Dark Grid (3 page)

“Yes.”

Eric waited for more and when Joel didn’t go into any further detail, he prodded for additional information.  “Did you try more than one station, and did you try both FM and AM?”

Joel didn’t answer right away but eventually responded with a curt, “Yes.”

“Joel, this isn’t an interrogation.  I’m not waterboarding you for crying out loud, I’m trying to make a point!  I bet your cell phones don’t have any signal either do they?  If you’ve got laptops that were turned off and unplugged then I’m sure they boot up just fine because the batteries are ok.  If you have an inverter in the car you can charge them without a problem.  Unfortunately, the Internet is down.  For the first time in recorded history when someone says ‘Hey, the Internet is down’ they’re actually right.  The whole thing is really and truly down!”

“Calm down, Eric.”  Joel said.

“I am calm, Joel, I really am.  I’ve just spent too much time being a sheep dog and you two are too intelligent to be acting like sheep.”  Rachael was about to take offense to the last remark and Joel was fast on her heels with, “Now just a minute”, but Eric kept right on going.

“I wasn’t trying to offend you, although anyone with a brain can see I just did. 
That
wasn’t my point at all but I’ll let myself out now.  I was trying to get you to entertain for a minute that you might not have all the information.  I’m done, I’ve said my piece.  If you don’t believe me maybe you should ask Sheri when she gets home.”

Eric got up from the kitchen table and headed for the front door, passing Joshua, the Taylor’s sixteen-year-old son, on the way out.

“Hey, Mr. Tripp.  You’re out and about awful early.” ‘Awful early’ actually came out ‘awwwuuul uurreeeee’ as Joshua had yet to learn not to speak through a yawn.  Sixteen years old and he hadn’t learned to cover his mouth while yawning yet either, apparently.

“Morning, Josh--you have no idea.”  As he passed Josh, Eric looked over his shoulder at Joel and Rachael with raised eyebrows while moving his eyes between them and their son.  He didn’t say another word but the message was clear:  If I’m wrong, so be it; but if I’m right, what about your kids?

Eric let himself out and Rachael brought over bowls of cereal for Josh and Maya, who had also come down just as Eric was leaving.  They had to use the milk while it was still cold, and they were using the ice to keep frozen foods as close to frozen as they could.  Josh and Maya were both kids, there were no two ways about it, but they were fairly mature for their age

As they ate, Joel and Rachael looked at each other across the length of the table each willing the other to make the first mention of the night before.  Finally, Joshua broke the silence and the tension.

“Ok, what’s up, what did we do?  Did you guys find Maya’s Playboys?” For which statement, Josh was rewarded by a kick in the shin from his sister.

“Eww, as if!  You are so gross!”

Rachael rolled her eyes and Joel stifled a laugh, which was a welcome if short-lived change.

“No, and let’s just not go there, Joshua Michael Taylor.  It isn’t anything you’ve done. Although, if there’s something we should know, now’s the time to spill it; I seriously doubt your mother and I could be any more surprised about anything than we think we are right now.”

“No,” Joel repeated, pausing to take a breath, “It’s about why Mr. Tripp was over so early this morning.  Maya, do you remember waking up and seeing the aurora borealis last night?”

…..

Chapter Four

“Ten-to-one the radio doesn’t work.” Sheri muttered to herself after the lights went out.  “Figures.”  This they had actually drilled for--a lot.  Not to this catastrophic level, but a power plant losing power isn’t as impossible as most people might think.  All it takes is one idiot pushing the wrong button and the outside world keeps getting their power just like always, while everyone inside is in the dark.  Ok, technically it takes three idiots, a manager, two switches in different rooms, and five minutes--the point is that it’s possible.

The emergency lights came on after about a two-second delay and Sheri reached into her left-hand top desk drawer for her three D-cell Mag-Light.  She didn’t carry a purse to work--she had a wallet--and her keys were on a carabineer on a belt-loop. 
Ok, now for the radio
.   Dead, of course; it was plugged in.  The surge would have knocked it out.
  Hell, that surge would have knocked out Superman!
  Sheri thought.
  So, what just happened?  Had a nuke gone off?  It hadn’t been a bomb inside the dam, they would have felt an explosion.  Cutting the lines, all of them, even simultaneously, wouldn’t have shut the power off inside the facility.  Aliens?  No, they only blow up national monuments…usually.  Sheri, you are sick.

“Is everybody OK?”  Sheri asked of the other seven technicians and engineers in the control room.  If this had been a drill, there would have been supervisors on shift within shouting distance of the entire plant, but there was only one on site tonight, and he was in the cafeteria.  One more nail in the coffin of the idea that this had been a drill.

Nobody was stepping up to take control of the situation; not that there was much to control except getting everyone out of the control center.  They were under almost one hundred and fifty feet of concrete, steel, and water. Without the air pumps they had about thirty minutes before the air got stuffy.

“HEY!” 
That got attention, if only for a couple of seconds; now to get people moving.
  “Ok, folks, we’ve only got about thirty minutes before the air is going to get stale down here.  Who knows why they put the control room at the
bottom
of the dam but they did.  Jack and Pete, help Carol up the stairs, but bring up the rear.”  That got her a sour look from Pete.  So be it. Carol was pregnant and Pete was able-bodied; he could deal with it.  “We need to get up top, let’s go people.  We’ve done this a hundred times if we’ve done it once.  When the power comes back we can do most of what we need to from half a dozen different places up there and come back down later.  You’ve got two minutes to grab your stuff.”

The key is not to let anyone think you aren’t in control; if you question yourself or let them question you it will devolve into chaos and someone will get hurt.  Let them write me up for ordering my peers around after everyone is safe.

It didn’t take quite sixty seconds once everyone snapped out of their initial shock.  Sheri was right, they’d done this at least a hundred times; it had simply caught them flat-footed.

The emergency lights in the stairwells were working, which was both a good sign and a testament to the design and construction of the backup system.  Sheri wondered idly if the transfer switch had started to kick in during dip or at the beginning of the spike.  Oh well, another one of those things she figured she might wonder about for a while.

They heard voices up ahead as a couple of technicians were climbing out of the dam and picked up Chuck, their supervisor, near the top.

“Sheri, we got anyone else down there?  On the way up a minute ago, Jerry said two of the turbines arced over fifty feet between them.  He’s been doing this for thirty years and he’s never seen anything like it.”

Chuck was shaking his head, eyes wide, as he continued.  “He said that those two seized up while the rest spun down when the lights went out, from what he could see.  Those two turbines that seized are shot, Sheri, and if that spike was as big as you said--and don’t give me that look, I believe you--I bet the rest are shot too.”

Sheri felt some of the supernatural calm of earlier this morning give way to whatever the next stage of shock was.  The stage that gave you trembling knees and sweaty hands, apparently. “Super.  Now what?  I got everybody out, I now defer to you oh great and powerful management-type guy!”  Sheri said it with a shaky smile, but she was serious.  She’d stepped up to get everybody out of the control room but she really didn’t have a clue what to do next.

“Ha ha ha.  Well, the manual says we, um, uh, let’s see, oh yeah, this isn’t ever supposed to happen.  We drill for it, sure, but actually having a spike on the grid, that blows out turbines and shuts power off to the plant?  Uh-uh, ain’t supposed to really be possible short of a nuke, and if we’re talking about it they’ve got hydro plants in the afterlife and/or hell looks an awful lot like an early Thursday morning.”

Just then, they got to the door and stepped outside and Chuck swore under his breath.  “Charles!  There are ladies present and one of them is pregnant.  Watch your mouth!”  Sheri had been riding Chuck for almost four years about his language, and--truth be told--he’d been getting better.  But when he didn’t think she could hear, or when he was really caught off guard, he could turn the air blue.

“Sorry, Sheri, but I think I know what happened.  Idiots had six years warning, got it wrong by three months, and
still
weren’t able to give us the warning they thought they would!”

Sheri gaped as what Chuck said registered.  “Wait…No!...Chuck, tell me it wasn’t the CME.  Please tell me that isn’t what happened.”  She reached out a hand as if to shut off a switch, or bolt a heavy door.  Chuck thought about reaching back to comfort her, but changed his mind.  It might not seem right, coming from a supervisor.

Sheri continued, “The DoE was sure they would be able to notify us at least twelve hours in advance.  There was a plan in place to do a whole Emergency Broadcast System alert.  The grid was going to be offline for goodness’ sake which was what operation ‘Dark Grid’ was all about--1,542 pages just for this event!”

Sheri was looking around at the small group of people who had gathered outside of the building.  “Hospitals were going to be on generator power, elective surgeries were going to be postponed.  Airports were going to be closed and flights cancelled for the day--just to be safe.  They were going to put the astronauts into the Soyuz capsule on the ISS for the duration of the event because they had no idea how much radiation was going to be generated!”

Sheri’s voice was rising by this time, and Chuck turned to face her directly. “If this was the 2012 CME and we didn’t get a warning we are so…”

“SHERI!” Chuck’s bark was part amusement, part command, and part shock at what he was pretty sure Sheri was about to say.  “There are ladies present and one of them is pregnant.  Not only that, but if you panic all these people I am gonna be so pissed.  There’s a reason I was cursing under my breath and it wasn’t just to avoid your wrath. 

“I think we need to send most of these folks home and see if there is anything worth salvaging here.  By the looks of the sky, I personally think I know what happened.  We’re in the know and frankly so are most of the people here right now, but not everybody.  We need to figure out a way to let everyone know but not panic them, and then let them go home.  We need to secure the dam and then the rest of us should probably head home too.”

Chuck paused for a minute, not quite sure how to go on.  Finally, a little quieter than he’d been before, “Sheri, do you have someplace to go?”

“Sure, I’m sure the house is still there.”

“Sheri, I’m not talking about your house.  I’m sure it’s still there, too, unless you’ve got a 10KW electric heater running day and night that was drawing full power when the spike hit.  I mean afterwards, do you have somewhere to go--family, friends?”

“Oh, um, I never really thought about it.  Wow, I don’t know.  I don’t have family close by.  I’ve got some friends in the neighborhood and I’d like to think we’re close but I don’t know.  Why?”

“Well, I’m not suggesting anything but a hand, but if you need a place to stay or, well, you know, anything.”

Was Chuck turning red?

“Chuck, I really appreciate that--a lot.  I can’t tell you how much that means.  Tell you what, let’s get this goat rope sorted out and then how ‘bout you follow me back to the house, just to make sure everything’s ok?  Like I said, I do have a couple of close friends there and they know I’m working graveyard.  If I don’t show up they might start to worry.”

“Sure…yeah, good deal.”

“OK, people,” Chuck turned to the rest of the crowd, “from the look of the surrounding area the power’s out and I don’t just mean out for a little while.  We need to secure the facility and then the following people can go ahead and take off.  Don’t worry about the rest of the shift, you’re covered.  I’ll need the rest of you to hang back for a few minutes afterwards…”

Three and a half hours later, just as the sun was coming up, all of the now totally unnecessary shutdown procedures were finished and the only people left were Sheri, Chuck, Pete, Carol, and Jerry.  Chuck had waited until all the cars were completely out of the parking lot before he pulled those he’d kept behind together.  “Everybody know what happened this morning?” Chuck asked, although the looks on everyone’s faces pretty much told him everything he needed to know.

“I thought we were going to get some warning,” was Pete’s response.

“Yeah, like twelve hours,” Carol chimed in.

Jerry just shook his head--not in negation, but in resignation.

“How are each of you set for getting by, at least for a while?”

Pete was the first to answer.  “I’m getting out of town, like now.  My dad’s got a spread in Oklahoma and I’ll be on the way as soon as I get home.  I’ve got fifty gallons of gas for the truck, a battery powered siphon for the gas stations that I
know
will be without power and the tools to take the caps off the refill ports.  I think I’ll be able to convince any reluctant gas station owners to part with the gas too.  I knew this was coming, damned if I didn’t.”  Pete chuckled at his little joke as he looked at their surroundings.

“Well, I can’t just take off.  We’ve been putting everything extra away since we found out I was pregnant, so everything’s in the bank--which of course we can’t get to.  Scott’s never been one for the whole ‘prepare now, while you can’ thing either, beyond a couple of days in the pantry, unfortunately.  I’m not sure what we’ll do, but I think we’ll be ok.  I don’t know why, but I really think we will.  Scott’s a good hunter…” Carol’s voice trailed off.  She was obviously worried, but she was going to stand by her man.