Sunburn (Book 1, The Events Trilogy)

by Gorvine, Samuel

  “It’s absolutely immense,” the Russian, Grigory, was saying.

  They were all well trained and knew that an Event of this size and intensity would disable nearly everything electric on the International Space Station and at NASA and at Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. There would be no rescue possible by tomorrow, if ever, and it would only be a question of whether the crew would die of cold or suffocate first as the oxygen pumps, heaters and carbon dioxide scrubbers failed.

  They began to turn the solar arrays away from the Sun to try to save some of them and to keep them from burning up the controllers. They patrolled the Station looking for things they could do to save equipment and maximize their chances, but they knew that although they could delay it, and that some of their gear might work for a while, there was no workable solution without resupply. Sheldon could not see a way out of this.

  “I hope they take care of our people,” Sheldon said quietly to no one in particular.

  Dr. Rosen sat with Rabbi Levi Shapiro in the synagogue at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. She wore a plain black dress with long sleeves and a dark blue headscarf. They sat in a part of the synagogue usually reserved for men, but anyone could see she was not a tourist and when a younger man with the side curls of the Ultra-Orthodox approached to reproach her, she just looked sharply at him and he knew to just walk away.

  Rabbi Shapiro was a small man, almost as diminutive as she was, with a long flowing white beard, and bright blue eyes, which gave him a penetrating, almost hypnotic stare.

  He smiled gently as he explained the Universe to the illustrious scientist.

  “God promised Noah not to destroy the world. He is keeping his promise. The event you describe which will happen tomorrow night will not harm a single innocent creature. It will attack only Man at his most chuzpahdik, in his most arrogant aspects. And Man will destroy himself, or at least the worst parts of himself that are offensive to the Holy Name.”

  “There will be so much chaos and destruction—“

  “Only as much as we make for ourselves. As for the people here, we have candles, the ones we have lit for generations all over the world, before there was even a dream of electricity. We do not need laptops or Iphones to study Torah. God has presented each person with a very personal survival puzzle. But sometimes only the soul survives intact and the body perishes, if that is His will.”

  7.

  In the following 24 hour period, strange things happened, but often it was just as odd what did not happen. The United States did not power down the power grid it shared with Canada. The Senate wanted to hold emergency hearings, but of course there was no time for that. The cabinet argued until the Secretary of the Interior walked out in fury and frustration. However, on the advice of the Israelis, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf States all powered down their grids.

  In Europe, the parties of the Right blamed the Jews for the crisis, saying they wanted to benefit somehow from the troubles of others. The European Union did not believe the crisis would be that serious and, in any case, like the USA, they were too muddled in politics and red tape to take any definitive action in time. The worldwide media tended to downplay the event because they had no hard data on how bad it would be and didn’t want to be accused of causing panic. For every expert saying the Event would be catastrophic, another could be found to say it would be no worse than the Carrington Event of 1859.

  But everyone was out late at night when the flare was due to arrive and bring the aurora borealis to the whole world. Whatever else it would be a hell of a show and there were huge gatherings in places noted for a great view of the heavens, like Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Sydney Harbor and San Francisco Bay. People brought food and drink and there were huge parties.

  And the Show did not disappoint.

  Starting at 0133h, Greenwich Mean Time, the main body of the flare struck the earth and the sky over the Northern Hemisphere was filled with dancing lights. It was more intense than ever seen before and soon spread to most of the Southern Hemisphere as well. Only the region around the South Pole saw no light show and neither the Ross nor Scott Research Stations experienced any aurora borealis or indeed any electric disruption to their equipment.

  As the hours passed, the show grew more intense, and in fact more ominous. The colors deepened, so much so that the color red began to predominate so that it seemed the sky in some places seemed filled with blood.

  The sky got redder and the people got drunker.

  In Amazonas, the Oxbow People came out and stood on the riverbank watching the light show in fascination and terror. Both the sky and its reflection in the River were bloody. Some people fell on their faces and tried to cover themselves with the earth of the riverbank. Their Shaman, Billas, went with his ritual staff and, standing in the shallow water of the River said to them:

  “This is all my fault. I urged you to eat the fish-belly man and the Gods are now displeased with us. So much so that they have filled the heavens and our River with blood. To take away this blood guilt I will go to the next world to intercede for the People.”

  And clutching his staff, he dove into the River and allowed himself to be carried away downstream and into the next world.

  The lights did NOT go out all over the world. On the contrary, as the air filled with huge amounts of static electricity, even the light bulbs that were not connected to any power source lit up, and at greater intensity then their listed wattage. Even bulbs stored on shelves burned extra brightly and all the windows all over the world lit up as though answering the heavenly summons to light. Hours or days later they burned out.

  After a while, as the power grids went down all over the planet, machinery that could not work just from static electricity in the air, ground to a halt. Planes in flight lost their computer control systems and those that could not glide to safe landings, crashed with great loss of life. Trains and cars stopped in their tracks as their electric power failed. The starter solenoids in auto engines, made to receive low current from the battery, received power surges that rendered them useless.

  People’s hair began to stand out from their heads from the static charge in the air, giving a comical aspect to everyone celebrating in the streets and on the beaches. Only wearing a hat was a cure for this clown hair. How they laughed at each other! The parties went on and on as the aurora became more red and the people became drunker, knowing they were seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event or even more than that, as the turning of the millennium had been, something without recent precedent in the cycle of life.

  But the hangover outdid the party. Sometimes it took a while to see it. Those who woke up on the beach with the headache of a lifetime did not see the world as very much different, but if you were in your apartment you knew right away as the sun beat on your windows that would not open and there was no air conditioning, no TV, no coffee machine, unless you had one of those European coffee makers that didn’t need electricity. People were making coffee straining hot water though gauze if they could get a fire going somehow.

  If you had a gas stove, it wouldn’t light if the burner starter was electric. If you went to start your car, the motor would crank and crank but never catch because there was no juice getting past the solenoid to the spark plugs—and on and on as the world realized that the party was really, but really over.

  Everywhere there was that sharp electric smell but especially in the power stations that had not powered down. But a few of those had major fires which burned merrily on since fire trucks could not start their engines either and the fireman could not get to the fires.

  On a personal level, casual touching, handshaking, as well as social kissing in Europe and Latin America vanished quickly and became a casual wave and a “Hello,” since if you didn’t touch something grounded just before touching someone else, the static charge stored in your bodies would knock both of you over as of you had put a fork in a live outlet. It was sort of like that little spark that jumps from hand to hand on a rea
lly cold day, but a thousand times worse.

  Stores tried to open but found that any employees that couldn’t walk to work or didn’t have bicycles, were not coming that day or maybe never again. People who tried to get their money found the money machines dead and silent, and if they went to the actual bank to talk to a real person, they found few tellers and long lines at the windows. Some of the banks had been smart the day before and tried to print hard copy of all their customers and their balances in case the system went down, but the sheer size of the task had meant that the printers often hadn’t had time to print out so much data and customers with last names from “t” to “z” for example, might be out of luck.

  Customers who were on the list and who had ID could get their money and the teller would note the withdrawal in pen and ink on the paper list the way it had been done two hundred years before. Clumsy, but it worked. In some cases where the time locks to the vault were electric and not mechanical, the vaults could not be opened and the banks quickly ran out of cash. Messengers were sent on bicycles to the central banks or even eventually the Federal Reserve if there was a branch in town, but the central banks, even when they had it, refused to put a million dollars in cash into a messenger’s saddle bag. Only weeks later did horse drawn vehicles appear on the street to begin to transport money to and from the banks.

  The financial net didn’t go down as quickly as the electric one had, but down it went with a bang! The only good news was that there was no stock, bond or commodities crash because none of the markets could open and nothing could be bought or sold.

  Will and Mary had watched the show from his deck overlooking the Paw Paw Valley. He had shut off the connection to the grid and tried to protect the solar voltaic system with layers of electrical tape. He and Mary had worked hard all that day trying to protect Will’s gear from everything the solar storm might bring.

  In the morning after the aurora, which they watched from chairs on the deck, sipping good Kentucky bourbon, five of the six solar panels were still okay but the system controllers were fried. Will took out the components and replaced the damaged wiring. The batteries were damaged too, so he bypassed them.

  When he had reached for Mary to give her a friendly hug he found himself flat on his back an instant later. Had she given him a judo throw? What had happened? But she was down too and laughing.

  After a moment he figured it out. Static electricity. The air was still full of it and all the lights were on too brightly, even those switched off. They would be lucky to have any bulbs left after this.

  As they were realizing this, millions of people were realizing that their apartments in tall buildings, or even not so tall ones, were no longer habitable. There were no elevators. How could anyone live in a 50 story walkup? Or even in a 20? In addition, most apartments were built for air conditioning and had no windows which could be opened to the outside. Before lunchtime, hundreds of thousands of apartments all over the world from New York to Shenzhen had become unbearably hot and stuffy. Even if the people could think of a place to go there was no way to call and see it was available, and no way to get there if it was, except to walk or ride a bicycle if you had one.

  There was a lot of foot traffic in the streets the following day and a lot of bicycles. It looked like the Peoples’ Republic of China before people had cars. The parks were full of people putting up tents as if there had been an earthquake. They had brought with them their supplies of canned goods which were guarded carefully. Meat, on the other hand, was about to spoil anyway and so impromptu barbecues were arranged using wheel hubs and other improvised grills. The beer was warm but what the hell! Everyone shared in the last splurge of first world plenty.

  8.

  Meanwhile, in third world countries, not too much had changed. Most people had never had access to electricity or the internet, and they still didn’t have it. Their bicycles, burros and oxen still worked just fine, even better now that the streets were free of cars and buses. In the vast rice cultivation areas of China and Southeast Asia, peoples’ new lamps and radios didn’t work anymore, so they dusted off their lanterns and easily returned to the endless cycles of the seasons, birth and death—the things that were never interrupted.

  In his hillside hideaway, Will’s TV and radio now had power from the solar panels but no signal from anywhere. Actually, even had there been a signal he never could have heard it, so full was the ether with howling and screaming from the magnetic fields of the flare clashing with those of the earth.

  “I think we may be the Last Ones,” he said softly after a week.

  Mary was not so keen about playing Eve to his Adam, even though they were already intimate and very much enjoying each other’s company. She wondered how long it could last in this isolation which she was beginning to find oppressive. No one else to talk to, no TV shows, nothing to do but look at the people-less Paw Paw Valley and watch the deer at the salt lick. They were getting used to her now too, and she could watch from a few meters as the little family of the two-prong male that Will called “Buck”, climbed the hill carefully to the pan where Will would leave some hard corn niblets and a bowl of water next to the salt. There were plenty of books to read in the house and shelter and they were both getting more and more into that habit.

  During the third week she was watching the deer at the salt lick when suddenly their ears twitched; they looked down the hill and took off running along the driveway. Looking down the hill, Mary could see a dark shape moving in the bushes. She began to walk quickly toward the stairway to the deck. Halfway up she turned to look and saw a medium sized black bear ambling up toward the salt lick. She continued up and crossed the deck to the sliding glass door to the kitchen.

  “Oh, Will!” she called. “I think we have a visitor!”

  Will came down from the bedroom with the Mossberg shotgun open under his arm.

  “A visitor?” he growled.

  “Look there.”

  The bear was busily sniffing and licking the salt. He looked up at them through the glass door.

  “Oh,” he laughed. “That’s just Walter. He comes by now and again.”

  “He’s not dangerous?”

  “Walter? No, black bears aren’t that aggressive. Now, a grizzly or a brown bear will kill and eat a deer if he can catch one and attack a person if you startle him, but these small black bears aren’t dangerous to people.”

  They went out on the deck. She had her arm around Will’s waist and he around her shoulders. They watched as Walter made a mess of the deer feeder.

  “Why ‘Walter?’” She asked.

  “Why not?”

  9.

  As Mary and Will discovered each other through love, the rest of the Western World was rediscovering the art of conversation. Coffee shops which a month ago had been full of people ignoring each other, silently texting on their phones or typing e-mails into their notebook computers, were haltingly trying to actually speak to each other. The coffee shops and other restaurants were using kerosene lamps for light and making their coffee the old fashioned way, but they were in business.

  A way of life, of wit and lively talk was slowly and painfully being rediscovered. There was no choice but for married couples to talk to each other now. There was no more TV, no internet, no modern distractions. If you wanted to see a sporting event you had to walk or bike to the field, buy a ticket and physically watch the game, without an earphone stuck in your ear for commentary.

  Some people discovered that their mates were actually smart and witty if given half a chance, but far more people discovered that conversation for them was a lost art and sat staring at each other and at the silent TV screen as if waiting to be rescued.

  Separations and divorces were being planned. And the canned food and crackers were running out—

  The astronauts had struggled for a week after the Event began to try to stay alive.

  Five of the seven solar arrays were still generating electricity but their controllers were fried and ther
e was only one spare that had not been fatally damaged as well. Grigory had made a space walk to get two of the arrays wired to one replacement controller and that had worked for six days. After the last controller failed the temperature in the station began to drop precipitously as the carbon dioxide rose to toxic levels as the scrubbers failed too.

  In the end Baker Sheldon and Grigory had embraced and even kissed, huddled together with their four comrades from other parts of the world, threw a switch and let the vacuum of space flood into the cabin. They were all flash frozen in thirteen seconds and the International Space Station continued its melancholy orbit of the darkened earth below, accompanied by the silent fleet of dead satellites from all nations.

  The strange thing was that Fred Goodman and his family were actually enjoying their new life among the Amish. At least after a month they could say that. They were helping with the harvest as it was now into September, and pruning fruit trees. The work was healthy and not at all stressful. They were spared the most difficult aspects of Amish life, the constant rush to daily prayer and the domineering supervision of the Bishop and the deacons, who wielded considerable power in community life.

  The Amish were a little in awe of them and gave them room as a family that a single individual would never have gotten. They were taught good farming techniques, which they learned rapidly and participated in group work in the harvest and construction of outbuildings, but they were otherwise left alone.

  Fred had left the twenty-five shotguns and rifles with their ammunition he had bought in two different Maryland gun stores the day of his arrival in the community storehouse near the church. They had all watched the aurora borealis from the open space by the church that night and from the power of it the Community knew that God was speaking and making big changes in the world. It was not so clear why he was doing so or how it would go for Amish people.