2027

Description

It’s 2027. Bramble, the world’s largest internet browser, practices covert censorship in collusion with large pharmaceuticals and uses increasingly pervasive ways of tracking online activity. Other browsers follow Bramble’s lead just to stay in the game. Hope, an immigrant from a small unnamed country, is Chief Information and Security Officer at Authentik UK, a company with a mission to use technology for good. One evening Hope gets a call from Jason from back home. His alternative health blog and others like it have been blocked under false pretexts and things are getting worse. After a restless night, Hope plucks up the courage to negotiate with her boss to return home to investigate for herself. The journey will not be an easy one. She will face intense opposition and overt attacks from Bramble and the misleadingly named Good Pharmaceuticals once they find out her plan to tap into her vast network of coders and designers from around the world to build a new browser that is safe and fair using open source technology – and her country is just the place to test it out. But it requires a unique strategy and there’s also a more personal challenge for Hope to overcome.

Biblical Connection

Nehemiah Chapters 1-5 tell the story of Nehemiah returning home to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. The fictional world of 2027 is a type of Jerusalem with its walls broken down. Authentic UK is a type of the king Artaxerxes, Hope is a type of Nehemiah, the opposers Sanballat, whose name means Bramble-bush, represents the Bramble browser and Tobiah, whose name paradoxically means the Lord is Good, is a type of Good Pharmaceuticals. The labourers on the wall are represented by Hope’s international network of coders and designers who have to defend themselves against the threats and open attacks of Bramble and Good Pharmaceuticals and there is much work to be done to encourage the local people to try the new browser and to keep it a secret for as long as possible. In the meantime Hope has to deal with the challenges of being a temporary returnee to the land she loves. Will they accept her? What would it be like to see some old faces again? The challenges Nehemiah/ Hope faced: false accusations, ridicule that it will not be strong enough, invitations to compromise and treachery from within all create wonderfully dramatic twists to the story of