It was a beautiful, clear night as he walked his dog through the dark outskirts of his town. An inveterate stargazer, his attention strayed ever upwards to the sky, appreciating the beauty he found there, the sheer artistry involved.

And then, as his line of sight swept the so-familiar face of the moon, it snagged. Something was different; something subtle, that only someone that called the Man in the Moon an old friend might notice. He stared, forensically, searching for something distorted, disrupted, distressed- there! By the Mare Crisium, a strange speckling, like one of those QR codes; some black, some white, curiously linear. The Sea of Crises, he thought- how appropriate.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, dialled a number most people could not reach.

-Phil? Charlie.
-Yeah, fine. Look, we’ve a problem. Can you reboot the Moon?
-Dead pixels again, like O’Neill’s bridge. Crisium again.
-OK, suspend the program then. At least no-one else’ll notice.
-Great. Love to Jan.

And above, the sky went out.