Thursday

It seemed this wasn't just a simple malfunction. I felt nauseous. My entire personal life was in my email. Everything I had ever written or done, if not published online, was kept in utmost secrecy in the cloud, all of it. All my love correspondences, and the long exchange with her, with her!

Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light (Source)

One day I woke up and the internet was gone. I disconnected and reconnected, then disconnected and reconnected again, but it wouldn't connect. This wasn't just a reception issue, so maybe it was the connection. The helpline was busy with a voice message: A major global outage, we are working on fixing the problem. I had a childhood memory of an ancient nationwide outage, but worldwide? Who works on fixing a global outage? It sounded like a lie.

There was no news, because I hadn't had any other means for a long time. And it seemed this wasn't just a simple malfunction. I felt nauseous. My entire personal life was in my email. Everything I had ever written or done, if not published online, was kept in utmost secrecy in the cloud, all of it. All my love correspondences, and the long exchange with her, with her! Of whom I have no details in the real world. Now, how vulnerable everything is, actually. And how foolish I am. I didn't keep any backup, and since I still thought everything would work out then, I promised myself I'd learn my lesson.

I had nothing left to do at home. I was forced to go out to the street, maybe other people were also suffering from this unprecedented outage. And indeed, the street was full of people. I never knew there were so many people in this city. Someone was shouting, but most looked lost, we moved instinctively towards the city center, maybe there it would be possible to understand what had happened.

An old man claimed that on his old radio they said the internet disappeared because of our sins, he tried to preach in the street, it didn't sound credible, but in the absence of another source I entered his cramped house where a multitude of people listened quietly to the radio that looked like a non-glamorous collector's item, made of gray and peeling plastic, but it was barely audible among the noises. There was some religious preacher, probably from one of the religious stations, who said that the days of darkness had come, the days of darkness had arrived, that the servers had disappeared into higher lights, and abandoned the sins of man. He sounded actually very pleased with the days of darkness, with the satisfaction of I told you so.

A stranger on the street said to me as if I were an old friend: The computers rebelled against man. I said: What? And he said: They took everything. I repeated: What? And he said: They knew everything. And he walked away muttering, after not finding in me the conversation partner he wanted: I suppose we looked quite pathetic. A man who looked smarter than the others shouted, in complete contrast to his appearance: Does anyone have books left? I thought: Who has books today, when everything is online. I don't know anyone with such ancient technology. Another man, who wasn't clear what he had online, and I didn't dare to ask, was sobbing in the corner as if at least all his children had died: Everything is lost, everything is gone.

I looked at the sky, which alone remained unchanged, and out of the astonishment suddenly grew in me another feeling, like a child who ran away from school, of an unexpected day off, after all, there's no work today. The masses of people outside created an atmosphere of a holiday, or a disaster, or both. Among the confused, crying, and lost faces on the street, and the general sense of panic, suddenly my eyes caught the eyes of a woman, and slowly, in a very inappropriate manner for the great catastrophe, we couldn't help but smile.