Students everywhere were left shell-shocked today as they were greeted by an ominous “no connection” warning on every social media app. It soon became clear that Parkway West was the latest victim of a nationwide AT&T outage.

A haunting “SOS” took the place of the familiar mobile data icons, indicating to the user that they do, in fact, have every reason to be afraid, and no one is coming to save them. 

Because social media and texting are crucial to learning, the school quickly erupted into anarchy. Teachers could not console their distraught students, who immediately began stocking up cheese pizza, Kickstart and waffle fries from the cafeteria in preparation for the end of the world. This havoc has resulted in widespread fear, not just of the outage but of the subsequent savagery that will inevitably arise. 

“I [just thought] my phone was messing up because I [had] this issue two weeks ago,” AT&T customer and sophomore Kamori Berry said. “Then I got to school. All of the sophomores hang out in the main area [on the third floor]. Everybody’s like, ‘What’s going on with my phone, it’s not working.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, it’s not working for me either.’ All of us just started talking about it. Everybody’s mad.”

AT&T is one of the biggest internet providers in the country, providing about 27% of the country with typically high-speed internet. Even local governments were impacted by the outage, making this a national concern. But even worse than government security, YouTube Shorts was completely unreachable.  

There are no answers yet to what caused this harrowing outage, but there have been some guesses as to why this dystopian loss of communication happened.

“I believe the cellular outage was a plot by the Postal Police Services. This little-known organization is covertly responsible for many of the happenings of modern America. From the preservation of the modern corporate oligarchy and America’s bourgeois democracy to the Iraq War, the Postal Police Service is the true mastermind of the American empire,” AT&T customer and senior Will Brown said. “The PPS has links to not only the assassination of JFK, but also RFK, Lincoln and, inexplicably, James Garfield. Merchants of lies will tell you [that] it’s reptilians or aliens who control the world, but in reality, my friends, it is the dastardly agents of the Postal Police Service who are the true guiding hand in America. May their influence ever wane and their members disperse like dust in the wind.” 

Other students had extraterrestrial theories as to what went down. 

“I think that aliens are coming to Earth, and they have started by taking out AT&T service to stop us from communicating with each other so they can take over the world,” AT&T customer, merchant of lies and sophomore Jake Herrman said.

Considering that this mysterious occurrence takes place just seven months after military officials and other whistleblowers testified that the government knows more about aliens than is being let on, perhaps further investigation into this is necessary. Not by the Pathfinder, however, because that would be too scary.   

AT&T customer and senior Lauren Holcomb’s father, Jason Holcomb, is an employee at AT&T. It is believed that he possibly does something with routers.

“I would ask him, but I can’t because I have AT&T,” Lauren said, making her nepotistic status completely unhelpful. 

Technology issues are nothing new for the district though. Just yesterday, Parkway South High School lost power, making today’s cell service loss just another catastrophic end-of-the-world event for Parkway. 

Our attempts to contact AT&T CEO John Stankey through our AT&T phones were not returned by the time of publication, leaving us to assume that he has been put in a position of danger. An attempt with an Ouija board was also unsuccessful, however, so there is no reason to panic yet. 

Ultimately, this hiatus from technology and screen time may have been a good thing, a reminder to slow down and appreciate the world around us. 

“This temporary halt to AT&T cell services has led me to the realization that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. So that was cool,” Brown said. 

At the end of the day, it’s undeniable that we live in a world where social media and the internet are completely integral to our social and academic lives, as well as our physical health. Who amongst us can claim to be able to pay attention to algebra without a Subway Surfer video accompanying the lesson?

“AT&T, get it together,” Berry said, reflecting the general attitude of the entire school.