“The sky is falling the sky is falling!!” Chicken Little screamed
“Fuck.” Ralph cursed as the screens began flooding with breach notifications and error codes. “Goddammit Bernie, it’s every five minutes with this shit today!” Ralph began furiously punching buttons and initiating reboot sequences in the critical and red zones. “You have one fucking job!”
“Oh, Jesus… fuck. Ralph I’m sorry man. I coulda sworn I had all that shit set up right. I forgot to even check. Gimme a sec, I’ll get another broadband sent and I’ll try to fix it. Fuck!” Bernie began queing the alert and, given the severity, selected global yet again and confirmed that he, yet again, was sure he needed to distribute to that size audience. He then had to confirm that he would, in fact, like to disrupt those in sleeping time zones. He yanked a token to punch in the override code on the screen. “You fucks have a lot more than sleep to worry about. Goddammit.”
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Chicken Little screamed again. “Oh shut the fuck up, we know!” Ralph punched the speaker.
Bernie had been lost in thought figuring out how to make alerts more appealing, eye catching, and friendly due to complaints/feedback/corporate guidance over his tone. “Fucking idiots” he cursed again, “a friendly fucking reminder. A friendly fucking reminder!” He jabbed the keyboard as if punctuating his ranting. “It can’t just be me!”
He guessed in trying to change the alert, he must have broken something for the scheduling. He shook his head and cursed every talking head he could think of. His eyes were so dry they stung. Even his weariness, confusion, and exhaustion couldn’t bring a tear to moisturize. He had just been outside a few minutes ago, how could there be a problem already?
One fucking job, Ralph muttered. One fucking job and he still fucks it up. There was far more exhaustion than malice in his words.
Bernie pretended not to hear since they both knew the frequency of alerting had become incomprehnsible. If Bernie couldn’t find a solution, it would crash entirely and soon. At this point, Ralph and Bernie both had lost count of how many days and nights they’ve been at this, and neither knew how much longer they could keep it up. So, Bernie understood and forgave all of Ralph’s frustration. He felt the same. It truly was baffling. How could anything get this far?
Meanwhile, across the world, a friendly chime and alert sounded on each device. A cheerful, dancing chick with a bright, chipper, English Butler-type voice announced:
Greetings Friends! Chicken Little would like to once again remind you to take a moment to look up at the sky. Isn’t it beautiful today? Thank you ever so much for your assistance.
Inspired by my dearest Bubba and Mr. Robot
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