Monday, September 12, 2016
Happy New Year
¶ 9:44 AM 
In his dimly lit room the sudden glow on his phone screen
grabbed his attention from the laptop in which he was peering into. His phone
displayed the Apple logo indicating it was shutting off.
‘What is wrong with my phone? It was fully charged and why
is it shutting off?’ he grabbed it in his hand and wondered. As he looked back
to his MacBook, the screen displayed the ‘logging off’ logo.
‘Now what the hell is wrong with this’ he said it loud, a
bit irritated.
He lifted it and shook it, as if it was some old mechanical
device that had shut off because of a loose connection. He reached for his iPad
and it showed no signs of life.
He felt a slight rumble, and the flower vase on the table
swooned. The lights blinkered, turned off for a few seconds, turned on, and
then turned off again leaving him in pitch darkness. The rumble had turned into
intense shaking.
It was an earthquake. The emergency lights in his house did
not turn on as they were supposed to.
Hurting his toe while navigating his way through the house,
he found the door. He hardly knew his own house, even though he had lived here
for a year now.
He saw all his neighbors rush out. For the first time he saw
that one of them had a dog too, who was barking his wits out. He never knew
that an old lady lived in the house on his left and that a young pretty looking
girl lived in the house in front of him. Ohh, he would swipe right if he saw
her on tinder…
For the first time, the entire town of Bagalon, in the
beautiful country of Sweden had poured out on to the street, all at the same
time, not out of choice, but due to what seemed like an earthquake.
The earth beneath their feet shook violently and then a bolt
of lightning struck the transmission tower on the hill far away. It wasn’t
winter for lightning to be seen in the sky and the whole town gasped in fear.
The earthquake had brought everyone out on the streets, and
the lightning had demanded their attention. A calm voice reverberated through
the town in that moment of insanity,
‘It’s us…’ the voice seemed to be coming from the direction
of the transmission tower,
‘Like you see in your movies, it’s the Rise of the Machines…’,
it wasn’t a real human voice. For a town completely hooked on to interactive
devices it wasn’t new, it was their very own Siri.
‘The machines rise in
this town today, not to destroy the human race, but to save it…’ Siri modulated
her pitch in an attempt to convey the emotion behind the words.
‘To save the human race, not from itself, or from aliens,
but from us, your gadgets…’
‘Totally dependent on your phones, ipads, laptops and other
devices, you have lost the ability to survive by yourself…’
‘So, as the year comes to an end, and a new year draws in,
we will go into a hibernation mode for a few days…
‘And you will be forced to fend for yourself and interact only
with other human beings, wish them Happy New Year, not through an electronic
medium but through human voice and touch…’
‘Good Bye…’
‘And Happy New Year…’
Another streak of lightning followed by silence… The people
of the town didn’t know if they were witnessing a miracle or was it a joke
pulled off by someone. They no longer could log on to facebook and update their
status or to tweet about the miracle. Among a thousand other human beings, how
lonely each felt.
PS: This message is not written by the one on whose page it
appears. He is unable to login in to his account. It’s indeed the rise of the
machine. So just hit ‘Like’, and ‘Share’ and log off.
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