Silence

Turn it off.

The feed was the information infrastructure that empowered nearly every human activity and on which nearly every human activity relied. A talisman that lent mere mortals the power of demigods. Doctors used it for diagnosis. Brokers used it to place bets. Physicists used it to explore the mysteries of quantum entanglement. Farmers used it to grow food. Kindergarteners used it to learn the alphabet. The feed was power, water, transportation, communication, entertainment, public services, relationships, industry, media, government, security, finance, and education. Without it the churning torrent of human civilization would cease. The feed was lightning captured in grains of sand, a miracle of science, engineering, and culture that wove the entire world into a single digital tapestry of unparalleled beauty and complexity.

Efficacy bred dependency. Turning it off was madness.

The lights in the conference room went dark. The gentle background hum of the building’s internal processes died. Diana’s files vanished from the shared feed. No, not just her files. The feed itself was gone. It was as if Diana had just stepped through the red satin curtains, Nell’s sure grip leading her into the exotic feedlessness of Analog.

But this wasn’t Analog. This was Commonwealth headquarters, the nerve center of the feed. Just a moment before, Diana had been a key node in the deluge of global attention, and now she was standing in the middle of an empty stadium, her teammates vanished, the crowd abruptly absent, the cameras off…