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Hello, dear reader!

Did you ever see one of those films where ‘modern’ technology takes on a life of its own and goes on some kind of killing spree?

I’m talking Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Christine, The Matrix, AI, Unfriended, and, of course, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace.

All these films along with countless books and T.V. shows deal with the theme. Are we too reliant on technology? Are we pushing it too far (I need to find a Chat GPT slasher. I’m sure it exists)? What happens when it all goes wrong?

This weekend—The weekend before Halloween (5: The Revenge of Michael Myers)—That question was finally answered.

In the interests of mental health and peace of your eternal soul, I should warn you that what follows is an ordeal beyond imagination. A tale of suffering without end. A tale fraught with a subtle, psychological horror that will stay with you long after you have closed down the laptop and gone to your bed.

You see, this weekend, the internet went down.

I know. I need a minute myself.

Manifest Destiny
The horror began on Friday night. Myself and the most marvellous Mrs (That’s Tina to you) were settling down, as we tend to on an evening, with some telly. We were just about to hit the last few episodes of Manifest (a generous 7/10: would not necessarily recommend), but Plusnet had other ideas.

If memory serves, we managed to get through most of what I think was the penultimate episode before the programme cut out to a message saying all was not well and the router started to flash orange (A far too cheerful colour for the circumstances in my opinion). A minute or two later, this flashing stopped, and eventually the router returned to its usual blue, signalling us to return to our scheduled programming and put the anomaly down to a glitch in the matrix.

How wrong we were.

What To Do?
The same issue continued to hit, in a seemingly random tempo, throughout all of Saturday, interrupting my delight in Leeds’ victory over Huddersfield Town (I missed 2 out of 4 goals), and continuing on to plague Tina’s car-crash amusement in the marital woes of people who definitely had not been hand picked to get married to complete strangers due to the ratings their ‘personalities’ might gain.

Not to worry, though, there were plenty of other things to do.

I mean, we could watch a fil…Ah, no. But wait, the Xbox, we could play…Nope, not that, either. Facebook? Youtube? The online Independent Cryptic Crossword (I don’t complete it, as a rule, but I like to give it a go)? Yeah, there’s an obvious issue there. Same for Football Manager (and no, it is not to blame for earlier issues). What about a spot of writing? You’re kidding me, I need to be online there, too. Is there anything I don’t need the internet for?

In the end, I settled for the unplugged delights of a book, and Tina did some painting and swore at the telly when the orange lights interrupted her viewing.

I Need Somebody

This obviously could not continue. Luckily, there was a solution. An online chatbot who would arrange for our connection to be tested and if necessary an actual human being sent out. We waited until all was clear, connectivity wise, took advantage of the window and sent the message HELP.

After being told a fault had been spotted (Duh!) the bot, who had a reassuring name I’ve forgotten, said that repairs would be undertaken, and we needed to do nothing. Sunday lunchtime, I was forced to send another HELP.

To cut a far too long story short, a man in a van turned up on Monday morning, between the promised hours of 8 and 1, tinkered with the phone line thingy, declared it a problem up the line, and headed out to a spot a few houses away to tinker some more. I don’t know what he did, and I don’t necessarily want to, but half an hour later he returned, checked wattage or ampage or something, and told us we needed a new cable end. Sadly he only had ethernet connectors, so the next best thing was to move the router to the hallway where the box was. I nodded, smiled, and instructed him to do just that. You could probably hear the whooshing sound as it all went over my head from the next town over.

Luckily, it seems to have done the trick.

I'm sorry Dave, I Can't Do That
I think my take-away from all this is a realisation of just what an effect the internet and its associated technology has on our day to day lives. As one of the generation who lived before this was the case, its sneaky ingress into our lives has become all-pervasive, to the point we don’t even think about it. We play, work, and consume media in ways previous generations wouldn’t be able to fathom, but we take it for granted. We assume it will be there. The question is, is this reliance a good thing or a bad thing? Do we need to learn to unplug?

Oh, and what, exactly, is the connection between Plusnet, and Skynet? Enquiring minds would very much like to know.

Until next time…

#

Hey, there! If you enjoyed reading any of the above, why not take a look at some of my published work? Below you’ll find links to a number of short stories I’m lucky enough to have included in anthologies. I’d love to know what you think


New Tales Of Old


Death Ship


Pestilence: Drabbles 1


Reaperman: Drabbles 3


The Musketeers Vs Cthulhu


Eldritch Investigations