Ep.1: Achluophobia

The episode starts with a woman walking towards a house. Her hair is tied in a messy ponytail. She is wearing a short blue dress with pink floral prints and a pair of blue heels. She enters the house. It is pitch dark inside. She is struggling to turn on the light. She needs to connect to the ILLUMINE app to control the lights remotely. In 2030, there are no switchboards; everything is connected to apps through the internet.

The woman starts sweating. The app doesn’t seem to connect. “Oh, damn! The 7G internet is not working, as always”, she curses her luck.
She is sweating profusely now. She is still unable to connect to the app. She tries to call her father but is unable to connect to his number. She remembers that he is travelling to Wellington, New Zealand, at the moment. She now tries to reconnect to the app, but no success so far. It flashes a NO INTERNET CONNECTION message on the screen.

“7G is worse than how the internet was in the early 2000s”, she sighs in exasperation. She enters the house and walks towards the living area in the darkness. She starts panting restlessly. She feels a cool gust of wind brush against her nervous ear. It feels like somebody is standing right behind her.

Her attempt at connecting to the app is still in vain. She feels a cold hand on her shoulder and freezes in horror. “Who is it?” All she hears is a soft wheezing sound coming from behind. She starts feeling dizzy.
She now hears a whisper. “You are not alone!” She starts trembling. She again tries to connect to the app, but the internet connection is not back yet. She starts feeling breathless and has tingling sensations all over her body.

She tries to locate the sofa in the dark, but by the time she finds her way, she suffers a heart attack and dies. Immediately after she dies, internet connection is restored and the light is turned on by the app. The camera now zooms in to the woman’s face. I am aghast, because the “she” is ME!