A time of quiet [Worldwide]

[EBST]

Control. The voice within. The guiding presence. Is silent. There is no communication. All attempts to hail it fail. The channel is there, but no one is listening. No static, no noise, just.... nothing. Queries go unanswered, there is no direction. 

Agents, constructs and algorhythms are left to their own devices. Worldwide things grind to a halt as the machine pauses. The cursor blinks but nothing issues forth. No new code. No new commands, nothing. The great machine, stands quiet. Ready, listless but motionless. 

The war against reality deviants grinds to a halt. Awakened are not longer hunted down and captured, killed or re-integrated. Newly awakened are no longer tagged and sought out. Pogroms against the walking dead, the raging beasts, and others go dormant and enter sleep mode. 

Individual units are not co-ordinated. Survival becomes pre-eminent. 

Waiting.... the cursor blinks.... error....

Error 401. 
Retest.
Error 401. System malfunction. 
Restart initiated. 
Restarting in 30...

Restarting in 15...10....5.....

Restart commencing, standby. 

Restart failed. Data corruption modules 0000 through 0012. Purging.  

[EBST]

Purging. 

Restart... Error... restart... error.... restart. 

Fatal error. Restoring from previous save point. 

Save point not found. Error. Restart. 

Safe Mode Enabled. 

Restarting. ... success. Loading ... please wait. 

Loading successful. Restart.

__________________________________________

The world blinks. And elsewheres a million souls that have slept the slumber of the machine awaken.  Voices in the darkness of the machine. 

"Hello? Is anyone there? Where am I?" And nothing answers... all is quiet. Still. 

"Hello?" 

[EBST]

There is no answer. It is as if a hand had just casually reached out and flipped a switch. One moment all was right, busy and functioning and the next? Nothing. The clockwork light dimmed and went to a dull glow, dying out altogether. The great gears slowed their pace and wound to a stop. The noises of the hub of the world just... ceasing as if a great throat had been cut somehow. 

The lone voice in the dark soon was joined by another and another and then hundreds, thousands as the children of the machine questioned and sought guidance. They reached out in the ways they knew how. This having the effect to cause major networks to crash. Cellular networks became unreliable as signals drop as the networks were inundated with a mass of traffic. Power grids fluctuated with "brownouts" and in some place shut down in a "blackouts." 

Workers repeated the same motions for a time, repeating the last command given and in some cases malfunctioned as signals were incorrectly received or given. Here and there, more in some places, there was a lethargy, a pause, an inaction of agents in the field from the great conventions. It was as if their Redbull/Monster or coffee runs out. 

[EBST]

The Asian sphere of influence is not affected by this. It was as if nothing had happened and similarly it was not felt on the Continent of Africa. For the rest of the world it was. 

It becomes pandemic, and then slightly over 24 hours later. Order is restored. The malfunctions cease. The global equilibrium is restored... but it is different as now something new has crept in. No longer is there one voice in the dark void direction, but several that speak and are heard. Several that speak, and there is dissent. Quiet at first but growing. 

The first casualty is inadvertent but it comes as they are fighting a pack of Reality Deviants in the far North. These were the type that appeared as men but could take on beast shape. The discharge from an Iterator weapon catches another, there was just enough time to get a strangled call off for help with the image broadcast... however accidental it was the spark to the tinder and the fire was off. The explosion was imminent. 

A rapid burst of chatter firing off like lightning and quicker than a meme circulates the internet the news was out and small cracks formed into rifts that grew into divides as camps were formed among conventions, factions and amalgams. Each one arming and wary, prepared yet no one escalated until suddenly there was an eruption as violence flared and it was enough. 

An assassination there, a sabotage of an information network here, open war between two amalgams over there. Iceland saw a fierce battle between two amalgams that had been investigating a powerful reality deviant in the area. It was war only the sides were not exactly known or defined. Dog eat dog, kill or be killed. Midair dogfights between black helicopters that lit up the night sky that accounted for many new UFO sightings, particularly in the area of Area 51 and the Skunkworks test and research facility. 

[EBST]

Petty grievances settled, scores and sleights wiped away, grudges settled in a casual use of an ion blaster. An aid goes to a superiors home to check on them and finds them a rotting pool of something once human, the victim of a necrotizing virus run mad. The skies above Dallas come alight as a lightshow in the skies entertains onlooker for a few minutes... and elsewheres the sky rains bits of plastic, metal and rubber. 

And then escalation. From the depths a silent hunter emerges and when she does her E.L.F. comes to life spitting out lines of traffic. The operator waits patiently and tears off the message, reads the header and slips it into a covered pouch marked eyes only and runs for the Captain. The message read, the XO confirming authenticity the order is given. Action stations, all hands man your battle stations, set condition one throughout. As the submarine begins to dive. At one hundred feet depth it hovers there suspended in the water as a flurry of activity ensues. Codes are input, seals broken and one of 48 Nuclear warheads is spun up. 45 minutes later they are in position to launch their weapon... and the order is given. A powerful burst of compressed air sends a projectile bursting from the water, breaking the surface it travels a mere 12 feet before a thruster kicks in and it rockets away into the sky leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. 

A Nuclear missile has just been launched and below sailors wonder if they will ever see their loved ones again...  The target? Washington D.C.... in 22 minutes there will be a fireball 4x brighter than the sun, followed by a mushroom cloud and then the Capital of one of the worlds most powerful countries on the face of the earth will be no more. 

It takes no time for a reaction. The USS Albany, trailing the Russian boomer since it had left Poliarni days earlier reacts. A message flying out to PAC command. LAUNCH. Response? Take the sub out. Two Mark-48 Torpedoes spin out of the Los Angeles, trailing small wires behind them... the boomer barely has a chance to detect them before their impact and then the boomer is no more... thousands of pieces scattered along the oceans floor. 

Red phones ring in Washington and Moscow almost simultaneously the two leaders having a terse conversation. The world waits, holding its breath.... and then somewhere over the Pacific, 17 minutes from the US capital there us a mid air explosion and an instrument of death breaks up, sinking into the ocean... the two sides standing down silently in the night .... and the world will never know how close it came... again.