When the lights went out

[Leander]

Just a simple one-shot piece for a possible submission somewhere.
Any feedback welcome.




When the lights went out

It was a late Thursday afternoon when it happened. I remember looking at the time when it said three thirty-three, that stuck with me. At least twenty minutes later, maybe more, but before it was four o’clock, that was when it happened. That was when the lights went out.

I know this for sure. It was a work day and right at the end of that too. We were going home on the hour. The machines had already been shut down and I had the broom & brush. Without a sound, off went the overhead lights. Power cut, that was what my brain said. I had another thought too: the emergency lights didn’t come on. A couple of weeks beforehand, in the late afternoon again, though probably not on a Thursday because I think that the coincidence would have struck me, the lights went out then as well. The machines all died at that moment, unfinished cardboard boxes stuck going through the belt system. When that first event occurred, two floodlights had come on. I’d asked my boss afterwards how that had occurred. I hadn’t understood the mechanics of how mains power dying had switched them on. As with any questions directed to Robert, unless they were simple or relevant to the process of box-making, I’d never received an answer.

So the main lights were off and the emergency ones never came on.

Odd.

In came Robert straight away. He nodded at me with my broom & brush, always seemingly impressed that I ended every day with a fast sweep of the floors, and then told me, and the two other guys on the factory floor as well, to go home. It was almost time and he didn’t know when the lights were going to come back on.

Getting out early, even a few minutes before four, put a smile on my face. I was upstairs to the break room in a flash. I kicked off my work boots, manhandled my trainers onto my feet, pulled my jacket on, grabbed my backpack and then went back down the stairs. Robert called out about not worrying about the clocking in/out machine. I wasn’t worried. I could hear the other two talking about one of their phones being dead. That reminded me to check that it was in my pocket. I looked at it as I walked towards the factory exit. It was dead too, no power.

That wasn’t an issue for me. I was sort of expecting such a thing. At lunchtime, when I’d last been using it, the power was rather low. It had run out quick of what was left, but the matter didn’t concern me. Home wasn’t far away and when I got there, the plan that formed in my mind was to charge it.

I saw Steve, our front desk man, at the door. He wanted to talk to me, saying something about the power. I just wasn’t interested in him or what he had to say. Him and I weren’t on good terms most days. I was also in a rush, not ready to waste my few extra minutes of free time. I just waved goodbye and was out of the door, noticing though that the buzzer on it, which made a noise when it was opened, to alert Steve to drivers and customers, didn’t beep.

Something else to do with the power cut, so I assumed.


Experience taught me the fastest way to walk home from work. I went out of the factory grounds and cut straight through an alleyway between two blocks of flats. I would have hated to have lived in either, with all of the noise coming from eighteen-wheeler lorries going into my factory first thing in the morning. It was strangely silent all around me as I went past them. I recalled when we had the first power cut the noise of an alarm going off – how does that work was a question like the one with the emergency lights – but, because I was too focused on getting home, it was again something I just didn’t give any real fought to. There was silence elsewhere too. No traffic sounds.

Really odd.

I cut across a road, from one alleyway to another. It was a residential street but never quiet: commuters used it as a rat run. Not that afternoon. There were no passing cars. There was though a small van stopped in the middle of the road with the driver out of his vehicle and the front bonnet up. I tutted at him for stopping right in the middle of the road like that. He could have caused an accident.

Going up the next alleyway, with the gardens of houses on one side and a school playground behind a fence on the other, I started to get the feeling that something really strange was going on. I could smell smoke. I could hear someone shouting. No further traffic sounds were to be heard either.

It was all too difficult to explain.


Some days, I’d go the longer way home, one that went past the mini-supermarket where I would nip in there if I needed something. There was a smaller shop on the quicker route though, a corner shop that had once been a house. I had a mental list of three things I had to buy, all of which I could get there.

The guy who always worked there on weekday afternoons was standing in the doorway. He told me that they were shut because there was no power. The card machine and the till were down. On any other day, that would have been a problem for me because I never usually had cash. However, through quite the fortunate turn of events, that day I had a banknote. I waved the £5 at him and told him what I needed was the exact amount. He was dubious to say the least, but I said please.

Okay: as long as I was quick and if there was any change, I’d have to get that tomorrow.

The bread, the milk and the two bars of chocolate were where I knew them to be. The prices were right too. I told him he could keep the change (it was a pittance) and I went to leave. As I was going out, someone else came in. this woman was talking at us, not to us. I was trying not to be rude yet I just wasn’t interested. It was a feared solar flare, something she’d been reading that they – whomever they were I had no idea – were saying was going to happen. She pointed upwards, presumably at the sun, and told us both that that was why the power was out. I nodded impolitely while the shop worker started talking to her more about this, saying no, it was just a power cut.

By then I was out the door. When I turned the corner to my street, I saw a car in the middle of the road. It wasn’t parked, just stopped. Two men were standing outside of it, next to their closed doors. I heard the passenger say something about how it had been ten minutes since ‘it’ had happened, but, again, I just didn’t care about what other people were saying.

I was on my way home. I started walking away. Yet, I stopped. It was more than curiosity. It suddenly became something that I needed to know, to understand what was going on.

I stood watching the two of them, listening to them argue. The driver was saying that he had tried everything to get the car started. The passenger had more suggestions, all of which he doubted had been done properly. I kept on thinking as to why he hadn’t done any of that himself if he was so smart. Talking to them entered my mind but they were rowing, getting angrier.

Then I smelt smoke again. I saw it next, coming out of a house. A woman ran out of there with a baby in her arms. She was shouting for someone to call the fire brigade. The car’s driver called out to me, telling me to do it because his phone was dead. He didn’t believe me when I said that mine had no power either. In a flash, he was right in front of me, grabbing my phone. I was too taken aback to stop him yet he gave it back straight away when he saw I was telling the truth.

The woman with the baby, whose house was on fire with a lot of smoke now coming out of the open front door, was asking all of us why if there was a power cut then why would no one’s phone work. I had no answers, no one did. I asked her if she was okay, if she needed anything for the baby.

The fire brigade was what she demanded that I get for her.


I walked away. It was a bad situation. I was thinking about what was said back in the corner shop about the solar flare. It struck me that I remembered hearing something like that the day before.

They were talking about it at work. The whole thing had sounded silly. A warning had been given by some scientist somewhere, one that sensible people – politicians and media experts – said that no one needed to worry about. There was activity going on with the sun’s surface but it was nothing to worry about. No impact was going to be felt to anyone here, none at all.

I connected the two things now.

A solar flare and the power going out. Still, I couldn’t understand how that meant that phones and cars were dead too.

A guy ran past me on the street as I got to my building’s front door. He bumped into me, not even saying sorry. My focus was on getting in the door. I went in and then up the stairs to my first floor flat. That door opened up and then I was in. I flipped the light switch, knowing that it wouldn’t work yet, hoping against hope, that the hallway light would come on.

No light.

I went into the kitchen. There was food in the fridge and I worried over what the power outage meant with regards there. On the kitchen floor were my fridge magnets. They were mementos from foreign visits. I picked one up, the one with the leprechaun & the pot of gold. It wouldn’t stick back on. All I could figure with that was that the magnet wouldn’t work.

Odd.

I had a clock on the counter-top. That had stopped at three minutes to four, back when the lights had gone out.

Sitting down on the chair at the kitchen table, my mind went to work again. I was connecting it all. There was no electricity anywhere and, on top of that, even magnets weren’t working. What did that all mean? What else wouldn’t work?

I got up and went to the tap. Water came out as I let out a sign of relief. It might not work for much longer though, so I thought. I started filling with water anything I could find.

I tried to prepare for what was coming next, fighting off a growing sense of fear as I did.

Whatever was going to happen, I hoped to be ready for it.

It turns out I was – just – because, all these years later, in the world which is no longer what it once was, I’ve survived. I’ve thrived even.

So many haven’t, not after the lights went out.

[jemhouston]

Chilling

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Excellent, though terrifying...

Yes, a 'super-Carrington' event would toss most of us back to Medieval level, for which scant few of us have any appropriate skills.

Couple of things:
If severe enough to tumble fridge magnets... Make that *some* of them, as the neods would endure.
At the time of Event, I'd expect twinges from metal dental fillings, bone-clamps etc.
Pacemakers ? He's dead, Jim.

Those old diesel tractors and pumps, the ones you gotta pre-heat with blow-lamp, then crank, they'd survive...
And steam engines ??

Brrr...

Could you put new lyrics to that classic, 'The Day The Music Died' ??

[Belushi TD]

Old cars without electronics should still run, albeit difficult to start. My parents had/have a 1950 MG TD that has the little hole in the front bumper to put the hand crank in to start her up. Dad told me never to wrap my thumb around the shaft, because when the engine catches, it kicks the hand crank backwards, and you'd break your thumb.

But I'm rambling.

Nicely done. Where were you thinking of submitting this? I'd go and vote for it.

Belushi TD

[kdahm]

Yes, I can see electronics with any sort of chips being fried by a strong enough event. But one that demagnetizes refrigerator magnets is enough to do very bad things to living beings.

Plus, there's all kinds of gear that should still be capable of running. Many older farm tractors and older diesels use mechanical fuel injection, so the only electrical is battery to switch to starter. In extremis, they can be push started.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

You also have scenario that the 'zap-extended' atmosphere will pull down GPS, Starlink and other non-hardened constellations which are unable to correct their orbit.

The ISS and its Chinese counterpart are toast...

And, potentially, every civil airline with fly-by-wire...

[Leander]

Chilling

The body count would be immense, even if everything soon came back on like nothing happened.

Excellent, though terrifying...

Yes, a 'super-Carrington' event would toss most of us back to Medieval level, for which scant few of us have any appropriate skills.

Couple of things:
If severe enough to tumble fridge magnets... Make that *some* of them, as the neods would endure.
At the time of Event, I'd expect twinges from metal dental fillings, bone-clamps etc.
Pacemakers ? He's dead, Jim.

Those old diesel tractors and pumps, the ones you gotta pre-heat with blow-lamp, then crank, they'd survive...
And steam engines ??

Brrr...

Could you put new lyrics to that classic, 'The Day The Music Died' ??

I was thinking of the 2012 CME which came pretty close to doing this to the planet... well, according to the theory I read.
I hadn't thought of the internal body things. Fridge magnets, will change!

Old cars without electronics should still run, albeit difficult to start. My parents had/have a 1950 MG TD that has the little hole in the front bumper to put the hand crank in to start her up. Dad told me never to wrap my thumb around the shaft, because when the engine catches, it kicks the hand crank backwards, and you'd break your thumb.

But I'm rambling.

Nicely done. Where were you thinking of submitting this? I'd go and vote for it.

Belushi TD

It needs a rework, but it's something for a project down the line. Thank you.

Yes, I can see electronics with any sort of chips being fried by a strong enough event. But one that demagnetizes refrigerator magnets is enough to do very bad things to living beings.

Plus, there's all kinds of gear that should still be capable of running. Many older farm tractors and older diesels use mechanical fuel injection, so the only electrical is battery to switch to starter. In extremis, they can be push started.

This is something quite special in terms of what had happened, hence the magnets!
I agree, so much would work, and there would be people who know how, but the event would bring societal collapse, and then you have the problem with trying to get people organised to do even the most basic of things.

You also have scenario that the 'zap-extended' atmosphere will pull down GPS, Starlink and other non-hardened constellations which are unable to correct their orbit.

The ISS and its Chinese counterpart are toast...

And, potentially, every civil airline with fly-by-wire...

Don't forget to duck of you'll get a Boeing on your head.

[jemhouston]

Even if you duck, you could still get a Boeing on the forehead.