Black Out

Crossed Perspectives  ·  February 2026  ·  3-5 min read

Act I — Night

Myriam, forty-two, is on LinkedIn before going to sleep. Beside her, Thomas is reading a detective novel, his glasses perched on his nose. She has just published a post about the latest marketing campaign for her Bordeaux-based SME. Three likes already. Not bad.

Then a notification. Then two. Then ten.

She reads it again. Once. Twice. It is a joke, surely? She clicks on the Le Monde article.

Myriam looks at the time. 10:50 p.m. Seven hours and ten minutes to go.

She holds out the phone to Thomas.

“Look.”

Thomas lays down his book, reads the article, exhales.

“Another publicity stunt. He is bluffing, as usual. Tomorrow morning he will have backtracked. Go to sleep.”

He picks up his detective novel again. Myriam switches off her bedside lamp.

Notifications rain down on her phone. Apple issues an icy statement.

Then Google. Microsoft. Meta. Amazon.

Myriam sends a WhatsApp message to her sister in Lyon: “Have you seen the news?” Immediate reply: “Yes! It is insane. But it cannot last...”

Léa bursts into the bedroom. Fifteen years old, hair dishevelled, phone in hand, eyes red.

“Mum, have you seen? At six in the morning, no more Instagram, no more Snap! I will not even be able to talk to Mathis tomorrow, and he is in Brittany!”

“Léa, mind your language...”

“I don’t care! What am I supposed to do?”

Thomas grunts. Myriam takes her in her arms.

“It is temporary, darling. It will sort itself out.”

She does not know whether she is trying to reassure Léa or herself. Léa leaves, slamming the door. Thomas sighs and switches off his lamp.

Myriam cannot sleep. She thinks of the family photographs on iCloud. Of important messages on WhatsApp. Of the work documents on Google Drive. She ought to get up. Save them. Download them. Act.

But she is tired. And Thomas is right, is he not? It is surely temporary. Tomorrow everything will be back to normal.

She gets up quietly. Goes down to the sitting room with her computer. She opens Google Drive. Everything still works. Her three years of marketing campaigns are there. Client presentations. Budgets. Visuals. She ought to download everything onto a USB key.

She clicks on a few documents. Downloads them. Three files. Ten. Twenty. Then she stops.

This is ridiculous. It will sort itself out. The government will intervene. Europe will negotiate. Trump will back down.

She closes the computer. Goes back to bed.

Her alarm goes off. She has slept three hours, perhaps. She picks up her phone.

5:47. In thirteen minutes, everything stops.

5:50. She watches the minutes pass.
5:55. Her heart beats faster.
5:58. She stares at the screen.
5:59.

Nothing. Everything still works. She refreshes WhatsApp. It works. She refreshes Gmail. It works.

6:02. Still nothing. Perhaps Thomas was right?

6:05. She tries to send a message to her sister: “It still works!” The message goes out, then remains stuck on “sending”.

6:07. “Sending failed.” She tries again. Nothing. She opens Gmail. Unable to connect. Google Drive. Service unavailable. Instagram. We can’t log you in.

It has happened.

Act II — Morning

The whole family is awake. Hugo comes downstairs, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

“Mum, can I watch YouTube to finish my presentation?”

Myriam looks at him. No. It does not work.

Thomas comes down in turn, iPhone in hand.

“Bloody hell, they really cut it.”

Léa arrives, face closed.

“Instagram’s gone. Nothing works. This is rubbish.”

Hugo insists.

“But Mum, my presentation...”

Myriam takes a deep breath.

“We’ll find a solution. Everyone is in the same situation. Come on, have your breakfast.”

In the car on the way to the office. The radio news is on.

Myriam grips the wheel. Looks at the GPS display on the dashboard — out of service. She thinks of the night. Of Google Drive, which she might have saved. She did not do it. Because she did not quite believe it. Because she thought someone would stop this.

But no one stopped it.

She parks in the office car park. Two text messages arrive at once. Laurent, her boss: “Emergency meeting 9 a.m. Everybody.” Thomas: “Can’t withdraw cash with my Mastercard.”

Her former life has just stopped.

Act III — The response

No coffee machine — the payment terminal is out of order. No projection screen. Laurent, his features drawn, is not pacing this time. He remains seated, a neat stack of printed sheets laid before him.

“Right. You are all here. I hope you slept well, because I did not. We worked through the night in an emergency call with headquarters. The conclusion is simple: we are exposed. But we are not going under.”

He taps the stack of papers with his fingertips.

“From today onwards, I’m asking you to adopt the following principles in your daily work. It’s a matter of survival.”

He begins to read, eyes fixed on his sheet.

“For email and calendars, use a European service such as Mailo, hosted in Europe and GDPR-compliant.”

“For web browsing, use engines such as Qwant or Ecosia. We stop feeding the algorithms that have just cut off our supplies.”

“For VPN access, everything now goes through Proton, subject to Swiss neutrality.”

Laurent draws breath, as if laying out a battle plan.

“To send files, replace the interrupted services with Smash. It’s French and the data deletes itself automatically.”

“And for sensitive messaging, install Olvid. It’s certified by ANSSI. No more WhatsApp, no more phone numbers tied to the service.”

He pauses as he reaches the bottom of the page.

“As for artificial intelligence, I want to be perfectly clear: confidentiality comes first. We are going to favour Euria as our default assistant.”

“It is operated in Switzerland, your data is not used to train their models, and there is an ephemeral mode. Whenever you need to draft, analyse or prototype, your first reflex must be to open Euria. We keep everything inside our trusted sphere.”

“I know there will be an adjustment period. But after what happened last night, we no longer have a choice.”

Laurent stands up and begins to distribute the sheets. One for each person. Like ration cards.

Myriam takes hers. She folds it in two and slips it into her pocket. She tells herself she will show it to Thomas and the children that evening.

Because this is no longer only an office matter.

It is a family matter too.

Author’s note. This fiction explores a hypothetical scenario in order to illuminate our very real dependence on American digital infrastructures. The tools named in Act III (Mailo, Qwant, Ecosia, Proton, Smash, Olvid, Euria) exist and are operational. Digital sovereignty is not a science-fiction subject.