by Patin, Eddie
Melinda straightened her red blazer, checked her microphone, and took another sip of water. She watched the science team.
“Ready, doctor!” one of the men exclaimed.
Melinda pointed at Chad.
He hit record, and signaled back at her.
The anchor woman, smiling in the lights for several seconds, blinked, breathed, waited, then opened her mouth to speak.
“Initiate phase one,” Freudenstein said suddenly in the background.
“Thank you, Katherine! This is Melinda Ballard back in Geneva, Switzerland, reporting to you live from the science lab facility under the UEA Office. We are seconds away from the first ever test of UEA’s new Dimension Drive—Dim Drive—standing in front of what the UEA is calling ‘Portal Zero’, along with the science team working hard to bring this new benevolent technology to better the whole of humanity…”
All of the scientists behind Melinda were intensely focused on their work. Some of them typed furiously. Others were monitoring various graphic and text feedback that Chad didn’t understand.
“Phase one complete,” one of the technicians said.
“Hold it for a minute,” the director said, his accent thick, but his voice intense and cutting through the room like a laser.
Melinda was still talking. “Dim Drive is short for Dimension Drive, which is a major project of the UEA’s United Pilgrimage Initiative, and is the latest technology involving space travel. After the test, we’ll be showing you a graphic explanation about how this new technology works, but I can tell you that it’s not warp drive, or some other form of faster than the speed of light travel from the movies. The simple explanation is that it involves bending space through the use of what’s called the ‘Einstein-Rosen bridge’—basically, creating a shortcut, like a worm hole, between two points in space, or space-time as physicists—”
“How are we doing, Plessner?” the director asked from the back of the room. He uncrossed his arms, and moved up into the empty central walkway between the desks. “Is it holding?”
“Stable, sir,” the man responded, looking up from his computer screen. “Should I initiate Phase two?”
“Do it,” Freudenstein responded. “Keep an eye on the levels.”
Melinda went on. “—calculate that our planet Earth will not be able to sustain the world population much longer! Some UEA scientists have calculated that in just seventeen years, all of Earth’s natural resources will be consumed, and we will be suffering from lack of food, as well as the weather extremes caused my manmade global warming…”
Something happened in the room suddenly…
The screen of Chad’s laptop blinked for just an instant, then went back to normal, showing a little window of Melinda talking about global warming and everything else. But Chad felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and was suddenly aware of an extremely low frequency hum in his ears. A low drone vibrated in his bones. He looked at his right arm, and its hair slowly standing up, charged with static electricity. Looking over at the news team’s table, he saw the water in Melinda’s water bottle vibrating, creating tiny concentric rings—ripple after ripple.
They must be generating an insane amount of power for this portal, he thought, looking back to the camera’s display.
“Whoa,” Melinda said suddenly, interrupting herself. “Something’s happening! It looks like the portal’s going to be opening very soon! As you can see, the scientists are working very hard, and are very focused! Now, there’s a deep hum in the air, and I can feel a lot of static. Is this normal??” she asked, looking off to the side. “Is this supposed to be happening?”
Freudenstein ignored her, raising the volume of his voice to counteract the rumbling hum.
“Phase two holding?” he asked sharply, looking down the room at the portal.
Chad looked at the portal too. It was still an empty metal ring. He saw the blue concrete wall on the other side.
“Phase two holding!” one man shouted. “All levels nominal!”
“Let’s make history, gentlemen!” the director exclaimed. “Open it!”
Chad saw the scientist’s gaunt features tighten with excitement, then, he looked at the portal to watch…
“Sounds like…” Melinda said, raising her voice as if reporting inside a storm, holding her earpiece with one hand, “Here we go. It seems they’re opening—”
There was a sudden explosion!
Like a massive thunderclap sundering the air in the room, the sound made Chad’s head reel with the concussive force of whatever just happened around Portal Zero…
Chad felt himself instinctively drop close to the floor, raising his hands to protect his head, and for an instant, all he could see was Melinda and all of the scientists reacting in the same way as a gust of wind blew through the room.
And then, there was only darkness...
2 - Arthur Kline
Colorado Springs, CO
“Yeah, I’m just getting home now,” Arthur said into his cellphone as he pulled up to the house.
“Okay, honey,” his wife said on the phone. “We should be back in time to watch a few episodes before the kids go to bed.”
“Sounds good,” he said, turning the key off in the ignition and pressing on the parking brake.
An obnoxious voice said something in his wife’s background.
“Mom says hi,” Sheryl said.
“Hiiii,” Arthur said unenthusiastically, stepping down from his truck. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”
“Okay, love you!” she said.
“Love you too,” he said with a smile, then, hit the lock button on his phone as she hung up, slipping the device back into his cargo pocket. Arthur deftly slung his keys around in his fingers until his truck key was hanging, done for the day, and his house key was ready for action.
Arthur Kline approached his house with weary steps, his steel-toed boots feeling extra-heavy. He stomped off the mud left over on his soles from the job site onto the concrete as he walked. In one hand, he carried his lunch bag and water bottle, both now empty.
He wanted nothing more than to get out of his clothes and get a beer…
Slipping the key into the deadbolt lock, Arthur tried to unlock the door, but failed. He jiggled the key once, twice, and eventually finagled it open.
“Damn lock,” he muttered, stepping inside. It was getting worse every day, it seemed. One of these days, very soon, he’d have to stop at Wal-Mart or something on the way home and get a new set of locks and keys for the house.
Putting his work stuff on the dining room table, he headed up the stairs and into his bedroom.
Sheryl had left her side of the bed unmade. He smiled to himself and shook his head, approaching his side of the bed and working to unhook the paddle holster from his belt. Once the hooks let go, he put his Glock 19, in its holster, onto the dresser, then changed into some sweats. With a quick look into the bathroom mirror, Arthur smoothed out his thick, dark blonde beard and ran a brush through his mane of hair, matted from wearing a hardhat all day.
Samson the cat lay on the bed, curled up in Sheryl’s messy blankets, and raised his head, looking up at Arthur with a feline smile and his eyes mostly closed. Arthur reached out and scratched the orange cat’s head, then folded his pants, leaving his keys, extra magazine, and other gear attached.
Slipping into some sandals, he headed straight to the kitchen, to the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of IPA.
Pulling out a bottle opener, Arthur opened the beer with a hiss, and took a hearty draught, flooding his mouth with cold, hoppy goodness...
“Aaaah…” he said, turning to look at the kitchen.
There was a plate of food on the counter, covered with the Microwave’s splatter guard.
Walking up, beer in one hand, he pulled the impromptu cover off of the plate…
Steak. And a side of the kids’ mac and cheese with some extra cheese melted on top. Not steaming with heat anymore, but far from cold.
; Sheryl had cooked him a steak before leaving to have dinner with her parents with the boys.
He smiled.
“Awesome,” Arthur said to himself. “Thanks, Sheryl…”
He put the beer on the counter, and pulled out his cellphone, immediately navigating to his long-running text with his wife.
He started to type with his finger on the touch-screen.
“Found the steak. :) Thanks bab—”
A sudden thunderclap split the air, shaking the walls and slamming Arthur with a surge of adrenaline. The lights in the house went out. Arthur was cast into darkness and dropped his phone to the floor…
“What the fuck?!” he cried.
Did a transformer blow up nearby or something? He thought.
Must be really damned close!!
So loud...
The dim light of the darkening evening glowed through the closed blinds of the kitchen. Arthur staggered over to the window and pulled open a crack of blinds with a trembling hand. The neighborhood was totally dark.
Yep. Power outage. Damn.
Arthur reached down, and picked up his phone. He pressed the unlock button so he could finish his text.
It was dead.
Did it reset itself? he thought, holding down the lock key to make the phone turn on again. He held the button down for several seconds.
Nothing.
He tried again, holding the button down for a while. If the phone was jolted into turning off, this should at least turn it back on…
Nothing.
The phone was dead.
Weird, he thought, pulling open the battery case. He pulled out the battery, put it back in, closed everything up again, then tried to turn it on...
His phone didn’t respond.
Instinctively thinking to smell the phone, he lifted it up to his nose, and could detect the faint odor of singed electronics.
“Killed my phone??” he asked an empty room.
The silence of a house completely without electricity answered him. The fridge was off. The furnace was off. All of the normal droning sounds of domestic life—gone. The cool quiet of the house was spooky, and Arthur stood still for a moment, before shrugging, then, made his way back toward the steak…
Click-click.
Nothing.
This flashlight was also dead.
“What the hell happened to all of the electronics??” Arthur said to himself in the dark. So far, he’d tried three different flashlights, stashed around the house. The penlight he kept on his belt was dead, and he had just changed the batteries on that thing! The flashlight stashed in the lower bathroom wasn’t working, and the handheld gun light he kept next to the bed was dead as well.
Stumbling through the darkness of his bedroom on his wife’s side of the bed, Arthur found a couple of candles on her night stand. Then, he stumbled back around the bed and retrieved a cigarette lighter from his pants on the floor.
It had been over an hour since the power went out, and he was wondering what was happening at his in-laws’ place. What was his family doing? Were they experiencing the same outage over there?
If Sheryl tried to call his dead phone, she’d go straight to voicemail. She’d probably know that his phone was off, for whatever reason.
The urge to make sure that they were okay hit him like a ton of bricks...
Arthur shook his head.
They’re probably fine, he thought. They’re having dinner with Seth and Maggie. Maggie’s probably being pushy with Sheryl’s parenting. Sheryl’s probably smiling and biting her lip. Little Justin is probably resisting eating whatever food doesn’t have cheese or butter on it. Maggie is probably threatening her grandson that he won’t get desert unless he finishes his food. Seth is probably sitting at the head of the table, drinking his wine and staying out of it...
At any rate, they’d still be back in ... maybe an hour?
Hopefully, he thought.
Once Arthur held the faint, golden light of a lit candle, he started gathering other candles from around the house. If his flashlights were all dead for some reason, he could at least go with good, old-fashioned fire. He thought back to his parents, who always had oil lamps stashed here and there for power outages.
He hadn’t touched an oil lamp in years.
Once Arthur had gathered several unlit candles together on the dining room table, he checked his wristwatch. How long had it been? Sheryl and the kids should have gotten back from dinner by now, shouldn’t they?
Dead. His Casio’s digital display was blank.
What the hell was going on? He thought.
Arthur looked outside the living room window at the dark neighborhood. He saw the glow of candlelight in the windows of a couple of houses across the street. Idly stroking his beard with a free hand while he stared out of the window, Arthur figured that he had been home for somewhere between … two and three hours?
Heading upstairs, he dressed himself in his day clothes again, strapped on his concealed Glock, and pulled his keys off of his belt. Grabbing a fleece jacket, he blew out the single candle he was using for light, stepped outside into the crisp night air, and locked the front door behind him.
Everything was so quiet…
The wind blew through the trees. It was the beginning of April, and Colorado was just starting to warm up again, but the crazy weather here still flirted with storms and the idea of winter. Arthur never really thought about all of the road noise he normally heard, the constant drone of the city in the background of daily life. His little neighborhood circle was pretty isolated, but it was still close to a few streets that always made noise. Montebello was close, and Academy Blvd wasn’t too far away.
But the night was quiet like … like being up in the mountains...
The only sound was the movement of the wind in the trees.
Arthur walked down the concrete pathway, his footsteps louder than he expected, and unlocked his truck. Climbing up into the seat, he put the key into the ignition, and tried to start the vehicle.
The truck’s starter turned over and over, but nothing happened.
“What??” he said.
He tried it again. Cranking the key, the starter turned, whining loudly, over and over, over and over, but the engine didn’t catch on.
Arthur stopped, pulled the key from the ignition, and lay back, his head on the seat.
“So,” he said to himself, “the battery is okay, but … the … what?!” Arthur sighed. It didn’t make sense. If the battery was okay, why wasn’t the truck starting? “What the fuck??”
He sat up, put the key back into the ignition, and cranked over and over again. Stopped.
What kind of power outage kills phones, flashlights, and cars?? he thought.
Arthur left the truck, locking it behind him, and went back inside, struggling with the front door’s deadbolt a little on the way in.
“Stupid lock…”
So he couldn’t call Sheryl, and he couldn’t drive there. He couldn’t call a cab—he couldn’t do anything! He could—what—walk there maybe? He could take his old mountain bike—it was hanging up in the garage…
Not good.
If Sheryl and the kids were experiencing the same kind of outage...
He had to make sure they were okay.
But how??
Relax, he thought. No need to get worked up about it. Sheryl’s parents lived all the way over on Dublin. That part of the city was probably fine. If a transformer blew over here, it was probably just his circle—maybe some of the streets around it.
But the night was so quiet, he thought. Shouldn’t he be able to hear the sound of cars on the street outside of the outage?
Should he take the bike?
Wait longer?
It was probably … eight o’clock? Nine?
It was probably better to wait, he thought. Sheryl was likely on her way back already!
Arthur lit his single candle from before, and made his way down to the TV room. Pulling his Glock out of its h
olster and putting it on the end table, he sat down, sinking into the leather couch, and settled in to wait…
He was cold.
Arthur opened his eyes, shivering madly.
Daylight pushed its way through the closed blinds and curtains, and he could see the steam of his breath in the air.
Arthur was still in the TV Room.
Wearing his normal clothes, boots up on the coffee table, arms clenched together, his body shivered to warm itself under just the fleece jacket…
“Wha—?” he started, his mouth trembling and his teeth suddenly clattering together.
With great effort, he moved his body, pulling his stiff legs off of the coffee table and finding his feet under him. Vigorously rubbing his hands together, Arthur struggled to stand, then rubbed his arms.
The power was still off.
It was morning!
He’d slept in.
Where were Sheryl and the boys?!
Arthur’s joints popped and creaked as he got moving, trying to warm himself up, and he took some shaky steps toward the stairs back to the front room. He stopped, turned, grabbed his pistol, and put it back into its holster, taking great care because he realized that his hands were shaking from the cold.
Unlocking the front door and stepping out into the bright, chilly morning, Arthur tried to start the truck again.
It was still the same.
The starter turned, the battery was still strong, but the engine just wouldn’t start!
Looking around the neighborhood, the streets were quiet, and several fireplaces showed thin plumes of smoke.
Yeah, he thought. Everyone is inside trying to stay warm. No electricity. No heat.
The sun was low in the sky, but dawn was definitely behind him. Normally, Arthur woke up to his alarm at five, and was up and heading to work before sunrise.
“Even the alarm clock,” he said to himself. It was battery-powered. “Huh.”
He looked at Gill’s house, his neighbor next door.
All quiet on the outside.
What was that kooky dude doing? Was he even home? Gill always kept that SUV of his inside the garage, so there was no way to tell.
No lights, of course. No smoke.