The third great war was not fought on battlefields, where soldiers were subject to the whims of nature and changes in terrain that could mean the difference between going home warm or cold. There were no guns or bombs, no casualties or deaths. There were no real soldiers even. Many didn’t believe the severity of it, brushing us off as children, simply young people who couldn’t stand to work for things or pay for things like they had to when they were our age. But it was a war, and it was one unlike anything we had seen before.

It was a fight for freedom. Freedom of self, freedom for communication, knowledge and connection. It was war for experience. A war for art - something that had been stripped away from us many years ago and it wasn’t until now that we had any means of getting it back. Something we always thought had to be bought, never once realizing that it, like us, had a burning desire to share and be shared.

For so long we were told to be seen, not heard. Even when they pretended this wasn’t the case, we all knew it was. Even as adults this was the policy. ‘Keep out of harms way. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’ And we sat and waited and listened, keeping to ourselves, talking to each other because we knew no one else would listen. But then, we were heard.

It started in our pockets and it was fought in our basements. Through phones and cameras and messages passed in CAPTCHA. The QR codes on the bottoms of our coffee cups went ignored by those not privy, but became invaluable to us as we started disappearing, thrown away for unfair use and unlawful distribution.

Sometimes we wondered if it was worth it, if what they were saying was true and we should just get jobs. Become part of the machine that we had been fighting against for what felt like ages. And then we would hear stories, see on the news the case of yet another enemy falling, of another white flag being raised. And our confidence grew and we went back to our maps and our CD collections, back to code and to this secret war we were all fighting after school or work or sex or vacations.

The world did not end with fire and brimstone. A thunderstorm of blood, the mouths of dragons or people vanishing in to the sky. It ended with the death rattle of a server, a cry of pain from the people controlling the strings of the people controlling those we thought had power.

And then it began anew.