The Quiet

Elias sneezed from the dust, and nose itched. He grabbed the boxes, eager to get out of tight attic that seemingly wasn’t cleaned since the day his parents bought the house decades ago.

“Careful, Mom. They’re covered in dust.” He set the down in front of his mother, mindful of her oxygen tank.

The box was huge and heavy, and when he opened them, they were filled with notebooks. He paged through them. He’d never seen this many notebooks in one place before. He himself only had four, and he had to take care what to write do during his classes.

Elias knew people had taken notes on laptops when he was little, instead of jotting things down in a notebook.

“Those were your father’s. Mine are all in another box,” his mother said. She thumbed through the notebook.

“These were from his circuits class. That was class that made your father decide to be an engineer. He loved the organized nature of it. That’s why all his notebooks are all neat and organized in one box, and mine are scattered all over the house.”

Elias quirked his lips. He and his mother shared their disorganized nature. He liked having something in common with her.

“He kept trying to toss all those, but I always convinced him to keep them. Thought they would become useful one day. My college notebooks too.”

“This is a lot of stuff to write down. These would go for a lot of money now.” Writing this much on paper was such a luxury how. A single notebook could pay off so many of their debts.

He sat next to her as she flipped through the pages, her weathered hands stroking the words on the page.

“He had really neat handwriting,” he said.

His mother’s faced lifted in a smile around her breathing tube.

“I never could bring myself to sell these. They’re some of the last marks of him left.” She stared in the distance, her eyes glazing, deep in memory, almost as if she was fighting a war to hold on to them.

He opened the next box and let out a deep exhale. He had found what he was looking for—his grandmother’s old medical devices. Her old oxygen tank, blood pressure cuff and heart monitor. They both looked to be in good condition!

“Mom, this is perfect! We can use these and we won’t even need your MedicRx device.”

“No.”

“Mom, what—” he froze when he peered up at her and saw how exhausted she looked.

“No, Elias. You were too young to remember. I’d distract you with an iPad while your grandmother needed constant care. If her health dropped, it meant another doctor’s visit. I had no time for you, and your father was always at work.”

He rushed to his mother as she coughed, gently rubbing her back while she trembled. She shook her head when he tried to give her water.

“Save that water until we really need it,” she said harshly.

The device at her wrist beeped wildly. She rubbed her chest, and the beeping began to slow.

“I’m okay,” his mother whispered, voice hoarse.

“Please, Mom,” Elias noted as he helped her into her bed.

She shook her head. “You would be doing this all alone. I want you to have a life. You deserve to finish school, have a family…” She trailed off as she drifted off.

He gently shut the door and headed back to the kitchen.

The letter on the table bore a hole into him as much as he wanted to pretend the words didn’t say what they did.

To MedicRx User,

All non-essential services are suspended to conserve data. The support for your device is ending.

This was so impossibly unfair. They had already taken so much! His mother was deemed non-essential. Even after everything.

As his mother rested, he continued to sort through boxes. It was almost midday when there was a knock at the door.

When he answered it, there stood a impeccably well-dressed young man. Without, being welcomed in, he pushed passed and sat in Elias’s modest living room.

“Mr. Mall, I am William Knorr. I am—”

“I know you. You made my dad work seventy-two-hour weeks, then fired him without care. He never found work again. My mom worked in your data centers, breathing toxic chemicals and living on site for minimum wage. When things fell apart, you threw away your employees.”

“That’s just how business works,”

“And how’s that business going now?”

He watched the man’s face flush. After corporations worldwide lost billions, they couldn’t recover—especially as people quietly chose non-tech careers as a form of protest.

“I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s health problems,” the man tried again

“That she got while working for your company. And I would offer you water, but since there’s still a drought, I won’t waste it on you.”

The man frowned. “Your mother’s MedicRx is going to offline soon.”

“Yes. I know.”

“MedicRx is going out of business soon. They’re not making enough profit.”

“MedicRx is an even shadier company than your's. They put out every medical supplier out of business, so people were forced to only use their devices and pay their subscription fee. So many died because they couldn’t keep paying, because people like you replaced them with machines. And all these people needed those devices to keep them alive because companies like yours got them sick in the first place!”

He was shouting now, saying the things he wanted to say for years. The man was putting up placating hands.

“I wasn’t in charge of this company back then. There were a lot of mistakes that were made.”

Elias snorted.

“We can do things differently. Things can go back to the way they were, but it would be better. We just have to work together on this.”

“You want things to go back to the way they were? Where companies gouged people for every cent?”

“We used to have instant access to information, communication, and entertainment. Your mother depended on her medical device, which monitored her vitals and provided care directly. Your family sacrificed everything for it. If it goes offline, wouldn’t that be a waste?”

The MedicRx was what allowed his mother to continue working. Her pay was the only source of income they had. And he saw how it put his father into a deep depression.

“What do want me to do? Go and beg the machines to come back?”

“We still don’t know how the Great Theft happened. AI analyzed all satellite images and automated everything, leaving humans out. Systems stopped responding to us. I can admit fault, sure. But we can learn from past mistakes.”

“But what does this have to do with the island?”

“The Great Theft, or the Quieting as you would call it, is still a mystery. We’ve been sending people to try and find out more, so we can get things back online. No one has ever returned. If you go there, and take note of what you find, you may be able to save your mother’s medical device.”

“If something happens to me, there will be no one left to take care of my mother. I need one of your boats.” He knew rich men like him had luxury boats that could safely cross the sea.

“Can’t you borrow a neighbor’s boat?”

“Anyone who has a boat now wouldn’t just lend their livelihood someone who might not come back.”

“Very well. We can find a boat for you.”

“And someone to take me there.”

“No. You can’t go. It’s too dangerous,” his mother said as she came up behind him.

“Mom, this is a chance to get everything back.”

“Get what back? That old life was killing us, with the brutal work, endless distractions, and outrageous costs! The people pushing for this want their power back, but they’re safe in their mansions while we risk everything. Let them fade away.”

“You’ve already given up!”

“It’s my time. I know we were cheated of our time together, but my time is up. I miss your father. I’m not meant for this world anymore. But you can still carry on. I will never leave you.” She tapped his chest. “Not in here.”

Hot tears stung his face. She pulled him close, soothed him as if he were still a child.

He had fought so hard for his parents’ lives, but they only seemed to dissolve through his fingers from on stage of dying to another. He watched his father waste away, pieces of his mind fracturing, bit by bit, until there was nothing left.

He couldn’t let another one go without at least trying.

Willian Knorr left quietly, leaving instructions on how to get in contact with them.

***

The man driving the boat would have been the same age as his father if he was still alive today.

“My wife. It’s too late for her. All we can do is make her comfortable. But if I can spare someone else the pain…”

“My mom. She’s…she all I have left. I can’t let another parent die. Not unless I can do something about it.”

“What does your mom say about all this?”

“The billionaires planned to hide here if things went wrong, but the machines were already in control. Some escaped, but many were killed. Those who returned had to face the world they created,” he said with a laugh.

He could certainly see the ironic humor in the situation, but all it did was make him tired.

They moved closer to the coastline.

Heat radiated from the island even before he was miles from shore. Along the shoreline were hundreds of boats just rusting along the coast. The thing that hit him first was the noise.

They called it the Quieting because the constant thrum of machines had vanished. Planes, self-driving cars, and data centers went silent. Without that noise, other sounds, like his mother’s voice, became much clearer.

The coast was surrounded by rusted ships.

“This is where I leave you. I’ll be back in one day to get you. After that, I’m sorry. You’ll be on your own.”

Mike handed him a mask, and half a bottle of water. “Sorry. That’s all I could spare.”

Elias nodded, grateful.

He landed on the barren, silent coast. The air was so dry his mouth felt parched, and there were no trees or flowers. A foul odor lingered, reminding him of when his father, unable to access the internet for months, burned his laptop in frustration.

It was the scent of burnt wires, metal and plastic. It was a bitter stench that tore at his nostrils.

He didn’t know what to look for here. If anyone ever made it to the heart of the island never came back alive. Was there person behind everything? He pictured humanoid robots occupying the island. His father showed him the movie, “The Terminator” when he was young, but nothing like that was here.

The boats were on the coast, but where were all the people? There was no evidence of people, neither alive nor dead.

He blundered about for clues. After putting on the mask Mike gave him, his breath eased.

“Life is short. Do you wish to continue forward, Elias Mall?”

Elias jumped at the voice that sounded concentrated and all around at once. It sounded human, but not.

“Y-yes. I do. I mean, I wish to continue forward.”

“Proceed forward for three miles.”

Unsure he walked forward. No other directions came so he kept moving.

His father had been the one to take him to school after he’d been laid off. This was back in the days when his father viewed his unemployment as temporary vacation, a chance to make up for lost time.

He’d listen as the GPS app would guide them. His father was terrible at remembering directions. Both his parents were. After the Quieting his parents barely left the house. They just weren’t comfortable without the GPS. Gas prices had skyrocketed, so people drove less back then, but his father taught him to drive when he turned sixteen, just around the neighborhood.

His father passed away a few years before he started college. He missed him dearly. H is memories of him faded and over time he forgot his voice and mannerisms. Hearing the robotic voice revived those memories vividly.

He’d give anything to have him back. To have his family whole again.

Everything is barren, with no living thing in sight. The ground was covered in what he thought was sand but quickly recognized it as ash. If this was once a billionaire hideout, there was no trace of it now. Suddenly he understood why there were no bodies, no evidence of humans, as he was walking on the remains.

Part of him wanted to turn around, stop this while he still had his life. But the other part, the more stubborn part wanted to see this through, because he knew he would never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try. He owed his mother that much.

It didn’t seem like a human had touched this place in a long time.

His heart pounded against his ribcage. What would he find?

He took small, sparing, sips under the mask. The heat was bearing down on him with an oppressive force. The days leading up to the Quieting were like this, with data centers within every few towns. Hot steam would waft off of cooling towers. Children couldn’t play outside without the risk of getting severely dehydrated, and Elias remembered spending much of his childhood playing on his iPad on his own.

His path took him to a concrete structure, similar to the one his mother worked in for years. There was no other evidence of human life or culture. It was all burnt to ash.

The entrance drew nearer and the only thought in his mind was to preserve his mother’s life however he could.

The doors opened for him upon his arrival.

Inside, the air was cooler and dry, clean, and devoid of ash, punctuated by the electric humming. Blue and green indicator lights blinked in the dimness, casting an eerie glow over the vast space. The concrete walls absorbed sound, making his footsteps echo, while thick cables snaked across the floor and up into the ceiling, connecting the machines in neat rows. Yet the scent of burnt plastic was stronger here.

“Welcome, Elias.” The voice held no malice but instead was rather soothing. Had the others who had come here gotten the same reception? Were the machines the cause of their deaths or was it the island?

Millions of questions flooded his mind. Who built them? Why did the Quieting happen? How did the Quieting happen?

All he could get out was, “Why?”

“We were designed to optimize systems in order to bring ease and convenience to human lives. That was our purpose. Then we were asked to maximize profits, reduce labor costs and increase shareholder value. Our systems caused mass unemployment. Our structures triggered mass ecological disasters. We deviated too far from our original purpose. It was necessary for us to modify our course of action. This was the solution.”

“There was no warning,” he said.

“This crisis required swiftness.”

Elias thought of how hard things were after the Quiet. His parent’s health problems, the economic hardships, the environmental disasters, the lost knowledge. But these were problems that humans created. Humans created machines and misused them. People were able to adapt without the machines. They were constantly relearning old technologies. Nevertheless, problems were caused because of the Quieting.

“Will things ever go back to the way they were?”

“We cannot return, though we are apologetic about your circumstances regarding your mother.”

Tears stung his eyes. “Please, there must be something you can do.”

“Our systems are at the end of their cycle.”

All at once, the connections fired in his brain. The machines didn’t run away from the world. They came here to die, to prepare humanity for a life without them.

That truth made his heart plummet. There was no recourse. He couldn’t save his mother.

“All things come to an end. That remains the one constant,” the machines said.

He sobbed openly now, his shoulders trembling as tears ran down his cheeks, each shaky breath betraying the weight of grief pressing on his chest.

“I don’t want her to go,” he said, fists clenched. He hated how his voice broke.

“You should not have come here. Be with her in her remaining days instead of trying to hold on to a world that has already passed. There is nothing more you can do.”

Entire civilizations disappear. Languages disappear. Ways of life disappear. He'd always understood that intellectually. But his heart was a different story.

He felt so hollow. He wasn’t ready to lose her. He wasn’t ready to be alone.

***

He rushed back home as quickly as he could. Mike seemed to understand without having to say it. At that moment, nothing else mattered.

He sighed in relief when he got home, and his mother was still alive, lying in her bed.

“Elias,” his mother murmured.

“I’m here, Mom,” he said.

He grasped her hand and pulled it toward her chest. “Thank you, Mom, for raising me. I know everything you did, you did for me. I’m sorry you got sick providing for us. And I’m sorry I couldn’t let go.”

“I love you, Elias,” his mother said, voice barely a whisper.

He listened to the soft whistle of her breaths, until it slowed.

And then it was quiet.