existed, and lots of companies trumpeted their philanthropy. No one could guess the scope of change that had occurred within less than five years.

It was one project that started THE RESISTANCE. Which, needless to say, has been heretofore futile.

Somewhere around two years after DFNG had become ubiquitous, churches noticed that their memberships dropped precipitously. Before the drop in attendance, churches were doing even better than before DFNG. Apparently, people playing the game initially donated significantly higher percentages of their income to churches. It came out that players started increasing their earnings fairly quickly after starting to play the game. And the churches benefited. At first. Then while a drop in attendance was noted, it wasn't considered a problem because of the increase in contributions. But it continued. Some churches emptied out completely. Many found that they didn't really have a mission anymore and shut down. Then two things happened. The churches started to be bought, by whom wasn't yet clear. The second thing was what started THE RESISTANCE. A report came out that people who played the games stopped going to church when they reached certain levels of three of the game modules.

That's when people started to fight back. It didn't last long, every resistance leader seemed to be coopted some kind of way by DFNG. It's like they could give you whatever you wanted to give up, so why fight? I'm writing this as a kind of record of the last ragged days of the few remaining in the Free Human Resistance. I can't really think of anything else to do, I'm getting very tired of fighting, mostly I sleep as much as I can, but I feel like giving up. I'm going to try and finish this first.

DFNG started recruiting the best players for a 'game within the game.' These recruits formed groups that worked as pods, first developing special mods for the game. When someone added a 'mod' to the game, they got rewarded by how many people used it. Players got access to devices that allowed them to 'play the game' much of the time. The games were set up to get players to develop whatever technology DFNG wanted to develop. They created 3D graphic programs with flythrough visuals for chemical and biological imaging capabilities. They were able to make buckyball polymers cheap and abundant overnight. They created industries supplying lightweight wearables, headgear and clothing with thermal and insulative properties, 360 degree video camera capabilities, real/virtual goggles with binocular amplification and true surround sound capabilities. Programmable clothing allowed for variation in texture from that of spandex to absolutely impenetrable chain mail, shape and color changes from a pressurized bubble that would float on water to virtual invisibility. At first these 'spacesuits' were part of the game, making you like Superman and the Predator all rolled into one. They were able to measure a lot of the functions of the body, such as mood, stress, some medical stats, neuromuscular contractions, as feedback in the game. It wasn't very long before the recruits in these pods just kept them on and everything they did became part of the game. Soon, almost anything that needed to be done could be done 'virtually,' by playing some module in the game.

Anyway, back to the church thing. When the churches were being bought up, bells started to ring for people that maybe this was starting to be creepy. Pun intended. What they started doing with the churches really provoked us. They took all markings, or brands, if you will, off the churches. No crosses, stars, crescents, Ankhs, Om symbols, whatever. When the games started, they were many little names for the various modules that started cropping up. After they had coalesced into an entire alternative reality, then infused real reality with its presence, it stopped being referred to as anything other than what was going on. Like they said, fish don't refer to the water that they swim in as 'the water.' And people could exist in 'The Game' and reality at the same time. It became school, play, work, love. Everything happened in and through it. That's when the infinity symbols started to appear in the game, almost as a kind of brand. Self referential. Like God calling IT-self God.

That's when we figured out that DFNG was trying to take over the world.

Clearly influenced by some unknown force, these church pods played the most sophisticated games designed to develop mental and physical powers which they called siddhis, the Sanskrit word for spiritual powers like levitating, telepathy and a power over form they called transmutation. And they began to be able to program their awareness, so that they were united in a kind of group trance they called non-duality. When one of them conceived a child using these powers, they worked together as a group to make sure that the child had the most pleasurable gestational experience possible, culminating in a water birth ritual accompanied by a specially designed sound and light show attended by the growing congregation, meditating and chanting as the new 'member' emerged. They even endowed each child with a million dollar fund so that they were taken care of very well for their entire lifetimes.

We've tried to figure out what this DFNG is, why it's happened. How did it come about? Who or what is this? Is it the only manifestation of an alien invasion; once it plays out, they will come in and take over? If they have the kind of power to do this to us, why didn't they just get rid of us, or are we being trained as slaves for them? Is it some demonic entity, or the devil, that has come to fulfill our temptations and take over our souls? We probably will never know. I surely don't believe the reason they tell us. Maybe I'll get to that later, it's thinking about that which seems to drain the last bit of fight out of people. DFNG members all walk around like zombies in bliss.

Politics, energy, transportation, communication, parenting, health care, education, housing, entertainment and media, manufacturing, textiles, mineral resources, refuse and pollution, food and nutrition, religion, crime and prisons, war. Nothing is the same.

Whatever it is, we must fight to keep from surrendering.