Bo Waggoner, July 2018
PROTAG woke feeling rested, but confused. She had awoken without her 6:55am alarm -- the first time in months. As she sat up, she saw that the smart curtains hadn't yet been drawn back, as they automatically would be told to do at 6:45. But the light coming in around them was too bright.
Pulling her phone from its charging pad, she saw with a shock that it read 8:30am. Much too late! Shaking her head to clear it, she held up the phone and blinked painfully at the camera flash. "Unable to access face recognition database," her phone told her. That figured. "Reconnecting". If she didn't get going, she'd be late to the morning meeting.
Stumbling into the living room, PROTAG sniffed, noticing that the coffee maker had not come on at 8:10 as scheduled. She set her phone on the pairing pad and sat back in the armchair with the wireless keyboard, still blinking groggily. The TV screen lit up with her phone's background image: herself and coworkers on a hike in the Rockies. She typed in her passphrase only to see a popup dominating the screen. "UNABLE TO CONNECT."
Ok. This at least explained the failure of her alarm, window curtains, and coffee maker. The building's Internet connection was out (though the electricity and lights worked fine). But the smart home fiber package included a satellite backup, as did her phone. Hmm. She shook her head and dressed in a hurry.
* * * * * * * * * *
On her way out the door, PROTAG fished the house key out of its drawer and powered off the smart lock manually. (Good thing she'd delayed upgrading -- did the newer models even have a manual setting?) Settling into the backseat of her smart car, she snapped "take me to work", still fiddling with her phone's screen. But the car didn't move, instead saying, "Connecting. Please wait while we retrieve your route."
"Unbelievable," she muttered.
"I'm sorry. Can you repeat that?" her car asked. She ignored it. Was her car's satellite data provider the same as her house and phone? She couldn't remember. It must be. An entire telecom's network down -- this would cause havoc. And a lot of that havoc would come down at work, where customers would blame their smart devices. She'd better get in fast.
As she sat flummoxed for a moment, she saw a pickup coming slowly down the street with a rideshare taxi logo placard on top and, she realized, an actual steering wheel and human driver. Well, what the hell? She jumped out and waved one hand, a bit too wildly, trying to pull up the app with the other. The car slowed to a stop. "The system's down today," the man said as her phone directed her to recheck her connection. "I'm only taking cash."
PROTAG thought for a second. When was the last time she had used cash -- months? But possibly in the house. Yes, the upstairs desk drawer. A couple large bills "in case of emergency". She asked him to wait and fetched it. "Downtown, please."
"No problem."
The song changed seamlessly as they pulled away and she realized he had a phone -- no, a standalone mp3 player -- plugged in to the dashboard. Physically plugged in! Everybody normally streamed from an app these days. How old was this truck? It had a gas engine in it. The driver was navigating manually, without a maps app. She looked around but for a phone connection pad but didn't see one. She'd be at work soon enough. She realized, though, what else had been mising from her morning: notifications. Not one email, news item, or social media post. The disconnect was slightly eerie.
* * * * * * * * * *
But work wasn't open. The front doors were locked and not responding to her badge, the indicator light a steady red. Hmm. And no one in sight. As PROTAG turned, she saw CO-WORKER walking up from across the street, a bit disheveled. She lived two blocks away. "It's not opening," CO-WORKER said bluntly. "I've already tried. Went to get some coffee in the meantime, but BRAND A was still closed and BRAND B's payment system is down." The lack of coffee was clearly hitting CO-WORKER hard.
"Are they coming to fix the door? Did somebody call?" asked PROTAG.
"My connection's actually down," said CO-WORKER. "I was hoping someone else would call. Are you on BRAND C?"
"No, I'm on BRAND D. But my phone's down too." PROTAG paused. "Sounds like a big outage."
"Yeah," CO-WORKER said, tapping the door in frustration, "and that's a lot of angry customers on hold for tech support." They stood around waiting for something to happen, but the streets were quiet. Finally CO-WORKER said, "Well I'm starving and need some coffee. I'm sure the morning meeting is cancelled. Want to grab breakfast?"
"Sure, why not?"
They picked a street and started walking down it, laughing off their nervousness. (How long had it been since they'd traveled without phone directions? Neither could remember.) The first two diners were closed, as were BRAND E and BRAND F (national chains). Finally they found a hidden hole-in-the-wall and walked in.
"Cash only right now," said a man -- the chef? -- behind the counter. CO-WORKER looked like she was getting ready to be angry, but PROTAG came up with the change from the morning's rideshare (a blessing in disguise, she thought). They selected a table from a touchscreen, following the lighted path on the floor and sitting down. The rest of the place was empty as they ordered electronically and the same man arrived with their food.
"Wait," said CO-WORKER, looking up. "Your system is working." She pointed to the touchscreens. "But my phone couldn't connect over your wifi. Can you connect us? Our data connections are both down."
He smiled and shook his head. "Sorry, we're down too. The ordering system isn't Internet-connected. I coded it myself, actually." PROTAG was intrigued (if disappointed). Touchscreen ordering systems were typically contracted out to a big third party, who would put the system in very cheaply. The data collected on people's eating habits, especially when correlated with their credit card spending, more than paid for the hardware. "Hang on," said PROTAG. "Do you have a phone in here? Like, a landline?" She had wanted to check in on her mother after last weekend's surgery.
He chuckled. "We do, but it won't help ya. They switched over the landlines in this region to route via the Internet, three years ago now. Same as the TV. It's down." PROTAG's sense of unease increased and they ate quickly, walking up to the counter to hand him the money and get their change.
* * * * * * * * * *
Back at the office (which they found without getting lost), nothing had changed. Neither was surprised, as Internet had still not returned to their phones. "Look," said PROTAG, "we might as well take the day off. I think I'll go visit my mother and check in with her. Just for peace of mind."
CO-WORKER grinned nervously and said, "Sounds good. I should check my cat anyway -- her food dispenser's probably offline." She turned, then stopped. "Hang on. Could I, maybe, borrow some cash? I needed to get groceries on the way home, but if their credit systems are still down..."
"No problem," PROTAG cut her off, fished in her bag and handed over a few bills. "You can BRAND H me back electronically later."
CO-WORKER departed and PROTAG took a moment to get her bearings. No rideshares were in sight. Her mother lived about 5 miles away. Rent a bike? No, her phone app wouldn't be able to connect. She sighed and started walking. But after only a few minutes, another rideshare driver went by and she managed to wave him down. There followed a 10-minute frantic search through her phone for her mother's address -- apparently saved in the now-inaccessible cloud. Luckily, she found it in a text to the doctor's office; and more luckily, the driver knew the area by heart and took her straight there.
* * * * * * * * * *
At her mother's, PROTAG stood dumbfounded in front of the locked front door. The facial recognition system had failed -- Unable to Connect to Database -- and her next step would normally be to manually key in her name to the touchpad doorbell alert system. But the system was Downloading Updates - Please Wait. Knocking loudly had not produced an answer -- Mom was probably upstairs.
Soon a loud beeping came from inside and the door opened. "Saw you standing outside, but this visitor system's out of whack," her mother said. PROTAG stepped indoors to a flashing red light along with the beeping. "I didn't want to wait for them updates," her mother said over the sound, "so I just hit the fire alert. Door opened right up. Let me cancel it." She ambled over to the panel and thumbed it. The beeping stopped, but the light continued flashing. "It just says Cancelling," she said. "Well, it'll figure itself out."
They walked into the kitchen, trying to ignore the red light. "The Internet seems to be down," PROTAG said, "and work looked like it was closed, so I came over to see how you're doing."
Her mother grunted. "Can't complain, but I do feel a bit woozy. Say, did you bring a bite to eat? Haven't had breakfast."
"Woozy?" PROTAG asked. "What's your insulin indicator?" Her mother's surgery had implanted a wireless-enabled insulin dispenser. It allowed constant monitoring on a connected app and reported back to the doctor's office daily (and the insurance company).
"Won't connect," her mother said, holding up her phone. "Says Authenticating. Seems I ain't authentic enough." She chuckled, sitting down heavily. "And that food delivery you signed me up with, they didn't have nothing for me today. Darndest thing. Delivery man shows up with no delivery. I opens a window so we can hear each other, he says the shipment never showed up. Couldn't get on the line to corporate, doesn't know what's up. So he's just driving around delivering apologies."
"But do you have food in the house?" PROTAG asked, with a sinking feeling. She had cleaned out most of Mom's junk food herself when the latter was away at surgery. Doctor's orders.
"Oh, I got peas in the freezer and some of this n' that in the larder. But I've hardly grocery shopped since you signed me up for them deliveries. Wonderful service."
"Well, let's heat some up. We don't want your blood sugar dropping too low," PROTAG said briskly, trying to feel in control of the situation. Where was the nearest grocery store? She didn't know, and her phone's directions wouldn't work, but her Mom probably knew. It was probably walking distance. She had enough cash for at least two day's worth of groceries for the two of them. "Mom, do you have any cash in the house?"
"A fair bit," her Mom said. "Or at least, I used to. No, come to think of it, I spent most of it last month at that yard sale."
PROTAG wasn't really listening. "Why isn't your sink running?"
"Oh, that smart meter's on the fritz again. Can't reach the server for two minutes and it thinks I'm trying to steal water and shuts down. A Technician will be Arriving Shortly, heard that one before. I got a bottle or two of water in the fridge -- no BRAND I though, it's bad for my sugar. And if you gotta go, try to hold it till the plumbing's back."
PROTAG handed her mother a bowl of microwaved peas, feeling both thirsty and like she did have to go. Well, there was a river nearby and the stove was a manual model, right? They could always boil water. And one of her mother's neighbors probably knew how to bypass the smart meter for real, if it came to that. But she should really see about getting her mother a proper meal.
The time was 11:00am. PROTAG had been without Internet access for almost three hours.
* * * * * * * * * *
If you want the Internet to come back online NOW, click here.
If you want the Internet to come back online in ONE WEEK, click here.
If you want the Internet to never come back, also click the previous link.
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At that moment, PROTAG's phone buzzed. Then it buzzed again. The flashing red light stopped as notifications piled up. Things were ringing. Her mom's television had turned itself on. PROTAG walked her now-very-woozy mother to her smartcar (which now was able to navigate), through the sudden traffic jam, and to the hospital, where despite the massive queue, and with some help from the now-functional vending machines, everything turned out okay.
As far as could be ascertained, The Crash was simply an accident. PROTAG had explained it to her mother like planes at the airport. "You know how, if one plane is late, the others get backed up? Well, a bunch of planes were late. That's all." "Maybe they should have built more time in their schedule," her mother had replied. PROTAG said it wasn't that simple. No one company was to blame; they were all trying to optimize for profit over cost, and none of them was exactly in charge. Sometimes, PROTAG figured, accidents happen.
Her company went out of business, of course. People suddenly weren't so hot on smart devices, for a little while. But legal successfully argued that none of the damage or deaths -- alarms that failed, fires from ovens that failed to shut off, smart food, water, and medication dispensers that failed to restart, suffocation or entrapment behind doors that failed to receive proper authentication -- could be blamed on the devices themselves, which worked correctly. It was the The Crash, the Internet that was promised to be available but wasn't, that had failed those people. The same lawyers were retained by the smartcar companies for several high-profile cases.
There was a silver lining, though. PROTAG's equity deal with the company included assets, and these covered the data they had collected from their medical devices, smart homes, wearables, and so on. This data was quickly divided into shell companies, split and sold off to giants in the biotech and advertising space. PROTAG came out of the bankruptcy sitting on a small fortune, though legally restricted from telling anyone exactly how she got it.
She is now working on smart parachutes for the military.
I'm actually testing a prototype next week.
THE END
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By mid-day, the neighbor had been found and bypassed the smart meter for real. The neighbor also had quite a supply of food and was happy to share. PROTAG promised to BRAND H him back electronically as soon as the banking system came back online. PROTAG knew enough about the Internet to know that it could be fixed within a week, tops. In a week, they could probably throw out half the infrastructure and replace it entirely, if they had to. But a week went by, and still the credit cards didn't work, emails didn't send, phone calls didn't route. No news or communication, except for word of mouth, got through.
Electricity stopped too, soon enough, and public water. The main problem, though, was food. It's not hard to calculate. The city's people collectively needed X amount of food per day to survive. At the time of The Crash, the city had about 20X food in it total, most stored in grocery stores quickly ransacked. If no new food arrived, then after about 20 days, no matter how equitably the people redistributed their food, they would all begin to starve.
Of course, the countryside supplying that city produced on average a bit over X food per day. The invisible hand had grown that food in giant rows, called in supplies and water from far places, sent tractors up and down the rows to nourish it, had packaged it and shipped it to the city. But the hand's lifeblood was money, and the veins through which it flowed was the Internet. The Internet was down. Supplies stopped arriving. Self-driving tractors, harvesters, and delivery trucks stopped running. Human drivers were found for a few days, for cash, but cash was just paper after all, and they began finding it difficult to exchange for anything that could fill their bellies. And when supplies stopped arriving, the point quickly became moot.
So when the wheels of capitalism fell off, its citizens were more than capable of jumping off and pushing. The rows of food and tractors were here; the supplies were over there; and the city was right where it had been. But the lines of communication had been cut. The delicate symphony, so carefully conducted by an invisible hand only one day before, fell quickly into discord and then into silence.
Was The Crash malicious? Accidental? Nobody knew, and an investigation never took place. Millions of connected devices, made cheaply and programmed without security in mind, hacked in simple ways or simply overwhelmed, flooding the backbone with panicked messages. Routers, the oh-so vulnerable vertebrae, hacked or confused, unable to communicate, reduced to bricks. But why and how: who knows? As PROTAG would say, accidents happen. The manufacturers did end up avoiding all lawsuits.
PROTAG was right. It only took a week to bring the Internet back online -- to physically replace some of the routers, to re-flash the others with patched firmware, to manually block off IP ranges from compromised devices. But by the end of that week, the people who should have been doing those things were no longer interested, were busy trying to survive instead. The work that would put the entire world back on track couldn't provide them with cash, food, or water enough to complete it. The invisible hand no longer held carrot nor stick for them. Yes, it only took a week to fix the Internet -- but that week never happened. And about two weeks after it didn't, the city began to starve.
* * * * * * * * * *
And we have a joke these days, my wife and I. I get home from foraging, or visiting the village, and I ask her for a mango, and she pretends to take a picture of my face with her fingers and thumb. "Authenticating," she'll say, and I chuckle. Or when we're done weeding, sometimes, she'll ask if I want to go for a swim in the river, and I say, "Updating software. Fetching swim module." And we laugh. And sometimes I think of PROTAG, and her mother, and CO-WORKER, and all those people, and X amount of food per day, and phoning the mothership for permission to pee, and not being able to eat till the right numbers fly through the right wires, then of not being able to eat at all. I think of them and am filled with a regret I can't quite source for a mistake I can't quite place.
But I still laugh. I mean, it's funny. Right?
THE END