The sky above New Dover was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel. Its server farms, the “blue birds”, rose over the channel, along the white cliffs. Stuff flowed through the port as never before, at the speed of light; the only barriers the latency of the cables, the only restrictions the laws of thermodynamics. Little England was a network node, a client, a server. Some had thought they’d flock to a European Singapore. They hadn’t come. They didn’t need homes. They just needed clear networks. New Dover, like Little England, was built around a shiny, frictionless architecture.
The sky above New Dover was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel. The queues of lorries had long gone now. Gridlock was a thing of the past. The extra customs and police were off on other zero-hours contracts now. The old port still bore the scars of the ‘disturbances’ but the country had settled back as its famous phlegmatic culture demanded.
There was a new England, a new Little England as brand. Little England as a superpower; a new superpower; a new sort of trading superpower.
Dover’s shiny server farms and cooling towers rose over the channel. The cables and microwave towers or “blue birds” as they had been called lined up along the white cliffs and up the M20 towards London. Stuff flowed through the old port as never before, at the speed of light across the channel and across Little England; the only barriers the latency of the cables, the only restrictions the laws of thermodynamics as the Company fought to cool the port and ports.
Digital trade flowed backwards and forwards through Dover, fanning out across Little England, circulating, routing, never resting in any one jurisdiction.
Little England, far from being isolated, independent and alone as some had feared (or hoped) was now a more integrated part of a trading bloc than it had ever been. No longer an island it was a node in a network, a client, a server.
Some had thought they’d flock to a European Singapore, that the post-Brexit regime would provide a naural home for a corporation demanding freedom, independence and flexibility. Some saw them becoming English. They hadn’t come. They didn’t need to. They didn’t need homes. They just needed clear networks.
New Dover, like Little England itself, was built around a shiny, frictionless architecture.