Staff Writer Daniel Ortega-Venni has volunteered to help you, dear reader, get to the bottom of those annoying (and sometimes terrifying) Zoom glitches.

For the first time in a couple of weeks, you’ve finally prepared yourself properly for class. You’re sitting in a chair that’s just comfy enough so that you don’t feel tempted to fall asleep, you have your notebook and pencil at the ready and everyone in your house is doing their own moderately quiet things.

But Zoom has other plans.

You click “join class” on courseworks. Your professor is busy trying to share his screen and once he’s finally figured out how to do this, he smiles broadly at the class. “Welcome to—”

Your professor is cut off midway through his sentence…or is he? Your heart leaps in your chest as you realize the voice still crackles through, garbled. But it sounds like someone else, not like your professor.

Then who it could it be? Who is creating this disturbance in the middle of your class? Obviously, it’s you from the future, desperately trying to get to break through the space-time continuum to warn present you about what fate befalls you. Perhaps trying to major in whatever you’re majoring in is actually a mistake. Or maybe future you wants to warn you not to catch that next flight out of the country, because you’ll end up being kidnapped. Surely, it must be something dire if they’re interrupting your class to do this.

Quick! Try to piece together what they’re saying before—

And now your professor is back, acting like he didn’t realize that the future and the present almost collided before his very eyes. You’re shaking a little, but remain calm. Hopefully, future you will return to finish its garbled message.

A minute later, it happens again. Your professor is once again stuck in an odd position onscreen, with his eyes rolled upwards and his head blurring towards your screen. There’s no garbled message this time, just silence, so it can’t be future you this time after all.

Squint a little. Do you see random bits of green in the top left? Does part of your prof’s skin seem to be stuck in fragments above him? Unfortunately, it looks like your worst fears are true. Your professor is an alien.

His human mask must have slipped off inadvertently and, in a last-minute effort to stop his identity from being revealed, he’s stopped everyone’s internet. That would account for the weird blur and the fragments, wouldn’t it? Get a screenshot of this before it’s too—

He’s back. Maybe next time. But keep an eye out, maybe next time he won’t be so careful.

Another few minutes pass before it happens again. Your professor is stuck, the voice is garbled. Too many things are happening at once!

And then you hear your mom in the other room – “is the wi-fi down for anyone else?”

Sorry, kid, it really just be like that sometimes.

Image courtesy of Bwog Archives