“What am I forgetting?” He asked his laptop, before closing it. He spun around in his chair 90 degrees to look out into his secret workshop, hoping something would stand out.
He stared first at his dead computer, close to a small organized pile of things he heaped onto the floor taken from other parts of the house. He hoped Bill had a similar pile in his “protected” room. A couple of Mexican cell phones, a watch, a few solid metal sculptures, his favorite alarm clock — anything with value that was electronic or had a large amount of metal or other conductive material.
“It should be anytime now.” He blew out a large breath. He felt a large weight bearing down on him. In addition to the end of the world occurring any moment, enough for anyone, he knew it was a matter of minutes or hours before one or both of the two drug lords he knew considered him too much of a liability. He just hoped that he thought through this scenario enough to protect his best friend, his family, and with a little luck, himself.
So intent was he that he didn’t even notice his muted phone was attempting to give him other warnings.
Stacy Jenkins’ face crinkled into a smile, the recognition of her phone speaking to her, alone in a sea of people at the airport. Five passengers from the next flight sat behind her at the gate’s waiting area, each engaged with their devices, while also disconnected with everyone else they were sitting with. Stacy stood outside the area in the path of hurried travelers, who breezed by her as if she didn’t exist. She watched intently for an signs of her friends.
She pulled her phone up to her face, trying to see if it was Dar calling or texting, but it was only a spam email, “You may qualify for low priced term insurance. Get a quote now before…” She ignored the rest, clicking the phone’s hibernate button. Her face and shoulders hung in disappointment.
She expectedly scanned the throngs of people coming at her from all directions. Dar texted her an hour ago saying that she was running late and they’d see her at the gate. But her subsequent texts went unanswered. She tried calling Dar too, but she never picked up. “Where are you, Dar? I need you,” she said to the crowd, who never acknowledged her pleas. The thought of flying without Dar to hold her hand brought her close to panicking. She wasn’t sure how she was going to fly, and even considered cancelling, but when Dar said she would be on the same flight, Stacy was ecstatic.
“Last call for flight three-six-three to Dallas.”
“Oh no. What am I supposed to do now? Maybe I can get a later flight.”
“Stacy Jenkins, is that you?” An out of breath but familiar voice emerged from the crowds in front of her, dragging a little boy behind.
A big grin broke out on Stacy’s lips, “Thank God.”
30.
ISS Dead to the World
From a porthole, R.T. stood, arms tightly crossed, glaring at the auroras blanketing the Earth below. Those damned CMEs ruined everything, dooming his last mission in space. If it was possible to hate something inanimate and ethereal, he did. The ISS had gone dark for almost 24 hours now. He and the other astronauts onboard had tried everything they could think of to jumpstart their systems, but nothing worked. There was no help for them below, as the Earth had its own problems now. R.T. knew they were hours away from death if they did nothing further. The only unknown was whether they would freeze to death, run out of oxygen, or burn in a fire. His money was on freezing to death. For warmth, each wore every layer of clothing brought on board; perhaps four total and their suits, without helmets. Regardless, deprived of any electronics, there was no way to heat what was left of the ISS.
What else could they do? Electromagnetic pulses from the sun’s coronal mass ejections had taken out their communications and then fried everything, including all their other electronics, in spite of their shielding. R.T. figured that the induced currents, still found their way inside to the electronics all connected and integrated into each module. Their handheld electronics and most importantly, their suits unconnected to the modules’ structure, were protected and still worked, but would only sustain each man or woman for a couple of hours. It was kicking the can down death’s road of inevitability.
He supposed he should feel lucky, because only ten minutes earlier they almost lost the whole space station to fire, manually casting off several modules to save the whole. The CME’s induced electrostatic charges ignited the fire. These particular modules were older and didn’t have very much shielding, as they were built by the Russians. Enough said. R.T. figured the next CME, due any moment, was probably large enough that it would have the same effect on the remaining, better shielded modules. He wanted to change his vote now, definitely fire.
It was cold. They were huddled together in Melanie’s research module in hopes of creating a little more warmth. They were tired, spent; most wearing a thin layer of blackness from fighting the fires minutes ago. They silently stared at each other or out the aft porthole of their module, counting the seconds until the next sunrise, which would heat their module up just enough to take the sting out of the cold. Then darkness, and with it the bitter cold of space would soon follow.
The escape modules were out because someone would have to stay behind to release each manually. Even then, there was still very little chance of survival, because each module had to manually deploy their chutes at the right time, something normally done automatically by computers at the correct altitude. Then there was the little matter of running out of oxygen before they could escape their modules.
“I think we all know the situation we are in,” R.T. broke the silence, speaking as their Mission Commander. “Best I can figure, we have only one shot for any of us coming out of this alive. We draw straws for someone to stay behind. The rest of us split up into the two escape modules, and the winner will manually release each of the modules. As you know, each escape module’s occupants will have to guess correctly at the exact moment to pull their chute. If wrong, either you’ll burn up during re-entry or you’ll crash to Earth at 10,000 miles per hour. Further, you’ll have to set your suit’s O2 on a barely passible setting, and then have enough left to be able to pop your helmets off before passing out and then suffocating. Any of you surviving that long will probably still die of hypercarbia. Any questions?”
Everyone was silent, their highly intelligent and educated brains already deducing the same scenario long before their commander spoke.
R.T. held out eight strips of paper, the bottoms covered by the palm of his hand, waiting for someone to start their lottery of death.
Melanie reached first. “I guess I’ll get us started.” She drew a long strip of paper, but held back any outward sign of her happiness. No one but R.T., who watched her response, could see it. R.T.’s resolve was strengthened, knowing she would have a chance.
Each participant’s strip of paper drawn appeared long. Their reactions were similar, not as reserved as Melanie’s, breathing a long release of air upon realization, and then taking in oxygen and momentary relief into their lungs. When the last participant waited an extended measure of time to choose from what was believed to be a fifty percent chance at death or a remote possibility of life, he too breathed a long sigh of relief. Then, all looked at their commander, all but one of their knowing faces full of acceptance, and relieve it wasn’t them. Tears filled Melanie’s eyes.