by Tom Larcombe
Thirty years, she thought. Please let him remember me. I remember him, the first man I chickened out on and ran away from. I hope he doesn't hold that against me if he does remember.
She waited, time stretching out until she felt like hours had passed. A glance at the clock on the wall told her that in reality it was only three minutes before the handset was picked up again.
“Rynn?” asked an eager voice that she was surprised to remember.
“Michael, thank goodness. You actually remember me?”
“Of course I do. Joshua said it's an emergency, what's wrong?”
“We need somewhere safe to go.”
“We? What we?”
“I've got five students from the school and there are riots in town. Someone tried to break into the school last night and everyone else is gone.”
“Slow down, tell me everything,” Michael said.
Rynn calmed herself and told him the whole story. When she was done he immediately volunteered to take them in.
“Yes, I've got room for all of you. Well, I can make room anyway.”
“Thank you so much. Now we just need to figure out how to get there.”
“Take an older car. They're more reliable for us.”
“I can't drive, I never learned how.”
“Can any of the students?”
“I don't know, I can ask—”
The fire alarm went off with a clangor. Rynn immediately looked to Eugene. He shrugged and threw his hands in the air. It was immediately obvious to her that he wasn't responsible for it.
“Michael, hold on. There's a problem. I'll be right back, don't hang up. I might not be able to get a call through again.”
She set the handset down and raced from the office. Eugene followed her, slowly dropping behind as she outpaced him. Rynn followed her nose, there was smoke in the air and a hint of some sort of accelerant, maybe gasoline. It was coming from the front of the building.
She raced down the corridor and found smoke billowing out of the room where the window had been broken the night before. Rynn slid to a stop and heard Eugene come around the corner behind her.
“Get the fire extinguisher at the end of the hall,” she said.
She slid into the next classroom over from the fire and peered out the window. There was a group of young men outside. She recognized the one in front from the evening before.
Stupid gangbanger, she thought. Couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?
She pulled the pistol out of her pocket and opened the window enough to shoot through. Someone saw the motion and there were shouts from the group outside. She pulled back out of sight. Moments later, bullets shattered the window and came flying into the room.
Fine then, you want to play with fire? We'll play with fire.
She stayed along the wall and made her way back to the door. Eugene was just returning with the extinguisher when she planted herself in front of the doorway leading to the flames. He watched wide-eyed as she walked into the room.
Rynn created a shield in front of her that would push the heat and flames along. She knew she wouldn't get it all, but she'd get enough of it. When she reached the edge of the fire she narrowed the shield, forcing the heat and flames towards the broken window. She squeezed her end of the conical shield she'd created, forcing the flames out the other end, towards the gang she'd seen out front. She worked her way up the shield, contracting it until all the flame had been forced through the window. When she looked outside, there was no-one there any more.
She walked back out into the hallway and gestured for Eugene to use the extinguisher on what remained of the flames. He stared at her until she finally spoke.
“Go, get the rest of it put out before it flares up again.”
Then he snapped out of it and moved to the doorway. He worked his way through the room, spraying down the glowing embers and coals. Then he came back out with the empty extinguisher and something else in his hand.
He dropped them both and grabbed his notebook.
'I don't think you'll be using those shoes any more.' he wrote.
Rynn took the notebook to read what he'd written and noticed the paper browning around her fingers.
Uh-oh, I built up too much heat. I need to get rid of it somehow. First I have to get back to the phone though, finish making plans with Michael.
“Back to the office,” she told Eugene.
She started trotting down the hallways barefoot, not even sparing a glance for her melted shoes. Eugene followed, once again at a slower pace.
When she got back to the office, she immediately picked up the handset.
“Michael, are you there?”
Nothing.
“Hello? Hello?” she nearly shouted.
Silence.
After a few moments she set the handset in the cradle. When she picked it up again there was nothing, not even a dial tone.
“Eugene, go down and let the other students know that the fire alarm is taken care of, would you?” she asked.
Rynn slumped in the chair. After a few moments the smell of singed fabric reminded her that she had heat to disperse.
Maybe I can let him know we'll be coming. We won't be able to talk, but just maybe...
Rynn focused her mind on the man she'd known. He was more than a boy when she met him: idealistic, inventive, focused, and mature beyond his age in some ways. She pictured him in her mind and added thirty years to his looks. For a wizard, there were hardly any physical changes in that span of time. She recalled to her mind his essence, the gestalt of the man she used to know.
Then she channeled the excess heat she was carrying. Turned it into a power she could handle and used that power to attempt to send a message to his mind.
Michael, we're coming!
* * *
Chapter 6
Michael pried the bottle open and handed it to Joshua, then settled back and opened his own. A long swig later he lowered it. Joshua was still examining his bottle.
“What is this stuff?” he asked.
“A chocolate porter. They brew it up in Boulder.”
Joshua shook his head.
“Why would you do that to a good beer?”
“It isn't beer, it's porter. Try it before you judge. These are the ones I hide away from you all the time, in case you were wondering. I figured you could use a treat for being a good sport about helping with the fence.”
Joshua raised the bottle to his lips. He took a careful drink, then a larger one.
“What the..? That's good.”
Michael nodded and took another drink.
When Joshua finished his porter he looked hopefully at Michael.
“Go ahead, I got four six packs when I was shopping the other day.”
Joshua pulled another bottle out of the holder and opened it.
“I figured I owed you something, that's why I didn't complain about the fence.”
“How do you owe me anything?” Michael asked.
“Well, remember how you kept telling me that I should diversify and get my investments into other areas, mainly gold and silver?”
“Yeah, so?”
“When the market went nuts yesterday, I had my broker switch everything over to precious metals. Everything else seems to be in free fall. But when I checked this morning, I'd recovered a good chunk of what I lost on the stocks already.”
Michael sighed.
“That's a great idea...” he said.
“There's a 'but' coming, I can hear it,” Joshua said.
“But, if you'd listened closer, I said physical precious metals. If you can't hold it in your hand, you don't own it. Lots of the places you can get silver and gold shares from don't redeem in the metals, only in dollars. Most of them don't have enough gold or silver to settle out all their shares. So if you hedge in precious metals and don't have them in hand, you don't really have precious metals.”
“Yeah, but my investments are recovering this way.”
Mich
ael shook his head.
Well, it's a step in the right direction. Next I need to convince him to cash out and take possession of physical metals. Then he'll have a safe investment, or at least a safe hedge.
“But they're also still tied to the dollar. If its value drops more than your precious metal shares rise, you still have a problem. Here I'll show you.”
Michael went to his computer, attached the static strap to his wrist, and plugged it in.
“Stay back a few feet, close enough that you can still see the monitor though, okay?”
Joshua was still sipping at his second porter and feeling pretty mellow.
“Sure, whatever.”
Once the computer was booted, Michael clicked to his bookmarked investment site.
“I've got a chart here that shows values for portions of the market, silver, gold, and the dollar,” he said.
When it loaded, he scanned the figures.
“Wow, you're right, gold and silver are up fifty percent from the last time I checked. And the dollar... that can't be right.”
“What?”
“This says the dollar is down twenty-five percent since yesterday.”
“So, you're proving my point. If my investments are up fifty percent and the dollar is down twenty-five then I'm still ahead of the game,” Joshua said.
“Yeah, but what the hell happened to drive it down like that?”
Michael clicked to the financial news site affiliated with the one he was on. The headlines were in a massive font size and blared:
'China selling off all US Treasury debt.
Other countries following suit.'
“That's bad. That's really bad,” Michael said.
“What is it?” Joshua asked, edging closer.
“China's taking a dump on the dollar and it looks like everyone else is hopping onto the pot with them.”
“So, I know that's bad. What's it mean?”
Michael got a whiff of something burning and yanked the plug out of the power strip.
“Why'd you do that?” Joshua asked.
“One of us got too excited. The computer was responding to the energy wizards leak into the area around them when they get emotional. I hope I got it unplugged in time to keep it from being destroyed.”
Joshua realized he was standing immediately behind Michael and hastily took a couple of steps back.
“So what's that China thing mean?”
“It means they aren't going to support the dollar any more.”
“So? It isn't their currency, right? Why would they support it?”
“They've held more than a trillion dollars in US debt for years. They didn't want to sell or redeem any of it because it would crash the dollar and make what they still held worth less. Evidently they gave up on waiting for us to fix things or they're trying to destroy our economy intentionally, not that we haven't been doing that ourselves for a long time now.”
“So, you said other countries are doing it too?”
“Yeah, none of them wanted to be the first to sell, but now that someone is, they all want out. It's been building for years. The US dollar was the reserve currency since World War II. That means when other nations bought things from each other, they normally paid using our currency. A few years back, some countries started working around that and using other currencies. I'm thinking China decided they could make a go of it without us now. The other countries followed suit to try to get as much as they could for however much of our debt they were holding. The longer they wait, the less they're likely to get.”
Joshua drained the rest of his porter and walked over to the phone. He picked it up and dialed. Michael sat there and listened to him.
“Come on, pick up. Pick up already!”
Five minutes later Joshua hung the phone up.
“My broker isn't even answering the phone. What kind of crap is that?”
“Tell you what. Stay over there. I'm going to see if the computer still works. I'll find out whatever else I can if it does.”
Joshua nodded absentmindedly. His attention wasn't focused on anything in the room.
Michael plugged the computer back in and listened as it started up. Everything sounded normal and the monitor flickered to life. He opened his browser and it returned to the page he'd been on earlier. The headline had changed and now read:
'Trading halted for the day as stock market blows through circuit breakers.'
“I've got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Good news,” Joshua said.
“It doesn't matter that you couldn't get through to your broker.”
“What? Why?”
“That's the bad news. Trading is halted for the day.”
“What?”
Joshua came rushing across the room and Michael held a hand up.
“Stop! If you destroy my computer I won't be able to find out anything else.”
Joshua came to a sudden stop.
“Go do something else. I'll find out what I can, but if you sit there in the mood you're in, I'm shutting back down. I worked hard to get this rig functional and I don't want to lose it.”
Joshua, without asking, took a third porter and headed out back. Michael settled in for some research.
* * *
An hour later, Michael walked out onto the back porch. He found Joshua in the yard, throwing rocks at the cliff face.
“So, you ready to hear what I found out?”
Joshua spun to face Michael.
“What's going on?”
“China's sale of treasuries set off the fall in the markets. It gets worse than that though.”
“What else?”
“You know what computer hackers are, right?”
Joshua nodded.
“Well, the banks are having problems processing credit cards. They claim it's due to the turmoil in the markets and the falling dollar, but I think they're lying.”
“So what?”
“You and I can't use credit cards, but most of the US population does. They don't carry any cash on them. If they need cash they slide their debit card into an ATM and get some. If the banks can't process the cards, then they can't be used. No-one can use their credit cards or get cash. I found reports dated a couple of weeks ago, before these problems started, saying that the major banks were experiencing some intermittent problems processing cards. They surmised hackers were trying to penetrate their systems but claimed it was under control. I think the hackers stopped because they knew they could get in whenever they wanted and shut the system down.”
“Is that what really happened?”
“I think so; they traced the origin point of the attempts back to somewhere in China. Add the two things together and I think they're trying to destroy the US economy. It sounds like a concerted attack to me.”
“So, what do we do about it?”
Michael stared at him incredulously.
“Us? We don't do anything about it. I wouldn't have the first clue how to start. What I can do is make sure that we're stocked up here with anything we might need. Credit cards are being turned down now even before the banks have made any sort of official statement. They're just claiming that the problem will resolve itself soon. I don't believe a word of it.”
“So that's it? You're just going to hunker down and take it?” Joshua asked.
“What exactly do you think we could do? I'm sure I'm not the only person that found that information. Maybe there's someone who can do something out there, but it's not me. I'm not a hacker. I never even got comfortable using a computer until earlier this year. I wouldn't even know where to start trying to fix this. Tell me something we can do about it and I'll try, otherwise...”
Joshua stalked off across the yard.
I promised Jeff I'd get him after school and give him a ride up here, Michael thought. I think I'll leave early, stop at the gas station, the grocery store, and the gun shop. Fill my tank and stock up on more food and ammunition. That's abou
t the extent of what I can do at this point.
Michael rummaged around in the garage, coming up with two five gallon gas cans. He tossed them into the back of the Jeep and then went into the house and grabbed his savings. Joshua was still fuming out back when Michael called out that he was going out to stock up on some things and pick up Jeff. There was no answer so Michael guessed that Joshua wouldn't be coming with him.
* * *
He stopped at the gas station first.
$6.39 a gallon? I can remember gassing up for under a dollar a gallon back when I was in school. Guess I must be getting old.
He chuckled. Michael knew that he still only looked in his late twenties. He'd looked that age for the past twenty years or so. It was one of the benefits that came with being a wizard and having an extended lifespan.
Handwritten signs were taped to the pumps. They read 'Cash only, please pre-pay inside'.
He walked into the attached convenience store and laid down $120.
“Filling it up on pump five,” he said to the attendant.
“No problem, you're all set.”
Michael went out and filled his gas cans and his tank. The total came to $113 and a little. He went in for his change and grabbed a couple of Cokes.
I bet Jeff doesn't get soft drinks much. I'll treat him to one. Oh, and I better grab Calvin a bag of Cheetos. He'd never forgive me if he thought I had the opportunity and didn't.
Michael tossed his purchases on the counter.
“Slow today, huh?” he asked.
“You bet, we can't take credit cards since our system is down. It looks like we're losing seventy-five percent of our customers because of it.”
“Well, have a good one. I gotta get moving.”
The attendant tossed a bored “Have a nice day” at him as Michael went out the door.
His next stop was at the grocery store. There was a security guard standing in front, something Michael had never seen before. He clutched his mother's ring in an attempt to calm himself.
Okay, I want a bunch of stuff that will last. At least my refrigerator and freezer run on DC from my panels and battery bank. I don't have to worry about losing what's in them, they're small though so I need to get more non-perishables. I've got plenty tucked away if it were just for me, but with Joshua around and maybe helping out Jeff and his family, I'll need more.