Fred's momentary dip in the data stream had passed as weeks in the physical realm.

“Reports are scattered at best as news of major losses to the cellular network signals are expanding from localized centers in outlying areas to more densely populated cities and business districts. This could be a slow week in the business world as we cope with lack of communication and steady decline of connectivity. It is difficult to say where the issues have stemmed from, but there are many who see this as a global problem and hold out for government and higher powers to create a safety network for transportation, banking, and important emergency services. Is this an attack by Wave7 or similar organization, or evidence we are overstepping the current capacity of our technology?”

Evan flipped the channels on the television mounted in the corner of Fred's hospital room.

According to the doctors there were many more signs, but there had been little change since the incident on the train.

He thumped his head into the high back of the reclining chair. His eyes watered as he squinted sleep away from his mind.

It was not too late. He wagered from the fading light through the hospital room window, it was barely near seven in the evening. He had not eaten since lunch, before that he was served the announcement his job was nowhere near as secure as the now faltering networks he had worked so hard to protect.

“Well, it’s all down now, so there you have it,” Evan mumbled at the muted television. “Fat lot of good that did, firing me. I’m not so great a scapegoat after all.”

Evan stretched his legs out on the lift of the recliner. He rolled his head to face the hospital bed opposite the chair.

Machines flickered, wires and tubes creating a sort of network all their own. An IV bag offered the steady drip to mark the passing of time. Within it all Fred lay on his back, thin hospital blankets covering his nearly motionless body. The steady rise and fall of Fred’s chest was the only sure sign of life.      

Evan clenched and released his right hand. His fist ached at the joints, though the bruising had gone down considerably since his overreaction on the train.. He remained grateful the emergency medical technicians on the train had been so willing to comply when Evan claimed the stranger threw the first punch.

Having a relatively intact military service history versus the apparently spotted record of the stranger in the damaged uniform likely helped Evan’s case quite a lot.

Many of the other passengers who had witnessed the confrontation between Fred and the strange man in the uniform jacket also backed Evan’s cause. Evidently the man had been menacing others on the train prior to his argument with Fred. Evan felt bad for the guy for all of a minute as police escorted him off the train directly behind the gurney carrying Fred.

It felt to Evan as though the moment marked the beginning of the spiraling doom his life had become in a matter of a few days. A busted hand. Communication brownouts. A security lockdown. A furlough of indeterminate timeline looked more like a firing of most of the security team at ITower.

Evan was left to wonder how long it would last and how far down this spiral would plummet as he continued to ponder the wires maintaining life support systems to his uncle Fred. He fixed his gaze back on the television. He watched as the flickering stream of data could blink out again at any moment delivered news and weather.

Rising from the chair, Evan stretched his legs in a slow pace around the room. He plucked his tablet from a wheeled table set in the corner of the sparsely furnished room.

There were no messages on the queue of either text or voice. He wondered if this was how his life would be now he found himself jobless. It was a furlough. Things could pick up, if the issue was due to a larger problem─hackers, tech terrorism. This was certainly even more than a security breach. Once ITower realized this, they would need him more than before, and his paycheck would certainly reflect it.

Evan tapped the screen to reveal a popup window containing a listing of current articles. The stream seemed to be feeding in, though there was little telling how long it would last, or if he would have to wait until he could get to his car radio.

It was interesting to experience how quickly radio shifted into a power play as the only media still clinging to a scattering of the former primary broadcasting system. Radio signals had begun to fill the airwaves almost immediately after the first dip in cellular communication. None of the same could be said of any other medium. Evan smiled to himself at the thought maybe the whole crash was something contrived by grumpy HAM radio hacks.

He flopped back into the chair across from uncle Fred. He sighed as he read the latest posting about the outages in communication. It was not looking good for GlobeNet services companies as a whole. ITower had, as yet, dodged the blame bullets as the chain of blame was inverse to the chain of command.

Cellular network companies at the bottom of the communication food chain felt the crunch first. One by one they lost service and felt the tidal waves of customer service complaints. It was likely nothing anyone of this generation of service agents and cube slaves had ever encountered. The sheer volume of calls alone might have been cause for some of the outages. Not that anyone had considered this when they were attempting to gain access to their contact lists, dropped calls, lost text messages, and email dumps.

Once more, Evan rolled his eyes as he imagined the riot squads of media-based socialites. The shriek of discovery that all record of their narcissism was lost to the ether.

It was, in the dark truth, likely smaller, portable businesses felt the initial punch to the gut of communication. So many current businesses survived entirely on the cellular networks. Not only calls and messages, the entire currency exchange system was built into the capabilities of tablets, mobile devices, and fingerprint guarded bank accounts.

Evan skimmed through off-mainstream news blogs. Sure enough, conspiracy theorists were running as rampant as ever, only now Evan felt almost inclined to be sympathetic to their thinking. The crash would indeed be a grand way for larger companies to decimate competition in one sweeping stroke.

Yet, when the big boxes began to release complaints of crippled commerce, the world began to shudder a little bit in their designer and knock off boots.

While grocery and supply markets were not the first to feel the pinch of the cellular brownouts, they were the first to beg for government assistance.

Food and transport of essential products were valuable and should be protected at all cost. That big move piqued the conspiracy theorists’ ire.

It wasn’t mistaken markets, not at all, it was something the bored and crazy could latch on to. Nevermind the only reason they were not starving or cities were not slowly degrading into hives of cannibals or raiding parties was because of forethought. No, let us blame it on commercial big guns.

Evan continued his flip through articles on his tablet as he allowed his mind to wander. There would be bigger issues if all of GlobeNet went down. People, average people, had little understanding of the big picture.

It was not that other means of communication no longer existed, but the base of much of the infrastructure was in something more than disrepair. It would take more than blowing a bit of dust off some old server rooms.

True it may be for more than forty years the cellular network had been the sole means of communication, the switch brought the ideas and scientific magic of Tesla to life. The world had done away with landline phones an age ago, and though Evan recalled his grandfather talking about how he had walled up the phone jacks in the house even though his grandmother had sworn it would be a bad idea, no one ever thought that anyone would ever need those squirreled away rotary dial phones, or touch tone with a cord to the handset. Evan had always laughed at the story when his grandfather told it, but now, Grandmother’s lunacy seemed too close to reality.

Evan allowed his eyes to scan the walls of the hospital room. His mind wandered as he questioned if there were even cables in these walls? The building was old enough to be sure, but did the wiring still remain? How many updates had the structure experienced? At what point did the construction crews and city regulations teams agree all the wiring would be more hazzard and hindrance than back-up plan?

While in communications meetings, Evan had heard underground wire systems still existed. They had been used to transition to fiber optic lines connected the original cellular towers. Those lines had long since been put out of service.

All these systems, well beyond the need for cables of any sort, were suddenly failing. As long as satellites captured and transferred frequencies, the world had taken for granted it was all around them, in the air. Including the Cloud.

The data, the memory of an entire generation, the Cloud was ITower’s greatest achievement following the infrastructure overhaul to an entire communications network. GlobeNet was the greatest monopoly in recent history, left to stand because of the smaller networking agencies and their commitment to bickering over the price of communication plans.

The Cloud made it all seem like a foolish game in comparison, and yet, there it was.

Evan rose from the recliner and waved a silent farewell to Uncle Fred as he left the room. He had waited out the rush hour traffic, but there was little point to staying late into the night. It was not as though Fred would be bored without Evan there by his bedside. Guilt, thus far, had not overridden a desire for the comfort of his own bed.

Evan returned to his car. A moment of anxiety overcame him as he awaited the action of the automatic lock to click open. The vehicle’s reliance on cloud-based software made it possible his car would be rendered unable to be driven, or at least accessed. Evan allowed a snicker to escape his lips. He was not sure how bad this would get, but his loss of gainful employment was starting to look like a small problem in a much more grand and global concern.

Coming off of his PTSD medications was beginning to allow darker thoughts to seep into Evan’s mind. The idea to ration the pills was meant to keep him sane longer, instead it appeared to be making the path to a breakdown a smooth slide.

Evan continued to consider the cloud as he maneuvered through steady downtown traffic. He listened for the next direction from his mobile global navigation system fed directly from the car’s tracking systems. If the cloud went down, would he even know how to do something as simple as get home? Evan watched the signs pass by his view. It was not as though he had never taken this route, he simply never looked directly at the signs. Evan realized there was little more than numbers to guide him. Naming new streets was a banal novelty meaning little when most everyone knew the pseudonym of their global positioning system coordinates.

Evan found himself strangely grateful his uncle Fred’s home was built when streets still had names and homes had clear numbers on the outside.

Within the confines of the dim, quiet house, Evan allowed his body and mind to relax as much as the rising panic attack would allow.

Welcome home, man. Linc's voice sliced through the silence.

Evan gripped the edge of the nearest wall. His heart lurched in his chest.

“Screw this.” Evan made a beeline for the medicine cabinet.

Man. Those pills were some powerful stuff. Took long enough for them to wear off. The familiar voice rattled Evan's mind.

He stumbled for the couch.

Take a load off, partner. I've got a little something to show you." As Linc’s words ripped through Evan's skull, he collapsed onto the floor shy of the sofa, his consciousness slipping away.

 A vision of a desert filled Evan’s mind as the sensation of sand dusted a fluttering scarf covering his face.