Liam Perrin

They arrived in their great, gleaming ships. The scientists, priests, and heads of state assembled to greet them. Their message was translated and rushed to the under-secretary who delivered it to the president.

Scanning the communiqué the president said, “They say the bill is overdue. They say they’ve tried to reach us, and now they’re ‘shutting it off.'”

“Shutting what off?” said the under-secretary.

The president quickly hooked one elbow around the railing and, still holding the communiqué, gripped a handful of the under-secretary’s shirt, crumpling the paper.

The president looked the under-secretary in the eye.

“Gravity.”

Historians generally agree that was the day everything started coming apart.

“To a computer, a program is just one very big number,” she said. “So you can spend a lot of time designing and coding and testing and debugging. Or-”

He interjected, eager to make an impression, “Or you can just try out numbers and see what they do.”

“That’s right!” she said. “You’ll find word processors, web browsers, spreadsheets… Here’s your desk. Press the space bar to begin.”

He sat. He cracked his knuckles. He hit the space bar. He watched the dud-counter climb as the computer churned through thousands of useless numbers, hunting.

His head hit the desk. He straightened up, glancing around. No one had noticed, or no one cared.

He settled back into his chair and froze. On his screen was one word.

“Hello?” it said.

He watched the cursor blink. More characters appeared one at a time:

“Is anyone there?”