Electrowave

The Beginning

Hello there, this is Hannes Malecki, but you can call me Honey. Everyone else does. Today, I have a story to tell you, a true story. I'm going to tell you about Welle: Erdball's adventures in a parallel universe, our escape from nuclear war, and give a warning to you. Gather round, and listen to the warning of Welle:Erdball. Listen to the true story of a world not too different to this one.

I could start off by telling you the complexities of parallel universes, or about a scientist so brilliant that by trying to improve things, he accidentally brought on the end of the world. But I'll start at the beginning, with the Electrowave. The Electrowave was first unveiled to the public on the 15th of November 2013. In this world nothing special happened on that day, it was just an ordinary day like any other. But in our world, our real world, it was the beginning of the end of everything. We just didn't know it yet.

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Mutually assured destruction was not enough anymore, people wanted stronger, faster weapons, more powerful. America had this now, with the unveiling of the new weapon. This weapon changed the power dynamic completely. No longer were countries who had mere nuclear weapons equal, as America could now eradicate them all with a single push of a button. But perhaps not for long. Scientists from all over the world were racing to replicate the Electrowave, and they were getting closer and closer each day. Whether this would improve the chances for peace or make war even more likely remained to be seen.

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Now, don't get me wrong, I love new technology, machinery is exciting, both old and new. The whizz and buzz of the computer, the emotionless value of machines, their reliability. That's one of the many things I like about computers. Predictability. Of course, errors can be made, or rather, the people programming the computers can make errors. Mistakes can be made, of course. Some machines shouldn't have been built at all. The Electrowave was one of those mistakes. At the time, the world leaders praised the Electrowave as a 'weapon for peace', whatever that highly contradictory statement meant. They told us it would bring about a new era of peace. But we knew better.

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A few days later we were sitting in our recording studio. We were there to discuss our music of course, but as always the conversation quickly turned to the new superweapon, and what everyone thought about it.

"We should make a protest against the Electrowave," Venus said as we sat around an Atari 500.

"Hasn't there already been enough protests? And Welle: Erdball isn't political, I've always said that," I replied, "Politics and music are two things that should never be mixed up. Of course, we don't support the nuclear destruction of the Earth... but... we should always try our best to remain neutral. Besides, the absolute worst thing we could do in a police state would be to criticize it."

"Right, ok then Honey," Alf said, disinterested, "Might as well get to work on the new album then...even though there might not be a world left to release it to once we're finished."

"Actually, that's a great idea!" Plastique said, turning to the Commodore 64 sitting in the corner, "Come on C64, let's forget about all this war business and make some music!"

The C64's screen flashed at them.

"No thanks," C64 said, "I would rather play games on the internet, leave me alone please."

Plastique just laughed at this.

"My," she said, "What a helpful computer you are."

"Yes," C64 replied, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm very busy."

"Why did we give you artificial intelligence again C64?" I asked as the Commodore computer proceeded to open up several browser windows filled with flash games.

"Because you had to," the computer answered, "Now, go away, Honey."

What an annoying computer. It hadn't always been like this. Back in the day when our computer was a genuine Commodore 64, one that worked peacefully alongside us, and didn't answer back when we wanted to do something with it. The government had done this to our precious computer. Now all we were left with was a poor imitation of a C64 that was constantly spying on us. And there was nothing we could do about it.