Thursday, January 10, 2019

Operating System Zero ep.1 (A Flash Fiction Serial)

Episode 1

Curtis:
     I feel like today, oddly enough, is going to be a great day. My TV is flickering a tad, but I tap the side of it, and it clears up as usual. My coffee is hot with the perfect amount of monk fruit in it, and just a touch of almond milk to give it that creamy taste that makes it perfect.
     After doing my morning start me up, I reach over and hit the start button on my computer. My Vaio computer still uses Windows 7 and runs perfect, but has a lag time that seems to test my patience sometimes. I took a drink of coffee, and my login screen finally appears. Type in my password and watch it start logging in as I surf through some of my favorite morning channels on TV. 
     I rotate my chair to the desk and watch the icons start appearing on the desktop screen one by one. I double click the icon that resembles Animal from the Muppets. Animal! Even though I am in my lower 30's I am still entertained by the Muppets crazy antics. As I watch the Animal Icon enlarge, I am expecting another login screen. The large icon disappears, and the screen goes black. Not sure for the difficulty or reason why my work software is not running. I wait... After 30 seconds I hear a voice yelling my name from somewhere outside my house.
     "Curtis," yells Rick.
     I open my window and hear Rick my neighbor yelling my name, "Curtis...".
     "What," I yell back. Not really disgusted but pissed at watching my computer do nothing.
     "Is your computer messing up?" He yells in my direction.
     Rick, and I work for the same company. We are both located in the same area because of the high intelligence in our work. When I say intelligence, I am stressing the term to mean security at a high level. We are both contracted for work in the private industry, but monitored at a level as great as or higher than the information we work with.
     "Are they updating the O.S.," I reply.
     "If so, I never received a memo," yells Rick.
     "Me neither," I yell as I swallow from my cup of coffee. 
     I start to smell smoke for some reason, not clear on what it was.
     "Hold on a minute Rick." 
     As I start walking through my office, everything looks fine, but I look at my computer, and the hard drive is billowing smoke from under its outer casing. 
     "Rick, power down and turn your wifi off. Our security has been compromised."
     The constant humming alarm sound of the emergency broadcast system on a TV or radio station is an individual sound that is highly recognizable, and that's what I start hearing. I walk in front of the TV hoping to see if there may be problems elsewhere and hear the exact noise start emitting from my smartphone. Turning on the screen, I watch smoke flow from every port and drop the phone.
     "Curtis... Curtis..." yells Rick.
     Before I can turn around and face the window. I can feel the house shake. The shake was obviously a tremor from an earthquake or an enormous blast from a distance.
     "Rick, you ok?" I yell and stick my head out the window.
     "I'm fine Curtis... Look at the sky," he yells. 
     We both hear nothing but an oncoming wind in the distance like a locomotive at high-speed barely able to stay on the rails with no breaks and watch the sky turn black.

To Be Continued...


Big Green Publishing