A World Slowed

by Rick Tippins

  Jared was incredulous as he spoke. “That’s it, that’s all you know? I can’t accept that, the company has to provide rides, food, water. Where is everyone?”

  The security man threw his arms in the air. “Man, I don’t know. They left, rode the bikes home, walked home, your guess is as good as any.” Dropping his arms, the man nodded out past the parking lots. “Something bad has happened, heard a lot of gunshots last night, and I heard a woman scream.”

  Jared nodded. “I heard that too.”

  With that, the man turned and walked off across the grounds towards the city streets beyond the safety of the campus.

  “There any bikes left?” Jared called out.

  The security man turned, but never broke stride. “What?”

  Jared stared at him for a long moment, then dropped his head. “Nothing.”

  Chapter Four

  The sun was much higher in the sky now, raising the temperature to the point where Jared returned to his car, seeking refuge from its relentless rays. That was the dumbest thing he’d done so far, the car was twice as hot inside as the weather was outside, so he climbed out, locked the vehicle, and began walking west. He planned to find an open store or a cop or anyone who could get him a ride home and tell him what in the hell was going on.

  He trudged along, thinking through his route, realizing that when he drove home, there was a completely different thought process than walking home. He had the roadways memorized, and it didn’t really matter if the routes weren’t exactly direct or took roundabout ways to get him to his apartment. Just as long as he wasn’t adding a half hour to the commute, he would do what everyone else did: drive, listen to the radio, and maybe do some light texting or make a call with his hands-free gear. Walking, on the other hand, was a completely different animal; direct routes were a must. Jared had no plans of walking any extra miles, so sticking strictly to the roadways was out of the question. He would have to cut time by hopping a few fences, cutting through parks, and maybe even some yards, although deep down he knew that probably was a bad idea.

  Jared cleared the parking lot and entered the surface streets surrounding the campus. The streets were empty, no cars, no people, not even a dog. He walked west along Rengstorff Avenue, passing a self-storage and a couple of businesses that showed zero signs of life and appeared locked. The air was filled with a thick acrid scent of smoke, while the road was littered with stopped vehicles, as they too had lost power in the middle of their daily routines. Some were stopped perfectly in the road as if the driver had simply coasted to a stop, never deviating from their lane at the time of…At the time of what? he wondered. Power outage, that was what he was calling it; power outage was far less scary than the unknown.

  Many of the cars were pulled haphazardly to the curb as if the drivers had attempted to park before their forward momentum was lost. This was one of those life things where what you saw did not paint an accurate picture of life. The vehicles left perfectly in the lanes belonged to people who didn’t have the common sense to take some sort of action after a loss of power and were content to stop in the middle of the road and wait for help, while the drivers of the cockeyed half-curbed vehicles had actually taken action, attempting to guide their stricken steeds to the safety of the curb line, where not only would they be safe, but the general motoring public would also not be impeded by their presence.

  Jared wondered how long the drivers in the perfect cars had sat waiting for help. He immediately scanned the cars, searching for any occupants who might have been dumb enough to simply sit and wait for help. Jared remembered himself sitting huddled, scared and cold in his car the night before, and felt a pang of embarrassment at his judgmental thought process.

  Suddenly it dawned on him. What was going on here, why had all the cars stopped, why had his phone stopped, and why was the sky filled with smoke?

  He sat on the curb and withdrew his phone. He attempted to power the unit up without success before turning it over in his hand. It was an Apple product and he knew a few people who had developed its technology. Heck, he knew the man who had come up with the design for the shape of this phone. The guy had come up with dozens of designs, and this had been the one chosen.

  Jared pulled out his car keys and used a nail clipper attached to the ring to open the phone, exposing its internal workings. The process took some time, and Jared knew the phone was a total loss, as he had damaged it during the opening process, which included some pounding and a lot of prying. When the phone was open, he gently removed the tiny motherboard, inspecting it closely. He was familiar with the tiny board; he always sought to learn through what others were doing and how they were applying new tech to current products, like Apple always seemed to be doing.

  Jared froze as he brought the little electronic board near his face, inspecting it. His mind raced over everything he had ever learned about electronics and the things that affected them. He stood, dropped his key fob on the ground, and crushed it with his foot. He picked up the tiny electronic component and closely inspected it. Jared was stunned as he struggled to wrap his brain around what he was seeing. Both electronic components showed signs of an overload, their weak links burning in place, rendering them useless for their intended purposes, no longer able to allow the unrestricted flow of data, energy, or anything for that matter. Jared recognized the damage as being permanent, making both items unusable. If this had happened to all these cars, his phone, and his key fob, what else had been affected?

  His eyes drifted to the sky, where the smoke from far-off fires still wafted across the calm blue sky. Planes, he knew people who worked for companies that supplied parts for most of the world’s airplane builders and, nearly without exception, the equipment was electronic based. Did all the planes fall out of the sky yesterday? Is the smoke from the burned wreckage along with human bodies? Jared remembered hearing somewhere that the Bay Area was one of the most congested areas in the world in terms of air traffic. How many planes would be in the air at any given time, he didn’t know.

  Jared’s personality lent itself to looking at a project, identifying the problems, prioritizing, and then slowly coming up with solutions to said problems. This approach had rewarded him with success since grade school, and he had excelled at his job using it. Jared started that process now, but not knowing the cause left him without a jumping-off point, which he badly needed in order to effectively initiate progress. Although Jared didn’t know the cause of his current situation, he already had the core problem identified. It was just so far outside what he thought was possible, he simply could not accept that all these electronic devices were no longer functioning, sustaining his world as they had his entire life.

  Jared stood there on the side of the street, staring at his cell phone’s stricken guts and smelling the smoke in the air, his mind swimming with uncertainty. He slowly relaxed his hand, the phone dropping to the concrete, bouncing next to the shattered key fob. He had to get home, sleep, and wait this thing out. Once he got home, time would sort the whole thing out, the government would send help, but in the meantime, he would be safe inside his apartment while it all played out. Jared took one glance at the shattered fob and phone, then turned and started walking.

  Chapter Five

  Solar flares have been known to man since the 1800s and have been studied in order to understand how they emit energy, what types of energy are emitted, and what fallout comes with exposure to these emissions. The energy emitted during a solar flare reaches Earth in eight seconds, leaving mankind little to no time for reaction. As in many of Mother Nature’s endeavors, mankind can only watch and try to compensate as the event is happening or after it is over. Floods, droughts, storms and temperature extremes are just some of the tantrums Mother Nature forces mankind to endure.

  When the sun experiences a buildup of magnetic energy to the point of release, it emits radiation in the form of nearly the whole of the electromagnetic continuum. This includes hard X-rays along with gamma rays emitted fro
m the sun in volumes equal to millions of one-hundred-megaton hydrogen bombs. These solar flares can last as short as a few seconds and as long as hours. Most solar flares, while large in comparison to Earth, are not large enough to have many adverse effects on its inhabitants. A larger solar flare could and would have devastating effects on the current earthly population. After a large solar flare, Earth would have eight seconds before the different types of energy slammed into the population and its technology. Satellites would be the first manmade objects to be disrupted and, when the energy reached Earth’s surface, it would damage any and all unprotected electronic equipment.

  On September 9, the day Jared slept in his car, one such solar flare reared its ugly head. The flare, although most likely not the largest in our planet’s history, was by far the largest ever recorded in the last hundred years. It caught the Americas dead in its sights, knocking out the lights of the United States, Canada, Mexico and South America.

  The United States leadership realized within seconds the country had been radiated back to the Stone Age and, in an act of self-preservation, launched an attack against key targets on the opposite side of the globe with its own version of a solar flare, the EMP or electromagnetic pulse weapon. The United States fired on China, Russia and the Middle East. Known only to key people in Washington the United States also sent missiles to countries like England, Germany and Israel.

  Surprisingly this was not a decision made at the time of the solar flare, but one made years before in a strategic planning session which had studied an event that could take the United States off the table as a superpower. The leadership agreed if the United States couldn’t be a superpower, no one could. This decision was made after it was decided even allies like France and Germany would take advantage of a floundering United States’ position in the world’s power scale. The United States would not be able to defend itself from an invading force and would be forced to invite foreign countries in to prevent the extinction of her population, in the form of humanitarian support.

  Studies done on the aftermath of either an EMP attack or an equivalent solar flare was that the US population would be reduced significantly within the first six months without humanitarian aid, but would suffer a catastrophic loss of identity were the country to allow a foreign military to position itself on American soil. The study concluded that the United States would not have the military might to force an occupying military to leave, and would soon after be subjugated. After the United States let fly its missiles, those countries intended as targets launched their own counterattack. The result was catastrophic as mankind undid hundreds of years of technology, crippling the entire planet in less than two hours.

  Although these studies were theoretical in nature, they were done by intelligent men and women who understood the infrastructure of the United States and its delicate balance in regard to supporting life within its borders. The first to die would be the elderly and those with illnesses necessitating routine medical assistance to survive. Diabetics would be without insulin, just to name one group. The professionals who cared for these people would no longer have the tools for proper care and would in most cases choose to abandon their patients, returning to their homes to care for and be with their own families. Patients with survivable ailments, but no daily care, would catch staph infections along with a myriad of other formerly treatable complications. Millions would die from illnesses completely treatable in the world of old.

  Most heavily populated metropolitan regions of the US have about three to five days of food in grocery markets at any given time. This was under normal conditions and not in the conditions that would follow an event like an EMP or massive solar flare. People would loot and, in doing so, they would stock up, taking more than they ever would have on a normal shopping day. This was viewed as having little effect on the population-reduction timeline, as some people would have food and others wouldn’t, meaning some would live a few days longer than others, but not a significant number of days. Within a month, starvation would be a real thing in all the heavily populated areas of the world.

  As starvation spread across the globe, people would try to leave the built-up areas and move into more rural areas. Crime would skyrocket, and millions more would die in their attempts to leave the cities. There were few people left in the world prepared to walk more than a few miles at a time. The United States government studies theorized that most of the deaths would occur within the first 120 days and would be mostly the old and sick, followed by starvation- and dehydration-related deaths.

  After the first 120 days, there would be people who had stocked up on food, water and weapons. They would likely not be folks found in the built-up urban areas, but country people, used to surviving and providing for themselves. They would provide zero assistance to those seeking help with food, water or protection. The people who had taken the time to prepare themselves usually didn’t have much use for the city types, who, in their eyes, were against everything the country folks held near and dear. The folks who would come streaming into the countryside would be many of the same Americans who tried, year after year, to ban guns, limit hunting, tell the ranchers how to raise their herds, and tell farmers how to grow their crops. No, these two groups would not be friends and would collide like bodies of raging water.

  The loss of life during this time would be there, but not big enough to play much of a role. Thieves found stealing crops or animals would be shot on sight as ranchers and farmers began taking the law into their own hands. Eventually the land would stabilize itself; the death rate would slow as the last of the world’s weaker humans passed on. It would be the Great Depression times a thousand. You either had a skill, were an asset to a community, or you died.

  Very few could live outside a community and survive indefinitely. A hundred years ago there were many men who lived off the land, but now there were precious few men or women who understood enough about Mother Nature to take from her bounty in today’s day and age. She did not allow just anyone her life-giving nectar, it had to be earned. A man could earn it within a community, or he could earn it on his own, hunting and fishing and sleeping on the ground. Communal and solitary life both had their pros and cons, and the survivors would either overcome the cons, or they would die.

  It was the plan of the United States government to emerge from their hiding place after six months and begin an outreach program using Special Forces, like they had in Afghanistan and a dozen other third-world countries in decades past. Reaching out to whatever communities had survived or risen from the ruined world. Within a year the government hoped to have repopulated the coastlines, opened ports, and started trading with other countries in an effort to rebuild the country of old.

  The power grid would have been the first thing the government started to rebuild, but they were met with a sizable snag before the end of the first week. America was attacked from within; Russian and Chinese agents who had been living in America for decades were activated by the event. They had very specific orders in case of this type of situation, and they acted like a well-oiled machine.

  The White House was attacked by sixty-five Chinese agents and burned while every single occupant was murdered where they stood. This went on around the capital and, to make matters worse, Air Force One crashed trying to land at JFK International, killing the President and all his staff. After the attacks, the Russian and Chinese agents withdrew and simply became victims like the rest of the population, but the damage had been done. America’s leadership was either dead or unable to muster due to the complete collapse of the communications and transportation component of the country.

  The Chinese and Russians were not the only ones with a plan to cut off the head of their enemies. The US also had agents in place across the globe, and they wrought havoc in much the same manner as was done back home on US soil.

  Man had made himself vulnerable with his dependency on technology. If mankind had used technology for things like flights, telling time, and simple non
essential matters, he could have survived with a much lower death rate. Mankind had not done this and had integrated technology into his water and food sources, making the delivery of both dependent on a functional power grid, and now this was gone. Mankind had also set the table with all his weapons poised to strike at his neighbors on a moment’s notice.

  Mother Nature is a peculiar animal in that she always fixes herself and, after the last century in which man had scarred her badly, it was time for action. She had only to deliver one savage blow, step back, and watch her problem take care of itself. Of seven billion people, only a few hundred million would likely survive the first year. Many of those who survived would be people who hadn’t left a very large footprint in the first place.

  They would be in the mountains of Afghanistan and the rain forests of South America, and they most likely would not even know there had been an event. News would eventually reach them, and they would go on with their lives, uncaring and unaffected. Mother Nature had hit the reset button and she would survive. The question was whether mankind could do the same.

  Chapter Six

  Jared had no idea at the time that his “wait at home” idea was going to be about as effective as Air Force Once’s landing had been. He walked west towards the El Camino Real, which he planned on taking north to his apartment. He saw folks in their front yards with camping gear, barbequing meat and drinking beer like it was a holiday weekend. Some folks gave him a wave while others had a look of fear on their faces; these people neither waved nor smiled.

  Jared walked and walked. His feet hurt as he stared at the sneakers he had on, thanking God he hadn’t opted for flip-flops the morning of the event.

  Up ahead Jared spotted two side-by-side duplexes, the occupants out front, sitting on the grass socializing, three women and three men. They appeared to be normal hardworking blue-collar types, and they acknowledged Jared as he approached.