The Blackout

by K J Kalis

  Freddie extended his hand, palm out, “Wait. Don’t leave. There’s something you should see.”

  Kat paused, unsure of what to do. “What?”

  Freddie pulled a full-sized photo out of the file he’d been looking at on his desk. “You may have really helped. Take a look at this.” He pushed the picture toward her, using a pen as a pointer. “We found this at the scene this morning.”

  Kat tried to take in what she was seeing, still reeling from giving Freddie the whole story before she wanted to. The picture was of a piece of equipment on the ground, the area charred and burned around this. “What am I looking at?”

  Freddie’s pen moved around the page, “This is a transformer. Here are the charred lines that were attached to it.”

  Kat was confused. “I’m sorry, why is this important?”

  Freddie grinned. “We don’t see this, not ever. Look right here.” He pointed to the bottom of the transformer. “Do you see this splintering?”

  Kat squinted at the picture and nodded. It looked like the pole the transformer had been bolted to had been snapped in half.

  “That’s not normal. When a transformer blows, it usually stays right on the pole. This one not only came off the pole, but the pole broke in half right under the attachment. The lines came with it and snapped off of the transformer. I’m sure it was one heck of a spark show.” Freddie grinned again.

  How someone could be so happy at the idea of transformers blowing off of power poles, Kat couldn’t be sure. She relaxed into her chair a little, still worried she had said too much.

  “Kat? Earth to Kat? Are you there?”

  Kat glanced up, seeing Freddie staring at her, his green eyes peering over the desk. “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t normally give away a lot of information. I feel like I betrayed Theresa.”

  Freddie wrinkled his nose. “Betrayed her? How?”

  “She gave me these in confidence.”

  The news didn’t seem to surprise Freddie at all. Kat guessed nothing did. “Are you writing a story on this?”

  “At the moment, no. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. She asked me to help her before she disappeared.” Kat looked back at Freddie, who had folded his hands on his desk. “The line between friend and journalist got a little blurry there for a second.”

  Freddie nodded. “How about if we concentrate on friend for a moment? Tell me about Theresa.”

  Kat took a deep breath, wondering if she was doing the right thing, but quickly realized that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. She started from the beginning, telling Freddie about the baseball game, how flustered Theresa seemed, how she had sent Kat the pictures later on that night and how Kat had been unable to reach her, even though Mike had gone to the hospital.

  “How do you know her?”

  “Through school. Our boys are both third graders. They play baseball together.” Kat shrugged her shoulders, the stress of holding the story inside dissipated as she shared it with Freddie. She had the same feeling as when she posted a story. Knowing that it was in the light of day made all the difference. She leaned forward, “Here’s the thing… Theresa’s husband. I think he knows what is going on. He might not know where Theresa is, but he knows more than he’s telling us. He got so flustered at the hospital that he had some sort of panic attack right in the hallway. He ended up in the bed right next to his son.”

  “Well, gosh darn!” Freddie yelled, slamming his hand on the desk. “I never expected this meeting to have so many twists and turns.” He glanced back at Kat’s screen. “Can you show me that picture you have again? Can you send it to me?”

  Kat nodded as he gave her his email address. Within a few seconds, it was up on his monitor. “Hold on for a skinny minute.” Freddie’s hands started moving over his desk with rapid-fire movements, pulling files out from under the pile stacked on his desk. He opened one and used his pen to point to something on the screen, “You said you were here about the Modesto fire?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one we could see the best. There were a couple of other marks on the map that Theresa sent, but I wasn’t sure about those.”

  “Well, you should be. There were three fires that started last night. These little blue dots are exactly where they ignited...”

  22

  Rodrigo Allen picked up the radio in his San Jose cruiser and called to his Sergeant, “Traffic is getting heavy here on the 680. Can someone call the Highway Patrol and let them know?”

  He shifted in his seat, watching lines of traffic build. Cars and trucks with what looked to be couples and families in them, the beds and backseats of the vehicles stuffed with personal belongings and pets. Before he heard back on the radio, his personal cell phone rang. It was his boss, Mark DiVito. “I heard your call. What’s going on out there?”

  “Looks like a mass exodus. People must be freaked out about the weather warnings.”

  DiVito grunted. “They should be. Haven’t seen Santa Ana winds like this in more than a decade. What percentage full do you think the lanes are?”

  “About eighty.”

  “I’ll call it in. Let’s see if we can get the Highway Patrol to open up those high efficiency lanes to let more cars use them.”

  “If we don’t, it’s gonna be a mess.”

  “I know. I’ll text you back as soon as I hear.”

  Rodrigo hung up his phone and watched the traffic again for a minute. Worries about wildfires were part of the lifestyle in California. He’d grown up in Southern California where even an extra twig in your yard could end you up in trouble with Cal Fire. Wind buffeted the side of the cruiser. Rodrigo felt the heavy SUV rock from side to side. He tilted his head and looked up through his windshield to the mountains. He could see smoke rising above them. He shook his head. Though wildfires were normal, something about this season didn’t feel like it should. He said a quick prayer for the people passing him. If the weather reports were right, they’d need it.

  23

  Roger Guerra was in the break room stirring some creamer powder in his cup of coffee, watching it swirl and wondering why it never seemed to dissolve when Candace Morrison came barging through the doors. “They’re back!”

  “What’s back?”

  “The blue dots! Remember the ones we saw on our last shift that we couldn’t explain?”

  Roger’s throat tightened. The blue dots had appeared a couple of days before on what had turned out to be a sixteen-hour shift. “Go take pictures before they disappear again!”

  Candace left the room without a word, the door slamming behind her. Roger tossed his coffee in the trash as he took off at a run. He needed to know what was causing the blue dots to appear.

  After the first time they had happened, he called the software company, Power Management Solutions. The tech he talked to said there were no blue dots on their program, or at least there weren’t supposed to be. Even after they had put in a support ticket, the company couldn’t explain them. By the sound of the tech that had called Roger back, it didn’t sound like they believed him.

  Candace swiped her Palm Coast & Electric ID badge and Roger ran right in after her, ignoring the policy that said he needed to swipe too. “There! Do you see them?” Candace had stopped just behind her station at the bank of monitors and pointed.

  Roger furrowed his brow. Sure enough, there were three more dots on the screen, clustered together. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and opened the camera feature, grabbing a couple of quick pictures of what they were seeing. He’d need them for his boss and for the software company. There was no way they could ignore him with actual pictures of what he’d seen.

  Roger sat down in his chair, staring at the monitors. Now that he and Candace had captured them on their phones, there was no rush. Roger leaned back, the chair reclining just enough for him to take in the entire bank of monitors all at one time. The way the system had been designed was a scaled-down version of what they used in other parts of the buil
ding. Roger’s team was working on one project and one project only - managing the rolling blackouts that were supposed to prevent the wildfires. Truth be told, he thought it was a stupid idea.

  Before the blackout project had started, he was part of a more sophisticated team that regulated maintenance and rapid response. Those departments used the same program that he and Candace were looking at, just one that was more complex. He and Candace didn’t have any use for all of that data, so the company had taken it down. What should be on the screen was pretty simple: the areas that had power and the areas that didn’t have power, superimposed over a detailed map of the service area. That simple information allowed the team of people working on managing the very bad decision to shut off people’s power for a random amount of time to operate as efficiently as possible.

  Roger glanced up at the screen again and decided to run a diagnostic. He leaned over his keyboard and punched in a few commands that started the process. “Candace, I’m running a diagnostic to see if anything comes back.”

  “Sounds good.”

  There was quiet in the room for a few minutes. Candace leaned his direction. “I’m starved. Okay for me to take my lunch now?”

  Roger looked at the corner of his monitor, more because he had no idea what time it was than whether he cared when she took her lunch. Either way, they were way past lunchtime. “Yeah. Go right ahead. I have to stay here with the diagnostic.”

  Candace stood up, her keys jingling in her hand. “Want me to bring anything back?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll probably get some fish tacos from down the street.”

  “I’ll take a couple. Pay you back when you get here.”

  Candace nodded. “Sounds good.”

  After Candace left, there was no sound in the room except the metal door closing and locking behind her, save the cooling fans running on the computers. Roger stood up and paced, his eyes darting between the monitors and his screen, which was scrolling code in front of him, the diagnostic still running. He scratched his head. By now, the program should have picked up the blue dots, he thought.

  Roger stopped for a moment as he paced and turned to look at the monitors. There were six of them in total. Three mounted in a line, end to end, above three that had been placed below, making the shape of a rectangle. At the moment the monitors on the bottom all had a wide view with the entire Palm Coast service area. The three monitors on the top showed distinct service areas, each of which were currently out of power. Roger squinted his eyes for a moment, pushing his glasses up his nose. Were the blue dots on all the screens? He checked each one. They were there. He sighed. That was good news to the degree that the very expensive monitor system the company had sprung for as part of their pet project was working correctly. The bad news was that the blue dots were still there, on all of the screens.

  Roger sat down at his terminal again, checking to see if the diagnostic was complete. It was. On his management page, there was a message, “Hit print report to see your results!” Roger moved his cursor into place and sent the report to the printer that was against the back wall. The equipment hummed as the file went to the printer. Roger retrieved it, looking for the results of the scan. “No errors!” the page read, listing all the criteria the program had met.

  Roger looked from the report back to the screens. How could that be? There was clearly something going on with the system. He glanced at the monitor in front of him as he started to type an email to the head of the IT department. As he did, he looked up.

  The blue dots were gone.

  24

  Connor had an errand to run. The work he needed to do at the house had been complete enough for him to move to the next part of his plan. For that, he needed his truck. Connor walked out in the garage with the keys in hand, listening for a moment to see if he heard anything from Janet’s car. He didn’t. He pushed the button, waiting for the garage door to open, walked out and started the truck, closing the garage door when he left.

  The air was so dry that he could practically feel it crackle around him. The inside of his nostrils started to tighten. Connor sniffed. He’d been right about the weather. It was the driest, hottest October in history. With the winds blowing the way they were, Connor realized that all the pieces had fallen into place — even the ones he couldn’t control.

  Connor drove about five miles down a few back roads, tuning the radio to the local news. “Traffic continues to build as more people decide to take the Weather Service warnings seriously and evacuate before orders come in that they have to,” the commentator said. “The State Highway Patrol has just opened extra lanes to alleviate traffic jams starting to build on the 680. All traffic should proceed out of the valley and to safety as soon as possible.”

  A couple of turns later, Connor pulled the truck into a local gas station. He half expected there to be signs up rationing supplies, but there weren’t any. With so many people evacuating, there probably weren’t enough people who wanted fuel in order to ration, he realized. He got out of the truck and pulled five gas cans out of the bed. He had put them under an old tarp that he had bought at one time or another. For what, he couldn’t remember.

  As the gas poured into the cans, a teenaged girl came out to the pump, carrying a package of paper towels. “Hello,” she said, standing in front of the dispenser, quickly filling it. “We are going through so many of these. Lots of soot from the fires.” Connor didn’t say anything. She nodded at the gas cans. “Filling up for your generator?”

  “You could say that.” Connor stopped the pump and started filling another.

  “My dad did that this morning. You never know when the power company is going to shut you off or how long it will last.”

  Connor watched as the girl shrugged and walked away. Just the mention of the blackouts made him furious. He put the last gas can back in the truck, lining them up against the bumper and covering them again with the tarp. As he pulled away, he glanced back at the girl. She was near the glass window in the front of the store, standing behind the counter, looking down. She was probably looking at her phone.

  Hearing her voice reminded him of Grace. Their hair was about the same color, he realized, not quite brown and not quite red. Janet had called her a dark strawberry blonde. He didn’t know if there was such a thing. He flipped on the radio while he drove, careful not to jostle the gas cans too much. There was a commentator talking about football. Connor wondered how he could be so cavalier. It didn’t seem right. He turned off the radio and cracked the window.

  The afternoon had gotten warm enough that he had been using the air conditioner in the truck, but for now, Connor wanted to smell the air. A dry breeze started to fill the cabin of the truck, the smell of woods swirling around him as he got closer to home. As the truck climbed the grade to his house, he could start to smell the faintest scent of smoke. He smiled.

  He thought about Theresa and Bart. A part of him was sorry that she had gotten caught up in Bart’s mess. He had thought long and hard about whether to include her or not in his plan, but the more he did, the more he realized that she was a part of what had been taken from him. He knew where she was right now, but where was Bart? His mind drifted. Connor wondered if Bart had realized that Theresa was missing already. It had been a full day. Though he knew a lot about their life, he didn’t know how often they texted or stayed in touch. He gripped the wheel of the truck more firmly. He’d be surprised if Bart knew anything had happened to her. Bart was that way — or at least, that was the way that Connor remembered him.

  * * *

  When Connor had first seen the articles about Bart’s success, he had called a lawyer. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked the man on the phone after explaining that his business idea had been stolen from him.

  “Do you have any proof that the idea was yours to start with? Anything like a patent or a patent application?”

  He glanced down next to him. He had found the leather-covered, black notebook w
here he had made his original notes. “I have my notebook from when I was in college. I also have the article from the journalist.”

  “But you didn’t apply for a patent?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what I can do for you…” The words hung in the air like a poisonous dart ready to hit its mark. “Without a patent or at least a patent application, we have no real proof that the idea was actually yours and not Mr. Walsh’s. It becomes a he-said-he-said argument. Those are nearly impossible to win. Have you tried reaching out to Mr. Walsh on your own? If you were close, maybe he’d be willing to come to some type of agreement?”

  Connor hung up without responding. It had been his idea. Bart only helped with a few of the details. The idea to manage power was Connor’s and his alone.

  After the conversation, Connor spent a few weeks mulling the idea of reaching out to Bart. He wrote and rewrote an email and even scanned in a copy of the article so that Bart would remember. That was the best he could think about the guy — that he didn’t remember it was actually Connor’s idea.

  The night he was finalizing what to say, Janet brought him a sandwich into his office. “What has you locked up in here?” Her hand rested on the back of his neck. “You are going to get frown lines if you keep staring at your screen like that.”

  Connor quickly closed his laptop. “It’s just stuff for work. Nothing important.”

  Janet smiled, as she always did, and left him alone.

  That night, Connor sent a tightly worded email to Bart. He had found his email address on the company website. Not Palm Coast Electric & Power, of course, but on the website for Power Management Solutions. Connor gently reminded him who he was and about their idea. Would he be open to discussing options to resolve the situation since Bart and his companies had profited from Connor’s idea?