Server Down

"He looks like he almost made it."

"Nah, never had a chance." responded the other man nonchalantly without breaking his gaze at the body.

They both looked down at the contorted, emaciated corpse lying on the floor in front of them part ways to the doorway they had come in through.

"Apparently, he was some kind of big deal… in there." The first man continued throwing a half-hearted, thumb up-raised gesture to the pod shaped rig in the centre of the room. In reality, the gesture was not needed as there was little else in the small room apart from the pod, it looked like some grotesque imitation of a black egg with various wires and tubes protruding from its mottled surface. The smell of the pod was heavy and oppressive, both men were now defensively covering their noses in disgust. “Supposedly one the top 5% for, er…well for whatever it is they all do in there.”

“Who found him?”

The other man spoke dismissively, finally looking away from the floor to make some perfunctory eye-contact. “They have people come to the rooms every few days to clean out the waste, shave the occupants, that sorta thing. The girl says she found him just like this.”

“She the one that took his teeth?” The first man grimaced as he nudged the dead man's head cautiously with his foot, exposing his mouth and a stale puddle of drool and vomit underneath the shrivelled body.

“He was one of them, what’d you call em? Perma-Cons, always online. They get the teeth removed before they go in so it’s one less thing to rot away out here. Makes it easier for the cleaners to change the feeding tubes and all that too. Today was probably the first time this joker has come out in years.” The second man gave a mirthless laugh as he said this, the first man frowned deeper as he contemplated it and both men unconsciously rubbed their unshaven chins, feeling their own still present teeth beneath the skin while they stood beside the body.

“How long were the servers actually down for?” Asked the first man. “They said on the feed that there were more suicides than ever this time. I’ve never known everything to crash at once like that, you know?”

“Dunno how long the official incident report said but it was long enough for him to run outta air. Looks like he was trying to get out or something. Not even any lights in here, the chump had no idea where he was going and never had the strength to pull the tubes out by himself.” The dead man’s arms seemed more fragile and desiccated than they did before he said this and both men - men who relied on their muscles to do hard physical labour each day, felt a sense of disgust at this thought. Any faint shreds of sympathy were soon swept away with this realisation. They both turned away, pulling on their heavy black gloves. The second man bent over to pick up his tools when he noticed the sticker proudly emblazoned next to the pod manufacturer’s logo: “98.6% uptime guarantee”. He silently chuckled to himself, “I guess this guy really was in the top 5% after all”. Both men wordless carried out their grim task as the fading, smoggy sunset rippled tired tobacco colours across endless rows of identical windowless buildings in the fading city.