Fifty Falling Stars

by Wesley Higginbotham

  Joey and Will had discussed the farming efforts at length since Joey worked for the town’s supply chief and had insight into the farming operations. Joey had explained to Will that most of the seed they had this year was hybrid seed, and that they couldn’t count on it breeding true for next year’s harvest. However, the supply department had found a sizable stash of heirloom seeds that one of the local farmers had donated. The plan was to eat off of the hybrid plants this year but plant the heirloom seeds as well. Next year, the entire crop of heirloom seeds would go toward planting. Joey said the supply chief also had plans to cultivate the flat lands to the east of town next year.

  As Will continued down his path to visit Mr. Pae, he came by the water treatment area, another fascinating achievement of Celina. The same men that processed the urine into fertilizer had also built this facility. There wasn’t too much to it, but the idea impressed Will. The men had built a wood-fired kiln out of bricks and clay. They had taken the metal plumbing out of a couple of houses and used it to make a coil, which they then ran through the kiln. They had attached a hose to an old hand pump that sucked water in from the river. The water ran through a filter before being pushed through the coil inside the kiln. Piping hot, sterile water poured from the other side of the kiln. In effect, they were pasteurizing the water and killing off any harmful microbes. Their little system didn’t look like much, but it produced hundreds of gallons of safe drinking water a day.

  Will smiled as he approached the house Mr. Pae lived in. He knocked on the door and a young white lady, no more than thirty, answered the door. Will smiled at her. “Yes, my name is Will Baker and I’m here to see Mr. Pae, please.” He said.

  The young woman frowned at him and stuck out her hand. “I’m Marcy, Mr. Pae’s assistant.” She shook Will’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Will. What do you want with Mr. Pae? You’re new here aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, we just arrived a couple of weeks ago. I was told Mr. Pae was the man responsible for making the CB broadcasts. We picked up one of those broadcasts by accident. That’s what led us here. I just wanted to stop by and thank him. If we hadn’t heard what he made possible, I don’t know where we would be.”

  “That’s a touching story.” Marcy said. “You’ll find him in the back, third door on the right.”

  Will smiled as he thanked her and followed her directions. When he approached the room, the door was open. A small Korean man with greying hair and a dingy white shirt reclined in a chair, listening to a head set as he fiddled with some nobs on a radio in his lap. Will knocked and the older man jumped when he noticed Will. “Excuse me.” Mr. Pae said as he took off the headphones and stood up.

  Will extended his hand. “Mr. Pae, I’m Will Baker. I just wanted to come by and thank you.”

  “Thank me for what?” Mr. Pae asked with just a hint of an accent, an accent forged in Korea but tempered by decades of living in the United States. The two men shook hands.

  Will invited Mr. Pae to sit down. Mr. Pae did and motioned for Will to pull up a chair. Will filled him in on their story and how the broadcast had saved them by leading them to Celina.

  “I see.” Said Mr. Pae. “You are very welcome. It’s good to know that what we do here is appreciated.”

  “I also wanted to know if you would answer a couple of questions for me?” Will asked.

  “Sure.” Mr. Pae said.

  “That CB that we had got me thinking. I’d like to learn more about radios, if you would teach me?”

  “I’d be happy to.” Mr. Pae said. “This is your day off from the security detail, correct?” Will nodded. “You can come by any day you are off and I’ll show you what I know. We can start today if you want?”

  “That would be excellent.” Will said. “So, how did you get into radios?”

  “After the Korean war, my parents brought our family to America. My father was a radio operator for the South Korean Army. When we moved to the states, I was just a little boy. He would sometimes let me play with his old radio from the war and teach me how to use it. I just became hooked on them.” Mr. Pae said.

  “So, you’re not from here are you? Celina? How did you get here?”

  “Oh no. I went to college and ended up with a master’s degree in electrical systems. I retired from BellSouth about fifteen years ago. I was living in Nashville, working as a consultant for AT&T, helping them manage upgrades to their cell tower network when everything broke up. My in-laws had a cabin up at the reservoir to the east of town. I headed up here as fast as I could, which was still pretty slow. I was one of the first groups of refugees that found a home at Celina.”

  “You mentioned your in-laws.” Will said. “Did they make it up here with you? What about your son or daughter?”

  “Just me.” Mr. Pae said, his voice cracking at the end.

  “I’m sorry.” Will said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No. No. It’s ok. My wife died soon after I retired, ovarian cancer. My daughter lives out in Los Angeles with her husband. His parents had gone out to visit them and our little grandsons when everything happened…” he trailed off.

  “Have you heard from them?” Will asked.

  “Not since a few days after the power went out.” The older man paused and wiped a tear from his eye. “I guess that’s why I’m here, obsessing over these radios. Maybe I’ll hear something from them one day.”

  Will wished he could tell the man that he would hear from his family, that they were still alive. He didn’t understand how the man could hope to hear news of his family over the radios. His confusion must have shown on his face.

  “You think I’m a little crazy?” Mr. Pae asked. “Maybe I am.”

  “It’s not that. “ Will said. “I just don’t understand how you hope to hear from them on the CB’s. I thought they had a pretty short range.”

  “So, you did come to learn! You are quite correct about the CB’s. They have a limited range. However, I have a short-wave radio here. If the conditions in the atmosphere are right, I can pick up signals from the other side of the planet.”

  “Really?” Will asked. “How?”

  “You see, the radio waves that this operates on,” he gestured to the radio that had been in his lap, “eighteen-hundred to thirty thousand kilohertz, will bounce off of the ionosphere, one of the upper levels of the atmosphere. The signal goes up and bounces back down. We can sometimes pick them up if they come down in the right place.”

  “That’s pretty cool. Do a lot of people have these?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Only a few people had them in the U.S. The CB’s you talked about were much more common. The problem is that you need a pretty big power source to boost he CB signals. All we have here is the solar panels you may have seen on the roof when you came up. We scavenged them from an RV that one of the locals had. They charge a row of batteries in the back room down the hall. We only have so much power to run everything.”

  “So, can the long range radios talk to the CB’s?” Will asked.

  “Not directly. That’s actually what I’m working on, besides monitoring traffic. I figure the best way for me to ever know what happened to my daughter and her sons is to identify and contact as many of the short-wave radio operators as possible. So far, I’ve found several signals from Europe and the East Coast. Going west, I’ve only found a couple reliable sources out of Idaho. It seems that the damage from the collapse wasn’t quite as bad out there. Some of the people were already pretty independent. Anyway, I’m having trouble contacting others. I guess the rarity of radio enthusiasts that would have one, coupled with the lack of power in a lot of places, makes a working short-wave pretty rare. If I can just find enough of them, and get them tied in with local CB networks, we just might be able to piece together a rough natation-wide communications network. It won’t be very good or efficient, but it’ll beat nothing.”

  Will was amazed. True enough, he had come to thank the man and learn a little bit more about radios, but his real purpose was
to try to find out what was going on in the local area, to see if there was any news over the CB radios. He hadn’t expected this. This guy was trying to piece together a nation-wide network. Will figured that he had spent enough time getting to know Mr. Pae. He asked his question. “That’s incredible. I hope you can get things working again and contact your family.” Will paused. “You mentioned signals from Europe and the East Coast. Got any news on what’s going on in the world?”

  “Surprisingly, quite a bit.” Mr. Pae said. “What do you want to know?” Will started to ask a question, but Mr. Pae stopped him with an upheld hand. “Just one thing, Will. You seem to care and seem like a nice young man. That’s why I’m going to tell you this. Just do me one favor.”

  “Sure.” Will said.

  “Don’t tell anyone that I told you all of this, please. I guess you can tell your immediate family, but that’s as far as it goes ok?”

  Will nodded. “The sheriff keeping tabs on the information that gets out?”

  “Not really.” Mr. Pae said. “He’s not hoarding it or anything. I give him and the mayor a daily scoop on everything we hear. He passes it all along to his deputies, who pass it on to others as they see fit. Most people just don’t talk about it because it’s not that good. Local things are more important.”

  “Then why don’t you want me telling anyone?” Will asked.

  “Most people don’t know that’s what I do here. I don’t want that to get out. I don’t want a line of dozens of people asking me for news every day. Understand?” Will nodded.

  “I bet you want to know everything huh? When was the last real news report you heard?” Mr. Pae asked.

  Will thought back “I guess it was over a month ago.”

  “Hmm.” Mr. Pae said. “I guess I’ll start off with the U.S. government.”

  “We still have one?” Will asked.

  Mr. Pae shrugged. “Of sorts. The official government broadcast says that the government is working to bring back stability, power, and food. The President has declared martial law. They’re sending out FEMA and military coordinators to large metropolitan areas. We’re supposed to work with them when they show up, but, luckily or unluckily, we haven’t seen or heard about any of this ourselves or from the other signals we’ve picked up from the East Coast.

  “A couple of those signals claim that the government has pulled back its entire Atlantic and Middle Eastern fleet to Norfolk, Virginia. They don’t have any power either. They are supposedly running the entire base from the power generated from nuclear carriers and subs. The guy sending the messages says that they’re not much better off than the rest of the country. He says the whole government is now running out of the Navy base and doesn’t have any real power anymore. So, out of those two tales, you pick the one you believe.”

  “Wow.” Will shook his head. “You mentioned Europe. Any chance we’ll get any relief from them? Maybe they can send some aid of some kind?”

  Mr. Pae shook his head. “The info we’re receiving out of Europe is sketchy at best. All we can say for certain is that Germany invaded France. We don’t really know why. Some sources claim that after the fallout of the debt deal and the economic collapse, Germany invaded to try to get back some of the billions of Euro’s that they had poured into the France, Spain, and Italy over the last several years. Other reports say that France struck first, although they don’t give any specific reasons why they did. Europe is split between the north and south, like a big European Union civil war. To the east, Russia invaded the Ukraine and some of its other old USSR puppet states.

  “Reports also claim that the Middle East is in complete chaos. All of the Arab countries have banded together against Israel. From what we can tell, Israel is holding them off for now, but it’s a losing battle without European or American assistance. On the other side of the world, North Korea has invaded the South. We’re getting second or third hand reports about that. There’s no way to tell what’s really happening.

  “It would seem that without the strong, stabilizing presence of the U.S. to keep things in check, the whole world has taken the opportunity to unleash sixty years worth of pent up frustration. You ask about outside help. I’m afraid we’re on our own for this one.”

  The information floored Will. He knew things had been bad, but not this bad. Every time things seemed to get a little worse and he lost faith, some little part of him had thought that help might arrive from somewhere else. The government, Asia, Europe, it didn’t matter. Now he knew that no one was coming, at least for a long time. The long-term plans the sheriff was making made more sense. He knew what Will had just found out. They were on their own. Will looked up at Mr. Pae. “How can you say all of that with such a calm… manner? That’s crazy news. You don’t even seem the least bit affected by it.”

  “Well, I have had time to get used to it. Nothing’s really changed in a couple of weeks. We get some signals talking about battles and resistance or the FEMA directives or the President making another address, but nothing that changes anything.”

  After the initial shock of the news wore off, Will spent the next few hours talking with Mr. Pae. The man tried his best to explain how radios worked and educate Will on frequencies and modulation and a hundred other questions Will had about radios and how they worked. About mid-afternoon, a couple of men from one of the security teams knocked on the door. Will and Mr. Pae heard the men talking to Marcy in the front of the house and decided to see what was happening. As Will walked down the hall, he recognized the man talking to Marcy. It was one of his new friends that was assigned to the same security unit as Will. “What’s going on, Sean?”

  The stocky man turned and adjusted the shotgun slung over his shoulder. “Hey Will. Not really sure. We just got orders down from the mayor that we’re to go door to door and make sure all of the electricity is turned off at the breaker box for every house. He’s planning a big town meeting in front of the courthouse this evening at dark.”

  “That’s kinda weird.” Will said. He looked to Mr. Pae and saw him smile. “You know something about this, Mr. Pae?”

  “Of course I do. I helped Tom Porter with some of his designs.”

  “You going to fill us in?” Sean asked.

  “And ruin the surprise?” Mr. Pae asked, his eyes dancing with excitement.

  Will joined Sean and the security crew when they left Mr. Pae’s to inspect other houses. When they finished with their section, they joined the crowd that had gathered in front of the courthouse. Will caught a glance of Jenny and the family on the other side of the street. He excused himself and walked over to his family. He noticed Chuck holding his mother’s hand. Chuck released it when Will got close. Will wasn’t surprised. He had seen the pair of them taking walks and eating dinner together. Jenny had not been in a position to notice the couple holding hands. Will wondered if she had picked up on how much time they had been spending together. It was a discussion for another time.

  “Anyone know what’s going on?” Will asked.

  “Not a clue.” Joey said.

  “It was very weird.” Jenny said. “The security guards just showed up at the hospital and asked some of the folks who had been there a while where the utility connections and stuff were. Made me a little nervous.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned with.” Chuck said. “Maybe they’re just doing some sort of maintenance check.”

  “Well, whatever it is, hopefully we’ll find out in a minute.” George said, gesturing to where the sheriff stood in the back of a pickup truck.

  The crowd broke into excited chatter as the truck stopped in front of the courthouse. The sheriff let it build for a few moments before silencing the crowd. When the crowd settled down, he reached down into the bottom of the truck bed and pulled out a large megaphone like cheerleader’s used at football games.

  “Good evening everyone. As you know, we have made a lot of progress towards our town’s long-term survival. Through the hard work of our farmers and those as
signed to help them, we have planted enough crops that we should have a surplus of food when we harvest in the fall. Our security teams and deputies have fortified the town and made it secure. Our construction teams have been harvesting lumber and will begin building new homes and shelters for our new residents by the end of summer. In short, we have made ourselves independent. No matter what happens, we will survive this.” He paused as many people cheered. When the crowd quieted, the sheriff continued. “And this evening, I’m pleased to bring you one more tool that will ensure our survival and prosperity.

  “As many of you locals know, the Dale Hollow Hydroelectric Dam is only about two miles outside of town. That dam has brought electricity to this town since the forties. Whatever caused the massive blackouts and power plant failures a couple of months ago also affected our dam. One of the first things that the town council and I did once we had stabilized the town after everything went dark, was to gather our best minds and get them working on the power plant problem.”

  “Many of you know Mr. Porter. He’s worked for the TVA for almost twenty years. We put him in charge of assessing the damage to the power plant and repairing it. With the help of some of the newcomers to town, particularly Mr. Pae who helped with the repair designs and Mr. Joel Sunderland who trained and led crews rewiring, Mr. Porter was able to identify the problem with the plant and take steps to repair it.”

  “The actual generators in the dam itself were not damaged in the event; however, the transformers and pieces of the grid feeding off of them were. Mr. Porter and his team have been able to scavenge several burnt out transformers and grid components, combine them into a working system, and supply enough electrical power to meet the town’s needs. That’s why we’re here tonight, to recognize the team’s achievement and restore power to Celina!” Cheers rose from every throat. Will was a little skeptical but couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement. The sheriff raised his hands and again quieted the crowd.