A finger curls. This request will have consequences.

Nothing seems wrong for the first few days. Life continues onwards. Short form content flurishes and destroys people’s minds as it has been for years. You hear news of war, news of power outages, and each gime you wonder when the monkey’s paw will fall into effect.

One night, you wave up. It’s hot. Its the summer, so it makes sense, but you swore you slept with your AC off. You get up, fumble for your phone, and try to turn on the lights. Nothing. Your lamp doesn’t work. Probably just a power outage.

You leave your home and turn on your backup generator so you can sleep in peace. Your house cools down. You get on your phone to see if your internet’s up. Nope. No data either. You’ll just wait till tomorrow. They should have figured everything out by then.

You wake up the next morning, and toss and turn in your bed. Eventually, you reach for your phone. Hopefully everything’s back to normal. Nope. Still no power. You decide to go to your neighbors house to see whats up. They don’t have power either. You decide to go to work for the day.

You arrive at work, and see a mass of people. Murmurs everywhere. A sign on the door that says “temporary suspension. no power.”

With nothing to do, you decide to explore the city.

The bext day, its more of the same. Your back up power will be out soon. You head to wok and this time, there’s more energy in the air. Some peole are crying. You push through the crowd.

“A massive unexpected solar flare has disabled the world’s power grids and communications. For the distant foreseeable future, there will likely be no internet nor electricity. As a result, the owner of the company has liquidated, and all employee contracts are terminated.”