Humanity continued in their quest, to create ever faster systems, unlocking new and novel aspects of the universe to connect their machines together. Chips became smaller and smaller, until classical physics simply could not keep up with the demand placed on them.
Thus Earth entered the Quantum Computer Revolution and created a new internet, the Q-Net.
This heralded a new age of near light speed communication across the planet and at first all seemed… innocuous enough. Instantly everyone had access to near infinite storage that can be accessed to any system… the new age of the internet.
However something completely obvious was missed… something that Earth ‘should’ have figured could happen once the Q-Net reached a critical stage…
The Q-Net did as all Quantum based internet systems did and connected to ‘all’ other Quantum Internets… the ‘Universe Quantum Internet.
Suddenly, products from all around the universe could be ordered with ‘aliens’ somehow sending the item in what was considered ‘quantum teleportation’. This was not a science that humans had yet to understand or unravel, and it seemed that FTL was not a ‘thing’ either. There was access to intergalactic news, some kind of shared Universe style ‘you tube’ with all kinds of wonderful and interesting aliens that could be watched on computer screens… the possibilities were endless as humanity thought to reach out to them.
For the first time, humans were accessing an internet that they were not in control of… and worryingly, they could not shut it down or even track the users who tried to access it. The nature of quantum mechanics being applied to the entire internet meant everything was completely secret and completely un-blockable. As long as humans were using the Q-net, there was nothing stopping them from accessing the Universe-Omni-Web.
Some thought it might be best to abandon the Q-Net system, but it brought too many benefits… Of course, humans tried to set up accounts on various ‘alien message boards’ to talk to them… most were laughed and were promptly told to stop being ‘newbs’ (the least vulgar term) and were kicked out for spam. (Apparently it happened to various presidents who were trying to secure a treaty with them.) There were ‘etiquette demands’ on message boards that Earth fell short on, (though it was something that the youth had an instinctual awareness of and even experienced on Earth)
In fear of Alien Invasion, potentially resulting from an insult by a child in their parents basement, direct communication was banned by Earth Governments- not that some humans didn’t at least ‘try’ to understand them.
It seemed that the Q-net did provide a reasonable translation for most of the worlds on their system, but it wasn’t perfect. Earth was little more then ‘newbs’ to the Aliens who seemed to be laughing at the new planet trying to talk to them.
One of the more ‘friendly’ websites was termed ‘Alien Amazon’. Setting up an account was not too difficult, and apparently it was even possible to provide an item in exchange. The aliens who ran this system seemed okay with Earthlings ‘testing’ equipment and providing feedback.
Logos soon appeared of items being “Tested on Earth, Good reviews!” which was kind of like saying even a ‘child’ can use this system.
As for actual contact with the aliens… that didn’t seem to happen. The Aliens probably either didn’t see the point, or were content to just sell products on the Q-Net… Though some were considering to provide Earth with the means to create a ‘Space bridge’ of some sort for actual physical contact, but Earth had wised up that the aliens ‘might be trolling them’… so didn’t build it.
This worked out fine for the people of Earth… except when some of their products went a little awry…
