The air felt different. Crisp, heavy, charged with a quiet tension that didn’t belong in the everyday world. It was that same feeling you get when you wake from a dream that’s too vivid to let go of, where the edges of reality and imagination still blur, leaving a lingering confusion.
I blinked against the soft morning light streaming through my curtains, expecting a familiar hum from the phone on my nightstand, a chirp from the tablet as it synced to the morning news. But the silence was jarring, unnatural. Reaching out, my hand brushed an empty space where my devices should have been.
"What...?"
I sat up abruptly, the bed sheets tangling around my legs. A quick glance around my room confirmed something was off. The sleek, modern devices I relied on—my phone, tablet, smartwatch—were gone. In their place were strange objects, archaic talismans and symbols crudely drawn on paper scraps pinned to my walls. Burnt herbs were strung up along the windowsill, their acrid scent mixing with the smell of wax from candles I didn’t remember lighting.
My pulse quickened, and I pushed myself out of bed. The apartment felt... alien. My feet touched cold stone floors that should have been wooden laminate, and the modern décor I once cherished seemed to have transformed into something from a different age. Old, rough-hewn furniture, jars of strange liquids, and scattered piles of parchment littered the surfaces.
With rising dread, I fumbled through my drawers, searching for anything familiar—something to anchor me in what had been my world only a few hours ago. But nothing was there. My phone, my laptop, everything connected to technology had vanished. In their place were strange, handwritten books, and items that looked as if they belonged in the medieval past.
Still half-asleep, I tried to piece together what was happening. This had to be a prank, a trick. Or was I still dreaming?
I rushed to the door, flinging it open. The hallway outside my apartment was dim and eerily quiet. Gone were the soft murmurs of neighbors' televisions, the distant sound of people chatting over morning coffee. Instead, there was silence—thick, oppressive silence. I stepped outside and immediately noticed the symbols. Strange symbols scrawled in chalk lined the walls, on the ground, on the doors of each apartment. Pagan-looking signs, hastily drawn as though in warning, or protection.
Voices echoed from downstairs. Low, murmuring voices speaking in hushed tones, tinged with fear. I cautiously made my way down the steps, the smell of incense and herbs growing stronger with each step.
When I reached the ground floor, I stopped dead in my tracks. A gathering of my neighbors stood in the lobby, but something about them was… off. They were all dressed in simple, modest clothing—far different from the usual array of fashionable outfits. The vibrant colors of modern fashion had been replaced by muted browns and greys. Every electronic device, from the reception desk’s computer to the security cameras, had been ripped out. In their place were thick candles, wooden amulets, and books with cracked, leather-bound spines.
My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Devlin, noticed me standing in the doorway. Her eyes were wide with something between terror and hope, and she clutched a wooden cross to her chest as though it were a lifeline.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice tremulous. “Praise the spirits. You’re one of us still.”
“Mrs. Devlin...what’s going on?” I managed to say, my voice cracking.
She stepped toward me, lowering her voice to a whisper. “It happened in the night. The Judgment came. The stars spoke, and the Truth was revealed to us. Technology is a curse, child. We were blind, using it for convenience, letting it control us, but now—now we’ve seen the evil it brings.”
I stared at her, bewildered. “What? Evil? What are you talking about?”
She gestured to the others, who were deep in prayer, muttering incantations and rubbing their fingers along talismans. “We were warned, and those who didn’t heed the warning… well, they were taken by the machines. You haven’t felt it yet, but soon you will. The machines are watching. They’re listening. We had to destroy them before they destroyed us.”
The weight of her words crashed over me. Destroyed? Taken by the machines? My heart raced. This couldn’t be real.
“I—This is insane!” I stammered, stepping back. “It’s just technology. Phones, computers... it’s not—”
“Evil!” Mrs. Devlin snapped, her face contorting into an expression of fanaticism. “The voices from the skies told us, child! Those who still hold onto their devices, who rely on them, will perish. They will be consumed by the darkness that lurks within the machines. We’ve gone back to the old ways, the right ways. It’s the only way to survive.”
I shook my head, backing away toward the door. “No… this… this isn’t real. None of this is real!”
But as I stumbled out into the street, the magnitude of what had happened hit me full force.
The world outside was even more horrifying. Everywhere I looked, people had reverted to a strange, pre-industrial way of life. Cars sat abandoned in the streets, vines creeping over their metallic forms as if nature itself was trying to swallow them. Men and women on bicycles or horse-drawn carts moved between buildings, speaking in quiet, nervous tones. The modern world had been wiped clean overnight, replaced by superstition and fear.
Everywhere, there were signs of a purge—burnt-out electronics littering the streets, strange effigies hung from lampposts, and frantic scribblings about ‘the evil of technology’ plastered on the sides of buildings.
I rushed through the streets, trying to make sense of it all. My mind raced, refusing to accept what my eyes saw. This couldn’t be happening. A few hours ago, everything was normal. How could the world change so drastically in one night?
Then, without warning, the power in the entire city went out. The few streetlights that still worked blinked off, and the last traces of technology died in a wave of darkness.
Panic rippled through the crowd. People began chanting prayers, raising their arms to the sky, calling on ancient gods and forces I didn’t understand. The fear was palpable, like a living thing spreading through the streets.
As I looked around at the madness, I realized with a sinking dread that I was alone. I was the only one left who hadn’t succumbed to this new world of superstition.
And somewhere, deep inside, I felt the faintest flicker of doubt.
Had they been right?
