Dark Grid (2 page)

“Yes, they’re normally seen further north, but it’s an atmospheric thing, Carey.  We do have an atmosphere this far south you know; it does extend to cover the entire planet.  Besides, if it was the end of the world shouldn’t you have been raptured?”  That was a low blow and Joel knew it, but he’d had all he could stomach of the current conversation.

“Piss off, Taylor!” Carey spat and went inside.

Nice.  Good going, Joel.  With a last glance at the sky he turned and went inside, and wondered what the rest of the day would bring.

…

Eric had been a Cryptologic Linguist in the Army: which is just a fancy way to say that he used multi-million dollar equipment to find, identify, intercept, and decrypt foreign communications.  Most of that equipment had been satellites, or “birds”, and as such he’d done as much research on them as possible.  Eric had read everything he could get his hands on, from maintenance manuals to the highest levels of classified documentation he was allowed to read on their inner workings and programming. 

He was intelligent, actually he was a genius, literally, with an IQ of 143--but that wasn’t a problem.  It hadn’t prevented him from being a soldier and taking or giving orders; it hadn’t even prevented him from following stupid orders.  What it
had
done was prevent him from ignoring the fact that he couldn’t change a broken system as a grunt, and he wasn’t ‘political’ enough to make it as an officer.  So when his fourth hitch was up he’d made one of the toughest decisions he’d ever had to make.  Frustration warred with responsibility until frustration won out and he left the Army.

Prior to leaving the Army, though, Eric had learned all about threats to his birds, which had been threats to other birds (since birds were birds…basically).  If his birds were hardened against all kinds of damage and they were still vulnerable to weird “space weather”, less hardy birds would be even more vulnerable.

He’d also dealt with land lines, both communications and power, and there was some crossover there with the threats he’d researched.  Now it looked like at least one of the reports he’d read from NASA might not have been too far off.  Granted, he was making a SWAG based on the power being off and auroras being as far south as Tennessee, but the auroras made it a lot less wild of a guess.

Now he had to distil 25,000 pages of technical reports and four years of research and on the job training into layman’s terms to explain why he’d yelled GETUP in “drill sergeant voice”.  Being intelligent wasn’t the same as being good with words.  Eric had been dating Karen for five years and they had been living together for--let’s see--four years, nine months, and thirteen days.  See, very intelligent, did that off the top of his head.  But he still hadn’t found a way to ask her to marry him.  Now he couldn’t explain why he’d yelled to get her up.

“Ok sweetheart, work with me for a couple of minutes, ok?”  They were sitting at the kitchen table, looking at each other under the flat light of a couple of Coleman LED lanterns.

“Remember about three years ago, when I was working weirder hours than usual and I couldn’t talk about it?  Ok, sorry, bad example.  Man, I am so bad at this.  Let me try this one more time.”  Eric had to take a couple of breaths to calm down and order his thoughts.  Thankfully, Karen was the understanding sort.

“Right, ok, further back, back in 2006 there was this report that NASA put out about how the sun has cycles.  The long and short of it is that at points in the cycle there is massive sun spot activity and the sun sends out a bunch of ‘stuff’.  Particles, electro-magnetic waves, plasma…stuff.  It’s called a ‘Coronal Mass Ejection’ or CME.”  Eric was calming down.  He’d explained it to a Lieutenant once, after all, and Karen was much smarter than he’d been.

“Normally there isn’t a problem with either the amount of material or energy that gets released during one of these events.  The report, however, was predicting that sometime in 2012 one of the worst, and by worst they mean massive, events in recorded history should occur.

“The reason this event has the potential to be so bad isn’t necessarily due to the magnitude of the event but due to the level of technology we’ve attained, and specifically our power distribution system.  There was a plan that was supposed to be put in place that would protect everything.  The problem is it required a certain amount of notice, and the notice is based on how long it takes the CME and its associated matter and energy to reach us.

“It looks like NASA might have been off by about three months, but if what’s happening is what I think it is, the entire northern hemisphere just lost power.  Not only that, but everything that was plugged in and turned on is toast.  Anything that has a soft power switch, like a computer in ‘stand-by’, or our cable box, is fried.”  Karen’s eyes were starting to get big. 
Uh-oh, time to calm her down.
He thought.

“However, and this is a big however, sweetie, anything that wasn’t plugged in is probably ok.  The main power distribution system may be shot--and when I say shot I mean completely down for months, if not years, if not for good as we knew it--but if we can get a generator and, say, a brand new microwave from the store and plug it in, it should work.” 
Whew, that was close
.

Eric, unfortunately, had thought about this a great deal back in 2009 and 2010 when he’d had to harden his birds.  Microwave ovens weren’t the big problem.  In fact, they weren’t even “on the radar”, as it were.  The problem was much more fundamental than that.

Society as we have come to know it is a very fragile thing.  New Orleans didn’t fall apart after hurricane Katrina because of the government and their lack of response.

The reason that society came unraveled in New Orleans after Katrina--and why Eric was so concerned for himself, Karen, and a few people he’d come to know in his short time outside of the military-- was a simple lack of preparation.  That and the knowledge needed to survive in the short term, and the willingness to use that knowledge however necessary.

Ok, Eric, fine--be that as it may--what are you going to do?  You are here right now with Karen.  You have the Taylors down the street.  They were the first people to welcome you to the neighborhood and treat you like you didn’t have two heads.  There’s Sheri Hines across the street from them, who met Karen at the ‘Y’ and has become a really good friend and neighbor too.  Good folks, who’ve treated us really well, and who I really care about already.  So…self, what are you going to do?

Just as Eric was taking a breath to tell Karen they needed to tell a few people what he thought was going on, she beat him to it.

“Eric, if it’s that bad, and if you’re this worked up about it then it’s probably that bad, we need to tell Joel, Rachael, and Sheri, soonest.”

“Where have you been all my life?”

“Well, for the last four and a half years or so I’ve been following your sorry butt all over the country waiting for you to propose,” Karen had a twinkle in her eye you couldn’t miss even in the crappy lantern light, “but seeing as how we’re now in the middle of a crisis and you’re a gentleman and you wouldn’t want me to feel like I had pressured you into it, it’ll probably have to wait at least a little while longer.”

He couldn’t help but smile, both because he knew she was right and because he knew there was an engagement ring in the fire safe in the bedroom.

“Ok, I’m awful.  You sure you want to keep me?  Wait, don’t answer that just yet, you might want me to shoot a deer or lift something heavy in the near future.  So, do I go over now or do we wait until later?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Sheri’s got graveyard right now.  She mentioned how glad she was she didn’t have to go to another girls’ night out; or, as she referred to it, the ‘get Sheri laid party’.  The Taylors are probably sound asleep still, so I say we wait until the sun is up.”  Karen was looking over his left shoulder now--she always did that when she was deep in thought--her gaze drifted from the person she was talking to, to just over their left shoulder.

“We should probably get some ice for the coolers since those stay cold longer than the freezer.  Does the convenience store sell dry ice or just regular ice?”

Eric smiled but shook his head, “Just regular ice, unfortunately.”  “They restricted dry ice to grocery stores everywhere but the back hills and bait shops back when I was a kid, when dry ice bombs became popular—not that they ever went out of style.”  Dry ice would keep things colder for much longer than regular ice and when it melted, and wouldn’t create puddles of water in the cooler.  It was also lighter than frozen water.  They’d used it a couple of years ago on a backpacking trip to keep some ice cream frozen for dessert.

“I’ll head over to the mini-mart and grab some ice, probably ought to take cash, and I’ll rummage around for anything else that catches my eye as a must have.”

Chapter Three

The first thing Eric noticed at the convenience store was the humming of the generator; second, the lack of lights; and third, that the sliding doors were already all the way open--not a good sign. 
Right, okay…get the goods first and then the conversation.

Inside, a few emergency lights flickered dimly.  Eric was amazed at the kind of beating those systems could take and keep on working.  He bought six 10lb bags of ice, two bottles of rubbing alcohol, a bottle of aspirin, a bottle of ibuprofen, a bottle of acetaminophen, a bottle of Benadryl, and four six-packs of 20oz water bottles--which came to nearly fifty-three dollars before tax and earned him a very strange look. He mentioned the generator and lack of power in the store.

“Yeah, really weird, man! The lights dimmed real low and the coolers made a funny noise, then all the lights got real bright--brighter than they should have, you know?  Every last one of ‘em.  Tubes, regular bulbs, even the neon ones for the beer.”

“And then they popped--burned right out.  I was afraid a couple of ‘em were gonna start a fire at first, specially the neons.  Started to stink really bad.  I had to have the front and back doors open for a while.  I even went to turn on the fans to blow the smell out.”  He chuckled at that for a second and then continued, “How dumb’s that?”

“Not dumb at all, man, I went to grab some OJ out of the fridge and didn’t even notice the light wasn’t on until the fridge was closed again.  Just habit, I guess.”  Eric was still hoping to work the clerk around to the generator.  Apparently he didn’t get many visitors and was enjoying the company, or the dark was getting to him--or both. 

“Well, the generator comes on automatically and I figured the power would be on fairly quick, except it isn’t.  I reset all the breakers, the ones that’ll reset that is.  A couple of ‘em won’t budge.  Looks like they got cooked pretty good when the power blew.  The main is ok, and most of the others look good too, but nothing’s turning on.”

“Have you had any calls? Cell phone, anything?”

“Nope, regular phone’s out and my cell isn’t getting any signal.  How ‘bout you?”

“Nah, both the girlfriend and I have the same provider and neither of us have any signal either.  She’s probably freaking out a little as a matter of fact; I ought to be getting back.  Hang in there.”

On the way back to the house Eric decided he would definitely be at the Taylor’s door at sunrise.

…

Joel could see it was Eric through the windows set to either side of the front door.

“Morning, Eric, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess this isn’t a social call since I don’t see Karen or a bottle of wine.  Come on in.  I’d offer you coffee but, as you can see, the power’s out.  We’ve got cold Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi though. Rachael swears cold caffeine is better than no caffeine but I told her Diet anything is worse than…yeah, never mind, have a seat please.”

“Thank you, I’m good.”  He was starting to feel bad for giving Joel the shock he had.  He hadn’t realized how hard he’d knocked on the door until he’d seen them jump on the back porch. 
I guess I’m still wound a little tight, probably will be for a while too
.

“So, what brings you over so bright and early?”  Joel stole a glance at his wife whose gaze was fixed on Eric.  Oddly enough, Millie hadn’t barked at all when Eric had hammered on the door, and came over to have her head scratched once he sat down.

“Well, um, now that I’m here, I feel kind of funny bringing it up.  I know you folks haven’t known me for all that long--only a couple of months--but Karen and I really like you guys, and the kids--we feel like you’re family.  This is going to sound crazy, but…”

It took about fifteen minutes to go over the same information he’d gone over with Karen earlier.  When he was finished, Rachael was the first to say anything and that was after several seconds of silence.  “Everything you said, taken one at a time, sounds perfectly logical, Eric.  When you put it all together, though, this conversation sounds like something from ‘Coast to Coast AM’.  Are you sure the power isn’t just ‘out’?”

Eric didn’t answer right away.  He wasn’t sure what he was expecting but being compared to a tinfoil-hat-wearing nut job hadn’t been it.  “Yes, I am.”  Eric sighed, “Yes it sounds insane--that’s fair--but the power isn’t just out, it’s Out with a capital O.”

“So help me, Eric, if I have to admit to Carey that he was right earlier this morning, I will never forgive you,” Joel muttered.

Eric snorted.  “I don’t think I want to know.”

“Not right now, no,” Joel replied.

“My point is that I’m really not one of those end-of-the-worlders you hear about.  I don’t just have a ‘bad feeling’ about this.  It’s based on some pretty heavy-duty past experience and research.”  Eric stopped and looked around for something that he could use as an immediate example to prove his point.

“I see you have the coolers out.  Did you go and get ice this morning?”

“Well, I tried at about 3:45, but turned around when there were no street lights and no traffic lights.  The ice is just from the freezer right now.”

“I must have missed you by about ten minutes.  Humor me for a sec, ok?  Did you try the radio while you were out?”