Stone Age (18 page)

Powerless

9 Days A.E.

Rocky Point, Mexico

The auroras were gone for
a full day now and it was dark out.  The first total darkness they had experienced since the auroras started.  The sky was a carpet of stars and nothing else.  The length of the beach, usually lit up like a Christmas tree in December, was as dark as the night.  They could still hear occasional gunfire, but it was otherwise silent.

T
he Kings were careful not to turn on or use any electronic devices, in case there were any induced currents lurking around.  Before plugging anything into the house’s electrical line, Bill used a current tester to test the line: Nothing.  Although Max warned them that their solar panels would be slightly degraded because of the solar storms, he said they should work, if the storms passed.  However, it was dark now, and the panels would provide no help for the next test.  Feeling safe, Bill pulled the batteries stored in their safe room and connected them in parallel to the incoming line from the solar panel’s control box. Max said they had been fully charged a month ago, so they should still be holding a charge.  The other batteries hooked up to the system during the Event were already fried.

They each plugged in a couple of lights around the house.  Lisa and Sally stopped in the kitchen, lit by candlelight, they held their collective breaths and both had their arms out and fingers crossed, with expectant expressions on their faces.  Bill walked outside to the circuit panel, just outside their patio door. There was nothing more to be said, so Bill flipped the switch.

The lights flickered, and then they turned on.

Like a beacon of an old lighthouse casting it’s light out to sea,  the light from their house cut through the blanket of darkness inside and out, sending beams of brightness seemingly everywhere. 

All the Kings yelled in excitement, jumping
up and down, and holding onto each other.

Bill was ecstatic.  This was it.  Maybe
many lives would eventually go back to some sort of normal.  Maybe it wasn’t going to be as bad as Max had told them.

Air conditioning.  Computers.  Cold beer.

It might take a long time to restore what was lost, and undoubtedly many will still die, but maybe, just maybe, it would be something like what they had before. 

Bill k
issed Lisa, knowing she had similar thoughts.

T
he lights blinked.   Then they flickered.  Then they went out, this time for good. 

They all stopped just as abruptly, frozen in place, afraid to move an inch.

They waited.

There was silence and stillness all around them.  Even the waves barely moved.  It was a quiet that seemed unfamiliar
. 

Two of the lights they had just plugged in popped, their bulbs exploding outward.  This sudden noise startled all three of them, especially Bill who was standing closest to one of the two.

Then they heard something, a strange noise coming from the distance.   With the noise came a bluish light, then more orange-like, and now green.  This light, along with the noise, was coming from outside the house.

Like zombies from a bad movie, they all started moving in slow motion, ambling towards the large p
atio door leading to the beach.  They held hands, bound together to face what waited for them outside.

Once
through the doorway, they all looked up to the sky, walking still further. 

Streaks of colors, bisected by rivers of multiple colors, and muted wispy clouds undulated like waves towards them in the sky.  The colors were in concert with a strange whooshing sound, like a breeze.

It then occurred to all of them that the lights might never turn on again.  As Max had told them all in his letter, this
was
the worst-case scenario.  The sun would forever send massive electro-magnetic pulses into the atmosphere, generation after generation, rendering all electronics useless.

This
was
the new normal. 

They would forever reside in
a new Stone Age.

July 5
th
, 1860

Denver City, Sanatorium

Russell Thompson reached over and opened up the drawer of the wood table beside his bed.  With his bandaged left hand, he pulled out a leather-bound notebook given to him by his mother years ago.  With his uninjured right hand, he loosened the leather binding ties and opened the book for only the third time.  He glanced at the first page’s inscription,
The adventures of Russell P. Thompson III
. His deceased mother had written this in careful script.  He beamed at the memory of his mother giving him this book when he was a teenager, after announcing that he was going to travel the world as an explorer.  His father never tempted his desires, calling them, “fodder for idlers.”  His mother rejoiced in his ambitious desires of travel, adventure, and prospecting.

Skipping past a page of writing to the next was a drawing of a cicada.  He drew it a week ago; meticulously studying and copying in pen one of the millions of those flyin
g around him.  It was a sign of his rebirth.  A cicada first comes out of the ground every decade or so before being reborn to fly.  Similarly, his crushed body had come out of over ten months of therapy.  He was in his larvae state before coming out of his hospital bed, reborn.  Now he was ready to take flight.

He turned back to the second page again to see his nearly illegible scrawl from the first time he cracked open the journal.  It was titled, “The road paved with gold,” followed by the carefully written block letters, “
GSV EVRM LU TLOW SRWWVM FMWVI Z XLOOVXGRLM LU KROVW ILXPH, DSRXS SZW ML VZIGSOB KOZXV YVRMT GSVIV, RM GSV HGIVZN YVW, 143 KZXVH WFV HLFGS LU GSV YRT OLZM KRMV LM GLK LU GSV SROO ZH HVVM UILN GSV XSVIIB XIVVP XZNK”.  Below this, he had written in the same careful block letters, “USE ATBASH.”

He didn’t need to study the letters using the Atbash cipher he had used to write those words from the tip.  The words were already committed to his permanent memory, “The vein of gold hidden under a collection of piled rocks, which had no earthly place being there, in the stream bed, 143 paces due south of the big lone pine on top of the hill as seen from the Cherry Creek Camp.”

It was a reminder of his unfinished purpose.   He turned the page, past the drawing, this time forcefully and with his good right hand started to write:

5 July, 1860

I can no more explain how I am alive, than I can of waking up in this Denver City sanatorium bed, the very same bed of a dying man who gave me my very reason for coming to Colorado, seemingly a lifetime ago.  I should be dead.  This I know for certain.  There is no logical reason for my survival.  Yet here am I, convalescing from burns, which I fear will forever remind me of that event, barely ten months previous. I remember feeling the heat and the pain and then blackness.  After waking up a fortnight later, my attendants told me what had transpired.  I was one of a multitude who were injured that morning.  Many perished, perhaps even my friend Pete who accompanied me on this trip.  I am certain he was more than a vision from that faithful day.  I had thought destiny had turned against me as some sort of punishment.

He paused, looking up to his left leg, which was the part of his body, in addition to his left arm, w
hich were totally burned and broken, but now mostly healed.   Both arm and leg tingled together, an endless chorus of painful noise sung loudly from each.  More painful was the knowledge that his father was the one paying for his treatments.  The physical and emotional pain was until today, held back by the Laudanum.  He no longer wanted to cloud his thinking with Laudanum, so ignoring their clarion call of pain, he turned his back to them and continued his thoughts:

Destiny has a funny way changing one
’s course.  Only yesterday, I learned I was in the same bed as the lunger who told me his story in my hometown of Lawrence and the tip that would lead me to gold.  Because of his TB, he sought medical aid from this sanatorium, one that received worldly acclaim.  

Betty, a beautiful angel, working as an attendant, nursed me back to health over these many months on
a daily course of the sundry tales and life stories of the sanatoriums’ patients.  Her stories and the unspoken love which has welled up in me, suppressed until yesterday, by the fear I would never possess the will to express my feelings for her.  Then I learned the truth about my painful calling.

After returning from my regular walk, exorcising the demons of agony possessing my leg,
Betty told me of one patient in particular. 
He was in the later stages of TB
, she said tearfully. 
In one of his bouts of delirium, he said that he had struck it rich, uncovering the gold find of the century.  All he had to do was get back to Kansas City to get help and lay claim to his find.
  She feared that he never made it back.  I don’t know why, but I never let on that I was bound to this same man and my yet unfilled posthumous promise to him that I would make sure he was buried at his home and that I alone possessed his most cherished secret.

One cannot claim this as luck, any more than one can claim a new sunrise or sunset as accident.  After all, what are the chances of one randomly finding a stranger with a secret that will change his life, then surviving the oddest of events I dare say witnessed by man, and then falling in love with your attendant, and waking up in the same bed as that stranger?   Pondering such wonders makes my head hurt.  The how, perhaps I will never be known, but the why is certain.  It is still my destiny and purpose to find this gold and then propose to the woman I love.   I will not be dissuaded from both my missions.”

He closed the book, and then secured it in a leather hide, folding each corner carefully, finally securing the hide to the book with a long leather strip, which was tied around its width and length.

~~~

Betty was looking forward to seeing Russell.  He was nothing to look at, and was a little bit of a dreamer, but something had changed since yesterday.  It was as if he had awoken from a dream and he was alive again.  She was excited to see what he was like today.  All night, until she arrived for her shift, she was filled with happiness.  She could not wait to see him, and she hoped he felt the same.

She spent extra time getting her makeup just right, adding an extra measure of red to her lips, and color to her checks.  She
brushed her thick black hair more often than normal.  She pressed her uniform, making it look crisp and nearly new.  She wanted to look perfect for Russell, and hoped and prayed he would notice.

After visiting Mr. Jenkins, she entered Russell’s room.  He wasn’t there.  His bed, the second of eight, separated by curtains, was turned down and his belongings looked gone as well.  She walked up and saw there was a letter on his pillow.
It had her first name on it
.  She opened it up and read:

Dearest Betty, 

You have saved me not only from my physical ailments but also from those much more disabling in my mind.  I have a new sense of purpose that I have never felt.  I have also fallen in love with you.  I know that I will not be able to ask you for your hand until I have made something of myself.  So, I will take leave for a short while.  Know this, my love, although I am leaving you now, I promise to return for you.  I can only hope that you feel for me the same love I feel for you.  If, however, you do not, I am still joyous that you have given me so much to hope for.  I pray that that day when I am able return to you will come swiftly.

Until then, I remain ever yours,

Russell J. Thompson III

Revelation

“A Long Time Ago…”

Gord had tried to walk only during the night, something they were all taught, avoiding the daylight and its ruinous light.  However, the journey was so long and he feared he would never reach his destination.  He kept his walking during daylight to a minimum, knowing the risks, and really only started in the last lunar cycle.    He made up much more territory when he found the ancient trails made by previous masses of people.  Some of these trails were huge, at least thirty arm lengths, and it appeared that many of the trees were removed to make traveling easier.  Oddly, a small channel separated some of the widest spans, as if a mighty river, which had since dried up, once parted the middle of these clearings.  He would have enjoyed seeing what these trails looked like when they were built and maybe even their builders. 

Every so often, one of these spans would be blocked by an odd arrangement of large grey boulders, some standing tall like monumental trees of gray smooth rock.  Often, these rocky arrangements were impassible and required that he find a path around them.  When he came upon them, he couldn’t help but see some design to them as if the loose arrangement of gray boulders were actually used for something he would never come to know.  Occasionally, Gord would run across some sort of warning, obviously posted by a tribe many moons ago, as there sometimes appeared to be writing on a flat surface that had long since been removed by the harsh elements.

He was covering a lot of ground right now and felt as if he was very close.  Perhaps in a couple of days, but not much longer, he would find what he was looking for: a place called Cicada.

~~~

He lost track of the days.  So many days were the same: waking up, walking many trails, avoiding capture or death by the few other tribes, or the occasional wanderer who was desperate and not part of a tribe.  Always seeming to get closer to Cicada, but never getting close enough.  He was tired and frustrated, but still hopeful.

Gord stopped for a moment of rest, and a drink of water.  The end of his waterskin, a new one he made only a few suns ago, was cool to his parched lips, cracked from the sun.  He drank eagerly of the life giving liquid, careful not to drink too fast.  Wiping the wetness from his hair covered face, he noticed the dirt from the path caked his hands and no doubt his face, as well.   Looking down, he saw that his feet, wrapped in freshly cut skins, were also a grey-black color that matched the path beneath his feet.  His legs were a matted mess of hair and dirt, all the same color.  A nodule on his knee seeping blood and puss, where he fell shortly after sunrise, had run down his right leg adding the only color to his person.  Finishing the inspection, he examined his waist, then chest and then back out to his arms.  He imagined he was a pretty scary looking figure right now.  He smiled a smile he couldn’t see.

He took in another swallow of water and only realized then, something had changed.  The air was different here.  Normally, it was dusty, like it was now and sometimes he would smell an animal or the unending yellowish-grey trees around him, but rarely did he smell anything else.  Where he stood now, a new scent assaulted his senses, full of death and decay.  He was close to people.

Immediately, his
mind was on alert and he knelt down, making himself smaller and less visible.  This was something his father taught him when he hunted or when he was being hunted.  Gord searched all around him to make sure no one was watching.  He seemed to be the only one on a long hill, maybe 200 arm spans high, above a long valley.

Looking forward, the three pointed mountain top he had been walking to for countless days was prominent overhead.  These final steps had been aided by a flat surface on which he could easily walk.  Again, another passageway used by masses of people. 

He stood up for a moment.  In the distance, not far, but just far enough he couldn’t clearly see, was some object in the middle of the path that looked like a large marker.  Beyond the marker was barrier twice his height, and above this was, something he couldn’t explain.  The sky above the barrier seemed to reflect some of the sunlight back to him.  This made no sense, as there was nothing in the sky to cause this reflection. He started walking towards this marker, first slowly, attempting to soften the noise of each footfall, so as to not alert another.  As the distance between him and the object shrank, his pace quickened, as there was now an excitement in his step.  It felt familiar, as if he had seen what was becoming clearer.  The marker was like a large pile of stones, but smoother than normal and almost silver in color.  Inset was a large white flat surface that reflected the blinding light of the afternoon’s sun right back at him.  He squinted and held his hand in front of his face, failing to blunt the harshness of the light that mugged his vision, unable to see yet what lay upon it.

The crunch – crunch – crunch of his footfalls were almost at a running pace. 
Abruptly, he stopped.  Rearing up, he stared at the marker, which now stood before him.  The cloud of dust, churned up and trailing his swift passage, had now caught up and dispersed past where he stood.

He was motionless for a long breath, taking in what was now plainly visible.  The
marker was definitely older than he was.  It must have been made by one of the great technology tribes his father’s father Stepha told him about; the examples of their existence he had witnessed many times during his long pilgrimage.  The marker was as tall as he was and appeared to be made of a smooth reflective surface.  He remembered it being called, “metal.”    Taking up almost half of the surface was a perfectly square placard, of thin reflective material and a white finish, permanently mounted to the marker. 

It had fancy writing on it with a drawing in the lower middle portion of the placard.  Over the writing and the drawing, someone else had roughly written something else, presumable later.  It said:

The drawing was very familiar to him.  When he was standing in front of it, he knew exactly where this image came from.

Gord removed a large cloth sling from his back, which contained all of his belongings.  Placing it on the ground beside him, he pulled out a rectangular object and placed it in front of his feet, between the
marker and him.  He carefully untied a strap that bound the object.  Then he unfolded the flaps of leather protecting the prized possession within.  He picked up what was inside, what people before him called “a book.”  Gord believed it was one of the only books left in all the lands.

He opened the cover.  On the first page was written:

“The Adventures of Russell P. Thompson III”

On the third page was the drawing he remembered all too well.  He held the book and its drawing up to compare it to the image on the
marker.  It was the same. 

He had found Cicada.
  He had reached his destination.

Before he could
focus on his next step, an emaciated man, wearing dirty rags for clothes, stepped quietly behind Gord.  Raising a large tree branch, he hit Gord on the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.