Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

The Great Censoring

As Jack took a sip of his morning coffee outside of his favorite local coffee joint, a text rang through his pocket. "Who could it be now?" He thought, picking the excessively vibrating phone out of his pocket. It was Jim, his rather conspiratorial friend. He was skeptical, but he read the text, what else could it be after all?

"Urgent warning! Must read! A virus is going around censoring everything on the internet! Save what you can on whatever physical storage you have before it's too late!" Was what Jack read. Well, there was more, but before he could get to that, that seemingly vanished behind some black bars, gone before his eyes could ever lay on it.

"Huh? What's going on?" He now thought. "He looked at the digital sign of the coffee shop, but before he knew it as well, what was originally "The Daily Brew" was now just a blur of black lines as well. Now he was getting worried. He looked through his phone again, scrolling through contacts, but all he saw was blackened out names that held forever destroyed text messages within them.

"Damn it, this can't be... is this really happening right now?!" Was all Jack could think, but he knew that he couldn't just stand there. He had to do something, he had a lot to save, and so he ran, stealing a random skateboard from a kid in a forced upon exchange including some random candy from his other pocket. He raced back home, ignoring the crowd, because how else could he save his favorite anime onto DVDs without him being there? As he approached the door, he thought one thing to himself, he'll say to Jim later “Thanks for the warning.”. However, he tripped, head smashed, now it's not possible.

Written by: Dhruv Mohbe

Word count: 300 words

Contest: Daily Flash Fiction Challenge