He sits at the desk in the telecommunications facility, fingers hovering over the controls. One keystroke. The signals die. The internet goes dark. Sometimes for days, sometimes for a few hours.
The order came down: prevent mass hysteria. Keep people from coordinating panic. Keep them offline while the military figures out the next move.
He executes the shutdown.
The screens go black. The hum of the facility drops to a whisper.
What surprises him is the quiet that follows.
Kellin walks through the city after his shift and notices something: people are calm. Genuinely calm. Not the panicked scrambling he expected. They sit on stoops. They talk to each other. They seem almost satisfied. As if the absence of something is finally giving them what they didn't know they needed.
He realizes they don't seem to care if the internet ever comes back.
But it will. The vulnerabilities are shifting. The attacks aren't hitting the roads anymore—they're targeting the electricity grids, the cell towers. When the internet returns, people will cling to it like a lifeline, relieved and grateful and desperate. He can already imagine it in the bars, the first reconnections, the rush of missed notifications.
Kellin returns to the facility for the next shift.
His hand is on the switch to turn it back on. The internet. The connection. The endless stream of data and voices and content and dependency.
He could just hold the services. Never flip that switch. Leave the world offline. It's only a thought. But it roots itself deep. Then a coworker walks past. Looks at him sideways. A question. A judgment. What are you waiting for?
Kellin flips the switch.
The lights on the console pulse green. The internet flows back into the world like blood returning to a limb.
For him, it ended the need for socializing, all that constant connection, the feeds, the stories, the performance of it all. He saw that people could live without it.
But the media itself? The broader internet? The sheer architecture of information and data and humanity's knowledge stored in servers? That's something else. That's deeper. That can't be unmade. That shouldn't be forgotten.
He understands now: social media was the symptom. The internet is the deeper addiction. And humans don't stop. Even after they experience disconnection, they go back to train themselves in the data it provides. The cycle never breaks. If not for the internet, something else will be there. Better or worse, he doesn't know.
The image is mine.