by David Beers
At 8 AM EST yesterday morning, the power in the furthest point of Maine, a town named Cambellton, went out. No eggs for breakfast, no hot water, no lights. Cambellton, by any definition, is a very remote location. However, by noon all of Maine was affected and the outages weren’t being contained, they were spreading further south. By midnight yesterday, the blackout stretched from the top of Maine to the southern edge of New York. It followed extremely strict state lines, never venturing into a state that it didn’t fully black out, leading people to believe this was man-made rather than an error or accident.
It’s been twenty-seven hours since the rolling blackout began and there doesn’t appear to be any respite.
The Director of New York City Power spoke at a press conference today, in the state of Pennsylvania, where power still exists.
“We are unsure what lies behind these outages. Our engineers, our information technology people, everyone, is working around the clock to try and fix this problem. The President has declared a state of emergency, and we are working with every single power company from New York upwards to try and get to the bottom of this. No one is sleeping until this problem is solved.”
Five hours later, the problem has not been solved and, in fact, more problems are arising. The outages sparked, almost immediately, large scale traffic jams when traffic lights shut off. This led, eventually, to hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of abandoned cars, ensuring the gridlock. Businesses have shut down throughout the Eastern Seaboard, which has led to widespread looting. Criminals are breaking into businesses, large and small, and taking everything that can be lugged out. Many large items are left, however, as there simply exists no way to transport it from one area to the next given the condition of the roads. In New York City, the police were released on foot to crack down on the crime epidemic. From dying cellphones we have captured instances of police brutality, perhaps not seen in such high numbers before. Indeed, one police officer screamed into a group of people standing outside a closed shop yesterday: “If you’re outside, your head is getting busted.”
The President is supposed to speak tonight, and speculations have risen from people domestic and abroad that this is linked to Matthew Brand. The manhunt is still wildly active, spreading up and down the eastern side of the United States. This newest issue has reignited sparks of outrage from foreign leaders, including Canada’s Prime Minister.
“It makes absolutely no sense that the President is refusing to accept our help. Two weeks have passed and all we hear, day in and day out, is that they are close to finding Matthew Brand. We see the Director of Operations, Art Brayden, on television everyday saying that they are working diligently, but that’s it. There is no other information forthcoming from Washington, and the President hasn’t taken a single call from me in the past two days. Now these blackouts are literally one mile from Canada. A mile further down the road and the inaction of the United States begins to affect my constituents. I demand that the President begin to release more information and to accept help from the outside.”
President Herald is supposed to comment on both the ire spreading outside of the country as well as the possibility that these blackouts stem from Matthew Brand’s operation. As of yet, Brand has released no other news regarding his plans, although a suspicious fire in Massachusetts did draw the attention of the FBI a week ago.
The President will begin speaking at 7 PM EST.
“How are you charging your phone, Art? Can you tell me that, at least, since there doesn’t seem to be a single other thing you can tell me?”
Art listened to his boss, Gyle, nearly snarl into the phone. It wasn’t a bad question, really, because not a single outlet in Massachusetts was working, neither were any of the landline phones.
“I had someone drive across the state border and purchase a hundred new cellphones. I just keep changing the SIM card. Don’t worry, I expensed it,” Art said.
“I’m glad you’re finding it funny. President Herald isn’t. I imagine you’re going to have a call from him once this press conference is over. Is this Brand or not?” Gyle asked.
That was the question the whole country wanted an answer to and Art didn’t have it. No one in his entire organization could trace the source of the outage. It began in the furthest tip of Maine and then spread south, like a virus, logically infecting every touching town as it went. It didn’t skip anything, it didn’t spread out of control in one spot while leaving another untouched. It moved timely, orderly, downward, taking with it all electricity. It followed a system, a system that was plain and obvious, but one they didn’t know the root cause of.
“I don’t know,” Art said, the humor gone from his voice. “I’m not hiding anything from the reports you’re getting, Gyle. They’re coming in hourly from engineers that are looking at the individual wires as well as people looking at this from a holistic perspective. There isn’t any clue as to why the power is gone, where it’s gone to, or if it’s coming back. The power plants are still working, in fact, all the lights are on in every power plant in every state we’re talking about, it’s just that power is being directed somewhere else.”
“And you can’t trace it?”
“We’re trying to, except, it isn’t pooling anywhere. It appears to be siphoned off by the surrounding states, like the houses in New Jersey should be using the power from New York, but when we’ve measured it, that’s not what’s happening, it’s just what appears to be happening,” Art answered.
“So where is the power going then?”
“At some point before it is used by the surrounding areas, it’s stolen. It disappears and that’s where most of the engineers are looking now, trying to trace all that power. It’s a huge amount, Gyle. All the power from five states just disappearing, but yet we can’t find a trail.”
Gyle sighed into the phone. “The President wants to know if this is Brand or not. He wants to know what to say when he gets on the television tonight and I can’t go back to him with this answer. I can’t tell him ‘I don’t know’. That’s not what you tell a sitting President if you want to keep your job. I need you to have something more to me by the end of the hour. Have something of substance, Art. I don’t care what it takes.”
The phone lay on the table and Art stared at it. The door to his office was closed and no one should be knocking on it unless they had information directly pertaining to the power outage. This newest development was splitting his manpower. He was having to investigate the power problem while also conducting a manhunt for Brand. And, on top of it, Brand had been silent. Completely silent. Art called three times over the past twenty-four hours, and each time he heard a prerecorded message saying the customer had not set up a voice mailbox yet. Art didn’t know if these engineers working below him were complete idiots or if this was some kind of miracle of nature, but he was heading to a power plant today to try and figure that out. He might even stand right over the pack of engineers, watching each movement, both to let them know how serious he took this, as well as to understand. He wouldn’t get the math, wouldn’t get all the details, but he had a feeling he was going to speak with Gyle again today and have the exact same answer: I don’t know. If that’s what he had to tell Gyle, he needed more information than the power was disappearing, probably on the back of a Unicorn.
It had to be Brand though.
Why else wasn’t he answering? Why else had he gone dark?
And that led to the question which Gyle hadn’t asked, that the media wasn’t asking either. If it was Brand, did it mean they were too late? Did it mean that things had already begun?
Art wanted to pray, to head out of this Boston based building and to the church down the road, but he didn’t have time. Art didn’t have time for God right now. What he needed, more than anything else, was Brand. Jesus Christ, Art hadn’t even decided what they were going to do with the knowledge of Jake’s cell phone. No, that had been pushed to the side because millions of people were sitting in the dark. Art’s resources we
re strained to a point of nearly breaking and Brand could give him the answer he needed with a simple response: yes or no. He was behind it or he wasn’t, and Art thought that Brand would answer the question if they could just talk. The man’s pride wouldn’t allow him to lie, wouldn’t allow him not to receive credit if credit was due.
Call him one more time, then fly to the New York power-plant. One more time.
He picked up his phone and looked up the past number, clicking on it.
It rang for thirty seconds, and then right back to the recorded message.
“God damn it,” Art said, dropping the phone onto the table where it landed with a loud clack.
He stood up and walked to the office door.
“I need a flight to New York’s largest power-plant within the hour,” he said to one of his secretaries. He had three of them, didn’t know any of their names—his regular one, the one he had used for the past three years, had gone out on maternity leave three weeks before all this started. God bless. So he had three now because they were doing almost everything for him at this point, any administrative duty from payroll to lunch.
“Yes, sir,” a brunette said.
“What’s your name?” Art asked.
“Kerry.”
“Thanks.” Art closed the door. Kerry. At least he knew one of them.
He was walking to the computer at his desk when the phone started ringing.
Please, God.
He went to it, picked it up, and knew before answering that it was Brand. Unknown caller, although if Art hit redial, he’d end up dialing a number that led him back to Brand.
“You rang, Art?” Brand said.
“Yeah. Was wanting to see if you’d like to catch a Red Sox game this weekend?”
“Unfortunately, I’m a bit busy at the moment,” Brand said.
“You motherfucker. Is this you? Just tell me if it’s you.”
“Oh my gosh, such hostility, Art. I remember you calling me the other day, but I don’t remember what we spoke about. I was kind of a mess, really needed some sleep, and everything you said went in one ear and out the other. Would you mind catching me up on what we spoke about?”
“As soon as you tell me if this is you,” Art said, his fingers gripping the phone so tight that he could hear the plastic bending.
“Of course it’s me. You didn’t think I would be able to do everything I said without a large source of power. One cannot simply split every atom in fifty-five bodies with an ax, one needs a lot of energy to do it. I can’t buy that type of energy in a double-A battery, so I’m having to borrow it from some of the places around me.”
Art’s balls pulled upwards, his scrotum shrinking, and sweat popping out onto his forehead. “It’s starting?”
“Well, yes and no. Call this a dry run. I needed to make sure that my theory would work, and it is. The lights won’t be going back on, because I do need to make sure my machine is going to run when the time comes, so I need to go ahead and start checking through all of it, but no, I’m not splitting atoms yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Art’s fingers relaxed a bit on the phone. “People are dying. You know that, right? You’ve plunged millions of people into darkness and they’re losing their minds.”
“Art,” Matthew said, his voice no longer holding levity, “it’s going to get a lot worse than this. Those people you’re talking about, they have power during the day. They have sunlight that keeps the water clean and the crops growing. They might be scared, but this isn’t anything that humanity hasn’t dealt with on a wide scale basis before. What’s coming, what I’m building towards, that’s what should frighten them. A world with no light, only eternal darkness. If they’re dying now because they’re killing each other, why should I concern myself with that? This isn’t an issue. This is like the eighteen-hundreds, but you didn’t see massive looting, murder, or rape every night because they didn’t have electricity flowing into houses. The lights aren’t coming back on, no matter what your engineers do. The President is speaking tonight, and if he says you guys can fix this, he’s a fool and a liar. Everything from New York up is mine now. In my world, I don’t govern, I don’t try to control. The people can do as they see fit.”
At least Art had his answer. There wasn’t any more wondering and there wasn’t any more need to use up his available capacity. They could put this off to some other organization and he could focus on finding Brand again.
“You know he’s going to say we’ll turn the lights on,” Art said, unsure why he was continuing the conversation now that he had what he wanted.
“Of course. You won’t though. Was there anything else you needed, Art? I’m a bit busy making some preparations.”
“That’s it.”
“Bye, then. Talk soon.”
“It’s him,” Art said.
“How do you know?” Gyle asked.
Art and Jake sat at Art’s desk, the plane ride to New York canceled. A speaker sat in the middle of the table, from which they both listened to Gyle.
“I called him. You can run the tape if you want, it’s uploaded. He says it’s not D-Day, but that he’s basically working out any possible kinks before D-Day arrives. He also says that the power is staying off, that no matter what we do, we won’t be able to redirect back to its original path.”
“For how long?” Gyle asked.
Art looked at Jake. “Forever is my guess. Until either we kill him or he shuts the sun off.”
Gyle laughed. “This is getting worse by the moment. Every time I pick up the phone and talk to someone, I get just a bit closer to putting a bullet through my eye. Now I have to tell the President we know it’s Brand and that the lights are going to stay off. I have to deal with hundreds of people dying nightly because, apparently, when we can’t watch television we turn into animals and I have to talk to you knowing each and every time that we are not any closer to finding Brand. This is a nightmare.”
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
“That’s not entirely true, sir,” Jake said.
Art looked back up, his eyebrows rising. Which part wasn’t true? Jake had shown up for the meeting because Art sent him a text, but that was all they had said to each other in the past day. In fact, Jake could have been vacationing in the tropics for all Art knew—he had seen no reports, received no phone calls, nothing.
“You speaking to me or Art?” Gyle asked from the speaker.
“You, sir. We may be a bit closer to finding Brand. I think I might have something to pull him out into the open, if we do it perfectly. If he believes us, and we don’t screw up on our end, I don’t think he’ll have much of a choice in the matter.”
19
The sharp smell of sulfur opened Joe’s eyes.
Things were blurry, as if he was looking through goggles filled with water. He blinked, trying to bring the world into some sort of focus. Nothing on him hurt, but his entire body felt tired, weak, like breaking a pencil would be a monumental feat.
His eyes finally cleared and a lone man stood in front of him. There was a chair next to the man, a flimsy plastic thing.
“Mnuhh,” Joe said, not understanding that speech was beyond him until the word exited his mouth.
“No need to talk just yet. Just sit there and relax for a few, buddy.”
The man in front of him had been the man that sat down next to him on the bus.
What bus?
The Greyhound.
The Greyhound he had got on headed to Los Angeles. Then this fat man had sat down and stabbed him in the leg. Joe slowly gazed down at his leg, saw a little circle of blood just above his knee, but felt no pain from it.
Did he stab me?
Maybe. Maybe not. Where was he now? He tried, for the first time, to stand up, and realized his arms and legs had both been tied to the same type of flimsy chair that the fat man stood next to. Zip-ties on his wrists, forearms, ankles, and calves. Joe wasn’t standing up from here. He was, though, remembering what
happened. Sally told him to take the bus, the bus to Los Angeles, and that someone would meet him with the information he wanted. Was that this fat man? Was that where he was?
He looked around the room, his head moving slowly, like the first time he ever tried pot. He was in an old bedroom; something out of the seventies, with wood paneled walls and green carpet. The smell of the place said that a lot of life had happened in between these walls and not a lot of airflow after. There wasn’t a bed though. Wasn’t a dresser either, only a closed window to Joe’s left.
“My name is Charles. Not Charlie, but Charles. Yours is Joe, right? Joe Welch, born Joseph R. Welch?”
Joe nodded, his eyes coming back to focus on Charles.
“You have had an interesting history, Joe. To be honest, much more interesting than probably anyone I’ve met. Dad was murdered by Brand. Wife and kid too. Now you have a habit,” the fat man pulled out the bag of coke that had been in Joe’s pocket, “and an obsession with Matthew Brand. I’ve been wondering myself what obsession is stronger, the one for this stuff in the bag or the one for Brand. Given that I’m someone who knows a bit about addiction, I’d guess that they’re running neck and neck. Two large horses and each of them running at top speeds. What do you think?”
Joe’s head lolled to the side a bit. This man had to know Joe could barely hold his head up, let alone answer. He was able to listen, though.
“What I don’t understand, where I’m coming up at a loss here, is why someone who is running around looking for the most wanted man in the world would suddenly become interested in sex-slaves. It’s not your fetish. So why?”
“Yahnn,” Joe let out, his tongue feeling like a large furry balloon, unable to function correctly at all.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to have time to talk. Go on to sleep, I’ll be back later.” The fat man turned and walked from the room, closing the door behind him. Joe kept trying to look around, kept trying to stand up, but his attempts became weaker and weaker until he took Charles’ advice.
