When I was three, I remember coming home from nursery school one afternoon and excitedly telling my father about my huge, giant panacea (okay, I’m paraphrasing; I obviously didn’t use that word) to rid the world of all its social ills, misery, heartache, [insert depressive noun here].

So I explained my radical, completely original plan of having everybody be allocated jobs and paid the same wages. And that’s not all—everybody’s needs and wants with regards to material goods as well as entertainment ought to be drawn out and rationed to everyone, so that everyone gets a fair (read: the same) amount.

My father, kind as he is, couldn’t bear to tell me that I was a three-year-old Commie, so he just said that it wasn’t going to work, and, original as my suggestion was, kind of already had been tried out before and (here’s the kicker) failed. In fact, he said, democracy, voting, meritocracy and all that jazz weren’t too bad.

I was crushed. Whoever tried out their bang-up version of my plan in the past clearly didn’t do it right.

Fast forward to today: I was discussing my new online nation state at dinner, and J stopped me, right around the part where I gleefully explained how I banned Harry Potter (the lobbyists in the game said it was bad for freedom of speech—and I don’t want freedom of speech in my nation!).

“But…Why would you do that to a great book?” he said.
“Uh. ‘Cos it’s Satanic? Ha ha. Okay, ‘cos the people said it would give children too much to think about,” I replied.
“Like…Magic? Fantasy?”
“Yeah. They should be thinking about compulsory conscription, how to serve the nation well, how to make money and give it to the nation, how to get into the next tax bracket…”
“I don’t know you.”

And it seems this sudden* militant streak has overtaken me somewhat. Tonight, while I fixed up a simple WEP password lock for J’s router, which had never been secured before, probably due to a combination of technophobia and genuine, Apple-centric optimism and goodwill to Man, I realised how fast the connection had become after the router resetted itself and enforced the password.

“That means…Several people have been tapping on…And…I think we just kicked them off,” I said, eyes glinting.
“So what? We get pages to load faster?” he asked, stating the obvious.
“Yes, but that also means…We just kicked people off the network. We sent them packing. We walled up our fortress and blasted our bazookas right at their fannies.”

It takes the smallest things to make your night. But I’ll be darned if those freeloaders show up looking for bandwidth handouts again.

* It is debatable whether it is truly sudden or…Dormant.