by G. R. Carter
Casey Sr. agreed. “You just tell us what you need, Sy. You always take good care of us. We love the excuse of not being able to answer emails!”
“Except our SmartWatches, dad,” JR laughed. He pulled out a sleek SmartWatch like device from his pocket. He’d taken it off while hunting and hadn’t checked it for a while, but when he tried to activate the screen, nothing happened. “These things are supposed to have a three-day battery,” he said in disgust. “These are supposed to be a phone, a wallet, a medical monitor, but they never tell you what to do if it doesn’t turn on,” he huffed. “See, Sy, it’s not just your stuff that doesn’t work right all the time.”
JR walked towards his brand-new BMW sport utility vehicle, intending to plug in his SmartWatch. “At least German machinery always works,” he said confidently as he pressed his finger to a keypad on the door. Nothing happened. He tried again. When that didn’t work, he walked around to the passenger side door to repeat the procedure. Still nothing. “What the…?”
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” young Trey called out. He was still standing in the bed of the truck, hanging on like Sy had instructed. Max Bradshaw was long gone, tagging along with his uncle as he near-sprinted from place to place, trying to get things ready for a long dark night.
“Oh, it’s nothing, Trey. Just trying to remember how to get in this thing without the keypad.” JR stared at the window for a moment, trying to remember any kind of workaround for the electric…
Crap, he thought. The whole thing is electric.
Within an hour, torches were burning brightly over a long outdoor dining table. Kara Bradshaw, Sy's younger sister and the true brains behind the lodge's success, had their staff moving among the guests, trying to make the best of difficult circumstances. Finally, King insisted to the Bradshaws that everyone sit and join them. Soon the stories and beer flowed freely. Kara and Sy had taken over for their parents years before and most of the staff had been with the Bradshaw family since they started the hunting lodge twenty years prior. Several guests were regulars, coming here at least once a year for nearly that long. Though always cordial and friendly, most never got the chance to get to know one another. With no electronic distractions, what started as an inconvenience turned into a party.
Solar storms rippled green and blue in the night sky, stars twinkling out from behind in a breathtaking light show. The staff was mostly used to the beautiful views, but the city folk gasped. Light pollution prevented them from appreciating the truly breathtaking phenomena of the rivers of light that filled the sky. Out here, away from the skyscrapers and twenty-four-hour neon life, the sight was magic.
Sy came and sat next to King and the Caseys. “I’m heading into town tomorrow morning if you guys want to come along,” he said. King could see concern in the man’s face, even in the shadows of torchlight and a few beers. “Our satellite internet isn’t even working. I sent one of my guys over to the neighbors’ house a few miles away. They’re no better off. No SmartWatchs, no internet, no power.” He pointed to the sky. “It’s strange, we always see at least a couple of airliners overhead each night. I’ve been asking the staff; they haven’t seen a single one all night.”
“I’m with ya, mate, if you’ll have me,” King said.
The Caseys nodded their heads in agreement. “I’ve got to get to a phone to call BMW,” JR said. “They can unlock my car remotely.”
At the look King and Bradshaw gave JR, Casey Sr. explained. “I left my medicine in there today. I took it out of my room when I thought he was driving that fancy sport-ute of his out to the deer stand. I’m not supposed to go more than twelve hours without that prescription, it’s been twenty-four.”
JR held his hand up in defense. “I offered to break the windows to get in there, but he refused. He said he’s made it a day or two without before.”
Casey Sr. shrugged. “You said there’s no guarantee we can get in there, anyway. The whole thing is made with safety glass.”
Sy stood up. “Well let’s go to Mt. Sterling now, Ben. Kara would kill me if I let anything happen to you. She says you're our best customer.”
The older man waved him off. “I’ll be fine. I’m enjoying myself. Besides, nothing will be open in town by the time we get there. We’ll just go first thing.”
“Fortunately, dad got our company’s latest, greatest pacemaker installed. All the prescriptions do is keep his blood thin, so it flows through easier. The chip inside the pacemaker is in constant contact with the hospital. Any sign of problems, it adjusts. The best thing our company ever created,” JR beamed.
“Yes, yes,” the elder Casey rolled his eyes, “you Millennials are even more enamored with tech than we were.”
“Right, and isn’t that saying something! We’re the ones who first latched on to the phones and the web to do everything for us,” King laughed.
JR wagged his finger at his dad. “Too much stress and too many sleepless nights. He’s way too young to have an old man’s heart. Today’s tech means you’re never away from work.”
Kara finished making the rounds among the tables, smiling and laughing with everyone like they were best friends. She finally made her way to the Caseys’ and King's table, much to their delight. “My brother taking good care of you gentlemen?” she asked with a dimpled smile. She casually flipped back her wavy hair and looked down at her brother. “I bet you're telling them this is how people should live? Without all the electronics because we don't know how to do anything without it, right?”
Sy didn’t laugh along. “You know I'm right. We’re too far away from what our ancestors knew,” he said somberly. “Just think about it: the power’s out for a few hours, and it’s like we’ve lost part of our brain.”
“Aw, lighten up, mate,” King said. “We’re having a good time.” He raised his mug of beer. “Let’s get into a few more of these, and we’ll lose the rest of our brains. Just for tonight, then I’m sure things’ll be back to normal come morning.”
Springfield, Illinois
The Day of the Great Reset
Jalen Jordan quietly slid from under his wife’s arm, trying not to disturb her deep breathing of peaceful dreams. He began the same ritual every morning, rising around 5:30 to get coffee started and run three miles on the family treadmill. He needed no alarm clock; three decades of routine developed a highly-tuned internal timer active no matter the day of the week or the artificial calendar holidays.
Jalen poked his head into one child’s room, and then the other as he checked the daughters who brought him so much joy. As he shuffled down the hallway of his 5000-square foot stone home, he noticed that the battery-operated emergency lights were lighting the open stairway leading to the great room below. That was not unusual; whenever there was a power outage the battery backup lights would illuminate the house. But that action was always followed immediately by the whir of the backup generator kicking in to revive his home’s internal power grid.
Slowly making his way down the stairs, he glanced out the two story windows framing the eastern wall of the great room. Jalen could see the daylight beginning to appear over the golf course running just beyond his back yard. But no man-made lights appeared in the neighborhood beyond.
Must be a bad one this time, Jalen thought. The power outages were more common each month, as the remnants of state government moved out of Springfield for good, making their way to the sparkling new Regional Capital facilities in Chicago. With no important government business to support, the infrastructure of Springfield fell to the same priority level of that of any other small and medium-sized towns all over the United States. The Reboot legislation meant power, money and influence were all consolidated into the mega metropolis cities. Springfield held on longer than most, playing on the history of the 16th President, but eventually even nostalgia lost out to the desire of bureaucrats to be where the action was.
The loss of so many wealthy clients was bad for Jordan’s business. But one unexpected side benefit was his new roster of
contacts in Chicago. He found it difficult to penetrate the huge market there before, but with some of the most powerful people in the Midwest on his speed dial, business was sure to follow their move three hours north. Jalen planned to spend the week in the city starting this Saturday. Once the kids got out of school, the family would hop the high speed rail to enjoy a mini-vacation while his executive staff met with some of their best clients.
Instinctively, Jalen commanded the video screen to tune to NewsWatch, cursing silently as he remembered the outage. The basement door swung open, and he heard more than saw a large man stepping into the kitchen.
“Morning, boss,” Jalen’s head of security said. “Sorry I couldn’t get any coffee going for you this morning. There’s not a single thing working in the house right now.”
Jalen sighed, dreading the thought of not enjoying his morning brew. “I’m sure I don’t have to ask you this, but did you check the backup generator?”
“Yup, and it’s dead as a doornail. No cameras or sensors working. Makes me and the boys nervous. You think it’s just us or everywhere?” Aldo Pavoni was a man who liked to keep an eye on everyone, all the time. Just like everyone else, he had become reliant on technology to help him perform his job of protecting important people. Since Jalen had hired him almost five years before, Pavoni never missed a minute. He was a man who never had time for his own wife and kids, whose only hobby was multiple levels of martial arts and willing to live in his boss’s basement apartment.
Pavoni seemed different to Jalen this morning. Like his internal threat radar told him something was definitely not right. He just couldn’t get a handle on what was bothering the man.
“I decided to check the Sprinters, you know, just in case we needed to move to the secure site,” Pavoni said, referring to the bulletproof Mercedes Benz conversion vans used to transport the Jordan family and their security detail. “The lights came up, went through a startup cycle, and then went dead cold. All three of them, the same thing. Now here’s the crazy part: I decided to try your old '69 Impala, and guess what? Fired right up. I’m going to send one of the boys over to your shop to get another of your classics and bring it over. Any recommendations?”
Jalen thought briefly, doing a quick inventory of all the classic American chrome sitting in his private mechanic’s shop. The building had been one the first Jordan Inc. buildings purchased after an early life of want and struggle. Each vehicle Jalen purchased – his weakness was '60s muscle and luxury – stayed warm and comfortable in the individual stalls of the restored warehouse. All except his Impala, which was also the first luxury item he ever bought himself. He wasn’t able to drive it much these days. The car and the man were both too high profile to parade through town like a giant target.
“Bring the Lincoln, the one with the suicide doors,” Jalen instructed. “And then bring back the '57 Ford. That will give us three for a motorcade.”
Pavoni gave a nod and spun on one heel to head toward the basement and begin the day.
“AP, wait,” Jalen said using the nickname that he alone used with Pavoni. “I think this is something big. I don’t know why. I’m pretty sure you’re feeling the same way.”
“Yes I am, sir. I didn’t want to alarm you and I don’t have anything solid to base my feelings on. Just call it intuition. I thought I might bring it up when I had a few more moments to think it through. I’m sorry, I should have discussed it with you immediately,” Pavoni said.
Jalen smiled. Pavoni was the picture-perfect employee. If he ever resented being employed by a man from the streets, he never once let on. Perhaps my own stereotypes got in the way of doing business. I’ll fix that. Prejudice is expensive. Jalen had zero doubt that Pavoni would put his life on the line to save the Jordan family. He had proved it at least once. Jalen suspected there had been other times, too, though he was smart enough not to ask questions.
“AP, you’ve never let me down. We’ll get this thing figured out together. What are your suggestions?”
“Let’s bring five of my best agents here to stay at the house with Marti and the girls,” Pavoni said, referring to Jalen’s wife. “Then my suggestion, if you’ll take it sir, is that you call every one of your neighborhood captains in to meet at Ice as quickly as possible. This morning if they can all be found. I never developed an SOP for a city-wide outage, but my men will know instinctively to get in touch with home base. They’ll figure we’ve headed for Ice and at least send a runner to find out what the plan is before moving the captains.”
“Ice” referred to the Willard Ice building, the former headquarters of the Illinois Department of Revenue. Jordan Inc. happily snatched it and several of state government buildings at a preordained price during sham auctions. No states had their own tax agencies anymore; the Feds hated the competition.
Once purchased, Jordan Inc. refurbished the Ice building and turned it into a glittering headquarters for legitimate businesses used to wash illegal profits coming in from the city neighborhoods. Every day Jalen’s motorcade pulled in the underground parking garage, the irony washed over him that he was using the former headquarters of an agency feared by his predecessors.
“You don’t think Marti would be safer in the penthouse at Ice?”
“She’d be safe there, I think. But that puts them on dark roads between the two spots. And if someone decides to capitalize on this confusion and make a move, they’ll try to hit Ice first. This house is a fortress, sir. Before anyone could penetrate the defenses, we’d be back here to make them regret trying.” Pavoni wasn’t a man to bluster; he had done the math and calculated the time a reaction force would hit would-be assailants trying to penetrate the foot-thick walls and reinforced doors. A tank could get in – anything less would have a hard time.
“Okay, let’s do it. Give me a chance to get my gear on and we’ll roll.”
One hour later, Jalen slid behind the wheel of his Impala. Feeling the hard plastic steering wheel in his hands brought a flood of memories. Driving over a hundred miles an hour with would-be assassins in hot pursuit, his friends shooting out of the back window. Driving back around the block the first time he saw a girl named Martinique standing with friends outside her mama’s church. He circled repeatedly until she finally stormed out into the road demanding to know what he was staring at. Three years of “yes ma’am’s” and Sunday Church services finally convinced Marti that Jalen wasn’t a common street thug destined to be dead in a gutter somewhere by the time he twenty-five.
Jalen adjusted the rear-view mirror, smiling at Pavoni sitting in the middle of the back seat. Just like “Godfather 2,” Jalen chuckled to himself. Hit men always go for the guy in the back seat first. What assassin would think a man like Jalen Jordan would be driving his own car? Little did they know that the man in question would drive his own car every day if possible. All this time on top, and he was still uncomfortable with people waiting on him hand and foot. Sure it was nice to be pampered occasionally. But the power always left you wondering who was pandering and who was truly respectful.
The Impala’s lights stayed off as the long low sled rolled down the driveway. Headlights finally appeared as the lead car headed down the quiet street ending at the cul-de-sac in front of the Jordan household.
The typical twenty-five-minute drive took only about ten this morning. No traffic and no stop lights cleared the way for their steady speed on the way to downtown Springfield. An occasional flash of candle or lamp peeked out from a house on the way, but the slowly approaching dawn was the only steady light piercing the darkness.
Approaching their destination, they could see two guards standing outside the entrance of the underground parking garage built beneath the Ice building for visiting VIPs. Only Jalen’s most important captains had the transponder necessary to raise the blast-proof door. Even with the electronic device, an authorized retina scan still provided protection from a forced entrance. None of that was working this morning, but the hidden manual jacks allowed for entrance. Th
e door was immediately closed behind the suicide Lincoln as Jalen’s entourage moved down the ramp to his parking spot.
Two men headed up the stairs, careful to stay a full flight above them as Pavoni himself escorted Jalen to the main conference room on the fifth floor. Two of Jalen's most trusted men – one his first cousin and one Marti’s first cousin – stood to greet him with a quick hug. A look of concern hung on both men’s faces. Neither were soft men; family ties helped in business but weren’t a guarantee in the Jordan organization. But both clearly were a little confused both by the city-wide power outage and the call for an emergency meeting. Their respective organizations would be supervising both legitimate businesses that would be opening soon as well as other business that was concluding about the same time of day. Any interruption in the schedule threw the well-oiled machine off-track.
Jalen’s captains were supposed to be up and working from about 2 am to 2 pm each day. That still left time for school activities and family dinner; both of which Jalen insisted his men observe. The work schedule allowed the neighborhood supervisors to collect cash from the night’s activities and get everything reconciled and in the safes before the start of their legitimate day. Jordan Inc.’s convenience stores, auto dealerships and restaurants provided city residents with what was most important to them while the sun was up.
Meanwhile, Jordan’s GangStar organization provided everyone with what was most important to them after the sun went down.
Early success came for him with the realization he could work with the powerful instead of against them. Police and local officials were happy because one man could help them solve crime or keep it out of areas that made them look bad. Jalen and his family worked diligently to make sure rogue elements didn’t cause trouble in the part of the city where the bureaucrats lived. He also provided jobs and tax revenue through his small-business fronts; businesses which otherwise never would have survived without a steady stream of ill-gotten profits being washed through them.