WHEN SYSADMINS RULED THE EARTH by Cory Doctorow

It has been said that in the event of an all out nuclear war that the soul surviving species would be cockroaches. However, in this post-apocalyptic story humans survive.

See, in the advent of an attack, sysadmins from all over the world, connected to their mainframes and servers with alert protocols would be signaled, called back to their clean rooms with electromagnetic shields and filtered air. They would survive by chance because their wired-child’s cries would bring them running to see what is wrong, an upgrade needed, a hard shutdown and reboot, or a viral threat is about to invade the root.

What is the world like after? What will the world look like when the only humans left are those that would rather talk to a machine than another person? What kind of government would emerge? How will things ever get back to normal when the most important thing on a sysadmin’s mind is runtime and connectivity?

These questions and more are answered in this crazy story about a man who left his wife and child behind to nurture a machine.

This is an amazing story of human will and the urge to stay connected. You have to read it. So, here are three ways to find it:

Doctorow, Cory. “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth.” Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology. Ed. James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2007. p. 389 – 424

Or

Doctorow, Cory. “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth.” Overclocked. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2007. p. 5 – 56

Or

If you would rather listen to this story, Cory Doctorow has read it aloud as a podcast, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.