"Okay, Betsy," I murmured, walking over and placing a hand on her cool metal chassis. "Don't you do this to me. We've been through too much. Remember that DDoS attack from that botnet in Belarus? We laughed at it. Remember when we pushed three terabytes for that off-site backup in under an hour? You were singing."
I did the only thing a man in my position could do. I performed the sacred ritual: I unplugged her, counted to thirty with the grim patience of a bomb disposal expert, and plugged her back in.
Her fans spun to life. The lights flickered. She went through her boot sequence. And then the red screen of death returned.
This was wrong. This was fundamentally, cosmically wrong. My system doesn't go down. I have redundant power supplies. I have battery backups that could keep this office running for three days. My setup is more stable than most small countries. For my connection to die this completely meant something physical had happened. Something brutal.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from my wife, Sarah: Internet out for you, too? I was trying to file a brief.
Then another, and another. It was my neighbor, Tom: Dude, is your net down? I got kicked out of my Warzone match.
A cold dread, colder than any server room, washed over me. It wasn't just me.
I disconnected my phone from the dead Wi-Fi and switched to the blessed sanctuary of 5G cellular data. I opened the one place where truth, lies, and utter madness converge in a glorious suburban train wreck: the Serenity Springs Estates Community Facebook group.
It was, as expected, a nuclear meltdown in real time.
Cheryl P. posted: "Is anyone else's internet down? My little Braden can't watch his Cocomelon and he's starting to get fussy."
Mark R., a man who took his smart home way too seriously, was in full panic mode: "My Philips Hue lights are stuck on magenta mood. My thermostat is unresponsive. And my smart fridge just tried to order 70 gallons of milk. This is a catastrophe."
And then, like a pristine marble monument in the middle of a garbage fire, was a post from our glorious leader, the HOA president herself, Brenda.
Brenda Larson posted, with a picture of a perfectly manicured rose bush: "A friendly reminder to all residents that service provider issues should be directed to the provider's customer service line, not this community forum. Please keep this space clear for official HOA business. On that note, Janice, your lawn is a 1/4 inch above the regulation 3-inch height. You have been cited. Have a serene day."
I read Brenda's post, and a dark suspicion began to bloom in my mind.