Glitch in Society

I was relatively certain it was the morning for two reasons. First, there was the aches of my joints from sleeping in one position all night. Followed by the distinct bitter taste that mornings typically left in my mouth. It had to be morning, but my CORE display said otherwise. I blinked a few times in rapid succession, but the world that stretched out before me was nothing more than a black void. Immediately, I started to panic. The worst case scenario: being suffocated by darkness forever, became a clearer and clearer stroke of reality as the seconds dragged on. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. “It was simply a minor bug or glitch in the system.” I reassured myself. As with all programs CORE was not immune to technical difficulties. I knew that first hand as one of their lead systems programmers. Suddenly, a light out of the dark, a pop up wrapped around my display that read: SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. SERVERS WILL BE ONLINE SHORTLY. I breathed a sigh of relief and fell back into the comforting embrace of my covers. I was grateful to get at least another half hour of sleep in before the day finished loading.

I could not tell you why I worried so much. On countless occasions my coworkers suggested I get a reprogramming, but personally I liked to hold on to that piece of my humanity. What they deemed as “faulty wiring” was what I viewed as my imperfect asset. As any programmer will tell you, writing code was like speaking a language. It took a precise and calculated tongue to persuade a computer. My “faulty wiring” ensured that I took every possibility into careful consideration, and as a result the conversation always went smoothly.

I passed through the massive double doors of CORE inc. into a giant lobby. I remembered my first time stepping through those doors. I felt so small in comparison to the impressive columns that soared skyward to the untouchable ceiling. Even back then CORE’s ground floor had been a bustling ecosystem. Employees traveled in large colonies, splitting off into smaller groups down hallways before filing one by one into the elevators and being whisked away to their departments. As a few of the colonies broke away I managed to catch a glimpse of myself in the newly polished marble floor. My jawline and chin stood out to me immediately as too sharp. Quickly I pulled up the notes application on my display and scrawled down to schedule an appointment for a facial reconstruction. I figured it was probably past due anyway.

As I approached the elevator my display bubbled up with a few hundred gracious smiley emoticons and “good morning” messages. Regardless of not being the most social of butterflies I even had to admit that the communications team had outdone themselves with the latest update. On top of the addition of about 100 new (highly requested) emoticons, you now had the ability to send mass messages in an even wider radius than ever before. It was much more convenient for someone in my position to send out one mass greeting to the whole building, instead of feeling guilt-tripped into an awkward hello to every wide eyed secretary and intern I passed.

The elevator opened up on to a wide stretch of hallway which ended abruptly at a single set of glass doors. Lining the walls were large letters that spelled out MAJOR SYSTEMS in CORE’s iconic font. Every morning I triumphantly strode past those letters feeling as though they announced my arrival into my domain. With both hands I pushed away the glass doors, splitting the tides as I cleared a path for myself.

My presence had been ultimately ignored as I looked out over a sea of faces that remained glued to screens. My stomach began to churn, something was definitely wrong. No one at CORE ever took their job this seriously. Just then Lilah’s head bobbed up from her monitor and she waved me over.

Making sure to first adjust my voice modifier to erase any traces of unease in my tone, I asked, “What is going on?”

Lilah couldn’t stop nervously brushing the curls away from her face as she replied, “Sir there has been a malfunction in all of CORE’s major systems.”

“A malfunction..” I repeated in disbelief. “In all major systems…” My brain started to go through each department by floor: CORE Home devices, CORE transportation, CORE Social, CORE Lifestyle, CORE Health..

“Yes. You heard me right.” Lilah confirmed. “We have already managed to identify the source.”

“What is it?”

“A virus.”

I could feel the familiar grip of anxiety start to tighten around my chest. I felt sick,

like the air around me had been hiked up to about 400 degrees. In one hard audible gulp I pushed everything down that threatened productivity and started barking orders for diagnostics and reports and for my sanity, a CORE coffee.

//Playback from 8:27 am//

User: Joshua S.

Joshua gripped the wheel so tight he could feel his fingers going numb. At the top of his lungs he screamed over and over at his CORE dashboard. “CORE switch to manual drive!” Each time he was met with the same emotionless reply from the dashboard, “Invalid Request. Please try again.” He couldn’t help but feel like the dashboard was mocking him. The humanoid voice replied to him with the authenticated pleasantness of a community service representative. No urgency, and all fake concern. Joshua looked down at the speedometer, his car was approaching 80. The trees accompanying each side of the road were passing by in wild streaks of green. The road, one constant stripe of black, was hungrily gobbled up under the front windshield as the car covered more and more distance. He slammed his foot into the brake and slammed his fists into the wheel. His arms and legs flailed around, wildly kicking and punching in all directions in one last desperate effort to make it stop. Any onlooker with the ability to look in would have come to the conclusion that the man was exhibiting a full scale temper tantrum.

Joshua slumped back in his seat huffing and panting. His arms were so tired he felt like they might actually fall off, and his head split open by a piercing headache. A flash of a road sign through the passenger window indicated the approach of the highway, coming up fast. Quite literally the end of the road Joshua thought to himself. He would inevitably barrel onto the highway and collide with the first car that didn’t see him coming. No, no that wasn’t how his life was going to end. He wasn’t actually about to let a computer get the best of him, was he? His hands clenched into fists and with every ounce of strength he had left he punched the dashboard monitor. The screen beamed bright red in defiance and started screeching, “Error: System Damaged.”

Blow after blow the screen started to rippled with a web of cracks. He beat it until his hands were bloody and prickled with shards of glass, and the monitor finally went silent. The car slowed and veered off the road at the turn.

//End of Playback//

Lilah closed the playback window. “There have been several other instances just

like that with our other CORE vehicles.” she said.

“Has anyone died?”

“Only some major injuries, but nothing fatal has been reported yet.”

“First, wipe these transmissions from the servers. We cannot afford to let any-” I paused to think of the appropriate word, “-restless parties see that kind of structural integrity to our systems.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Then temporarily disable all CORE transportation until we figure this out.” I ordered scratching my throat.

//Playback from 1:09 pm//

User: Taylor J.

Taylor knelt by her mother’s hospital bed. Outside of their room the hospital whirled into a tornado of doctors and nurses frantically rushing up and down the hallways. The exhausted screech of gurney wheels echoing down the halls joined the cries of patients from their beds. Over everything the words “Offline” and “Failure” rang clear. But there in her mother’s room, besides the slow beeping of a heart monitor there was a quiet ambience. Taylor laced her fingers into her mothers hand. “Mama..”she started.

Her mother’s eyes entranced her own. They were soft and comforting. Her mother could always say so much with just her eyes. Taylor turned away quickly to wipe away a tear. “Mama I tried to get here as fast as I could. They told me everything was shut down and-” She stopped herself before tracing another thought. “I didn’t think they would be down this long and I wanted to be here with you.”

Interrupting them a nurse stepped into the doorway.

“Why isn’t CORE back?” Taylor demanded jumping up before the nurse could mutter a single word. Her eyes started to well up with tears. “My mother is dying!” she cried.

“I am sorry Ms. Thompson but we are doing everything we can with our limited resources.” the nurse replied shakily, clutching her clipboard tight to her chest.

“There has to be back ups right?”

“I’m afraid not. CORE found that the best model for integration was to be the sole trusted comprehensive system.” The nurse had practically regurgitated it from the CORE mission statement and spat it at Taylor.

Before Taylor could scream back at the nurse she felt a tug at her hand. Taylor waved away the nurse with disgust and brought her attention back to her mother. She coughed a thick and violent cough that made her body jerk in her bed. Taylor tightened her grip. With her free hand her mother reached out and touched her face. Her fingertips brushed faintly over Taylor’s cheek and then over the heart locket around her neck. She had given it to her for her 4th birthday and Taylor had refused to take it off ever since. Past the assortment of tubes decorating her face and the respirator Taylor thought she saw a brief smile pass over her lips. The beeps of the heart rate monitor slowed and came to a faint stop. Taylor buried her face into her hands and sobbed. One by one her display filled up with messages: “Sorry for your loss, our condolences, thoughts and prayers”.

//End of playback//

Delete?

I sipped the last drop of my second, maybe third coffee and stepped away from the monitor. I had stayed late to clear out the playback archives, and several hours later I had finally finished. I stretched, yawning as my muscles loosened. Averting a major crisis had never felt so freeing. After I had isolated the code and targeted the origin of the virus my teams found it child’s play to create an anti virus solution. That would ultimately result in approximately two maybe three hours maximum where the CORE systems were glitchy. Luckily for us we had managed to contain the virus to a small area. The majority of the population had not even experienced lag times that day.

I stood at my office window looking out over the horizon. I had an astounding view of the city. Sleek skyscrapers cut through the clouds and stood like polished monuments to the state of progress. In comparison, I thought about all the people on the ground; the many agents of progress. The people who made it possible everyday, by embracing innovation and the unification of technology and life. I raised my empty coffee cup. “Cheers to you” I said to myself. On my way out of the office that night I chuckled and shook my head. I really did worry too much.