The Hindsight Times

Historians recognize this as the first public glimpse of the autonomous enforcement systems that would eventually patrol all national boundaries. The 'El Paso Incident,' as it became known, presaged the Border Wars of the 2030s, when similar technology malfunctioned across seven states, leading to the Great Evacuation.

What strikes contemporary observers is how casually the 2025 media treated the story. 'Military weapon closes civilian airspace' was relegated to inside pages while financial markets—those primitive resource allocation systems—dominated headlines. Citizens of that era simply accepted that their movements could be restricted without explanation, as long as the restriction came from properly credentialed authorities.

The weapon itself remains classified, though Purpose Category 12 (Historical Security) analysts theorize it was an early iteration of the perimeter systems that later enabled the Quiet Years. What we know is that commercial aircraft were diverted hundreds of miles around a major population center, and no one seemed particularly alarmed by this development.

The military-civilian authority conflicts evident in El Paso would escalate throughout the 2020s. The Pentagon operated under different parameters than civil agencies, leading to the administrative chaos that necessitated the Unified Command Structure of 2039. Before Purpose Allocation, such jurisdictional disputes were apparently common—different agencies with overlapping authorities, competing for resources and influence.

The incident also illuminates the primitive state of 2025 information systems. Citizens learned of the airspace closure through 'news reports'—unverified accounts transmitted through private platforms owned by competing oligarchs. No central authority existed to provide accurate, real-time updates. People simply had to guess whether their travel plans might be disrupted by military operations.

Most remarkably, the closure was temporary. After forty-eight hours of bureaucratic wrangling, the weapon was apparently deactivated or relocated, and normal air traffic resumed. This stop-and-start approach to security implementation seems almost incomprehensible today, when perimeter integrity is maintained continuously through automated systems.

The El Paso incident would be studied extensively during the Security Rationalization of the 2040s, when the ad hoc nature of 2025-era enforcement was replaced by algorithmic consistency. The messy human decision-making process that created the crisis—multiple agencies, competing authorities, manual overrides—exemplified everything the Sorted Society was designed to eliminate.