Megacorps organize and finance the Reconstruction, managing to extort special privileges and extraterritoriality from governments. Across the globe, the middle-classes now trust corporations and clans (intercontinentals) 2-to-1 over governments.

Protocol implements treaties establishing Freeholds, Franchises and Estates as legal jurisdictions.

The global network-of-networks is rebuilt form the ground up utilizing hardened self-organizing (auto-poeitic) hardware and special genetic algorithms. The final form resembles the human immune system, with major arteries, free-floating antibodies, porous and semi-porous membranes and other features. The resilience of the new webwork is said to make another Netcrash impossible.

The American States of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nebraska, N & S Dakota, Nevada, Wyoming, and Idaho declare themselves freeholds and estate zones, becoming practically autonomous. Land is franchised or sold to thousands of corps and clans.

American government enlists the aid of rural Peace Militias to restore order in large cities. The resulting 'redneck rampage' causes such bloodshed that many cities declare themselves freeholds to escape Federal jurisdiction.

Pentagon establishment is purged and many generals are convicted of war-crimes in Asia. It later becomes known that President Haldeman engineered most of the trials to destroy his opponents within the US Armed Forces.

European Union fractures into conurbation city-states such as Provence, Barcelona, Milan and Ruhr. These regions join together to form the European Conference, the third pillar of the EU. The new EC becomes the Senate for Europe, with Senators elected to represent contiguous ethnic regions.

Organ vats and illegal genegineering labs develop in free zones such as Pusan, Sicily and Seattle.

New plastics and alloys allow for the development of simple cyber/bio-implants in people. Initial reaction is muted, as most people begin to fear biological innovations of any kind.

Japan closes its borders to foreigners and retrenches into an isolationist paranoia. Most Japanese multinationals 'emigrate' to new homelands in Asia and America.

An underground cipherpunk network called Undernet quickly transforms into the world's most secure illegal information channel, providing samizdata to subversive activists and criminal syndicates alike. Working in cell-structures, untraceable distributed networks, and state-of-the-art encryption, Undernet is impossible to infiltrate or eliminate.

In America, the Apparatus helps President Haldeman squash congressional opposition. The Directory, a secret shadow cabinet of Haldeman's friends, begins to control several government departments. Congressional powers are slowly weakened as power accumulates with the Executive.