Jenny woke up late in the morning, with the sun already streaming through the bedroom curtains. She rolled over to greet her husband, but his side of the bed was vacant. She ran her hand over the wrinkled sheets, feeling the last traces of warmth from his body fading away. She rubbed her eyes and stretched out in the comfortable bed, dreading the moment she had to put her feet on the cold hardwood floor and leave this cozy cocoon.
She could hear Michael banging stuff around in the kitchen and could faintly smell the aroma of coffee wafting up the stairs. She sighed, and with a final groaning stretch, she rolled out of bed and shrugged on a sweater to face the chilly downstairs. It was only the beginning of October, but it looked like it was time to start turning up the heat at night. Luckily, her husband of only five short days was keeping her nice and cozy upstairs. The downstairs looked foreign to her after so many days holed up in the bedroom celebrating their happiness.
She came around the corner into the kitchen to see Michael rummaging through the cupboards and refrigerator muttering to himself.
“Can I help you find something, dear?”
He jumped at her voice, whirling around sheepishly. He gestured a hand at their pretty much bare cupboards and pantry.
“I think it might be time to end the honeymoon and go to the grocery store,” he responded with a laugh. “Not that I haven’t loved the first week of our marriage, but if we’re going to keep this up we need more sustenance than a box of baking soda and half a loaf of stale bread. Unless you were looking for my world-famous baking soda sandwiches, that is. Then you have come to the right place, my dear.”
Jenny rolled her eyes and laughed. It had been a whirlwind few days. She hadn’t noticed just how empty the kitchen was getting.
“Well, I suppose if this food thing is so important to you…” She stepped into his embrace and breathed in the smell she was quickly becoming so accustomed to.
“It is. But don’t worry, your ever-faithful and devoted husband will come along to carry the bags. Now the food might be gone, but let’s go see if there’s a little hot water left to share.” He grabbed her up in his arms and carried her squealing over his shoulder back up the stairs to get ready for the day.
The streets were lively as Michael drove the few blocks to the grocery store. They lived in a small town, but there were always plenty of kids running around, and families hanging out in the park. It was the kind of town where they knew everybody’s names, and neighbors were always welcome to stop over for a cup of coffee. Jenny loved the town, but sometimes it just seemed a little too small for her. She loved the idea of being lost in a big city, surrounded by a sea of strangers all caught up in their own lives.
The parking lot at the store was only about half full, which was normal for a Saturday morning. The gleaming row of carts stood ready, and Michael grabbed one and headed into the store. Jenny took a deep breath once inside. She always loved the low buzz of the fluorescent lighting, the faint smell of fruit and cardboard that always seemed to drift about the old market, and the hum of shopping cart tires on the worn linoleum floor. She had been shopping here since she was a kid and Michael was the boy down the street that she had a major crush on. Years later, he laughed with her over her old diary, and the scribbles of his name decorated with hearts and kisses. They were just meant to be, he said.
“Well well, if it isn’t the happy couple, coming up for air at last!” Jenny and Michael turned to see Mary Holmes waving to them from the opposite end of the pasta aisle. They smiled as they made their way over to her. Mrs. Holmes has been their English teacher in high school. She was a favorite teacher of most kids, and she had been older than dirt even before they had her in freshman year.
“Congratulations, my dears. You look so happy together. What happened, finally ran out of food and had to face the world?”
Jenny blushed. “Yes, actually. We got carried away for a few days.”
“Nothing at all wrong with that. It’s nice to see such happy newlyweds. I better get my shopping finished and get home before Mr. Holmes thinks I got lost out here, but I’m so happy for you two. I wish you both the best!”
Michael and Jenny thanked her and slowly made their way up and down the aisles. Their cart got heavier with every turn, and they finally decided that enough was enough, and they would have more than enough to fill the cupboards back up. Only one of the registers was open, so they took their place in line behind a few other families and Jenny leaned forward against the cart to wait. Michael stood beside her, lightly rubbing her back. The combination of the warm store and Michael’s soft touch was almost putting her to sleep.
Suddenly, all of the lights in the store went out. It was bright outside, so light still filtered in through the front windows, but the back of the store was cast into dusty shadows. The silence left from the absence of the fluorescent buzz was quickly filled with worried whispering. Jenny looked up at Michael, who smiled back down at her.
“Just a little power outage. Nothing to worry about. Someone probably hit a pole somewhere, or another squirrel got into a transformer like last year. I’m sure they’ll get it back up and running soon.”
“I hope so. Although we could always spend a night in front of the fireplace. I guess it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
Michael laughed and hugged her.
“That’s my girl, always thinking on the bright side.”
“Another squirrel, I suppose?” Mrs. Holmes pulled her cart up alongside theirs and squinted towards the big plate glass windows in the front of the store. Michael turned to smile at her.
“I just told Jenny the same thing. I’m sure it’s nothing.” The hand rubbing Jenny’s back slowed to a stop. He had been hoping that this would be a quick trip, followed by a few more hours in bed before they separated themselves again for dinner. He tried unsuccessfully to turn the lights on.
The cashier was at a loss momentarily. If the power stayed off much longer they would have to start ringing out customers by hand and limiting them to the essentials. It had happened before, and Jenny had to stifle a laugh at old Mr. Hodgkins behind them. She saw him tighten his grip imperceptibly on the case of beer in his arms. She was pretty sure he didn’t plan on leaving the store without it, working registers or not.
The store murmured with low conversations, everyone suddenly quiet with the lack of background music and the ever-present hum of refrigeration units and chiming cash registers gone. None of them were overly concerned with the sudden loss of power until they heard the scream.
Jenny jumped, startled by the sudden sound. It wasn’t quite the scream of a woman being torn to shreds or witnessing the horror of an alien invasion, but more of a shock, as if someone had pulled a very ill-timed prank on her. Nevertheless, a couple of the patrons closest to the doors rushed outside to see what was going on.
Michael looked like he wanted to go see what was going on, and Jenny motioned him towards the doors.
“You should go see if they need help. We’ll be fine in here, I can’t imagine it’s anything too bad. Probably that old geezer that hangs out by Sherman Street pulling out his willie again. This will be the third time this year!”
Michael laughed and squeezed her hand. “I’ll be back. If you hear me scream, it was definitely the Willie Man.”
She laughed as he moved through the crowd and helped the two men already up there pull open the now powerless automatic doors. Jenny turned to Mrs. Holmes and smiled. This was going to be a long afternoon.
Stepping out into the bright sunlight, Michael immediately felt the wrongness in the air. It wasn’t obvious what had caused the unknown woman to scream, but you could tell something was off in a big way. He and the other guys from the store stood still for a moment, taking in the scene. A young woman was sitting on a bench in front of the drugstore with her head between her knees. Another man and woman were bending over her, making sure she was okay. A few more people stood around and talked in increasingly loud and worried tones. From the sidewalk in front of the supermarket, Michael couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they were pointing randomly around the street and towards the park nearby. At first, he didn’t get what was wrong. When he finally figured it out, it stopped him dead in his tracks.
Nothing was moving. No tree branches were swaying, not a single leaf fluttered, not even a twitch from any of the flags hanging outside. The air was completely still. This was slightly creepy in itself, but it didn’t stop with the air. The stream that usually flowed happily through their little town square park appeared to be frozen in place. It was like the world had been paused. A glance up showed the clouds still and quiet. To his shock, he saw leaves suspended in midair, halted on their voyage to the ground. They had been blown off by the previously breezy day, and then stopped by… what?
No one seemed to be hurt or in danger. Birds still soared through the sky, though they appeared to be making wide slow circles, probably confused about the sudden lack of wind and air movement. The young woman who had alerted them with her shocked outburst was recovering fine and had seemingly just been frightened by the oddness of the scene.
Michael didn’t blame her. He felt a chill run down his spine, even though nothing looked hostile or malicious. He turned back towards the market doors and saw Jenny staring questioningly at him. She must have seen something in his expression because she was headed towards the doors before he could motion for her to wait.
He tried to say something to warn her, but all of a sudden his mouth felt as frozen as the world around him. She glanced around just enough to see no imminent threat and then turned to him curiously.
“What is it? Why are you all standing out here with your thumbs in your butts? Was it old mister…”
She trailed off as she started to feel it too. A sense of off-ness everywhere. He watched her eyes widen as she took in the unexplained stillness. She turned to him, not yet panicky, but close.
“What is this? Michael, I don’t understand. What’s going on out here?”
“I don’t know yet, Jen. I just… I don’t know. It just stopped. Everything. Like someone pushed pause. The people and animals seem fine but… did you see the stream?”
She didn’t answer, too stunned to think of any appropriate response. Her mind raced with memories of all the science fiction books and movies she had enjoyed her whole life, and in minutes had a whole slew of possible explanations. None of them were very pleasant. Especially not when they heard another loud yell.
This time it came from a large burly man across the street. He was shouting something unintelligible and pointing up at the sky, where previously only frozen fluffy clouds were scattered across the blue sky. The noise drew more people out of the nearby stores and houses, all rushing outside to stop and stare in shock at the motionless world around them.
Michael and Jenny saw it at the same time, instinctively reaching for each other as they stared at the new development that had set off the yelling. There was suddenly lots of noise and pushing around them. It felt like a violent contrast to their silent and immobile surroundings. Michael pulled Jenny to the side as the crowd of people quickly turned into a more violent swarm of crying and hysterics. He pulled her around the side of the building, away from the shouts about the end of the world, the sins of man, and the imminent takeover of our lives and planet.
Jenny was almost disgusted by how quickly their fellow neighbors and acquaintances fell into despair horror and mass hysteria. As she and Michael stood staring up from behind the building, however, she couldn’t find any words to describe the hollow and terrified feeling. It felt as dead and silent as the trees and grass. Michael was talking, but she couldn’t hear him over the rushing in her ears. She felt tears welling up in her eyes, but she wasn’t sure what they were from. It may have been relief or sorrow; it was so hard to tell. Maybe it was just sheer confusion.
The apparition was now solid, having faded in from a hazy indistinguishable form to a clear, distinct shape. It was a rectangle, slightly less white than the clouds behind it. It took up most of the sky, and the people below had no trouble reading the bold black lettering across it. Jenny’s first thought was that this had to be some kind of a sick prank. She realized with every moment though, that this was real. This was much too elaborate, and frankly impossible, to be a prank.
The application is not responding. The program may respond again if you wait. Do you want to restart this process?
Jenny has seen this message a thousand times on her own computer. The box in the sky was complete with option boxes at the bottom and a white arrow waiting to choose one or the other. The stalled water and leaves frozen mid-fall suddenly made a horrible kind of sense.
Everything the crazy conspiracy theorists had always warned them about was true. This world, this life, their whole existence was just a program or a game on some unfathomably huge computer belonging to some other being that we never even dreamed had existed. And who knows, maybe it didn’t stop there? Maybe they were nothing more than an even larger, more elaborate game. Maybe it was simulations all the up.
No matter what the truth was, Jenny couldn’t tear her eyes away from the white arrow on the box. Any minute now, that arrow would move and decide their fate. Was this the end? Could everything in her life, in all of their lives, really boil down to this?
An error?
Michael stood beside her, equally speechless. He knew he should say something, anything, but there was nothing. He knew they were both thinking the same things, and the only thing he could do without losing his mind completely was to pull her into his arms and hold her as they watched the sky for any sign of what was to come.
The screaming in the town square, and probably all over the world, sounded muted and distant. The only thing he really heard was his pulse pounding in his ears and Jenny’s soft breath next to him. He had always thought that when this moment came he would be panicking and begging, his life flashing before his eyes. He only felt a kind of quiet emptiness though.
Together they watched as, almost on cue, the white arrow in the sky started sliding towards the option buttons at the bottom of the terrible error message. It was clear that it was moving towards the restart button, and as it got close to touching it, the commotion on the streets and across the planet suddenly rose in volume and pitch until it seemed like they were drowning in the screams. The panic and fear in the air were suffocating. The sounds and feelings and strangeness of it all came crashing together in a final heart-rending crescendo as the world was shaken by a single, impossibly loud click…
Jenny woke up late in the morning, with the sun already streaming through the bedroom curtains. She rolled over to greet her husband, but his side of the bed was vacant. She ran her hand over the wrinkled sheets, feeling the last traces of warmth from his body fading away.
