Overflow

Papers fluttered down from the dark sky as if someone had tossed a bin of newspapers out of the window of a skyscraper, except these papers had no end to them. They fell and fell, covering the windshields of cars and balling up into great masses in the alleyways where the wind placed them. The beautiful countryside that lay around the vast swollen cities had become ugly, the piles of paper covering them like snow and then decomposing into dirty piles that held rats and worms in like some obscure level of Hell.

When the obelisk had formed in the sky the world stopped for a moment, a physical entity that could be viewed from any position on earth. Jets scrambled in the United States could be seen flashing past it by a young boy standing on a beach in Australia, a moment later Russian jets could be seen by the very same boy, but the two pilots never saw each other. Tens of thousands of physicists and theorists, and scholars of a hundred professions followed up with millions of pages of papers trying to explain what the object in the sky might be.

I had been on site at a research facility in California with a dozen other reporters when it happened, taking notes on an experimental technology that would replace the thousands of data centers humming away in every corner of the earth. It was nothing particularly special to most, more of a reaction to the constant complaints on the existing centers, and the growing complications of acquiring recourses to make more.

The machine fired up, consumed an unimaginable amount of information from a dozen centers in a matter of moments, so much so that they had made up a new word to measure it. It reminded me of the first time I had heard of a terabyte years ago, but I had no way to comprehend what had really happened in that room. It was all explained by some pale old man who surely could not have seen the sun in years, he wore a white lab coat like you see in the movies and was far more excited than I was. I took the remainder of my notes, what I thought was exciting or story worthy more so than the important facts before packing them away, shaking a few hands, taking several pictures, and jumping in the van with my team.

That’s when it had appeared, no more than ten minutes after we had left, it seemed so close and far away at the same time, as if it was massive or low, one’s mind could not quite wrap itself around what your eyes were taking in. The papers began falling several hours later, after the jets had been scrambled and the initial shock was dulled to a cautious curiosity.

The paper was just articles, pages from books, lines of social media activity, it was quite obvious what had happened to those of us in the van even if none of us had any way to explain or understand it. I had a bitter moment of regret as I thought of all the technical points and generally important information, I had flat out ignored back in the facility. I dug through several piles out of fascination finding a chili recipe from some girls’ grandmother she had put online years ago, a piece of a document on Italian politics from the 1980s, dozens of long scripts in other languages I did not even recognize.

Something had torn and broken when that machine was started and now an obelisk the color of burning oil spat out the information of the world at an alarming rate, covering the land and oceans in a thick layer of pointless filth that had no end in sight.

I am writing this by candlelight on the back of a sheet of music from 1993 as there is no sun anymore, the power went out weeks ago, and I have not heard the sound of another human being in days. If the papers stop one day and someone finds this, I hope it gives a sliver of explanation. There is a lesson to be learned here, we went too far, we were happier before everything became so complex and we had all the world’s information at our fingertips.