The alarm blared at 8:55 AM, and I rolled out of bed just in time to pee, brush, splash some water on my face and dash to my office down the hall. My dot was green by 9:03 - safe. Weirdly, everyone else was either offline or orange; guess it is time for summer vacations after all. I checked my calendar to see only one scheduled meeting for the day. Excellent - this meant I could spend the day goofing off.
I picked up the laptop and charger, and set up shop in the living room, where the Xbox was. This way, I could both play as well as monitor any incoming pings. I thought about hopping on a multiplayer FPS, but instead decided that today would be a good day for a nice, single-player adventure. So, I picked a fun-looking action RPG from my backlog and got to work.
Around noon, I thought I might treat myself to takeout, but decided to just throw a Jamaican patty in the microwave instead. Inflation is crazy right now, so better to save money. After lunch, I checked Teams & Outlook, but no change - everybody was still either offline or away, and strangely, I received no emails. Usually by this time in the day, I would get pulled into at least two surprise meetings and get a few spam emails to sort through, but nothing happened.
My meeting time also came and went, but neither my manager nor any of the other participants showed up, nor did they respond to my messages. Whatever, I had some work to catch up on anyway, so I decided to take a couple of hours to wrap that up and then return to my game.
By the time I reached a stopping point, it was already 5:30. Once again I checked my work laptop, and there were no calls, no chats, & no emails. Thanking the gods for this blessing today, I continued my game until dinner time, at which point I once again resisted the call of takeout - go me. I heated up some leftovers and ate while a reality cooking show played in the background. After dinner, it was more video games, then off to bed after a nice, peaceful day.
The alarm blared again at 8:55 AM, and I rushed to get through my morning routine and in front of the laptop. Strangely, everyone was offline today, and still no new emails. I even tried calling my manager’s cell, but it just rang and rang. As I sat in the quiet, dark morning wondering what was going on, a realization dawned on me. Dark? It was supposed to be a perfectly sunny summer day.
I went outside, and could not believe my eyes. The sky was clear, not a cloud in sight, and the sun was out shining. Yet, everything was dimmer, as if someone turned down the brightness & contrast and added a gray filter that cast a deathly pallor over everything. Shivering even though it was 94° F, I went back inside. Something was horribly wrong. Had I seen or heard a single moving car at all yesterday?
I checked messenger - zero updates across any of my group chats since the day before yesterday. I checked reddit - no new posts. UberEats - no drivers available. I checked all my other accounts and frequent haunts - nothing, nothing, nothing. The next steps were calling my mom and sister. My sister’s phone was dead (typical), and my mom’s just rang on until it got to the beep.
Thoroughly freaking out, I tried to think things through. What did all of this mean, and what would I need to do to keep myself safe and learn the status of my family? First things first, I decided to take a trip to the grocery store for two reasons: A. I was hungry, and takeout was clearly not an option. & B. I had to see for myself whether or not my worst fears regarding the situation were true.