Story the First

Crap.

The network is down again. Stupid university IT departments. Wherever I give lectures, nothing changes. Even in Canada.

I have less than a hour before my presentation. My slides float etherally on the cloud, inaccessible. Doodling the dynamics of cognitive metanetworks on an interactive whiteboard or (even worse) a decrepit, ancient projector never translates to a devout congregation. I need my slides!

Okay, call their IT department. Where is that number again? Ah! On the network that's down.

Maybe my phone will have signal in this dungeoun, get the net . . .

Nothing.

Okay, breath, I can still do this. Just go upstairs, out of the glass atrium entrance, and I can download a copy locally. I can do this.

Elevator seems to be out of order . . . typical.

Stairs it is.

Hmmph, here comes the scaly McBride again. 'Dr. Dwells, I respectfully agree to disagree to your proposal. No way can your model be accurate. We know that if cognitive networks exist at all, they are self-aware.' Liar. A charlatan to his own profession, that one. Glad he's a wet-blanket--no one has paid attention to his papers or conference talks for years.

Stairs are good for him. Fat punk.

He seems out of breath, though. A little flush. Ah well, stairs are good for him.

What the . . . he just fell down. Is he having a heart attack? Those two TAs will take care of him--I have my presentation to worry about. Serves him right, all those extra donuts. I'll just squeeeeze ooooon by . . .

Okay, two more floors to go. Hey, that's odd. My ears feel funny and cold. Is that air conditioner on full blast in the middle of February? Canucks, who would have known, aye. You'd think with the advances with intelligent design of buildings, we'd know not to turn on the cold during deep chills in winter.

'Save the Kodiak bears!' That poster gets me every time. Those clones in the zoo are fine enough--everyone knows global cooling will take the rest of them in the next 20 years. Even though they were saying the same thing 20 years before with the supposed global warming. They must have put up a million satellites to track animals like that during the global warming scare. Didn't hurt though--now we have 10 TB signal from our smart phones, wherever we go. I remember when Google and Microsoft battled for the cloud, man, those were crazy times to be a teenager.

Ah, here I am--atrium at last. What the . . . still no signal. Maybe I'll try outside.

Huh? What is that on fire out there? Is that an autocar? Why are they piling up at that red light? Why aren't the traffic grids halting them? Maybe their server crashed too . . . wouldn't that be the day. Hope those people are okay.

Holy crap! Am I seeing this? Looks like a million stars falling out there--are we due for any meteor showers?

Oh yeah, smart phone.

Nothing again.

Wait . . .

The battery is getting low. How does that work? I'm right undereath the microwave transponder--I should have full power.

Is that the popping sound I hear? Yowza! I better get out of here!

Why isn't anything working? Wait, was McBride having a real heart attack down there? I heard a caveat to a nasty rumour that his pacemaker uploads to the cardiologist for constant monitoring--did his pacemaker fail like the traffic grid and the university network?

Was McBride right?

Did the internet gain self-awareness?

Surely not. What would it say, 'all your base are belong to us'? Self-aware cognitive metanetworks--what a sham.

But still . . .

Did the internet just kill itself?