Tim Washburn - Powerless

“Why?”

“I’m not sure how much stock to put in their 1859 technology. Plus this ejection of plasma is much larger.” Sam pauses, hoping for a rebuttal—for Kaylee to tell him he’s crazy as a loon. But she doesn’t. “Put another call in to NASA. I want a definitive explanation about the status of that satellite.”

Kaylee stands and heads for the door only to pivot on her heel.

“How bad do you really think this storm could be, Sam?”

Sam returns the glasses to his face. “Bad, Kaylee. It could be catastrophic. Worse than a sky full of bombs, at least for anything depending on electricity.”

NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center

Wednesday, September 29, 8:01 A.M.

Sam shuffles into the solar observation room. His blue shirt is damp under the arms and a sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead.

“Sam, there have been several more CMEs in the last ten minutes,” someone shouts.

“They’ll be here fairly quickly, then,” he mutters. He stands tall, squaring his shoulders. “Okay, listen up. I need everything you have assembled into a concise brief and I need it in the next fifteen minutes.” He turns to Kaylee. “You’re in charge of putting the data together.” Sam turns and hurries back to his office.

The room explodes into a beehive of activity as everyone begins speaking at once. Kaylee stands in the center of the room and yells for quiet, then issues instructions. She flips open her laptop and begins typing, trying to organize the bits of shouted information into a workable timeline.

Back in his office, Sam picks up the phone and heaves a heavy sigh as he punches in the phone number. To hell with stepping on sensitive toes , he thinks. He’s chosen to bypass about ten layers of bureaucracy by calling direct to Dr. Debra Bailey, the under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and the director of NOAA.

“Director Bailey’s office,” the receptionist says.

“This is Dr. Samuel Blake at the Space Weather Prediction Agency. It’s urgent I speak to the director right now.”

“In regards to what?”

A gatekeeper with an attitude. Sam explains to the receptionist who he is as he doodles dirty words on a piece of scrap paper. The receptionist puts him on hold. His anger at the bloated government agency ratchets up another notch.

Finally, the phone is picked up on the other end. “Dr. Blake. What can I do for you?”

“We have a serious situation developing.”

“How serious, and what exactly are you referring to?”

“A massive geomagnetic solar storm may be on a collision course with Earth.”

“Might be? We don’t know for sure? And when you say ‘massive,’ how massive?” Her voice is full of skepticism, and he can hear the shuffling of paper on her end.

“How about the total destruction of every electrical system north of the equator?”

The paper shuffling stops. “You can’t be serious, Dr. Blake.”

“I’m deadly serious. We need to begin a national mobilization to shut down power grids, and we need to ground all aircraft because of the potential loss of communications.”

“Come now, Dr. Blake. You just said you didn’t know if the storm would even hit here. You want me to ask the brass to cut off power to millions of people in addition to stranding travelers in some far-off destination based on a maybe?”

“I called”—he inhales a quick breath—“I called to request a videoconference so that I can explain the situation.”

The director pauses, as if consulting her busy calendar. “How’s tomorrow or the day after sound?”

Sam chuckles. “I was thinking sometime within the next fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“What? Impossible. You know what a scheduling nightmare that would be. It will take most of the morning to even make contact with whomever needs to be contacted.”

“We don’t have most of the morning. There’s no time to be worried about schedule snafus.”

“When do you expect the storm to arrive?”

“Unknown. But my best estimation is between ten and seventeen hours.”

A gasp on the other end of the line. “How bad could this storm be, Dr. Blake?”

“It might very well send a vast majority of the world into darkness for years, and maybe forever.”

A long silence. He taps his foot, waiting for her to reply.

Finally she does. “We need to keep this under wraps until we can develop a response. I’ll set up the videoconference within the hour. We need Homeland Security involved, as well as Energy and FEMA and the Joint Chiefs, and…” She ticks off several more organizations. “Did I leave anyone out?”

“Yes, you did. The President.”

“I’ll arrange it. You better be on top of all your facts and figures. I don’t want to be the agency crying wolf.”

“I think there are more important things to worry about than saving face. I’ll be in my office whenever you’re ready, and please—every second counts.” Sam slams the phone down and stands. He shoves his hands into his pockets and paces the small confines of his office, hoping they’re not too late.

The Marshall home, near Durant, Oklahoma

The screen door slaps shut behind Zeke as he and Lexi step through the back door of his parents’ home. The house came with the property, and what began as a one-story wreck shedding shingles is now a three-bedroom rancher with gleaming stainless steel appliances arranged around the built-from-scratch kitchen. His mother’s pride and joy. He finds her at the gas stove, an appliance large enough for a commercial kitchen. The aroma of sizzling bacon makes his empty stomach rumble. Zeke steps up and offers her a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Pour yourself a cup of coffee, Zeke,” his mother says, reaching for a cup from the cupboard and handing it to him.

Barbara Marshall is taller than average at five foot eight, and her once-svelte figure has gotten less slender with age. A thickness has settled into her hips, but she’s not overweight. Just a heaviness that seems to accumulate over a lifetime. Her mostly gray hair is pulled up in a ponytail and the apron wrapped around her jeans and sweatshirt is embroidered with KISS THE COOK across the front. Both of Zeke’s parents are closer to seventy than they would like to admit.

“You realize you don’t need to cook for me.”

“I know, but I was cooking breakfast anyway.”

Zeke pours coffee and steps over to join his father at the scarred dining room table, one of the furniture holdovers from their early days—sentimental value, according to both parents. Zeke never asked what was sentimental about an old table, fearing the answer. His father has today’s paper spread out before him.

“Anything interesting?” Zeke says.

“Is there ever?” His father folds the paper and tosses it onto one of the vacant chairs. Robert takes off the reading glasses, his sole concession to growing older. He is only an inch or two taller than his wife, but at six foot three their son towers over both. Zeke has the same broad shoulders and big hands as his father, but how he grew so tall is a mystery. His mother insists that most of the males in her family had been tall, so they chalk it up to genetics. “How are the tables coming?”

“Slowly. I may need your help sometime this week to mill a couple more walnut trees. I’ve just about gone through everything in the drying shed.”

“How many orders do you have left to fill?”

“Three.” When Zeke moved down here he helped his father, a retired civil engineer, put the finishing touches on a state-of-the-art woodshop, built—of course—to his father’s precisely engineered plans.