The internet worked.

Kind of.

Maybe.

Technically.

You know... If someone was feeling extremely generous with the definition of the word ’worked’.

I sat cross-legged in the middle of the couch glaring at the buffering wheel spinning slowly across the television screen while one single bar of signal mocked me from the corner of my phone.

This was not civilization.

Not that I was expecting civilization. But after having months of internet after a decade without it? Even I would admit that I had gotten used to the finer things in life, and I wasn’t willing to needlessly suffer anymore.

And this? This was suffering.

Overtop of me, the mansion sounded like an active construction site.

There were footsteps on the roof.

Several loud crashes with even louder swearwords that not even I had ever heard before.

At one point Lingyun shouted something about almost dying, followed immediately by Chenghai yelling back that electrocution wasn’t technically dying.

Personally?

I felt like they were both missing the point.

The point being that my dramas still weren’t loading.

I grabbed another handful of caramel popcorn and continued glaring at the television with enough hostility that Netflix should have fixed itself out of fear alone.

It did not.

Which was more than a little bit rude.

The baby vine lifted its head from my lap and hissed softly toward the buffering symbol like it also understood betrayal.

"Exactly," I muttered darkly. "See? Even you get it! This is unacceptable."

Another loud bang shook the ceiling.

Then silence.

Then Lingyun shouted, "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY WIRES?!"

"Because the internet runs on electricity!" Chenghai shouted back. "We need to set up the solar panels and grid and generators before we can have working internet."

"That feels fake!"

Yuche’s voice cut through both of them calmly. "Stop pulling random cables."

"...I wasn’t pulling random cables."

"You absolutely were."

I snorted softly and reached for my drink just as Zhenlan walked back into the living room carrying another black equipment case under one arm.

He stopped when he saw me still staring at the buffering screen.

"...It’s only been fifteen minutes."

"And it has been the worst fifteen minutes of my life."

"I can think of at least three situations worse than this."

"Then you clearly lack imagination."

Zhenlan actually looked like he wanted to argue with that for a second before deciding against it.

Smart man.

He set the case down beside the others already stacked against the wall. At this point, the living room looked less like a mansion and more like the military had exploded directly inside my house.

Cables stretched across the floor.

Battery packs lined one entire wall.

Two generators sat near the back doors waiting to be connected while solar panels were stacked outside on the patio beside several crates of equipment nobody had even opened yet.

It looked expensive which meant that I had made the correct choice in taking it.

The front door suddenly slammed open hard enough to rattle the windows before Lingyun stormed inside covered in dirt, leaves, and what looked suspiciously like soot.

"I’m retiring," he announced immediately.

"You don’t have a job."

"I am retiring from whatever this is."

I looked him over once. "You look dramatic."

"I almost died!"

From outside, Chenghai yelled, "You touched a live wire after I told you not to touch it!"

Lingyun pointed toward the ceiling. "In my defense, I thought he was just being dramatic. You know how he is."

"I’m dramatic?!? You launched yourself backwards off the roof!"

"I landed just fine."

"That is not the point!"

I shoved another handful of popcorn into my mouth while Lingyun collapsed face first onto the couch beside me with all the suffering of a deeply exhausted man.

The baby vine immediately crawled onto his shoulder and started chewing lightly on his sleeve.

Lingyun sighed into the cushions. "Your plant child is judging me."

"What can I say? It has standards."

"Apparently higher ones than yours."

That was rude.

Before I could defend myself, the lights throughout the mansion suddenly flickered again.

Everyone froze.

A second later, half the house powered down completely.

Silence filled the room.

Then Chenghai screamed from upstairs.

"WHO UNPLUGGED THE INVERTER?!"

Lingyun slowly lifted one hand from the couch cushions.

"...Hypothetically?"

Zhenlan closed his eyes briefly like he was reconsidering every life choice that brought him here.

I pointed at Lingyun immediately. "I want it noted that I believed in him."

"Your faith means nothing to me."

"It should."

Yuche walked into the room a few seconds later carrying what looked like three different cables over one shoulder. Unlike everyone else, he somehow still looked calm despite the mansion slowly descending into technological warfare around him.

"Good news," he announced.

I straightened immediately. "The internet works?"

"No."

I sank back into the couch.

"The generators are stable now though, and part of the equipment that we set up is a high tech communications interface."

I stared at him blankly. "I don’t know what that means."

"It means we probably won’t accidentally blow up the house. And if we wanted to, we can call someone on the other side of the world, the communications is just that good."

"...And yet... still no internet. And I am not calling someone for spoilers."

Yuche dropped the cables beside one of the crates before walking toward the television. A few button presses later and the buffering wheel disappeared for half a second before the screen suddenly loaded.

Everyone went still.

Netflix opened.

The homepage appeared.

It was beautiful.

Perfect.

Civilization had been reborn in my living room.

I gasped softly and then... as if it had heard me... the screen froze again.

The silence that followed felt deeply personal.

Slowly, I turned my head toward the four men.

Nobody moved.

Nobody breathed.

"Fix it," I whispered.

Lingyun pointed at the screen weakly. "In my defense, that’s significantly more internet than we had this morning."

"Not enough."

"We’re literally rebuilding communications infrastructure during the apocalypse!"

"And yet somehow I still don’t have episode six."

Chenghai finally walked downstairs carrying the massive instruction manual under one arm. His hair was sticking up strangely while grease stained one side of his shirt.

Honestly?

He looked like civilization had personally assaulted him.

"There should be enough power now," he muttered while flipping through pages. "I think the satellite alignment is wrong."

"How do you align a satellite?" Lingyun demanded.

Chenghai looked down at the manual.

Then back at Lingyun.

"...I don’t know."

I let out a long sigh and sank deeper into the couch cushions.

Hopeless.

All of them.

Outside, something massive rustled through the jungle beyond the mansion walls while thick vines continued spreading slowly across the abandoned street.

Inside, four grown men struggled against military-grade technology while I suffered through buffering.

No one really appreciated just how exhausting it was to survive the apocalypse.