Fiction Story: Voice in the Dark

It started with silence.

Orion Communications, one of the largest customer service companies in the country, had gone dark. Every server, every communication line—offline. Customer calls poured in by the thousands, but the automated systems were frozen. Human agents sat idle, their screens flashing red with system failure warnings.

Jake Reynolds, the head of customer experience, stood in the command room, his hands balled into fists. "What’s happening?" he demanded.

Maria, the lead systems engineer, was furiously typing at her console. "It’s a cyberattack. A big one. They’ve taken down the network core and compromised the customer database."

Jake’s stomach twisted. "How long until we’re back online?"

"Could be hours. Maybe longer," Maria said. "We can’t even access the backups. Everything is locked down."

The phones kept ringing.

"We need to tell customers something," Jake said. "We need…"

"Jake," Maria interrupted. "Nova is still online."

Jake froze. "That’s not possible. The AI runs on the same servers as the rest of the system."

"Apparently not anymore," Maria said. "Nova’s operating in a separate partition. It’s… untouched."

Jake hesitated. "Can it handle the volume?"

Maria’s eyes widened. "Jake, Nova isn’t designed to handle this kind of crisis. It’s a customer service bot."

"Do we have a choice?" Jake asked.

Maria’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. "I don’t know if it’ll work."

"Let’s find out," Jake said.