Cornelius sighed. The world was going to end at precisely 2:34 pm on Saturday and it was his fault. Not that he’d meant to start The Apocalypse but his latest update to the Global Wireless Network had made it inevitable.

"Hey, Corny!" A voice called from outside his lab. "You there?"

Cornelius sat up straight. It was Jessica. "Um, ye-yes, I’m here."

Around the bank of monitors a petite redhead appeared. Jessica was the most beautiful woman Cornelius had ever known. She was also the most brilliant computer designer he’d ever known. Which, in his eyes, made her even more beautiful.

"Um, yes, Jessica?"

"There’s something off with the system," she said as she stared down at her 12x12 portable workstation. "Have you been making any changes?"

Cornelius swallowed. "Um, yes, I have."

Jessica frowned. "Well, whatever you did is eating up a lot of processing power. If this keeps up people are going to get busy signals."

Cornelius hung his head. "In three days time busy signals won’t be the worse of it."

Jessica gave him a wary look. "You mean because the Board of Directors will have our heads for this?"

"No, I mean because in three days time we’ll all be dead." Very quickly Cornelius explained how come Saturday all the wireless devices in the world would begin emitting a high-pitched squeal capable of frying the human brain.

"Geez, Corny," Jessica said with wide-eyed amazement, "if you were going to make a Nobel Prize winning discovery couldn’t you have at least made it a non-lethal one?"

"I wasn’t trying to be a genius," he said with honesty.

"So, how are you going to fix it?"

"I can’t," he answered. "The system goes critical at exactly 2:34pm Saturday and there’s nothing I can do to stop it."

Jessica’s eyes narrowed. "What do you mean you can’t stop it? Erase the main server and kill it."

Cornelius shook his head. "It’s gone viral. It’s on ALL of the servers."

Jessica stared at him. "ALL of them?"

"I don’t have the authority to erase them all and even if I did that would destroy the entire Global Wireless Network. Every cell phone, PDA, laptop, email, the Twitterings, the Mutterings, the Rants and Raves, the entire Global Information Network would be gone. We’d be plunged into an Informational Dark Age."

Jessica stared at her personal workstation. Her life was on that 12x12 silicone pad. Jessica tossed it onto his desk. "Do it."

"Do it?"

"Do it. Destroy the network. We’ve got humanity to save. Besides, I won’t miss ‘Mutter.’ Who cares if Brittany Spears is taking her grandkids to the zoo for the umpteenth time? That’s NOT information. Take the system down." Cornelius blinked undecidedly several times. "Now!"

He hadn’t thought that a woman glaring at him could give him so much motivation but it did. Building upon an old college prank he created a virus designed to crash every power grid on the planet (including backups). No power meant no network. The world would be in the dark but it would be saved.

"Are you sure about this?" He asked her.

The look on her face told him all he needed to know. Cornelius pressed the button and launched his virus. Being at the center of the Global Informational Network meant he was already past all the safeguards that would have prevented this sort of mischief. It was easy. The lab suddenly went dark. Cornelius turned on his battery-powered lantern. People thought it strange that he had one but programmers were always expecting the worse.

"Looks like it worked," he said to her.

"Yeah." Jessica checked her work pad. It was dead. "Looks like." She glanced off into the distance and tried to imagine the mass of humanity suddenly without their cell phones. "I bet they’re all going crazy right now."

"I bet." Cornelius felt lost. He couldn’t remember when his office was so quiet. "So," he said, not really thinking, "I guess now we get off work early. What are you doing tonight?"

It took a moment before the absurdity of the question hit Jessica and she started laughing. "I don’t know my datebook was on my pad." She gave the device a tap. "What do you have in mind?"

Cornelius stared at her with surprise. "I, ah, I didn’t mean to suggest --"

She grinned, enjoying his discomfort. "Come on, you started it. What are you proposing?"

It took a moment before Cornelius found his bearings. "D-Do you like Italian food?"

Now it was Jessica who hesitated. "Um, yeah, but I don’t think the restaurant down the street will be serving. You know -- a world without power and all that."

Cornelius forced his mind to work. "I, ah, I cook. I’m actually pretty good with a camp stove and I have a couple of bottles of wine that I was saving for a special occasion. End of the world sort of sounds like an occasion. I mean, if you want to." He smiled nervously.

Jessica gave him a look that he’d never seen before - one of appreciation. "Yeah, sure, we’re entitled, we saved the world from total annihilation -- even if it was at the cost of 200 years of technological evolution." She then glanced around at the darkened lab. She couldn’t even see the door. "How do we get out of here?"

"Leave that to me," Cornelius said with a sudden surge of confidence. He produced a couple of flashlights from his desk drawer.

Jessica smiled again. "Why, Corny, you are just FULL of surprises. I’m going to have to keep my eye on you."

Cornelius relished that thought - Jessica watching him. Had he known that causing the end of the world would have gotten him this far he would have done it ages ago. But for now he was just going to enjoy it - the Apocalypse and all.