That Week When The Internet Went Down

Well... What do we do now?

— Everyone

That week when the internet went down was, well, a week during which the internet was completely inaccessible in the Megacorpolis. It's also called the Great Buffering, the Big Disconnect, or Modem Monday (as, of course, it started on a Monday), because it's a bit of a mouthful otherwise. Besides the usual - brief economic collapse, millions laid off, fiscal quarters missed, riots, and doomsday cults - the entire city went through a whole week where no one was really sure just what to do.

by Fight Club

What Happened?

[Click] ...Huh, this is taking a while to load.

— Everyone, again.

The Great Buffering started on Monday, [REDACTED, THANK YOU - The Computer ], at 12am. With little warning, the entire city's connection flickered, then died - plunging the city into mild boredom followed by exasperation. Workers were left without videos to watch while pretending to work, businesses could no longer operate their gaudy ads, and most gamers were locked out of their platform accounts.

by Mashable.com

---

After a few hours of that, people started to get worried. Technicians throughout the city were scrambling to identify and fix the problem. At the same time, Malcontents took the opportunity to launch all sorts of mayhem - unfortunately for them, bullets don't require an internet connection.

When hours turned into days, that's when the real trouble started. Javamat started to go empty, unable to send a signal back to their repositories, and that lead to riots. Countless meetings had to be postponed, which surely broke the heart of millions and led to much emotional damage. The 37th annual "End of Days" convention had to be canceled, but that was more due to the Doomies taking to the street and shouting that the end was nigh.

The antique item known as 'books' saw a brief resurgence during the Great Buffering, which has limped on since then. It's now common for corporate drones to keep a book (unread for decades) at their desk, 'just in case'.

At the end of the week, entire industries had risen from the brief outage ashes. Corporate profits had taken a real hit, but like the cockroaches they are, corporations proved resilient and more than able to off-load most of the hurt onto their employees. An entire generation of lost souls now wander the Chipless slums of the Megacorpolis, fired en masse during the Great Buffering.

Why, though?

Is it back yet?

— Everyone (again)

It's not really clear exactly what happened, and there's never been an official explanation. In the absence of fact, wild speculation has rushed to the void. When the corporations bother talking about it, they usually blame each other and point fingers at everything from malcontents to solar flares.
Nobody knows what happened, but for a full week, people had to raise their eyes from their screen and look at the world around them - and there were plenty who didn't like what they saw.
Whatever happened, it isn't likely that the Corps are keen for a sequel, for once.

The Likeliest and Most Reasonable Explaination by Giorgio Tsoukalos

Ah, FINALLY! It's back on! Now I can get some work done... Let me just check my email first.

— Everyone

Suspects, Theories, Explainations

As with any event of this magnitude, it is important to first assign blame.

The MÓRRÍGAN

by Simon Weaner

Always a favorite scapegoat for Corporations, the hacker MÓRRÍGAN have launched countless cyber-attacks of varying degrees of severity and sanity in the past.
It would seem counter-intuitive for a hacker to disable their own weapon, but that hasn't stopped anyone from blaming her.

The Yeti

by Lenta.ru

Some believe that no matter how many birthdays thrown for them, any surviving Yeti are still pretty sore about that whole extinction thing.
What better way to get revenge than to disable people's internet for a whole week?

by Supernatural

ALIENS!

Obviously.

The Computer

by 2001: Space Odyssey

Some think that the Great Buffering was not a malicious attack, but an accident. A result of a good ol' fashioned Windows update, temporarily crippling even the mighty Computer.

The Computer Again

But this time, as a victim. Some think that the disconnect was either an attack on the Computer or the test of some EMP weapon.
The culprits behind this are usually the Corporations or when they're the one fronting the theory, various malcontent forces within the city, there to take away our freedom.

Despite all the theories, there's never been any real conclusion, but that's never stopped anyone from drawing wild, unsubstantiated conclusions out of thin air.

The Merch

COMING SOON... The truth will be revealed behind Megacorpolis's greatest mystery.

— Ad for new show, the Connective-Detective-Perspective