Ysolde leaned back, and relaxed, part of her consciousness monitoring the
large orange number in front of her, but most musing - she had nothing to do
for a while.

 Just ten minutes until the big moment, and she was on shift.  She was going
to be the one to actually activate the tel'aran'rhiod project - the world of
possibilities - the cumulation of over a hundred years of work.  It had
taken them almost five centuries to climb back up to the pre-Ragnarok levels
of technology, and they still didn't have a tenth of the population.

 And then the vision of the last of the great Scientists, the men and women
who had made such a quick recovery possible, had taken fifty years in
planning, and almost sixty in implementation.  It had grown to the extent
that the Tel'aran'rhiod Working Group - the TWG - was now one of the major
factions, for all that their intent was to unify rather than play politics;
politics was needed.

 Still the project would change that - the advances in communications alone
would be stunning, and the chance for people to meet on completely neutral
territory.  The challenge of being able to explore the possibilities should
unify some of the factions, and the horrors of what could have happened
bring the rest into line.  Ragnarok was NOT going to happen again.

 There would of course be people who would try and pervert tel'aran'rhiod to
their own ends, which is why these control stations were to be occupied at
all times - and why they had the heaviest stasis generators ever designed,
capable of protecting them from anything known if need be.  The stasis
generators were, of course, why each command post was run by four couples
and had a fully functional colony-support medical facility.

 Five minutes, mustn't get distracted.  Activate primary synchronisation
channels, set secondaries on standby.  Not that it would really matter if
she didn't do it - right now her actions would be being mirrored by Mykhl in
the secondary post and whoever was on duty in the orbital microwave beaming
station that provided the necessary power.  

 Only fifty years ago they'd be astounded to know that those who would
eventually turn the project on would be so young, but then the implant had
been developed almost two decades ago.

 Four minutes - power up secondary generators, not that they'd last long if
the microwave-receiver went out.  She, and most of her compatriots on the
control teams, had received the implant in infancy and had been trained in
the use of it in the prototype tel'aran'rhiods that they had had running for
the last thirty years.  Outside the system they had more control than the
strongest willed person inside.  Inside they had almost total mastery of the
world.  If anything went wrong then they would be the ones called upon to
fix it, possibly the only ones capable.  Taking the system down for repairs
would be unthinkable so everything would have to be done on the fly.

 Three minutes - initialise the link with the Fast Transport Network, or as
it was growing to be known; the Portal Stones.  The FTN was put in place
only months before the opening moves in Ragnarok - in fact some classed it
as the opening move of Ragnarok.  Some of the same technologies existed in
the project as in the FTN - and it would provide an easier interface to it,
as well as a control mechanism; so that armies and weapons of mass
destruction would never again be carried by it.

 Tel'aran'rhiod would span all possibilities, not just those reachable by the
Stones - the knowledge of p-space had grown that much in the last hundred
years.

 Two minutes - spin the storage media up.  Strange the way that terminology
lingers - all data would be stored in motionless devices, yet one still
referred to it as "spinning up".  The data, and the actual systems were
stored far away from the command centres, protected by the strongest force
fields buildable - they would carry on working even if a mountain was
dropped on them.

 Of course both command and operations centres had another line of defence,
the interiors would not be accessible from within tel'aran'rhiod itself -
except to those with active implants, who naturally had to be able to enter
the system from within those locations.

 One minute - start system boot-up.

 Ysolde's hands almost flickered over the keyboards, touchscreens and
holo-imagers as she entered the passwords, options and authorisations that
would be required to give everyone in the world access to tel'aran'rhiod. 
As she worked the bank of holo-tanks in front of her started powering up,
showing mainly scenes from the system's interpretations of major cities.

 As a result of lobbying from various factions tel'aran'rhiod would not give
an accurate up-to-date picture of the world - there was a high latency,
objects that stayed in one place for a long time would be a lot sharper than
transitory ones.  This was supposed to reduce the possibility of spying.

 10 seconds, and everything is running fine - just have to watch the system
finish its final checks.

 5 seconds.  Four.  Three.  Two.  One.

 Zero.  She knew instantly the system came up, the presence transmitted to
her via her implant was suddenly much larger, with more depth than could
really be thought of.  She supposed she would get used to it, but for the
moment.

 She flicked a switch on the console in front of her, and broadcast to TWP
installations everywhere:

 "Zero hour has arrived.  All systems checks are green."

 "Tel'aran'rhiod is online.  Repeat; the Project is up and running."