2021-11-04

Orange, a French ISP, was about to unveil a new model of STB¹ named after the main app I work on at my day job. Bouygues Télécom, another french ISP, was also about to unveil a new version of its Bbox. Me and two of my IRL friends were talking about those at a small store near my coworking space, and we were also looking at a map of the nearby Wi-Fi networks on our phones. One of the phones was an iPhone.

We logged into one of the nearby Wi-Fi networks and I used some credentials that were given to me by Stargate Command: sg420s as the username and I forgot the password. I remembered the username more because of the 420 than because it is related to Stargate, even though I am a fan of it. The avatar on that account was my face, but bald, with a darker skin color, and covered in tattoos like a Goa’uld.

I remember being at my parents’ home during dawn, sitting on the sofa in the living room while the blinds were almost completely shut but some bits of sunlight still could peek through them and light up the room a little bit. I was explaining to my mom the advantages of getting fiber, and in particular of getting a Bbox with fiber now before the new model enters the market because there already were issues with it. I mentioned a speed of 6 GB/s (in bytes, not bits) and 3 GB/s if this was divided evenly between the floors.

I then remember being in a basement, escaping from zombies. We were initially just talking about the new STBs and Wi-Fi stuff while looking at some old worn-out posters glued to the wall. The basement had concrete walls, concrete floor and concrete ceiling, and all the concrete was a bit dirty. It was lit up by neons, giving the gray concrete a blueish hue. We started to walk down a large hallway from the room we were in.

Along the wall on our right, a door opened and a zombie came out of it. I was starting to get really anxious but got confused as the zombie was just walking normally at our speed, as if it just belonged to our group. Then, it tries to grab my shoulder. I start running as fast as I can to reach one of my friends who had walked faster and went through a door at the end of the hallway.

The door leads to a staircase. I do not see my friend, and I can go both up and down, so I hesitate for a second then run downstairs. I go faster and faster, basically jumping down multiple steps at a time, and wonder if the zombie isn’t just glad that I’m going down since I am going further into the basement. I remember hearing during that whole sprint some electronic music.

The stairs continue into some sort of lit-up platform floating in a very dark room. The floor of that room cannot be seen. The platform has white metal handrails and portions of it are stairs. It seems to head towards another lit-up tunnel on the other side of the room. I keep on running.

In France, you can’t have your own router. Instead, you get what is known in America as an STB or Set-Top Box, known in France as just “a box”. French STBs are usually flexible enough that even for self-hosting you won’t need your own router.↩︎

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