Wake

On the day the internet ended, Eliza was on a hike in the woods where she didn’t get service on her phone. She loved the wide trails that narrowed the deeper in the woods she went, ferns bordering both sides overflowing onto the narrow trail. Where the path was low and wet, there were low bridges that gave a dry place to walk. Eliza rarely had a day to herself and she’d planned this one for months. Slipping into the woods — even once a year, was such a salve for her regular hectic life.

She’d been in the woods for a couple of hours and was proud of the beautiful pictures she’d created with her phone. Even though the woods were rejuvenating, Eliza was feeling almost shaky at the thought of how long she’d gone since checking her social media accounts. She was checking her phone every 10 seconds as she got closer to the small parking area, knowing that there was a weak signal near her car.

Finally! One small promising bar became solid as Eliza came into the clearing where her car and one other was parked. She resisted, bolting for the car for warmth and rest. Inside the cocoon of her familiar car, Eliza turned the car on to warm it up and opened her favorite social media account, PHOTOROID at the same time. A notification appeared:

“You’re kidding,” Eliza said under her breath. So she tried FriendsFirst.

Same thing.

Naively, Eliza assumed it was just poor service, so far out in the middle of nowhere. She turned on the seat warmer and put the car in drive. She carefully backed off of the grassy turnaround, onto the barely-there “road” and slowly made her way down the gradual decline towards the paved road. Just as she reached the stop sign at the paved road, the notifications started pouring in, one ding after another.

“What the heck?” Eliza said aloud. She glanced at her phone — 37 texts! After checking that no one was behind her, as unlikely as that was, Eliza put her car in park at the stop sign.

Now Eliza was completely baffled. Text after text was from one panicking friend or another asking if she was having trouble with various sites or maybe all of the internet? Eliza sighed and rolled her eyes. Was she the only one who was tech savvy in her social circle? The internet doesn’t just stop working.

Eliza glanced in her rearview mirror. Still no one. She yanked the car into drive, glanced both ways briefly, and pulled onto the pockmarked pavement that sufficed as a legitimate road out here. She flew down the washboard road, jarring every bone in her body, but seeing no other evidence of a living soul.

Forty minutes later, just inside her front door, with her thumb frantically sliding the screen over her smartphone, this way and that Eliza realized it wasn’t just her tech-idiot friends … the internet really did seem to have disappeared. She looked up from her phone, dazed and unsure what to do with herself.

She wandered back out of her pristine new home, with the perfectly color contrasted front door, and walked down the short brick, custom laid driveway. Her neighbors had gathered on the street of her planned neighborhood. She didn’t know any of their names, but she recognized them, gathered on the quiet street.

Eliza moved towards the cluster of people.

“What going on?” she asked as she approached a blond woman wearing sunglasses and a black tshirt that said “Black Lives Matter”.

“I don’t know,” she responded, her forehead creased with worry, “no one seems to know.”

“Has anyone called the service provider?” a man with wild black curly hair asked to no one in particular.

“I don’t think it’s just us,” a petite young woman replied, a toddler perched on her hip. “My mom called and said she doesn’t have internet either. She was confused and thought she needed to restart her modem or something. But if we don’t have it either …” her voice trailed off.

“My sister is a professor at Greendale and the entire campus is down,” a 5o-something woman in a business suit shared, her partner nodding in agreement, her arm wrapped around the business suit.

That’s when Eliza started noticing children, all school aged, started coming to the front doors that had been left ajar, and squinting out into the street.

“Moooom!” a lanky prepubescent boy with jet black hair and an oversized hoodie called out hesitantly.

“I’m right here, Jax” came the call back from someone in the cluster on the street with Eliza.

“What’s going on?” Jax asked. “I can’t get my game system to load.”

“Me either!” a girl who seemed about the same age called from the neighboring house. Soon all of the children where echoing their agreement.

“Raven?” Jax called above the din to the girl. “Raven Smith? From Ms. Johnson’s class?” He seemed truly shocked.

“Hi, Jax!” Raven called back with more confidence.

And then as if by some magnetic pull, the children emerged from their homes and formed a ball of energy in Jax’s driveway. And magically, without Eliza even seeing how, bikes and chalk and dogs were suddenly among the children. Three girls with pigtails were racing their bikes up the street and around the cluster of grownups still gathered on the blacktop. Seven children ranging in age from those that had just learned to tie their shoelaces to those who had just learned to drive were running around in some sort of game that appeared to be a cross between hide and seek and duck-duck-goose. Two boys and three girls, all with mushy hair and gangling arms and legs that weren’t quite in proportion, were beginning a chalk creation that appeared to be in the planning stages and would span the road.

Awestruck, Eliza just kept thinking: is this what life is like without the internet?