The Day The Internet Died

It still wasn’t back.

As Alex walked through the school halls, she could feel the outward projected misery around her. It seemed like the entire school was reeling from a great loss. All around, people were trading stories of their own home experiences.

“Yea, our Wi-Fi didn’t work either! And neither did the TV! My Dad was absolutely pissed that he missed football.”

“Who cares about your Dad and football! Joshua and I were supposed to go on our third date last night but I couldn’t even text him to find out where!”

Now that sounds traumatic. Alex walked by several pockets of similar conversations. It seemed the outage was the only thing anyone was capable of thinking about. Even Katie was noticeably on edge.

“My God Alex when I got home last night my parents were freaking out.”

“Did they think you were a helpless kidnapped child?”

“No! They didn’t even care about me! They were too concerned with how they were going to report in for work tomorrow.”

“Ouch.”

Katie, disappointed that she hadn’t been heralded as the helpless kidnapped child, shifted the conversation. “What about you? What did you do after I left? Don’t you usually spend like all night online?”

Alex thought about the night before. About how she had woken up every few hours just to check if it had come back on. “Yea… it was, not very fun.” Habitually, she pulled out her phone again, only to be reminded that it still had no service.

—

On their way home, Katie stopped for gas, only to find that all the pumps were now cash only. They went inside to ask the clerk.

Katie approached the counter, with Alex trailing slightly behind. “Excuse me, it won’t take my card.”

“Sorry gals, cards don’t work with the internet being down. Cash only.”

Katie let out an overly dramatic sigh, before reaching into her purse to try to scrounge up some bills. “Cash only… who even carries cash anymore… I don’t even think I have… Oh! Ugh.” Katie had only been able to find one $5 bill. “Well, I guess I’d like $5 of gas please!”

Alex stood back, observing the conversation. Cash only… So is everywhere like this? She looked in her own wallet and found only disappointment.

—

When Alex arrived home, she found Sonya slumped on the couch, hospital scrubs still on. On the table sat a half-eaten bowl of microwavable mac and cheese and a newspaper.

Sonya perked up seeing Alex come through the door. “Alex! Welcome home.”

“Hey.”

“You won’t believe what happened last night. I showed up to the hospital, and the ENTIRE network was down! We couldn’t access any of the patient records, and all night they had us running around, trying to find the paper files. I didn’t even know we had paper files!”

Alex mumbled something under her breath as she walked into the kitchen to grab a drink from the fridge.

Sonya swiveled on the couch to face Alex’s direction, and continued, “You know, you didn’t tell me yesterday that everything was out.”

Alex came out of the kitchen, juice box in hand. “I thought you knew.”

Sonya deflated. The fatigue was visible across her face. “Alex…” Sonya turned back and grabbed the newspaper off the coffee table. “Anyways, one of the doctors coming in for the morning shift brought this in. He let me snag it off him since he was done with it.

Figures. We are a family of handouts now. Alex grabbed the newspaper from Sonya, and looked down at the front page.

—

SERVICE DOWN ACROSS ENTIRE COUNTY

Across the entire county, all telephone, internet, and cable services are down. As all networks continue to be inoperable, WNYB News has been unable to reach outside county borders to assess the full scale of the outage. Members of our Frontline Team personally drove out to Telecom’s city branch building to request a comment, but as of publishing no comment has been given. It is our hope though that Telecom will be able to provide a statement shortly. By then, other Frontline members should be back from neighboring counties to see if this is a larger-scale issue…

—

“Wow,” is all Alex managed to get out.

“I know right. Anyways…” Sonya paused briefly before continuing, “Because of all the pandemonium they need me to come in again for another shift tonight.”

“You usually have Tuesdays off.”

Sonya sighed. “I know. But with all THIS,” she emphatically waved her hands in the air, “it’s different. If they can’t get stuff back online soon I think we’re going to be in big trouble. They need all the help they can get.

Alex stared at Sonya before turning around to head to her room. “Okay,” is all she responded.

As soon as Alex closed the door, she fell face-first onto her bed. Turning over, she glanced at the blank computer monitor mocking her from her desk before pulling out her phone. Still no service. Still nothing. She sat up and walked over to her computer to begin a cycle of increasingly frantic clicking that she already knew wouldn’t give her the results she wanted. After a while, she crashed back into her chair and let out a grunt of frustration. What is going on! How is it still not back yet?! What could possibly have happened? Why did it have to go out now? Now, of all times!

Alex’s frustration soon gave way to anguish. That night, after Sonya had left for work, Alex sat on the couch eating her second bowl of microwavable mac and cheese, staring at the blank TV screen in front of her. Things wouldn’t be like this if Mom and Dad were here.