Call Me Joe

by Martin Van Es

  The line went dead and Yung was about to ring back when another call came in. At the same time as answering it she called out for the lights to come on and found the television channel changer, searching for the Weather Channel. The newly lit room emphasised the blackness of the picture window even more dramatically, reflecting the interior scene like it was a movie set with her at the centre, standing almost completely still as she took in what was going on and tried to work out what it all meant.

  “What in God’s name is happening over there?” Doctor Amelia’s familiar, throaty voice boomed through Yung’s earpiece.

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re in Lagos, just getting ready to go to the airport. I was watching the news channel and they say the whole world has gone dark.”

  “It’s totally black here at the moment.” Yung turned up the volume on the television to be able to hear a little of what the presenters were saying.

  “In the middle of the afternoon?”

  “Yes. What does the sky look like in Africa?”

  She could hear Amelia pulling back the curtains in her hotel room and the sound of someone praying in the background. “Oh my days! There’s nothing. No moon, no clouds, nothing between us and the stars.”

  “I guess if there’s no sun then there’s nothing to light up the moon…” Yung could hear a note of panic in the normally cheerful voices of the television weather presenters as they tried to get through to astronomers and meteorologists via phone lines and shaky video links, their fingers pressed tightly to their earpieces and their eyes wide with the pressure required to be professional and keep the show on the road when all they really wanted to do was run home to their families. All of the experts they were getting through to were becoming extremely excited, talking about what might be happening to the weather, searching for explanations, expounding a range of mad theories.

  “Do you think they will still be letting flights take off from the airport?” Amelia asked.

  “I doubt they know what they’re doing yet. Who knows if this situation is permanent or just a passing blip? Maybe it’s a freak meteorological storm of some sort. I doubt that there is an air traffic control manual for an event this catastrophic. Who could possibly have predicted it?”

  “Okay.” Amelia was obviously thinking what to do. “Listen,” she said after a few moments, “since the flight is booked, and the car is here to take us to the airport, we might as well go there as planned. Next week is too important for us to allow anything to get in the way. If there are any flights going out at all I will make sure I am on one of them.”

  “Your courage and optimism do you credit, Amelia,” Yung said, “as always.”

  “Just getting the job done,” Amelia laughed, “just getting it done.”

  Yung hung up as a text appeared from Lalit, who she guessed was in California. “Just woken up and there’s no dawn! WTF?”

  “Is there any precedent in recorded history?” the presenter on the Weather Channel was asking an agitated looking professor on a screen link. “Has the entire globe ever been plunged into total darkness before? Is this the sort of catastrophic event that finished off the dinosaurs?”

  “As well as the loss of light, the lack of any movement in the air is deeply perplexing,” the professor said, ignoring the question about dinosaurs. “I believe it is unprecedented, at least since records have been kept. It is too early to be able to guess what it might mean.”

  Across the bottom of the screen viewers were texting in questions.

  “Is this the end of the world?”

  “Is this the result of climate change?”

  Although the experts had a variety of theories, none had any definite or credible answers for the frightened and worried viewers.

  Yung texted back to Lalit. “Stick to the plan as agreed. If this is the end of the world we might as well go out fighting!”

  “Yes, Boss,” came the reply, with a selection of emojis, none of which she found amusing.

  Calls and texts were now streaming in and she could also hear the ping of emails arriving on her laptop. She gave everyone the same answers. “Stick to the plan”, “Get the first flight available”, “Our work is more important now than ever”.

  At the same time as fielding people on the phone, Yung flicked over from the Weather Channel to a news channel where the disappearance of the sun and freak weather conditions were already the rolling topic of discussion. Reports were coming in from all over the world of major traffic pile-ups happening in the few seconds between the sudden fall of darkness and the ability of drivers to switch on their lights in time to avoid collisions. It seemed like the whole world was now being viewed from the fleets of helicopters being scrambled by news organisations in every country and sent up to report back to everyone left on the black Earth below.

  Some of the callers to Yung’s phone favoured waiting in whatever safe place they could find until it became clear what was going to happen next.

  “I’ve got as far as Auckland,” Ahmya, the world’s foremost oceanologist told her. “I don’t like the idea of going out onto the roads while there is so much chaos.”

  “Give it a few hours,” Yung told her, “if nothing has changed hire a helicopter. Just get here.”

  She flicked on to another channel where a cross-section of religious experts were debating via video links the idea that the extinguishing of the sun was a sign from God that mankind must mend its ways or there would be terrible consequences. One was reminding the viewers of the descriptions of the Star of Bethlehem on the night that Jesus was born. Another pointed out that in the Book of Joshua, God stopped the sun and the moon during the battle between the Israelites and the Amorites. It seemed to Yung that even though the darkness had only been upon the world for less than ten minutes, people were already turning it to their advantage, claiming that it proved whatever theory they had been preaching before. All the doom-mongers who had been mocked for years for storing up tinned goods and bottled water in preparation for Armageddon now felt vindicated and were phoning in to shout their messages to the world. Their moment of triumph had finally arrived, their points had been proved and they were now certain they had been right all along.

  Yung remained calm and businesslike, totally capable of the multi-tasking required, giving short, sharp answers to every question, ending conversations abruptly as soon as she had said whatever she wanted to say. All the time she was talking and listening to the calls and the television, she was thinking of her son and wondering if he was frightened and whether he might be trying to get through to her. She wished she could be with him to protect him and she felt guilty for being an inadequate parent. She wished Liang was with her because he would know what to do. Thinking of Liang and what he might be going through at that moment brought a familiar stab of pain to her heart, but there was still no time to cry.

  Three

  The Director of National Intelligence was on his way into his bedroom from the bathroom in his home in Washington, knowing that he was scheduled to be rising early and would need to get his regular eight hours’ sleep, when the phone rang. His wife, who was already in bed and reading a few pages of the Bible as she always liked to do before sleeping, gave a cluck of disapproval. She had told him repeatedly that, at close to eighty, he was too old to be doing such a high-pressure job, and receiving phone calls in the middle of the night – or even 10.30 at night – seemed to her to prove her point. This was not the sort of gentle retirement she had envisaged when stoically enduring all the years of her husband’s steady ascent to the top of the political tree.

  “Yes?” He answered the call quickly, as if simply curtailing the invasive ringing would remove the source of his wife’s irritation. He listened to the voice reporting from the other end for a moment, aware that she was watching him over the top of her glasses and had not gone back to her readin
g, waiting to find out what could be so important as to disturb them in the privacy of their bedroom.

  “What do you mean, the sun’s gone out? It’s the middle of the night.” He walked to the window and pulled back the heavy silk curtains. It did seem unusually black outside, even for the nighttime. “The whole globe? So what are you saying, it’s some sort of alien attack?”

  His wife gave a snort of derision but threw her Bible aside as she climbed out of the bed to join him, barefooted, at the window.

  “Aliens?” she mouthed the word at him, twirling her finger around the side of her head in a mime of insanity.

  “Is it the Chinese?” he barked into the phone, ignoring her. “The Russians? Is it terrorists?… Have we heard from anyone else?… Anything from the Joint Special Collection Service?… Okay, call my driver, I’m on my way… No, don’t call the president. Let’s work out what the hell is going on before he starts declaring war on the Martians!”

  He hung up and strode out of the bedroom towards the stairs.

  “You’re not dressed, dear!” his wife called after him.

  “No time,” he shouted back, stamping downstairs in his dressing gown and slippers. “Go back to bed.”

  She heard the slamming of doors and the purr of the official car pulling away outside. She returned to the window, stared into the darkness and murmured a quiet prayer.

  *****

  The impact of the sudden darkness was obvious to everyone working inside the Chinese Ministry of State Security in Beijing. The Agency Head witnessed the event at the same time as all his workers. For a few moments he remained very still in his seat, his face expressionless, his brain going over all the possible causes, waiting to see what would happen next, wanting more evidence before drawing any hasty conclusions. The power to the lights and computers flickered but did not cut out. All the screens were still up and running and information continued to pour in. Slowly he stood up and walked out of his office onto the main floor. One or two people had stood up to look out of the window but quickly resumed their seats in front of their screens when they saw him emerge.

  A team of neatly suited managers ran along behind all the screen workers, firing off questions and listening intently to the answers, trying to find explanations that would make sense when they attempted to relay them to their superiors. Three minutes later, they were lined up in front of their boss, giving oral reports on what they had found out so far, which was very little. The Agency Head was already on the phone to the President of China, who had been in his car at the moment the darkness struck and was now being driven at speed to a safe location. The Agency Head had to admit to his boss that they had no idea what was happening, which was not what the President wanted to hear and he made it clear that he expected to be properly briefed within ten minutes, or sooner if they had anything solid to report.

  *****

  The Russian President was already up and working out in the gym when the call from China came through, moments before his own officials from the Ministry of State Security burst in to inform him that the sun had been extinguished. The Chinese-Russian translator sounded agitated as he relayed his President’s words down the line.

  “Is this something to do with the Americans or NATO?” the Russian President asked as he shrugged on a sweatshirt. “Is it a trick?”

  His own officials looked nervous, unsure if he was addressing the questions to them or to the phone.

  “Call the White House,” the President shouted at them.

  Two minutes later they informed him that the President of the United States had gone to bed and couldn’t be disturbed. His eyes narrowed as if taking aim through the sights of a rifle.

  “He won’t take my call?”

  No one in the room answered and a separate call came through to Moscow from the Intelligence Bureau of India, temporarily saving them from his wrath. The President answered immediately. He knew who would be calling. They were old friends from the days when he was a KGB officer and he had been seconded to train this man. They had drunk a great deal of vodka together over the years.

  “The American President has gone to bed,” he told the caller. “Is it a bomb?”

  “No reports of an explosion. Just darkness.”

  The Russian President allowed himself a small smile. It seemed he had a few minutes’ lead on his rivals, but what should he do to make maximum use of that time?

  *****

  In Washington the Director of National Intelligence had arrived at the NSA offices, having been taking calls all the way through the seven-minute journey across town. His security detail flanked him as he flopped his way into the building in his elegant Turkish slippers, none of them registering any surprise at his night attire on their highly trained, stone cold faces.

  He strode into the operations room where others were already gathering, all of them talking on phones or staring at screens.

  “Sir,” a young woman by the window called out to the Director. He glanced in her direction, raising an eyebrow to indicate his readiness to listen to her even though he was still talking to someone else on the phone and even though there were several other people in the room, all more senior than her, vying for his attention.

  “The moon is back,” she said, gesturing towards the sky outside. “The sun must have returned.”

  There was a rush of people towards the windows. Sure enough the moon had reappeared, reflecting the sun’s light down onto their upturned faces.

  “How long was the sun out?” the Director shouted to the room in general.

  “Twelve minutes exactly,” a voice replied after a few frantic seconds of research.

  “And have there been any reports of alien activity anywhere?”

  “A great many, sir,” one of the aides standing closest to him replied, “but we have not yet been able to verify any of them. Should we inform the President now?”

  “Christ, no,” the Director responded. “Let him get a good night’s sleep. Maybe by the morning we will have some sort of explanation to give him. We need to find out exactly what happened and whether it could happen again. We also need to have a plan of action for what we would do if the sun was extinguished permanently. How long would the world survive without it? Get answers!”

  Everyone in the room dived back into their computers, none of them having the slightest idea where to start.

  *****

  Alone in his cell, Liang Zhang could only follow world events from the snippets of conversation that he overheard his guards exchanging outside. It was hard for him to judge the passing of time with no window and no watch, but he was fairly sure that it had been longer than usual since his last interrogation, which suggested to him that something of greater importance had occurred and distracted the authorities from his case. He hoped that it had nothing to do with his family.

  Four

  The explosive reappearance of the sun made all the children in Sophie’s classroom screw up their eyes as they refocused from staring out into the darkness from the window. A cheer rose up in the room and could be heard spreading through the rest of the school, followed by relieved laughter and applause, as if someone had fixed a fuse somewhere or a pilot had safely landed a plane in turbulence. Nothing seemed to have changed outside during the absence of light. The grounds looked strangely deserted in the bright afternoon light but otherwise untouched.

  “Who’s that weirdo?” one of the girls asked.

  “Where?” Sophie came over and stood beside her.

  “There,” the girl pointed, “coming out of the bushes. He looks like some sort of tramp or something. Has he been sleeping rough out there all the time?”

  Sophie could see him now but he looked far too clean to be a tramp. He almost seemed to glow. His long, black hair and beard positively shone with good health, as did his darkly tanned skin. Both contrasted dra
matically with the simple white robe he was holding around himself.

  “He’s got no shoes,” one of the boys pointed out. “He looks like Robinson Crusoe or something, like he’s been shipwrecked on an island for years.”

  “He looks like a hermit to me,” another joined in, “like he’s been living in a cave up a mountain and he’s only just come down to visit the modern world.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sophie laughed. “He probably just got lost in the dark. Maybe he’s some sort of monk.”

  The man looked straight through the window, as if only just realising that he was being watched, and Sophie was struck by the kindness emanating from his dark brown eyes, and by the length of the lashes curling around them. He saw them all staring at him but rather than appearing embarrassed he simply smiled like it was the most normal thing in the world to be wandering alone around school grounds in such eccentric attire. He raised his hand in a friendly greeting before settling serenely down on an ornamental garden seat which had been donated to the school many years before by a grateful parent.

  “How did he get past security, Miss?” one of the girls asked, eager to escalate the potential drama. “Shouldn’t we go and get them? He looks like he might be a terrorist or something.”

  “He’s got no backpack,” one of the boys said, “so he’s not a suicide bomber.”

  “Who knows what he’s hiding under that blanket thing he’s wearing,” the girl protested.

  “He hasn’t got a gun either,” another pointed out.

  “He could be a serial killer,” another suggested, “strangling girls with his bare hands.”

  “Why does it always have to be girls?” one of the girls asked. “Why do serial killers’ victims always have to be girls? It’s boys that need strangling most often.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Sophie said. “All of you sit down and get on with something. I’ll go and see if I can help him work out where he is.”