As much as she had tried to set it to the least irritating sound, the alarm ringing from her phone was irreparably annoying. She wondered why she hated it so much… after all, her dreams were not so pleasant and it was kind of relieving to be abruptly snatched out of them. Especially that night, they had been unusually weird. She could never remember her dreams clearly, but somehow she felt her subconscious revealed a much finer and creative person than the one pertaining to the world after that tedious alarm went off.
Just in sync the blinds began to roll up smoothly. She rolled over in bed a couple times then stretched out her arm to reach her phone, and subsequently discovered that there wasn’t a single notification on the home screen. Strange, she thought as she stood up. The wall to the right of the window slowly lit up: ‘good morning x, the temperature outside is eighteen degrees, today will be sunny, partly cloudy only in the evening, you have zero notifications’. She didn’t hear this as she had already walked into the shower. The water of the shower was as perfect as ever, and she felt pleased, though the uneasiness caused by the night’s strange dreams was still floating around her head. Getting dressed she didn’t pay much attention to the clothes she chose, but she looked great anyway. After all she only wore high couture and had a lovely instinct for matching colors. After dressing she prepared a colorful low-carb, high-protein breakfast: blueberries, banana, greek yogurt and chia seeds. The photo came out perfectly, it barely needed any editing, but when she went to upload it, she realized her Instagram account was empty, completely blank. The feed did show posts and looked fine. Upon closer inspection however one could see none of the posts had been made in the last twelve hours. And there was something else that was odd, there didn’t seem to be any posts made by particular persons, they were all by brands or museums and the like. It was probably a problem with the internet connection, she would just have to skip the morning post, and hope that her most arduous followers wouldn’t be too pissed about it.
The agenda looked equally as blank, but since everything was synced with the cloud, that was also probably due to the fault in the internet connection. She decided she would go for a run as it was a lovely day outside. She lived in a nice residential neighbourhood, not too far from the center. It was a pretty, quiet area, with loads of parks surrounding the clean streets and symmetrical doll-house-like buildings sporting white façades and deep blue roofs. These contrasted rather nicely with a few blocks of taller, more modern buildings that from the outside looked like glass boxes covered in plants—@jasminesworld lived in a penthouse in one of these boxes. Her favourite park was one built not so long ago, where the massive council estate used to be—the one in which she had lost her virginity with that boy from high school, what would he be doing now? Nothing good probably. At that time in the morning however, there was some sense of urgency, as men and women politely dressed walked hastily towards the tube station or drifted on their hoverboards towards the financial district. Even though it wasn’t an unusual sight, she noticed everyone was scrambling with their phones and murmuring angrily at them. The connection flaw was probably affecting the whole neighbourhood. She took off to the park and ran for about half an hour, after which she decided to go to that franchise coffee shop where she usually met with her two best friends—she remembered she hadn’t yet had the mango spiced latte that was causing a sensation on Instagram last week. She also thought of the barista who was clearly in love with her, for he was always trying to impress her in some way or another and made heart shapes on the foam of her lattes. He was really cute, fairly handsome and had a beautiful smile. Too bad he was a nobody.
She got there, and went to the bar to get one of those mango spiced lattes, but the guy with the cute smile was not smiling at all while serving her, the transaction took place almost entirely in silence, except when he said that today they were taking only cash. When she got her latte cup at the end of the bar, she noticed her name hadn’t been written on it. She started towards the upper floor, and while walking she saw a familiar face, it was of a girl sitting on her own calmly reading a book. That girl was Amanda T., her best friend from childhood. She hadn’t seen her in a few years, and really didn’t feel like talking to her now, so she hurried up the stairs.
@lunamooney and @fairymimi were sitting at the usual spot. They looked distressed, as if they just had an argument or received bad news. “Hey girls”, she said sitting down on the chair between them, “Hey…” they both answered without looking at her
“Are you okay? You loo-“,
@lunamooney looked at her as if she was mad, and yelled
“Am I ok?! Fuck no, how would I be okay? Are you okay?”
At this point @Jasminesworld realised her friends were having the same issues with their profiles
“Oh so it’s happening to you too? It’s very weird isn’t it? It must be some kind of stupid error though, I’m sure they’ll fix it in a few hours.”
To which @lunamooney answered, “Well they better do cause I’m freaking out.”
@lunamooney was a huge celebrity, she had over two million followers and was living the jet setter life; she was always hanging out with movie stars and rappers, had all-covered trips to paradisiacal islands in the Pacific every other week, got paid ridiculous amounts of money for promoting brands and so on. Jasmine was really jealous of her, especially since she had been featured on the cover of Vogue about three months ago—that was @jasminesworld’s life dream. They were very good friends, but the sheer admiration @jasminesworld had for @lunamooney made it impossible for a meaningful bond to emerge between the two of them. @lunamooney could undoubtedly notice her friend’s jealousy, and was disgusted by it.
@fairymimi she had known for a long time, they had studied at the same high school. She was a year older than @jasminesworld, so they weren’t in the same class. Back then @fairymimi was the most popular girl in the school, and even one of the most popular teens in the whole city. Boys wanted to court her and girls wanted to be part of her entourage. As a beautiful, rich and popular girl she was proper mean to everyone that didn’t kiss her ass or anyone that did it too obviously. @jasminesworld was very intimidated by her at the time, but she managed to stay off her radar and so was invisible to her and the rest of the popular kids. It was only when she left high school that @jasminesworld began to be attractive to boys, somehow her unusual yet well-shaped face fitted in perfectly with the beauty trend of the moment. Her Instagram persona took off, and she was very happy to finally be a member of the cool kid clan. She met @fairymimi that year at an event for a cosmetics brand, and seeing her there, @fairymimi acknowledged her for the first time: ‘I can’t believe we went to the same school! We should have been friends long time ago’. These words worked like a magic spell on @jasminesworld. All those years of feeling like an irrelevant waste of space were swept off in a moment by the sound of that phrase floating off the untouchable girl’s lips. It was no wonder that @fairymimi went on to live off her popularity, she enjoyed the spotlight and frankly it was her only gift. As for @jasminesworld, she had never thought she could be in the spotlight, but she adapted rather quickly. She ditched her old friends and made new ones as the profession of celebrity demanded that she associated only with important people (that is, those with a high count of followers). @jasminesworld, with her peculiar face and her perfect taste, became muse to local fashion brands and in the time span of two years reached the same amount of followers as @fairymimi. @fairymimi was more of a typical beauty, and so wasn’t all that versatile when it came to adapting her image to the new trends of each season and to be honest she had been pretty stagnant recently. In fact, @jasminesworld had now surpassed @fairymimi by a couple hundred thousand. It’s an odd feeling, when you grow up and suddenly find yourself at the same level of those who you felt were inaccessible, superior human beings; when you are no longer feeling small and inexperienced, and instead it is them who are humbled by you. It is empowering, but also very saddening. This is how @jasminesworld felt about her once daunting idol, a mixture of satisfaction and pity.
The three girls kept on talking along these lines. @jasminesworld was sure it was a temporary issue with the phone company, which affected the three of them since they were all sponsored by it. @lunamooney was complaining that it was going to cost her hundreds, maybe thousands of followers. @fairymimi, surprisingly, seemed unconcerned. The cute bartender, who was picking up empty mugs from tables, overheard the conversation and without much interest told them that it was happening to everyone apparently, no single gadget or computer of any sort was working correctly. When he turned away, @jasminesworld’s phone vibrated and emitted a high-pitch sound. Seconds later the same sound started to emanate from every table in the café, @lunamooney’s and @fairymimi’s also. The screens of the phones showed an intense red and had the following message in white letters:
GOVERNMENT WARNING: DUE TO A YET UNKNOWN CAUSE, ALL DATA SERVERS ARE EXPERIENCING TROUBLE REDEEMING PERSONAL INFORMATION, WHICH IS COMPLETELY UNAVAILABLE FOR THE TIME BEING. AVOID LEAVING THE HOUSE, IF YOU ARE AT WORK, GO HOME, THIS IS A CALL TO ALL CITIZENS: PLEASE REMAIN CALM, WE ARE WORKING TO RESTORE NORMALITY. IN CASE OF SEVERE EMERGENCIES CALL 911.
After this, phones displayed only a red screen and a green button with the numbers nine one-one. There was silence in the café. People began to look around, trying to find an indication of what to do next in the eyes of the strangers around them. Like a dish crashing loudly to the floor in a moment of tranquillity, the ultra-famous girl’s voice broke the silence with a loud scream: ‘What the fuck!?’. Slowly a mumble began to build up and some people started to leave. The other two girls were sullen, and their skin was pale as if a dementor had sucked the colour out of them. It was as if the aura of exclusivity and privilege that one could almost smell around them had suddenly evaporated. Jasmine tried to think of something to say, but she realized that commenting on what had just happened required a level of insightfulness which she didn’t think them capable of; all they ever really talked about was waistlines and gossip. She felt her intestines being pulled inwards as if a gravitational force had formed in the middle of her hips. She couldn’t quite understand what was going on, but the electrifying energy the air was charged with reassured her that it could mean the complete reversal of the world as she knew it.
Two minutes later the last groups of people were walking out of the coffee shop. “I’m going home”, said Luna. “Yeah, me too”, said Mimi. Jasmine nodded at them, “I’ll call you guys later”. She was wondering what was going on in their heads, or in people’s heads in general. Why was the government asking people to go home? She didn’t feel like going home at all, so she just sat there, observing the people in the street and analysing their puzzled expressions. She toyed with her phone a bit, to see which kind of faults the flaw was causing. The fingerprint scanner worked, but didn’t recognize her thumb. The contact list had all the slots but was blank, and upon pressing on one the phone would try to call an infinitely long number composed of zeros and ones then give two tones, then just a flat tone. The music library had all the songs, but the names of the artists weren’t showing. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped slightly in shock. “Sorry, I’m afraid we’re closing the place”, said the cute barista, “are you alright?” Jasmine turned to him absentmindedly “Yeah yeah, I’m fine.”
It was still as lovely as ever outside; in fact the air was extremely pleasant. The street was almost empty, no cars or people whatsoever, only the distant wail of police sirens could be heard. She figured she would just go home, she thought of ordering a cab, but unsurprisingly the app wouldn’t let her log in, and so she started walking. She walked without a sense of urgency, and after five minutes of staring at the steady repetition of her feet alternating steps, she felt her thoughts starting to come together. So, it looked like what was happening was that all profiles, in all platforms, were inaccessible, but what consequences could that have? Naturally, she worried firstly about her Instagram profile. What if it was irreversible, and she had actually lost the vast amount of followers she had hoarded through years of careful work? She would have to start from zero. Maybe it could be positive after all, she would be able to use her experience to craft an even more sophisticated image of herself, getting rid of all the dodgy collabs with random brands she had once had to take because the money was good, by now she had enough money to live without a day of work for a couple years. But there was another possibility. If she was left with no trace whatsoever of her digital profiles, she could struggle to make the world understand that she was once someone, and she could struggle to believe it herself. She thought of her name, and in her head it sounded void of any meaning. The repetitive motion of her feet hadn’t made her realize that her legs had been steadily becoming blurred, and she could kind of see through them, she was becoming transparent.
She got to her building, stood in front of the iris scanner, which lifted its cover and produced a thin bluish laser that moved up and down her right eye. The tiny screen next to the laser reader showed the digitized image of her iris with extreme precision, but after that nothing happened. She repeated the process a couple times, but the door would not open. There was a key slot, but she had never seen the keys. She sat on her doorstep and felt scared. Not much time passed, and she was relieved to see one of her neighbours coming up the street.
“Can’t get in huh? Well you’re lucky, I have the keys.”
He opened the door and they both walked into the reception hall towards the elevator. Jasmine pressed the button, and while the neighbour toyed with his keys not paying attention to her, she felt she could do with some conversation.
“So do you think they will fix this anytime soon?”
“Oh no, not at all honey. I just came from talking to my brother, who works for the government, and he says it doesn’t look good at all. They have very little hope of reversing the hack or whatever it is; apparently all name-associated data has been erased from existence for good. In fact they are already designing a shock plan to cope with the situation, but I don’t know what the hell they’re going to do with it. No one knows who’s who, apart from personal relations of course, and who owns what and so on, it’s madness.”
A metallic voice invaded the equally metallic box: Floor three, doors opening. “Well, here’s me. Be safe darling, if you need anything you know where to find me.”
She dropped down onto her sofa dramatically and stared at the ceiling. She was hungry, so she tried to see if there were any places doing deliveries; after all, one thing people need is to eat. The app for ordering food wouldn’t let her log in, so she just googled for delivery food. There was a weird site that looked as if it had just been set up. The disclaimer read: Special apocalypse menu! Delicious restaurant food delivered at your door. “No cash accepted! We will only take as payment jewellery or other valuable objects. Right, she hadn’t thought about money. It wasn’t only social media accounts that were lost, it was anything that pertained to you because your name was on it. So what about the money in her bank account? She would probably not be able to claim it.
She felt anxious, she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be alone, so she thought of going to someone’s place. Although while trying to decide whose, she couldn’t find in her mental contact list a single person with whom she would want to be in this situation, now that she was feeling so vulnerable. All through these years she had chosen her personal relations according to a curated strategy of establishing herself among the people who had the potential of boosting her career as a celeb, and had no interest in evaluating whether they were good people or not. In fact, she had actively rejected strong bonds with the nicer types, as she felt any sort of compromise would prove a drag at some point in the future.
She was conscious of this, but it was alright with her, as long as she had money and fame she didn’t need a shoulder to cry on. She had lived like that most of her life anyways. Amanda was the only person that had actually been there for her when she was the ugly duckling, yet she ditched her almost overnight when she received some ugly comments on the two or three pictures she had uploaded with her. How she wished now she had kept her closer. Now all that tremendous effort and self-discipline was apparently worthless, all she was left with was the unjustified pride of being the girl who once had it all. Her eyes were still shut. The white background of her thoughts receded concentrically to a black spot, and she literally felt like she was disappearing. She reached for her body, touching her feet, knees, elbows and neck to make sure she was still there. She was there physically, for sure, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she was floating in a free fall into nothingness. Who was she? @Jasmineworld was gone, her money was gone and she had no friends. She touched her body again, and this time the reassuring presence of her bones was comforting. She went to the mirror in her closet, undressed, and stood there staring at herself. As much as she tried to reconcile the fact of her existence, she couldn’t convince herself that she was really there, for every time she tried to shape an idea of Jasmine she found herself trying to reach for elements which had simply vanished. The image in the mirror was, in each small detail, reproducing shapes that weren’t hers. She was getting increasingly angry at the stupid reflection of that body in the mirror. Her brain was rushing, and a deep self-hatred for all tangible aspects of her existence was consuming her. Without really being aware of her sudden movement, she broke the mirror with a punch. Her hand bled heavily. She was now certain she wouldn’t be able to bear the humiliation of being a nobody, a common scumbag equal to all the other mediocre people out there.
She opened the window in the bedroom and climbed onto the frame. She looked down at the pavement, it was a certain death. How sweet, to go right now, to not be here to witness the world going nuts. She took a deep breath and prepared to let go. On the verge of jumping, she heard a familiar sound that transfixed her for a moment. And then again, and again. DING, DING, DING. It was her phone. She got off the window and got it back out from her purse. It was exploding with tons of likes, messages and notifications all piling on her home screen. She unlocked the phone with her thumb, and hurried onto Instagram. Her profile was back as it was the day before. On the feed, she saw a selfie of @lunamooney looking fabulous in a cocktail dress. She commented a bunch of smiley faces with hearts instead of eyes. Upon noticing everyone was using the same hashtag, she arranged her hair lightly and took a picture covering her chest with her left arm and wrote the same thing: #blackoutglowout. A text from @fairymimi popped up: there’s a party at Chanel headquarters, come babe! She smiled, and a tear of pure joy rolled out of her eye.