1999: A "2X21" Story About The 90s, The End of The Cold War, and Rise of The Internet
Another 30 Day Installment of the book in progress, "2X21"
I finished “1999” a few months ago, as part of a longer work.
I wrote “1999” over the course of 30 days, as an installment in a “Box of Stars”.
Each series is a novella in its own right, and “1999” is both a historical travelogue through the birth of the Internet, the fall of the USSR, and a science fiction arc for one of the book’s main characters, a war hero whose war has ended, leaving him lost.
"Box Of Stars", which used to be named “2X21” and “2921”, began as one essay.
In January 2021, I joined a writers group, for a 30 day series of daily essays.
On my third “cohort”, that was when “2X21” was born, a part history/mythology and part future story. The “X” stood for the unknown of 2021, after so much changed in so many ways from late 2018 forward in my family. I thought I was done for a moment, but I wanted to explore the backstories of the characters of “2X21"/”2921”. What followed was “1648”, “1961”, “1987”, and the one I’m describing in this piece, “1999”.
The entire “Box of Stars” series was finished with “1976”, which I’ll write about in a post after this one, and it all lives on “web3” platform Mirror - all 150+ chapters.
The series, from “2X21”, “1648”, “1961”, and “1987” are on Notion, with music playlists.
Here is the link to the first day of “1999’s” story, “One Network Falls, One Rises”.
The best place to see and read the whole “1999” series is in of all places, a twitter thread. It’s also on a 30 day Twitter thread.
The “1999” series is compiled only on Mirror, a new Web3 publishing platform.
“1999:The Great Decentralization
” will live on Mirror for awhile.
Due to Mirror’s formatting, there’s no simple and easy way to index all the relevant “chapters”, unless a standalone links page of each chapter is made.
One more “home” for the whole “Box of Stars” essays is on a links homepage at Tellie,
another web3 platform that supports “token gating”. The link is here and this image
Part 1 of the first chapter of “1999” begins with 1991 and the end of the Cold War.
The “Part 2” of the first chapter, the fiction part, begins in 2877 on Earth.
This series of “1999” focuses on a “secondary character” from “Box of Stars”, Jacob C. Big Jake” Tagore, Sr., a war hero who has lost his way in peacetime.
It’s an origin story for someone who helps lead characters, John Cadmus, and his remaining “son”, “Alep-H”, evade and later resist the powers-that-be in a post-war society, the "Triumvirate”, a post-war government made of AIs and humans.
“1999” was also my way of learning more about the end of the Cold War, the fall of the USSR, and the rise of the first version of the Internet. I wanted to explore the big historical themes which blossomed in the 1990s and changed the world order.
The fictional story arc of a war hero, who has to cope with the loss of a son, and the end of the “Long War”, was inspired by the end of the USSR and a long cold war. Even though peace is the one thing we want, when it comes after what seemed like a forever war, it might be as chaotic for those who learned to live with war for so long.
Anyway, I’'ll end it here, and update it later if possible. Moving on to a new post to describe “1976” and the end of the “2X21” series and the birth of “Box of Stars”.