When the Sky Turned Purple

The sky had turned purple two weeks ago, and nobody cared anymore. Not after the government had trotted out a panel of scientists with their neatly pressed lab coats and jargon-laden explanations. Something about "anomalous solar activity," "ozone layer fluctuations," and "temporary chromatic aberrations." It was all very official, very boring. People shrugged, and life went on.

But Colby knew better. The sky wasn’t supposed to be purple. Not in the “oh, it’s a pretty sunset” kind of way. This was a deep, unnatural violet that stained everything it touched. It made him uneasy, but he didn’t say much about it. Not until the drones started to malfunction.

He stood in the open-air market, watching one of the delivery drones hang in mid-air, its rotors cutting out sporadically. It wobbled, dropped a few feet, then stabilized. People glanced up but quickly went back to their business. It had become a normal sight in the past couple of days. The city infrastructure was old, and if anyone noticed the increased malfunction rates, they chalked it up to bad maintenance.

Colby wasn’t buying it. He had an old-school suspicion of coincidence, a relic of his time as an engineer before the corporation he worked for downsized him out of a job. Now he ran diagnostics on broken equipment for whoever could afford him. Which, lately, wasn’t many. But the drone malfunctions? The purple sky? Something connected those dots—he just didn’t know how yet.

"Yo, you lookin' to buy or just stand there, man?"

Colby noticed the vendor staring at him. The guy pointed at a basket of what looked like oranges, though they had a faint, unsettling blue tinge.

"Nah, just… thinking," Colby muttered and walked away, weaving through the crowd.

He didn’t have time for fruit. He had a meeting with Meredith. She was one of the few people left in the city who hadn’t completely written him off as a paranoid idiot. They had history—mostly professional, though that line had blurred once or twice back in the day. More importantly, she still worked in the labs, meaning she had access to all the data he couldn’t get on his own.

He found her in the back of a dingy café, a laptop in front of her and a frown that suggested she’d been staring at the screen too long. She glanced up when he slid into the seat across from her, shoving a cup of something vaguely coffee-like toward him.

“Colby,” she said, “if you’re here to rant about the sky again, I swear to God—”

“Drones are malfunctioning,” he interrupted. “It’s not just the sky. Something’s messing with the electronics.”

Meredith sighed, closing her laptop with a soft thud. “You know how old the infrastructure in this city is? I mean, come on, half the stuff’s held together by duct tape and prayers. Of course the drones are malfunctioning.”

“No,” he said, leaning forward. “It’s not just the drones. I’ve been tracking it. Sensors, comms, even personal devices. Everything’s getting weird. There’s a pattern.”

She raised an eyebrow. “A pattern.”

“Yeah. You’ve got access. I need you to check the EM spectrum.”

Meredith stared at him for a long moment. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the last time you had one of your ‘hunches,’ I ended up on a disciplinary review board, remember? I can’t afford to get caught snooping around again.”

Colby exhaled sharply. “This isn’t a hunch. Something’s happening, Meredith. The government’s lying about the sky, and it’s affecting more than just the color of our sunsets.”

She studied him, she tapped on the edge of the table. Finally, she spoke, her voice quieter. “And if I check, and you’re wrong? What then?”

“I’m not wrong.”

“Colby…”

“I’m not.”

Meredith stared at him for another beat before giving a small, resigned nod. “Fine. But if you screw me over again, I’m done with you.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Deal.”

---

Two days later, she called him, her voice terse. “We need to meet. Now.”

They met at the same café, though this time Meredith looked less annoyed and more… afraid. She slid a small drive across the table.

“You were right,” she said, barely above a whisper. “There’s a spike in EM activity across all bands. It’s subtle, but it’s there. It started around the same time the sky went purple.”

Colby felt a vindication he wasn’t sure he wanted. “What’s causing it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it’s not localized to the city. It’s global.”

“Global?” That surprised him. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I hacked into a couple of satellites. The readings are consistent everywhere.”

Colby leaned back, trying to process that. “So, what’s the endgame? Solar activity? Some kind of atmospheric interference?”

Meredith shrugged, though she showed her unease. “Maybe. Or something else. Something we haven’t seen before.”

He didn’t like that answer, but it wasn’t like he had a better one. “The government knows, right? They’ve got to.”

“They know,” she said. “But they’re not doing anything about it.”

His mind raced. “Or they can’t.”

Meredith didn’t respond, but the silence was enough.

---

Two more days passed before things escalated. Colby was in his apartment, poring over the data Meredith had given him when the first blackout hit. Not just the lights. Everything. His terminal went dark, the hum of the city outside faded. He opened the window, the purple sky eerily still. No drones. No cars. No power.

He grabbed his jacket and bolted outside, he thought rapidly. If the power grid was down, if the EM interference had reached critical levels…

Meredith’s place was a half-hour walk, but he made it in fifteen. Her building was dark too, but she was already outside, pacing, a tablet in her hands.

“Colby,” she said when she saw him. “It’s worse than we thought.”

“I noticed.”

“No, you don’t get it.” She held up the tablet, which was flickering but still functional. “I tapped into a private network. The EM interference is spiking everywhere. Satellites are going offline. Global communications are about to collapse.”

He stared at her. “How long?”

She shook her head. “Hours. Maybe less.”

“Shit.”

They stood there in the dim twilight of the purple sky, the distant sounds of the city growing quieter as things ground to a halt.

“So, what do we do?” Meredith asked.

Colby didn’t have an answer.

The sky shouldn’t have been purple.