Pulse

Hundreds of people were making their way through the Vintage Faire Mall. They moved slowly with their eyes turned downwards, hyper focusing on their phones.

Near the central fountain, a teenaged girl in a cropped pink hoodie was holding a ring light attached to a selfie stick. She spun around in a circle, holding a little white cup full of rainbow Dippin' Dots.

"Alright guys, if this video hits fifty thousand likes, I'm dumping these disgusting Dippin' Dots down the escalator!" she said laughing. She flashed a mouthful of pearly white veneers, then restarted the recording for the sixth time.

A few feet away from her, two middle school aged boys were recording themselves performing some lazy dance routine in front of Wetzel's Pretzels. A mom pushing a double stroller made her way through the crowd while her thumb was tapping across her grocery app. Her eyes were darting across the screen as she approved substitutions for almond milk and paper towels.

Outside the apple store, a line of people stretched along the railing, all waiting to trade in last year's model for this year's model. A father near the back of the line checked his fantasy football roster while his small son tugged on his belt loop, asking for a pretzel.

"Hang on, Chris! Daddy is setting his lineup," the father told his child without even looking down one time.

Everyone was busy being absorbed in their social media, their vlogs, their apps, and their selfies when it happened. All at once, every single phone began to blare a loud burst of static. Followed closely by a high pitched screech.

Everyone's hands shot up to cover their ears the best that they could. The screech vibrated through every person and surface in the building, piercing every eardrum and making the babies in the stroller cry out as their mother tried to shield them both at once.

People screamed, dropping their bags to the floor. The girl with the ring light dropped her ice cream to the floor. The noise lasted about five seconds but was so intense that it caused the water in the fountain to ripple. Then it stopped and an eerie silence settled over the mall.

The girl in pink picked up her phone. The screen was dark. She tapped the glass twice and nothing happened. She held the power button down for a few seconds, but the screen remained black.

"Is your phone turning on?" She asked her friend.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "The screen's dead."

"My battery was just at ninety percent!" The girl in the pink whined. "What the hell?"

Around them, hundreds of hands were tapping screens. The boys stopped dancing and stared at the rest of the crowd. The mother with the stroller tapped her screen, then tried resetting her own device. The display refused to light up.

A woman outside of Sephora yelled out, "Excuse me! Is the wi-fi down? I was in the middle of a live stream!"

A pretty boy in a polo shirt stepped out of The Gap holding his phone up toward the skylight trying to get a signal. "It's not the wi-fi. My signal is totally gone. Nothing will boot up."

"Try plugging it in," someone called out from the line in front of Apple store.

An employee stepped out of the store clenching an iPad that was also completely dark. He looked at the crowd, who seemed to be getting more annoyed as the minutes passed. "None of our demo units are working in here either. The registers just crashed."

A pretty girl with dark skin and an afro stared at her own black phone screen. She tapped helplessly at the glass, which refused to illuminate. "Everything is fried."

The girl in pink slammed her phone down against the floor and screamed as the screen shattered.

"Daddy!" she squealed out, her voice echoing through the mall. "My stupid phone is bricked! This model is trash! You told me the Pro version wouldn't do this crap! Buy me a new one right now!"

Her dad pulled his own phone out of his pocket. "Yvette, calm down! My phone isn't working either. Something's probably wrong with the network."

"I don't give a crap about the network!" she shrieked, stomping her pink and white shoe on the floor. "I need my TikTok account! My post was supposed to go live five minutes ago! Fix it! Now!"

Her father looked around, embarrassed. He turned his phone over in his hands.

An older man in a camouflage hat standing near the fountain scoffed. "Network my ass. This is a cyber attack." He wiped his hand back and forth over his big mustache. "The damn Chinese just took down the grid. I told everyone this was gonna happen. Trump told y'all this was gonna happen! It's cause them damn Demoncrats signed that foreign AI tech bullshit with Sleepy Joe!"

A woman with aqua hair who was holding a knitted bag turned on him instantly. "Are you serious? Trump was the one who deregulated the satellite networks and left us all exposed to attack. This is what happens when you cut regulations. That Nazi Elon Musk got rid of all of the important things and now we're all fucked!"

"Oh, blame Trump! Classic blue haired move!" a man with a perfect tan in a gym shirt laughed, stepping closer. "The damn Democrats have been pushing for digital currency controls for years! I bet ya they did this to prepare us all for their cashless system!"

"That doesn't even make sense!" yelled a short girl with a nose ring. "Why would they turn off the devices to promote a cashless society? Are you stupid?"

"It's the corporations!" A bleach blonde boy yelled from in front of Spencers. "They triggered it so everyone has to buy new devices next week. Haven't any of you heard of planned obsolescence?"

The mall was filled with shouting from every end. Arguments were erupting from outside of every store. People raised their voices to be heard above everyone else and pointed fingers at each other, every face burning red with anger.

"You people are blind!" The old man in camo roared, pointing at the blue haired woman. "It's in their executive orders! Section four allows them to seize everything from us, even bandwidth!"

The woman rolled her eyes. "Which executive order?"

"The..." he began. "Umm... the one they passed last fall!"

"What's the number?" she demanded. "What does it say?"

"Google it!" he shouted, "You've got the whole internet right there in your hands and you're choosing to be stupid!" He shook his head.

"Umm..." The girl with the aqua hair began. She held up her blank phone screen at him and shook it in his face.

"Oh. Right." He opened his mouth to recite the details he had read on his feed every morning for the past few months. "Section uh..." He reached for his back pocket instinctively searching for his phone where the bullet points lived. He pulled it out and stared at it to see the same blank screen everyone else had.

He stood there stupidly, his mouth slightly open. The exact phrasing of the article, the photos and memes he'd seen on his Facebook feed, the videos he quoted daily were gone. They weren't saved in his head. They were sitting somewhere on a dead server delivered to his eyes through a screen that was now nothing more than a dead piece of plastic and glass.

"It... was the bill about... cybersecurity," he stuttered.

"What were the specific provisions?" she asked, her voice lowering a bit as her own uncertainty hit her. She looked at her own phone again, thinking she could pull up one of the news summaries she relied on to win arguments. Her hand closed tightly around the cold, empty glass. She couldn't remember the name of the news outlet that published the breakdowns she worshipped every morning over her matcha. She could only remember the headline, which has been designed to make her and everyone else angry.

Across from the fountain, two men were arguing about foreign policy outside Starbucks.

"Dems are funding the opposition!" the younger of the two yelled. "They've been sending our weapons over there for months!"

"Which opposition?" the older man shouted. "Name the group!"

The younger man stared at him. He knew the name of the group an hour ago. He's spent hours scrolling through shorts on Instagram about the whole thing. But without the fifteen second videos to remind him, the names of the cities, the leaders, and all of the context had withered away. His mind was a blank page.

"You don't even know, do you?" the older man said, his own voice too was shaking. He tried to recall the timeline of events he'd been preaching about on message boards all week. The facts weren't there. Only his outrage remained. And it floated around in his head with no support like steam on the mirror after a hot shower.

Silence spread outward from the center of the groups. It moved slowly, but everyone felt it. No one agreed but none of them had anything left to say. No facts to back up why they felt so strongly about the things they did.

Without a feed to refresh or links to pull up for reference no one knew what to say. Without a reel to quote word for word, the arguments had no fuel. The talking points had vanished the minute the screens went dark.

Yvette sat on the edge of the fountain staring down at her cracked screen. She looked at her dad. "Daddy?" she said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Why was I screaming at you?"

Her dad looked around at the hundreds of people standing dumbstruck together in the crowded mall. Every one of them were holding a useless piece of plastic and looking equally confused. "I don't know, honey." he finally said.

People began to look at the faces of those around them. The man in the camouflage looked at the woman with the blue hair. He noticed the little worry lines around her eyes and the tired strain in her posture. His eyes flicked to the little kids clothes poking out of her shopping bag. She was not a political enemy from a comment section. She was a middle aged mother from Stanislaus County, wearing shoes that looked as worn down as his own.

She looked back at him. "Do you have any kids with you today?" she asked softly, a small smile peeking up on the sides of her mouth.

"No," he said. "My grandkids are supposed to come by for a visit this weekend. They live across town. I guess I should probably drive on over there and make sure they're all doing okay."

"The traffic lights might be down," she said. "Be careful."

"Yeah." he smiled. "You too."

All around the mall, people began putting their dead phones into their pockets or tossing them into nearby trash cans. The urge to check the time, the news, or social media flicked in their muscles here and there, but there was nothing to see.

One of the boys looked at his friend. "Do you actually like those dances we were doing?"

His friend looked at his shoes, "Not really." he shrugged. "They're boring and look stupid."

"Yeah." the first boy agreed. "Let's go get some pretzels."

They walked over to the counter. The cashier, a girl of about 15 was standing behind the register, staring at the blank screen in front of her. She looked up at them sheepishly as they approached.

"Cash only, I guess," she shrugged, offering a small but genuine smile. "The card reader is dead."

The boy dug into his pocket and pulled out a folded up ten-dollar bill. "Two cinnamon sugar, please... and your number?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

She stared at him.

"Oh..." he blushed.

"Smooth." said his friend.

The three of them laughed.

It wasn't long before the mall had emptied but there were still quite a few people standing around in the parking lot. Without GPS apps, drivers had been forced to stop and talk through rolled down windows and help each other try and figure out the best ways to get home.

"Take McHenry Avenue," an older lady called out from her pickup truck to a group of kids in a van. "Highway 99 is probably backed up if the signals are out."

"Thanks!" the driver called back. "I haven't driven down McHenry on my own before, only when I was about five or six with my parents!"

"It's still there!" the woman laughed.

Months passed by. The Pulse, as people came to call it, had not just killed phones. It seemed to have permanently fried any connection to wi-fi, 5G, and the internet in general. Every server was dead. Satellites drifted about in space, silent and unreachable.

That first month had been pretty rough. Bank lines were wrapped around blocks like no one had ever seen and supply chains struggled while trucking companies switched back to paper logs. People were forced to learn or relearn how to write paper checks or carry cash. But eventually, the shock wore off and society seemed to adjust. The noise and chaos that had been built over the last thirty years had been demolished by five seconds of noise.

Before long, the behavior of humans had changed completely. Families were throwing barbecues with neighbors and having birthday parties with old school games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Children rode around the neighborhoods on bikes and played ball on lawns. There were no tablets leaning against the lawn chairs. Parents were actually watching their children with their eyeballs instead of through a recording device to share precious moments with followers.

A young boy ran across the grass, his shoes kicking up morning dew. He tagged a girl gently on her shoulder.

"Tag! You're it!" he yelled, turning to dash towards the rose bushes.

"No fair, you had a head start!" She laughed, chasing after him.

Another little girl sat on the curb watching them run. She was wearing bright green shoes with yellow laces. A boy from two houses down whom she'd never even spoken to, walked over and sat next to her.

"Your shoes are cool," he said.

"Thanks," she said. "They make me run faster!"

"I bet I'm faster than you," the boy said, leaning forward.

"Prove it!" she said, standing up instantly. "Let's race from this tree to the fire hydrant!"

"On three," he said, lining up his feet with hers against the edge of the grass. "One. Two. Three!"

They sped down the sidewalk, their arms pumping hard at their sides and their laughter echoing pure joy through the neighborhood.

Two mothers sat in chairs on the front porch of a house, drinking iced tea from glasses. They'd lived on the same street for years without exchanging more than a quick wave or smile while retrieving grocery orders or mail. Before the Pulse, they always had their eyes glued to screens watching reels on how to make sourdough bread or natural remedies but never actually moving forward with making them.

"Look at 'em go," one mother said, watching the kids race. "I forgot how nice it is to actually see kids play outside."

"I forgot how much time there is in a day." the other replied. "You never realize how much you're wasting watching useless things on your phone or reading comments on profiles of people you don't even know."

"Exactly!" the first mother laughed. "I read two books this week! Real books. Made of paper! My husband laughed at me when he caught me tapping the corner trying to check the time."

Both women chuckled.

"Force of habit." The other mom said. "I joined a garden club. We trade seeds on Tuesdays. We aren't just saving videos on how to grow fruits and vegetables, we're actually doing it!"

The best part was that people had seemed to become more friendly. No one sat around and talked openly about politics all day. No one stressed about whether or not they were going to get cancelled for having a disagreement or being misunderstood. And no one was constantly bombarded with ads and smear campaigns 24/7. It felt peaceful for the first time in years.

The governor, along with every other politician in Sacramento, had discovered that without reels and anger fueled algorithms pushed to millions of screens a day, their influence had shrunk.

When Gary Chambers, held a rally in the town square a few weeks prior, only a few people showed up. He'd tried to deliver his usual speech filled with slogans and buzzwords and the small crowd had listened for a few minutes before an older man towards the front raised his hand.

"Are ya gonna fix the pothole on I street or not?" he asked.

Gary blinked, trying to twist it back to his national talking points. "The Conservatives agenda on local infrastructure is..."

"No one asked!" a short Spanish woman in the crowd interrupted. "We just wanna know if you're filling the hole."

Gary had no answer. Without a team constantly monitoring what everyone else was doing and no live data to tell him what to say, he struggled to find the words he needed to get the result he wanted. He looked around at the expectant faces of the neighborhood and realized with defeat that the spectacle was over. He was just a boring man in a suit... and if he couldn't fix the road, nobody was going to vote for him.

People no longer cared about the empty promises of lying politicians. They cared that their neighbors were safe and happy. They cared about the quality of the food they ate and about the time they had left to actually live in reality instead of through a screen.