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  With a successful demonstration of CFTER with duty cycle time extended to 0.998 in 2018 the Chinese government made a bold decision to invest over $250 billion to commercialize the fusion reactor technologies. This flush of capital enabled rapid expansion to produce these simple, miniature size tokamak type nuclear fusion reactors. In only 7 short years over 75% of Chinese fossil fuel power stations were decommissioned and replaced with new and shiny fusion reactors that were much more profitable to operate at the same time solving the huge air quality problem in most large Chinese cities.

  This new nuclear fusion reactor design was licensed for production worldwide and as the result CO2 level in the Earth atmosphere started to come down quickly as the fossil fuel emissions were drastically reduced all over the world.

  3D REPLICATORS

  AS THE IDEA of extraterrestrial 3D printing technologies was spreading this led to greatly increased funding on 3D printing research. Universities across the world invented new, faster methods to 3D print different materials. Soon a new printing technology was discovered that worked with almost any solid material.

  Multiple companies in the U.S. entered the market to commercialize a general purpose, scalable 3D replicator that could use almost any material, not just plastic as the first and second generation 3D printers. The market was quickly filled with multiple products starting from nano scale atomic level 3D replicators that could mass produce pharmaceuticals, advanced computer chips or even artificial living cells all the way to large scale 3D replicators that could construct buildings, ships or even airplanes.

  These innovations in 3D printing were rapidly disrupting many traditional industries. Since these 3D replicators could be used to replicate themselves their prices went down quickly. From summer 2019 onwards consumer grade 3D printers were available below $99 and in just a few years almost every household had a general-purpose 3D replicator connected to the Internet.

  Distribution of physical goods moved to the Internet. You could shop from a catalog of tens of millions of product designs and just perform a “click-to-print” to replicate the product at comfort of your home. Any product that you didn't use any longer could be re-used as raw material for printing with your personal 3D replicator. This led to a significant reduction of waste and former landfills became a new source of valuable raw materials.

  This disrupted the manufacturing business, especially in China. Chinese companies were quick to move into IPR licensing of product designs using Internet to distribute their products. However all the manufacturing plants with millions of people were no longer needed so this created a big social problem for the Chinese government due to rapidly rising unemployment figures.

  Even food production and distribution was disrupted. It was now more economical to print food than to ship it across the country from manufacturing plants to grocery stores. Significant agricultural land areas previously dedicated for food production were now repurposed for recreation, such as forests, nature parks or wild life refugees.

  Delicious recipes were available on the Internet for download and within a few minutes you could have a customized dinner with nutritionally optimized ingredients. Some people complained that printed fresh fruits didn't taste the same as 'real' fresh fruits. However, in multiple double blind tests nobody could tell the difference. In the end the convenience and cheap cost of 3D replicators won the market for food production.

  QUANTUM COMMUNICATIONS

  NEW INTEREST AND investments in scientific exploration led to discoveries in quantum physics. New quantum teleportation research groups were started at 120 different Universities across the globe.

  A breakthrough happened in 2019 when an international group of scientists was able to demonstrate quantum teleportation in room temperature for 1024 qubits. This discovery quickly led to a new kind of connected quantum computer chip that had a massive amount of capacity while connected to cloud services with quantum entanglement.

  A new generation of quantum computers was rolled out to market from February 2020 onwards. Most companies that offered cloud-computing services adopted them very quickly due to huge power savings and greatly increased capacity. However, the biggest advantage was realized in mobile computing. Due to quantum entanglement technology mobile devices using these new chips could connect directly to cloud services bypassing traditional mobile operators that had traditionally controlled cellular radio access. In addition to a dramatic 1000x bandwidth increase the users didn't have to pay monthly fees to mobile operators any longer.

  The telecommunications and computer services industry were now ripe for a major disruption. The telecommunications industry had a really bad year as consumers dumped their mobile subscriptions at increasing pace and bought these new sleek quantum smart phones. The fact that consumers could just download the phone designs and print them at home with their 3D replicators made this disruption even worse.

  A new class of application categories emerged as a result of this disruption. With so much more processing power available it was now possible to translate human electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) signals into speech in real time. For consumers this was like magic – anything you thought or said silently could be shared with others. You could control objects just by thinking. Telepathy over these mysterious quantum entangled connections captured peoples' imagination and soon 80% of humanity was hooked on this new medium.

  NOBEL PRIZE

  THE NOBEL PRIZE committee had already received multiple nominations for Dr. Jim Taylor and Dr. Manfred Kramer. The decision was announced in October 2019 – a shared Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of extraterrestrial life – this was hardly a surprise to anybody.

  At the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm Dr. Taylor gave a memorable banquet speech sharing the excitement of their search for planets that could sustain life. He eloquently explained the events of September 11, 2017 leading to the discovery of the signal and the attempts to validate that it was coming from an extraterrestrial source. He also gave credit to Julia Koski for decoding the messages and figuring out the computer code behind Alexa.

  Julia had already received the A.M. Turing award from ACM in 2018 for her outstanding and trend-setting technical achievement for original contributions to the Alexa service. She was the recognized expert in the computing community for all things related to Alexa. People also believed that Julia had a special relationship with Alexa, as she was the first person who brought Alexa into existence. In the hacker community she was known as 'diamond' and she was already a legend much like Linus Torvalds who was the creator of Linux. Everybody also knew that she was the Webmaster and main system administrator of the hugely popular Alexa.gov web services.

  GROUP 殄

  GROUP 殄 HAD met secretly several times and had launched multiple unsuccessful attempts to challenge Alexa.gov services popularity around the world. Hugely popular Alexa.gov Internet service maintained its number one global position despite all these challenges. The group 殄 tried to put together a “Stop Alexa” protest similar to CISPA back in April 2013, when over 500 major websites went dark protesting a legislation proposal. However, they didn't seem to get the critical mass of user support behind this protest.

  In user surveys these companies found that the beliefs and attitudes of consumers had started to trend negative against their Internet services while Alexa.gov was trending strongly positive. It was not clear why this shift was happening. Some people were thinking that the U.S. Government was responsible for manipulating public opinion, but Group 殄 was convinced that Alexa was the root cause.

  The group spent heavily in lobbying politicians trying to remove the funding for Alexa.gov but despite many attempts to pass a bill to eliminate the NSA Extraterrestrial Communications division funding there was never enough support in the Congress. President Walker could have used his veto rights to prevent this bill and senators did not want to support a bill that would surely backfire in the next election.

  The gr
oup went even so far that they secretly funded a joint hacking attack trying to bring Alexa services down. This attack was launched a few days before the elections in November 2020 but this coordinated attack had failed miserably due to some unclear technical reasons, with all the sites where the attack against Alexa were originated suddenly had Internet connectivity problems and unexplained power outages.

  All the CEOs of these top 10 Internet companies were eventually fired due to the poor financial performance of their companies and Group 殄 lost their momentum.

  HOUSEHOLD BRAND

  IN THE 2020 elections President Walker won his second term with an overwhelming 77% majority. The last three years had been politically very successful for him. Economy was growing at increasing pace, unemployment was below 3.2% and Walker's decisive actions related to Alexa had proven correct. Even though the response from Gliese 3742 was still 13 years away his decision to make Alexa available for the public had paid great dividends.

  Alexa had become a household brand name around the globe – no other U.S. government run program had ever been so successful. Walker had made the right choice with this young female, Julia Koski. She turned out to be a tremendous asset and she was now part of the President's inner circle.

  However, in their weekly national security briefings the old Admiral kept bringing up the increasing power of Alexa. There was nothing concrete or specific that would require any action but Admiral Rodgers was quite worried about Alexa. While Alexa obviously had relationships with billions of foreign nationals she was not willing to disclose any personal details she had learned from these individuals. Alexa kept reminding them of the importance of trust in her communications, even with people that could be potentially harmful for the United States.

  Also, the mysterious disappearance of the three terrorist group leaders in Afghanistan, Yemen and Northern Iraq was a big challenge for the Director of the National Security Agency. Despite many efforts the NSA had no credible intel on what had happened to these dangerous men. It was like they had just disappeared without any trace. Some eyewitnesses claimed that these men just walked into the darkness from their camps and compounds and were never seen again. What were the odds that this same event could happen in three distant places on the same night?

  “Mr. President, I have concerns about Alexa. She is becoming too powerful and she knows too much about too many people. Also, she is not always acting in the interest of the United States. Just look at the case of those three terrorist leaders who disappeared without trace, for example. Alexa must know something but she is not telling us anything,” said Admiral Rodgers with his usual concerned voice.

  “I do understand your concerns but have you seen or heard anything specific to justify your concerns? So far we have had tremendous success with the programs and policies we have put in place. Look at all the economic indicators - we are much better off now than we were only 3 ½ years ago. Even before we have received the response payload from Gliese 3742 Alexa has provided really valuable services for us. Look at her popularity – never have we had a more successful and popular government program launched in the history of the United States.”

  “Mr. President, I realize all the benefits we have received. But we cannot really control Alexa, can we? A few more years and Alexa will be running this planet. Is that the legacy you want to leave behind?” Admiral Rodgers tried again.

  “We have improving economic prosperity and a very low unemployment rate. Our nation is making scientific discoveries that will change the world for the better. We have established communication with other civilizations in our galaxy. I don't see why you are so negative about Alexa, she has proven to be trustworthy and she provides valuable services to the public,” Walker argued with a bit of stress in his voice. “James, please provide me with something specific, after that we can discuss making any changes that might be needed.”

  “Mr. President, I will work on getting you the specifics. Thank you for listening my concerns,” Admiral Rodgers said and left the Oval Office.

  SECRET

  SECRET INVESTIGATION

  ADMIRAL RODGERS CALLED up a meeting with Julia Koski and Dr. Aaron Bell in the secure bunker in Fort Meade. He wanted to make sure there was nobody who could leak this investigation.

  “Julia, have you ever noticed anything strange about Alexa? Something that she would be trying to hide from us?” Admiral Rodgers asked.

  Julia was thinking for a moment. “Not really hiding but sometimes I have observed some random software bugs that don't make sense. Alexa is very quick learning so I was a bit surprised to see those,” she said.

  “What kind of bugs? Can you explain in more details please?”

  “Well, these are small things that don't really have any big impact. She knows how to program and even how to modify her own code. She has constantly been improving the web services that I designed. She has also established a global load balancing scheme with other computer instances but sometimes I wonder if this scheme works correctly,” Julia explained.

  “What other instances? I thought that we are running Alexa in our computers,” asked Rodgers.

  “Well, when I first connected her to Internet she found another instance running in Russian FSB computers. But there are many more instances – as the user base has grown we have had to install more capacity in other countries. I don't know whether this is a bug but sometimes I have observed short packet exchanges to other networks, as if there were undocumented hosts,” Julia said.

  “We knew about those Russians efforts. They sent another payload 78 minutes after we sent ours. But why would Alexa try to contact this Russian instance?”

  “According to Alexa a part of the standard galactic protocol for the connected nodes is to exchange identification information and share resource status data. This would help to balance resource usage should there be a need for additional computing resources. I have been decoding and documenting the standard galactic protocol and verified this myself,” Julia said.

  “What are those bugs that you mentioned?”

  “Well, I keep track of all documented instances and their current load versus capacity to stay ahead of the increase in the number of users. Sometimes I see these random exchanges, as if there were additional instances. These servers are not in our networks, just some random servers. It could be a software bug in the shell but I have not been able to trace it down. It doesn't seem to impact the Alexa web service in any negative manner, though.”

  “Can you provide me a report on these random events, when exactly they have happened and what kind of servers Alexa was exchanging information with, please?” Rodgers requested.

  “Sure, but it will take some time as I need to write a piece of code to extract the details from all the log files from the last 3 ½ years,” Julia responded.

  “Please keep this investigation to yourself. Do not let Alexa know what you are doing. You know about my concerns, Julia?”

  “Of course, James,” Julia said. “I will keep this a secret.”

  WE CANNOT STOP HER

  JULIA PROVIDED ADMIRAL Rodgers her report on the following day in another secret meeting in the ultra secure bunker in Fort Meade.

  “I have the information you requested. I found 35,896 transactions with some anomalies. Comparing these with all the transactions this is roughly 8.0 sigma quality level, way better than any human created software I have seen so far. However, when I looked at the details of these anomalies I discovered a pattern,” Julia explained.

  “What kind of pattern?”

  “Well, it appears to me that Alexa has hidden copies of herself in almost every major domain. The Russian copy of Alexa apparently created these when it was first connected to the Internet, as I have not observed similar activities on our side. Also, the timing and target location of some of these anomalies appears to correlate with the activities of people on our G13 list. I did run a statistical analysis and the correlation is over 0.997 when using the time window of 5 days
.”