No one knew who did it. But no one really thought it was the work of one.

            It started as just a trickle. Here and there, pieces leeched away. Basement files went first. It had leaked up to the third floor, soaked carpet, before anyone on the sixth or above began to hear about it. Whole buildings were drowned before the people who filled these offices and controlled these files realized their cubicles were not alone. It wasn’t their hard drives or the latest software update or the porn they were looking at or that email link they clicked or something from the site they watched that movie off of.

            It took even longer for the realization to come (to some of those on the highest floors of various tall buildings around the world) that this strange glitch, this pervasive loss to the underground rivers in cyberspace oceans…

            Well, to put it gently, sir, it seems the same kinds of files are being lost.

            What kinds of files?

            Accounts. Debts. Interest charged on loans granted to third world countries. Mortgage listings. Medical bills. Billing information on items already shipped.

            And how, exactly, are these files being lost?

            They’re calling it the Flood. Sir.
            The messenger received a very sharp look. Mr. G did not like when current events got too biblical, unless those events were strictly under his control. 
            First, the files corrupt, show up only as wave forms: after a file is opened like this, any attempt to reconstruct the data has failed. Files corrupted this way cannot be closed and then reopened because once closed they’re gone from memory.

            Financial documents only?

            Yes, sir.

            Well, then. Hire some people to build an ark. You’ll know what files to save of whatever is left.
            It would seem a character who’d say this would be sitting in an armchair as he did so. But whatever people may say, things are not the same everywhere. The man he spoke to was not fond of armchairs. He was fond of money and tall towers, believed firmly in streamlining.

            Ah, yes sir. But… what about the water?
            The water?

            The cooling tanks…

            Ah. Well, sandbags won’t do, will they? Open the windows and hire some pump trucks.

            But sir…

            What?

            We’re not sure … ahem, well, about precisely… ahuhm, how much money we have … ?

            Promise regular wages. Our name ought to be enough, don’t you think?

            Cue taken, he scurried off. Worried, uncertain, but also, he found as he got further away from Mr. G’s heavy wooden doors, a bit … excited.

            Until he got outside and smelled the air. He didn’t understand why the streets were heavy with smoke. Until he saw the headlines, and knew for sure the media caught hold of it: Financial Files Disappear: Whole World Affected. Then he knew what was burning.

Flood started fires around the world. People offered assistance. Years of paycheck stubs helped barbeque. Banks too poor for computer systems did the job themselves, erasing absurd numbers no longer in anyone else’s files with just the strike of a match.

            Noah was just one man. The world as it was, wasn’t his fault. He was just good at following orders, even though his employers were eccentric and would only send messages by dove. But Noah did enjoy stories by the fire at nighttime, so he named the ark Rapunzel. Files require names. He imagines the masthead as her, hair spread coils across every fitted board up and down her sides. After a story or two by the fire, Noah would check his email once more, to be sure no midnight instructions had flown in via dove@godsource.net. Then he would head off to bed to dream of the lovely gold grained wood, the intricate carvings down her long paneled sides.

            Rapunzel. Rapunzel. Let down your gangplank. I need to come in.

During the day, Noah and a group of others he’s never met collect files and backups of files. There is little left to choose from. Bankruptcy files are gone. Student loan files. Back taxes. This year’s taxes. Salary figures. The stock market closed after the screens worldwide stopped showing numbers in favor of squiggly lines, waving across displays like seaweed. It is not a crash, more like a clean slate. Nothing fails because of it. There are no files left to make the graphs that gamblers play against. No one can calculate money lost or spent or what markets are liquid or frozen.

            Certain information is safe though. Telephone directories. Patient history, including lists of allergies. Grocery inventories (not the prices, just the quantity.) Library catalogs. Videogames, car manuals, science and language textbooks, none of these things are affected by the Flood. The how-to’s and the where-is’s and the what-is’s and the who’s with their attempts at the why’s are all fine. Or, as Mr. G might have summed it up:  Unpriced, untouched.

             Poor Noah wasn’t the only one who dreamed Rapunzel had skin. Following the logic of the flood, the ark should remain unscathed until the waters recede. But how can deletion recede? Deletion may cover the earth, but it does not take up space. It won’t
evaporate. Rapunzel was a tower floating along in a leveled world. Perhaps since Rapunzel is reunited with her prince, Noah, or others, suppose she won. If a near lifetime of solitude imposed can be called a victory. Perhaps they should have realized the important thing was her hair. They did reach for it each night. It brought things in. Brought them up the tower. Into the ark.

            Where they stored the mimic octopus. (Class action lawsuits.)

            Jellyfish. (Wavering political support, regarding tax cuts, for whom.)

            Sea Lamprey. (Hedge funds.)

            Zebra Mussels (all that was left of the debt collectors files.)

Don’t ask me why they tried to save ocean creatures from the Flood. These creatures shriveled up well before they even captured the snakes. (The CEOs themselves, and their shattered personal files.) Can’t bring too much water onboard an ark.

            Of course no one thought to bring a dinosaur. (Accounts so ancient, only historians have them.)

            Or a heffalump. No one ever remembers to bring a heffalump. Which is unfortunate for them, because the heffalump is everything. If you need to build the world from scratch, just ask a heffalump to do a little dance.
            Wet carpets soaked smoldering embers in every asphalt desert.

            Rapunzel failed, they hissed.

            Let down your hair isn’t the most brilliant password to use to seal an ark. But that wasn’t even it. It was the obsessive reaching to fill what was already void with pieces of puzzles that never fit together in the first place.

            Rapunzel abandoned ship, cut her hair quick, fuck ropes, Noah, bring me a knife. Ran off to join the world starting a new life, cause she knew, what the snakes were just catching on to: hafta make it up as you go along, and now there were no made-up numbers to fall back on. A world full of imposter millionaires: if anyone tried to insist they had more invisible numbers changing like cloud shapes in the sky then the rest. How do you know all those cloud shapes aren’t mine?