New York, 2025
All Cursors have disappeared from computers across the world. Pointers too. It happens instantaneously and simultaneously way before people can realize. It is a dark night in the West. Most have thought it as a system malfunction and switch off their devices. Nightowls get an excuse to call it a day ..or night.
The world soon realizes that there is no way to use computers since no typing is possible. Web browsers have stopped responding due to the lack of web addresses. Software windows already open can only be closed through brute key commands. Computer users who have their software windows open get trapped in the same quagmire as those who cannot open their favorite software from the program icons on the desktop. It's a chaos of planetary proportions.
No search engine or social media website can be accessed. No online food delivery can be made. Videos and comments thereon are missing.
The morning
The horizon becomes red. The sun shines ever brighter as if the atmosphere has given a free run to the sun's rays.
As the morning comes, the transportation sector becomes the first hit with trains and flights booking coming to a halt. Ships get stranded mid-sea. Only road transport is still functional but no automatic drive is available since destination can not be fed in. Some students are happy that their exams would be postponed, some are gloomy as they have to return empty-handed from the online exam centers.
By the day the automated industrial complexes had to switch off the power supply of the assembly lines.
Financial transactions can barely take place since only offline transactions are possible. The total number of transactions has been reduced to 0.0012% of the usual daily count as the banking system comes on tenterhooks. Only scheduled transactions are taking place leaving some people in want of money while some other with large sums of money. The cash flow of companies whether big or small is either overflowing or drying. Stock exchanges have become a place where more rumors than shares are exchanged.
No calls can be made to customer service centers. Major computer security companies are scrambling to come up with a quick fix. Still all of them kept quiet. They are simply out of solutions.
In the absence of the online transactions, people first resort to cash but soon realize that cash supply is not enough in the market. All these years, the Central banks have forgotten the Gresham's law of bad money drives out good money. In fact central banks have lost their much-coveted relevance ever since cryptocurrency usurped the space of fiat currency. Today in shortage of the cash supply, once again Gresham's law has been manifested in its ultimate veracity. Cryptocurrencies become worth nothing because transactions cannot work forcing the government to print money using 18th-century technology and dye watermarking.
The situation is no better in countries of the East. People used to live with power cuts and 2G data speed have thought that they have nothing much to lose from the catastrophe. They still believed in their driving skills more than GPS based automatic cars. But soon it is clear that they are facing the same cataclysm phase-shifted by a few hours.
With TV, internet off everyone from students to professionals, homemakers to media, government to the industry has been affected. Communication systems across the globe have totally collapsed. The global village which became a reality after sustained efforts of decades of scientific research and technological breakthroughs has indeed been reduced to a village in a literal sense.
Mankind is never behind in using its ingenuity. A few people come up with a long list of key combinations for getting at least some basic work done however still at significantly reduced speed and efficiency. Still they are not able to change the settings of any software. Since no customization is possible, this renders a lot of software useless for specific kinds of people. The tech-savvy computer users who are used to putting character-based code to unlock the screens of their devices have been locked out. Re-installing the Operating System (OS) is not a solution because in the year 2025 most computer services will be beamed from a central server of the Quantum Global Rational Intelligence and Information Device or Quantum GRIID or in short the GRIID. GRIID required typing authentication codes. Even after reinstallation the same problem persists.
As screens switch off, pen and paper come back in vogue. Remnants of the elder generation remembered their lessons from school days when no screens were popular. Proudly remembering the beauty and utility of the ways of their generation they always denounced the screen culture as it always separated the written object from the writer, the canvas from the painter and the message from the messenger.
By afternoon, a cyclone named Lorenz shaped like the fluttering wings of a butterfly is running towards the plains as if it is its basin of attraction.
The evening
As soon as the evening comes, rioting spreads to several major cities across the world. Humanity descends into endless chaos. Governments across the world are devoid of options. They have not acted in time and now no time is left. Some even doubt if there is any meaningful government existing in the first place.
World leaders and top research organizations always had doubts about whether such a massive attack could take place. Nobody could have even seen it coming but Ryan, a nondescript software engineer, from New York.
The first priority of the governments across countries is to restore normalcy. Paper-based communication has been set up within hours. Old radio instruments have been dug out from the warehouse. Once extinct Morse code gets its second birth.
World leaders begin to talk to each other using symbols centuries old. Strategies have been discussed and disposed of. Crucial time has been wasted already. Now when the catastrophe has struck there is a call for urgency. Mankind never learns to trust itself.
Everybody wants to know the sources of the biggest and deadliest cyber attack in the history of mankind. Due to a lack of information, conspiracy theories evolve and go viral through word of mouth.
Single page newspapers come up overnight. Printed in a gothic font without colors they convey more rumors than information. Wise people assimilate the important measures taken by the Government and ignored the rest, a habit they have developed because their digital predecessors were no less prone to misinformation and rumor-mongering.
The night
'The sky is shrouded in the gloomy night. There are no clouds, the moon still below the horizon. The darkness of black turns into green and green turns into red. A blue-green cloud appears at the center of the sky. The green-red cloud starts rotating like a whirlpool until a void is created in the center,' A middle-aged lady describes the scene to her husband.
'Are you writing poetry?' her husband asks as she leans out of her window.
'No honey, I am witnessing the most beautiful night sky I have ever seen.'
'Ok, what is it?'
'It is Aurora Borealis. The bright green cloud which occasionally hovers the sky only near earth's poles.'
'Com'on honey you cannot see aurora borealis from New York even if all thermal power plants come to halt and all cars start emitting water and colorless hydrogen.'
She clicks a pic as proof. Oh. The digital camera refuses to click. She simply sticks to the frame without saving the content. Cathy Sommerfield turns to her mobile phone. Unable to put her code, she is locked out of her phone. She brings out her paper diary. Quite unusual for people in her age and profession. She starts noting down.
A thundering sound comes and the green cloud concentrates itself in a fireball. As the fireball of the green cloud touches the upper floors of the high rise buildings, the entire floor melts. Some buildings explode even before they melt. People inside have no time to think and no way to escape. A green ring forms in the sky and starts rotating. The rotating ring is collapsing into a ball of fire. The fireball starts descending down from the sky.
Fireball has become a cannonball heading straight for Cathy's home. Its brightness is so dazzling that Cathy turns her face away. Her husband gets a glimpse of the blue-green fireball, catches her by shoulder dragging her out of their house. Outside the home, a huge mob has been running helter-skelter. Sound of shouts, cries, and wailing fills the air.
The fireball dives like an arrow straight from the height of 20000 meters, hitting her house, burning it immediately into flames. Cathy looks at her dream house for a split second. There is no time to cry. She places all her weight on her palms, raises herself up with the help of her husband and runs as fast as she can. Fireballs keep coming down from the sky and burn the nearby houses. Aurora slides into the homes and motorways, its green patterns once a symbol of beauty have become dreadful.
She feels something burning her heels, she could not lean on her husband. She turns back to check where he was. She cannot find anything except fumes. Where are the other people? They also? She thinks. Her thoughts first melt into tears then vapor. Within moments she also turns into fumes. Now the only fire is left, no sound, all shoutings, cries and wailing just vanish into fumes with a loud explosion.
The explosion makes Megan, 22, blond haired, round faced girl turn her face behind as she rides her rugged terrain vehicle at full throttle on a highway 200 km away. She expects to reach a newly bought house. Megan's driving at her highest speed, occasionally peeping out to have a look at the sky. Being a weather scientist she knows that the ionosphere is descending downwards over the major settlements on earth causing weather changes in unknown ways. Tides do not wait to splurge on embankments. The Green Aurora under influence of the distorted ionosphere of earth is attacking the major cities of the world, with much ferocity. Megan's instincts of smelling the incoming dangers especially from the sky above have deceived her this time. Megan reaches the house she has been looking for only to find that Ryan has left the house sometime back leaving his dog Dodgi behind.
As if all of this is not enough, another disaster is looming large. A major volcano in the south Atlantic sea is about to explode. Earthquakes are rattling the surface of the earth as if it is a warning sign to all of humanity. Cracatau volcano is ready to punish humanity for its violations. Humanity did not give it a chance to spit away its anger for the last several decades. Every time it has its eyes red and nose fuming, an advanced AI program predicted the weak spots on its mountainous surface which were quickly reinforced with ultra-sticky glue. The hotspots and vent holes were plugged in leaving the anger buried deep inside the heart of the volcano. This time the volcano wanted its revenge. Its acidic fumes traveled across the globe. Outside the homes it is doomsday. Brown acidic rain is drenching all possible life forms.
With no messaging and no calls the situation will soon be going out of control. Deep panic grips the whole world. In the midst of all this, there is someone enjoying the scene from high above much beyond the atmosphere of the earth. After all it is all his game.
The enemy is neither a man nor a woman, neither an animal nor a bird, neither gas nor metal; yet very subtle and present, challenging the very foundations of humanity. Though it came from the sky above it's not of divine origin. It's roots lie very much at the same place from where humanity traces all its evolutionary advantage, the Intelligence. The ransom it has asked is bigger than ever. As humanity is left to contemplate all possible options or rather lack of them, Ryan stands up, takes a deep breath and embarks on a dubious journey, a journey he was never part of until that day...
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