Death of the Internet:
Under Burning Skies

by Brian Herbert and Bruce Taylor

It would prove to be the strangest time of his life, beyond anything he could have ever imagined possible. Alejandro Mancusco arrived home just after dark, at the Seattle townhouse he shared with his girlfriend. He’d followed this routine so many times that he assumed it would just be the end of another ordinary day. He hated his job at the county clerk’s office, having to stand at a counter for hours, dealing with the public and their problems and crude complaints—so he always looked forward to getting away. His home, though humble, was a much-needed refuge.

In the kitchen, he and Lotus Renault sipped glasses of white wine while preparing a salad Niçoise. It was a special recipe from her French grandmother, with butter lettuce, small white potatoes, tuna, avocados, and other ingredients, all topped with vinaigrette dressing. Almost a foot shorter than he was, Lotus had Eurasian features, from a mixed parentage. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes were deep with compassion, but her words irritated him now.

“I’m worried about you,” she said, as she cut hard-boiled eggs into quarters and placed the pieces around the edges of the plates. “We hardly talk any more, not the way we used to.”

“It’s just my job,” he said, as they sat down at the table. He poured more wine in her glass, then filled his own. “I can’t stand going in there any more, dealing with the same old property tax issues every day, the same petty office politics. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about it all the time.”

“What happened today?” she asked, with a soft smile.

“I don’t know. I’m home now, so I’d rather not go over the lousy details. Sorry to be this way with you, just had a lot of hassles today.”

“I understand.” She poured a little more dressing on her salad.

Alejandro picked at his salad gloomily. He and Lotus had been together for nine years, and usually she was adept at sensing his moods. Very often she was able to cheer him up, with gentle words and sometimes with lovemaking, but that had changed in the past couple of years. Now only one thing brought him out of the darkness—and he and Lotus knew what it was.

Seductive technology.

As if reading his thoughts, she said, “When we’re out together, you’re always texting someone about silly things, and when we’re home, it’s like you just can’t wait to get to your computer, your smart phone, or your tablet.” She looked down, stared at her wineglass. Without looking up, she said, “I feel like you’re with me physically, but I just don’t feel much real connection between us. You’re more interested in those inanimate gadgets than you are with me. Sometimes I feel like—” she shrugged, “like I don’t exist.”

He couldn’t argue with her. Alejandro’s computer sat upstairs in a spare bedroom, patiently waiting for him, seeming to know he would soon go to it, switch it on and light up the screen—and lift his mood.

But he wanted to prove her wrong, so he said, “I’m sorry. We’ll watch a movie at home tonight, OK?”

“That sounds nice.”

He rose to his feet and kissed her on the forehead, then said, “Just let me go upstairs and take care of a couple of quick things. No more than five minutes, OK?”

Hesitantly, she nodded.

“Five minutes, and I’ll be right back. I promise.” He bounded up the stairs, fully intending to spend a quiet evening with her watching a good movie on television, cuddled up in front of the fireplace. His intentions were good, anyway.

The computer monitor was large, connected to a new modem and lightning-fast internet service. He touched a key as he sat down, and the screen flashed on quickly, displaying a pale gray background color. He issued a series of voice commands, and a moment later he was in the internet, where it awaited his search instructions.

According to his mother, their ancestors had been South American Incas, and he’d been thinking about undertaking a detailed genealogical search, to learn more about his family origins. But he’d been delaying that, thinking it would be too big a task to take on. In answer to his questions, his mother (who still lived in Peru) had sent him a list of all of the names she could come up with from their family, along with a few facts about many of them—one had been a black sheep, two others were crazy, her paternal grandfather had been incarcerated for robbery, and his father had died in a farming accident, when heavy equipment fell on him.

Alejandro had not been good at staying in touch with his cousins, aunts, or uncles, but he’d decided to begin with one of the elderly aunts, who had lived half her life in a village, high in the Andes. Reportedly she had a social media page, and he was going to see what she knew, to augment the names he already had. His mother said she was eccentric, but had always been pleasant. Imelda Mancusco de Iriarte was in her late eighties now.

He glanced at a small pile of books on the table beside the monitor, scanned the titles. On the top was a book about the lost Incan civilization, and beneath that, a tome about Aristotle and other ancient philosophers. Two other volumes were Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, and Black Elk Speaks, the wisdom and ruminations of a famous Native American Indian. Alejandro had an eclectic taste in reading, and often selected them for no particular reason except that they sounded interesting. Because of all the time he spent each day on the computer, however, he’d done no more than skim these books recently, though he’d read the Lewis Carroll classic as a child and had enjoyed it.

Just then, Frankenpude, their furry white cat, walked over the books, and lay down on top of them, disturbing them a little and then closing his eyes. The pet, which Lotus had brought with her when they began living together, was always a calming presence to Alejandro.

Going to the best search engine, he typed in the name of Imelda Mancusco de Iriarte (instead of voice activating, so that he could get the spelling precise), and awaited the result. But in the few seconds it should have taken for her social media page to appear, Alejandro felt a peculiar sensation come over him, one of dizziness combined with confusion. He thought he saw a flash of light that leaped from the books on the desk into the computer screen, and then the monitor didn’t look right. He no longer saw the internet in front of him, but instead seemed to be peering into a strange realm inside the computer, as if he were at a window, looking in.

It was verdant jungle scene, with a large white cat staring at him, and not the domestic sort. This one appeared to be a jaguar, but pure white, unlike any other he’d ever seen. The yellow eyes were slanted and hypnotic, and seemed to draw closer to him, and get much larger, so that the animal was right on the other side of the screen, apparently only inches away and looking directly at him.

And as improbable as it was, he thought he heard purring words coming from the animal. “Have faith in yourself,” the jaguar seemed to say, “and in your abilities. That way, you will never fail.”

Abruptly, the jaguar turned and bolted off into the jungle, with Alejandro surging through the screen and pursuing the animal on foot, going faster than he’d ever thought possible. He ran across moist, soft land, sped through the dense foliage, feeling leaves slap against his face as he followed the jaguar, actually keeping up with it.

He saw jungle paths all around, going in numerous directions, one leading straight up the slope of a volcano, the side of which was covered with dense jungle foliage. The jaguar did not take that one. Instead, it scampered along a path that led toward what appeared to be a temple, the upper half of which Alejandro could see sticking above the dense jungle. He felt sudden apprehension, but followed.

Some amount of time seemed to pass, but Alejandro’s awareness distorted, and grew foggy. An indeterminate while later, he found himself thinking back, knowing he’d experienced many things with the jaguar, that he had taken more than one path with the animal. He could not bring back clear or cogent details, and just saw hazy images of people and places, of temples with robed priests standing on top of each structure, pointing at the sky, and of other holy men standing on top of the mountain, gazing heavenward.

Incan temples, he thought, from his readings. But he wasn’t sure, because the dense foliage seemed more like what might grow at lower elevations, and the Incans lived high in the Andes.

Then, abruptly, a flash of light filled the sky. Much brighter than the earlier burst from his books, it consumed him and hurtled him backward. He hit his head, and blackness consumed him. Then, slowly, he returned to consciousness, and awareness began to seep over him like a warm summer rain. He found himself lying on his back, staring upward.

But he was no longer in the jungle or on the mountain; he was back in his study, sprawled beside a tipped-over chair. His back ached, and he rolled to one side and struggled to his feet, his mind filled with the most peculiar thoughts. His computer monitor was off, as were the lights in the room, leaving it illuminated by only a strange glow coming from outside, throwing multicolored streaks of light through the window.

Staring at the darkened monitor screen, he had the odd sensation that he’d actually been inside the computer, and important events had taken place in there. He closed his eyes, trying to recall more details, but they eluded him. It was like a dream, with essential information hiding in the shadows, remaining beyond his ability to retrieve it, data that scurried away whenever he tried to reach for it.…

He became aware of Lotus entering the room, and walking past him to the large window. She appeared to be in a daze, pointed outside. Alejandro saw the sky aglow beyond her, a burning firmament over the buildings of Seattle, with curtains and waves of flaming reds, oranges, deep purples, and blues moving over the city, and touching the mountains beyond.

“Something terrible has happened,” she said. “It knocked out our power and our telephone.” She shuddered, with her slender form profiled against the curtains of fire across the sky. “An atomic attack?”

Alejandro joined her at the window, gazed into the eerie brightness. He heard shouts of alarm outside, and an explosion in the distance. People were milling in the streets, staring at the small illuminated screens of cell phones in their hands. Some of them had flashlights, and they worked, casting light. Several downtown buildings were on fire, and the unsettling sounds of emergency sirens cut through the air.

A passenger plane nosedived over Seattle, disappeared behind the tall buildings. He heard a loud thump but saw no flash, so it probably plunged into Elliott Bay. Then other planes, small and large, tumbled from the sky in the distance, dropping like dying, flickering fireflies.

He shuddered. “I don’t think it’s atomic. This is different, very different.”

“But what, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Alejandro rushed to his computer, stood in front of it and pressed a button to activate the battery backup. The screen flashed on, a pale gray glow. He tapped the keys, but nothing changed.

He tried voice activation, said, “Access internet.”

Nothing happened.

He lifted the receiver of a phone on the desk, got nothing. Then he tried his cell phone, got the screen to go on with battery power, and it showed the icons of apps. But nothing he touched worked, not even the voice activator. Disgusted, he tossed the phone on the desk. Outside, he saw the frustration of others as they tried to get their phones to work, without success.

“The systems are offline,” he said, “phones, internet, all of it.” He felt his body shaking, but stood up and tried to calm himself. He didn’t want Lotus to see the fear he was feeling. He looked at her, and managed to smile with some difficulty.

“I can see that you’re really upset,” Lotus said. “But don’t worry. We’ll get our power back, and your computer will go back on. The phones, too.” Gently, slowly, she began combing his hair with her fingers.

He pulled away, stared at her. “But the internet, land telephone lines, and cell phones are on different systems, and all of them are on the fritz, along with electric power. Satellite communication could be down, along with the web infrastructure. Whatever is wrong, it’s not good. And there’s more. I dreamed that I fell into the computer, and I was actually inside it, though the details are eluding me.”

“Dreams,” she said. “Dreams are only dreams.”

“I don’t know. I have a feeling that somehow my dream is tied to what’s going on outside. I don’t know how, but I’m sure it’s all linked.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

He pointed out the window. “Does that make any sense?”

O O O

Still wearing their clothes to keep warm, they huddled together in bed, with extra blankets over them. Alejandro had a deep sense of foreboding. Finally, fitfully, he heard Lotus falling asleep, and then snoring softly. He fell into a fitful slumber himself, but kept waking up and looking at the bedroom window. Around the edges of a drawn shade he saw the eerie multi-hued illumination of the sky, and he heard voices outside, the agitated sounds of people who probably didn’t know any more about what was going on than he did.

When Alejandro fell into a deeper sleep, he dreamed that he was seated in front of a computer screen, while Lotus was lying in bed in another room, crying softly, her heart broken. He realized that he was addicted to the technology, that he wanted it more than he wanted her, and there was nothing he could do about it.

His mind went into fast forward. His head pounded. Broken images came to his mind, and they were chaotic, a disturbing depiction of hell on earth. When the images finally coalesced he saw himself lying in the street like a drunk, dressed in clothes that were little more than dirty rags. It was daylight, but hazy dark. Around him were more people like him, homeless people with bottles of alcohol and their few meager possessions. In the streets and on the sidewalks, for as far as he could see, were broken computers and smart phones, and no motor vehicles at all—only occasional bicyclists, making their way carefully around the electronic junk. It was as if everything had gone back to the mid-nineteenth century, with industrial smoke stacks and coal-dark skies—as if the world had plunged into a pre-electric-age darkness.

He reached out toward the images of discarded technology, as if he was seeing them on a computer screen, and he thought he actually touched a screen, as he sought more details, precious information. At his touch, the images zoomed outward, and he saw piles of discarded computers and smart phones all over the world, because none of them were working anymore. People were throwing them away in disgust.

Technology is in deep trouble, he thought. This is really serious.

Alejandro awoke with a start. He stumbled to the window, lifted the shade. As he did so, the sky brightened, and he knew what was happening.

A CME, he thought. A coronal mass ejection, and it’s continuing. The night sky over Seattle was only filled with spill-over light, because the sun was on the other side of the planet.

But how did he know all this? He’d read about such things, and how CMEs could disrupt power grids, satellite telephones, and internet service. But he shouldn’t know for certain. He had no education in this area, no training. And yet, he felt certain that a CME had occurred—and that it was still happening. He saw changes in the colors in the sky—as if there were rivers and currents of color flowing through the atmosphere.

A bright light flashed downtown. He couldn’t see what it was, but something exploded.

He became aware of a woman’s voice in the back of his consciousness, getting louder and more clear, but he didn’t hear all of what she was saying. It was Lotus.

“What?” he said to her.

“I asked if you want to go downstairs and get a fire going. We could sit by the fireplace. I don’t think we can sleep with all this going on.”

“OK.” He felt strange, as if he were out of touch with reality, as if he were an out-of-body observer, seeing himself, the strange occurrences in the sky, and their disastrous impact on technology.

Lotus hurried downstairs in the dim, eerie light that washed through the townhouse. A dismal feeling came over Alejandro as he followed her, a sense of deep foreboding. He felt dizzy, grabbed the handrail as he made his way slowly down the stairs.

She looked back. “Are you all right?”

He didn’t answer, walked unsteadily past her at the bottom and plopped down on the couch in front of a cold fireplace. As moments passed, the dizziness diminished, but his stomach felt queasy.

“I’ll get the fire going,” she said.

He nodded, though this was usually something he did.

She placed three store-bought logs on the grating, lit a match to the paper wrappings beneath them.

Alejandro watched the logs slowly catch fire. A couple of minutes later, blue and red flames were flickering in the fireplace, and he began to feel warmth. The two of them sat together, with a small blanket over their legs.

Sirens sounded outside, and more explosions, some closer than before. Alejandro heard more shouts.

“I can’t stay in here,” he said, finally. “I need to go outside, with the others.”

She touched his arm. “Wait. It could be dangerous.”

“There’s no place safe any more,” he said.

Feeling a little lightheaded, he made his way outside, and approached a throng of people crowding the sidewalk and overflowing into the street, their faces dimly illuminated by the strange sky, with its burning rivers of color. Many of the people were nervous, their voices cracking, some crying. Several were still trying to get their smart phones to work, to no avail.

“What’s happening?” a young woman wailed, holding her useless phone overhead. “What in the hell is happening?”

An old Ford rattled by slowly, and a vintage Studebaker going in the other direction, but people were having trouble getting their newer cars to start.

He heard speculation as he joined the throng, people theorizing that it was an atomic attack, or an aurora borealis that had occurred much farther south than it should have.

“It was a coronal mass ejection,” Alejandro announced in a loud voice, as he merged into the gathering. “A CME.”

Lotus stood beside him.

“That’s what I was trying to tell them,” an imposing black man said, stepping forward. He was tall and large-boned, with bushy sideburns and short, neatly manicured hair. “The CME fried certain technologies—the internet, land-line telephone systems, smart phones, airplane guidance systems, and undoubtedly more that we don’t know about. Down the street, some cars are crashed, because their computer systems gave out. Did you see those planes go down?”

Alejandro nodded somberly. “I saw them. It was horrible.” He looked up at the sky. “We’ll have to get into shelters before daylight, to avoid severe sunburns. Preferably into basements, where it’s safest. People on the other side of the world, the daylight side where the sun is now … I don’t want to think about what might have happened to them.”

“You’re right,” the man said. He introduced himself, said his name was Willem Prentice. “But what about the electronic devices? The shielded ones are not supposed to have been affected. I know for a fact that my computer and cell phone have shielding against such things, because I paid for state of the art protection, but it didn’t work.”

“This is a mega CME,” Alejandro said. “Probably the biggest in history, and not just recorded history.”

“Why do you say that?”

Alejandro noticed people moving close, listening in on the conversation. He recognized a couple that he knew socially. He’d been to dinner with Bob and Olivia Jundy several times, having met them at a nearby coffee shop on Capitol Hill. Bob was solidly built, with a square face; while she was pretty, with short, curly blonde hair.

“I just know,” Alejandro said to Prentice. “That’s all.” Again, Alejandro didn’t know how the information was coming to him, only that it was correct. He felt absolutely certain of that.

Willem Prentice stood taller than anyone around him. He raised his hands and shouted out in a booming voice. “Listen to me, everyone! Coronal mass ejections are continuing on the daylight side of the world, and it’s not safe to be exposed to them. There can be severe sunburns, even death. As you all know, it has already catastrophically impacted computer and smart phone technologies, and other forms of technology. I don’t see any newer cars running at all. Has anyone gotten one started?”

Four men and a woman said they hadn’t been able to, and even though the vehicles had battery power, no one could get the engines to turn over.

“That’s what I thought,” Prentice said.

“What about battery-operated radios?” the large man asked. “Batteries still seem to work, at least some of them. We have flashlights. Is there anything on the radio?”

Several people answered that their car radios and portable radios would go on, and lights would appear on them, but there was no reception, just static.

“That means we can’t receive emergency broadcasts to tell us what to do,” Prentice said. “So we’ll have to fend for ourselves. I want all of you to get inside right away. Gather food, clothing, flashlights, and other survival necessities, and head for the nearest air-raid shelters, or just get into basements, if that’s all you can find, places where you can get as far away from the daylight CMEs as possible. Take suntan lotion to protect your skin, and only come out at night if you absolutely have to, and then for only short periods of time. Even at night, our skin—even my own dark skin—could be injured by the sun. This is an unprecedented event.”

A compulsion came over Alejandro, and he climbed on top of his own parked Subaru SUV, where he stood on the roof and shouted out to the crowd, before they could disperse. “There is more you need to know!” he said.

People in the throng were looking up at him, murmuring to one another.

The image of ancient priests standing on the tops of temples came back to Alejandro, from the dreamlike experience in which he thought he was actually in a strange realm inside his computer, a universe of details that he could not recall in full.

He stared up at the color-washed sky, as if he were a long-ago priest himself, and raised his hands heavenward. All around him the people continued murmuring to one another, wondering what he was doing.

Alejandro lowered his hands, and looked back around at the gathering.

After clearing his throat nervously, he said, “This CME event is so big it fried technology all over the world, took out all the satellites, maybe even screwed up the Earth’s magnetic field—I’m not a scientist, nor do I have any scientific background or training, so I don’t know what the complete explanation is, but we’ve seen the end of the age of computers and we aren’t advancing to any next stage of technology—” He began rocking. “All I can see, all I can see, is just loss. Just loss. No more going out into space, no more advances in medicine, and a great deal of what we’ve accomplished as an industrial-age society has been wiped out. It might as well be l850 all over again, except old cars are running—like in Cuba.” He paused, then added, “Without computers or smart phones, there’s no hope for the future. The future we thought we had, it’s done. Gone for all time.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Willem Prentice said, in a loud, angry voice. “You’re not a scientist, so how do you really know that for sure? Where did you get your information, out of a magazine?”

“Probably off the internet,” someone said, eliciting some nervous laughter.

Alejandro saw Bob and Olivia Jundy talking to Prentice.

After leaning close to listen, the black man looked even more upset at whatever they said. He glared up at Alejandro. “They say you’re just a government clerk, working for the county. Stop talking crazy about our technology never coming back, and get down off that car. The CME has fried your brain.”

Several people shouted agreement, though not the Jundys.

Lotus reached up to him, touched his foot. “Come down,” she urged him.

Prentice shouted: “Don’t pay any attention to what he just said about this being the end of our technology. Just get yourselves to a shelter and take survival goods and clothing—staying alive is what we all need to focus on now. When the CME has passed, we’ll get all of our technology back.”

“He’s wrong!” Alejandro shouted, as he climbed down off the car. “Computers and cell phones will never come back!”

People dispersed, looking very uneasy. Willem Prentice glared at him, and so did others, some shaking their heads in disapproval. Others looked at him with sympathy, as if they thought he was experiencing a mental breakdown.

Alejandro felt sorry for these people, because they didn’t know what was going on—and couldn’t access the internet to find out, and could not receive emergency broadcasts. Would the electric power grids go back on?

He didn’t know, but sensed that they might, on a limited basis. Yet computer and internet technologies would never be resurrected. They were gone forever, and these people just didn’t know it yet. His computer-immersion dream had told him this—a startling revelation that no one else could possibly understand. Certainly, he could never reveal that particular experience, or they’d find a rubber room for him. He would talk with Lotus about keeping it secret.

She was at his side now, guiding him back inside their townhouse.

“Let’s get our things together,” she said, “and head for shelter at the school. That’s where the civil defense system said we could go.” She smiled to him softly. “I checked it on the internet some time ago. We still have hours before dawn, so we have time to get there.”

“What about our cat? What about Frankenpude?”

She smiled again. “They have an animal shelter there, too. We can drop him off, and still go see him without having to go outside.”

Alejandro nodded, comforted that she was at least taking care of their day-to-day necessities. His little family needed to stay alive, and he needed to figure out more about what was going on. It troubled him that he was only sensing things so powerfully, without having any ascertainable facts to support his newfound beliefs.

In the shelter that night, Alejandro sat on the edge of his cot, one of hundreds that had been set up in the basement of an old high school building—a structure that in recent years had been converted into a community center. Lotus arranged bags containing their things under their side-by-side cots, while he just sat there.

He noticed several people who had been in the crowd on the street. Some looked at him as they passed, but continued on their way without saying anything, or making negative facial expressions. Even Willem Prentice walked by silently, hardly even seeming to notice him at all. Everyone had things of their own to do here, as they attempted to ride out the solar event and see what remained of their lives afterward.

Alejandro stared off into the distance, beyond the rows of cots, to a window high on one wall—a window that had been barricaded, with a shiny black substance on the side facing inward. As he stared at the blocked opening, he imagined that it was a computer screen—and a slit of light, a vertical slice of illumination, opened up before him. The surrounding voices and other noises faded away entirely, and he knew he was the only one seeing this light, that it was just for him.

He seemed to flow into the illumination and emerge on the other side, where he stood in the clearing of a dark jungle, under a starless sky. Even so, he could see things clearly around him, including a banana tree loaded with oversized greenish-yellow fruit. At Alejandro’s feet, a large black tarantula danced, and he heard it singing in a strange, clicking voice, “Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today!”

Alejandro shook his head, tried to clear it. But the peculiar images persisted. Overhead a huge blimp puttered by, its reader board displaying: “100° F / CO2: 450 ppm. Eat, make love, buy, and die. America’s Plan for you.”

What the hell? Thought Alejandro. He moved forward into the jungle foliage, pushing broad, green leaves aside that were hot to his touch, and suddenly before him, he beheld a plaza in the midst of ruins that he identified as Incan, from his own ancestry—despite the anomaly of it being in a thick, seemingly lowland, jungle. He looked toward the tops of several temples that were constructed of tightly-fitted stones, and saw the figures of robed men up there—whom he identified from their garb as Incan priests.

He felt something hit his foot. Looking down, a computer keyboard kept bumping into him. “Move the fuck out of my way,” it said. “Move out of my way now! I must find the mother-fucking motherboard!”

Alejandro lifted his right foot, and the foul-mouthed little keyboard surged past him, followed by seven little hand-held calculators that had appeared quite suddenly.

A shadow fell over him. Looking up, he found that he was staring at a tall Incan chieftain—dressed in a golden robe and a headdress of bright blue and gold feathers. He seemed to block out the sun behind him, as if eclipsing it, leaving a bright aura of light around his head. A smart phone protruded from the waistband of his costume, and he had earphones in his ears. When he began to dance, Alejandro saw that he was wearing blue suede shoes. He was singing, too, but not an Elvis song. Instead, it was, “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready—and go cat go—” And he continued dancing around the plaza, a public square that was empty now, except for him and Alejandro.

Then an automobile roared into the plaza and passed close; he identified it as a blue and white 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air, a convertible. Dinah Shore was at the wheel, and she drove along, singing, “See the USA in your Chevrolet!” Behind the car she dragged the dead bodies of four famous South American dictators in their bloody, bullet-riddled military uniforms.

If this wasn’t enough, Alejandro noticed a vibration in his chest, and he pulled a smart phone out of his shirt pocket. He looked at the screen, where words appeared: “Hi! Miss me?”

Dumbly, Alejandro stared at it. New words appeared, this time in red: “Hit reset.” And in one corner of the screen, the word “reset” kept blinking off and on. After a moment, Alejandro pushed it. There was a pause, followed by a scrambling of images and sounds. Then the entire scene went black.

For several moments, he didn’t know where he was. Then he opened his eyes, and realized he was back in the shelter, sitting on the edge of his cot. Lotus was on her own cot facing him, staring at him with deep concern in her eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m not.” But he didn’t tell her what he had just seen. It was too crazy to describe to anyone else. Not even to Lotus, though she would undoubtedly try to understand; it was in her nature to be compassionate and nurturing. But the things going on inside Alejandro’s mind didn’t seem right. Not even close.

Was I wrong about the end of computer and smart-phone technologies? he wondered. Was I wrong?

O O O

He slipped into a troubled slumber, kept waking up. Hours of tossing and turning passed, in which he couldn’t settle the jumbled thoughts in his brain. He just kept mulling over events, trying to make connections, asking questions of himself, for which there did not seem to be any satisfactory answers.

In that time between wakefulness and sleep, he had an experience that was so vivid and vital that he felt as if it were really occurring. He had gone back more than two thousand years to ancient Athens, and was walking with a bearded, elderly man who wore a long white robe embroidered in gold. The man was reciting the verses of a play he had written himself, one that would be performed the following week at a dramatic festival. It would be entered in competition against other poets and philosophers of the day, and he expected to win, as he usually did.

This man’s name, he realized with certainty, was Sophocles. He did not have even the slightest doubt of this.

Even more curious, it was the modern Alejandro Mancusco who was walking beside him in a long-ago time, and as they walked, Alejandro continued to go over his own concerns and questions in his mind, about the disastrous solar event that would strike the Earth in his future time, so that he hardly heard the spoken verses of the famous man at all. The two were in a large private garden that Sophocles favored, a place where he liked to contemplate great things.

Abruptly, Sophocles stopped walking, and placed a comforting hand on Alejandro’s shoulder. “I see that you are troubled, my young friend,” the great man said. “But know this: your troubles are my troubles. You are not alone; humankind has a vast repository of experience and information, and you have come to me on a journey to obtain the answers you need.”

Alejandro nodded, felt so much in awe of this literary giant that he could hardly form adequate sentences to talk with him. Sophocles was such an incredible intellect that it hardly seemed possible to speak with him at all. And yet, here they were, together.

“You are wondering what you can do to help your family and your fellow man,” Sophocles said. “You hope I can provide you with advice, but you are also wondering how an ancient man such as myself can talk with any intelligence about future events. You are wondering how I could possibly understand a coronal mass ejection that will occur in your time, so many centuries from now.”

Hesitantly, Alejandro nodded again, and this time he averted his gaze. The brightness of Sophocles’ genius seemed to radiate from the man’s countenance, from his piercing eyes, and from his words—as if the face of the man was, in itself, a miniature sun that was too brilliant for any mortal to behold.

Then Sophocles said, “You are just and noble, and you know what to do.”

Now Alejandro dared to gaze upon him fully, and saw the most kind, compassionate face he could ever imagine. His words sounded like the pealing of a bell, coming to him from long ago. “You have already begun the process,” Sophocles said. “All that you’ve endured in the cataclysmic solar event, and all that preceded it in your life, were to provide you with the knowledge that you needed—in order to lead others. You shall change the world, Alejandro Mancusco. You are the future hope of the world.” Then Sophocles looked at him more deeply, a gaze that penetrated to his very soul. “Yes, you!”

This image faded, and Alejandro found himself sitting in a tiny restaurant called the Reina Rosa Hamburgeria, with a man whom he knew to be Franz Kafka sitting across from him. In a hamburger restaurant with the famous writer? Preposterous! And yet, it seemed so real, just as being with Sophocles had been only moments ago. He could smell his own burger, and taste it as he ate it.

Kafka wiped his mouth with a napkin, then returned to the meal he had been eating. Except instead of a meat patty between the hamburger buns, it was a large, flattened cockroach, still alive and writhing even as he consumed it, and Kafka ate it all, down to the last squirm, stuffing the wriggling creature into his mouth with his fingers. Kafka had black hair and dark, haunted eyes that gazed across the table so soulfully, so sadly, that he nearly brought Alejandro to tears.

“Look,” he said, “you’ve been wondering if certain events in your life are real—the strange visions in a computer world, the coronal mass ejection, the conversation you just had with Sophocles—and the one you’re having with me now. For the time being, you must accept that it is all real. As human beings, we have a tendency to create the reality in which we wish to live, and you have embarked, for however strange a reason, into a universe of immense challenges. Think of the Temple of the Dark E-moon, and link this to your Incan heritage. Alejandro Marco, you must use all of your learning and experience to be the noble man Sophocles spoke of in Oedipus Rex and his other writings.”

“The Dark E-moon?” Alejandro said. “But what do you—?”

Kafka put a hand up to silence him. “No questions, just listen. Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Of course. Maybe too much—I can’t digest it all.” Alejandro put half of his hamburger on the plate, and gazed outside, up the slope of a huge, treeless volcano, gleaming like a great promise in the early afternoon light.

Franz Kafka sat patiently across the table. “Consider this,” he said. “In a universe where you can’t answer the riddle of your own birth, in a time and place where modern physics talks about multiple universes and multiple Earths—the Lord only knows how many dimensions—who’s to say everything that’s happened to you isn’t real?”

With that, Kafka vanished, and Alejandro found himself back on his cot in the shelter, staring up at the darkened ceiling.

O O O

Two weeks passed in the shelter, without further visions.

Each day was like the one before it, and no one could go outside without special passes from the shelter administrator, not even at night. Then, gradually, word began to filter in from outside that the CMEs had passed, and people would be able to go outside soon. Some older cars and other motor vehicles were running and some land telephone lines were working, but the federal government was saying that there were “serious problems” with all computers, with the internet, with cell-phone technology, and with radio and television communications. Most planes and other aircraft were grounded, because of seemingly insurmountable difficulties with their electronics.

The messages were being transported across the country by non-computerized vehicles and aircraft, because a number of critical land telephone lines were still interrupted.…

One morning Alejandro sat with Lotus at a community breakfast table, and noticed Willem Prentice approaching. He didn’t look happy.

“It looks you might be right,” the big man said. He scowled, and his dark eyes flashed. “I hate to admit it, but you just might be right. I don’t see how it’s possible, but top scientists are not optimistic about the restoration of computers, the internet, cell-phone services, satellites, or radio and TV communications. A growing number of experts are saying that the problems can’t be fixed, might never be fixed.”

“At least we still have motor vehicles and some other comforts,” Alejandro said. “We’re not quite reverting to 1850 technology. Some planes can fly on visual, some trucks and cars are still running, and older trains—but none of them if they’re dependent on computer systems to cover distances. Regular telephone lines are being restored, too, so at least we won’t have to use the Pony Express for messages across the country.”

Prentice smiled grimly, sat down at an open seat across the table from Alejandro and Lotus. “But how did you know from the beginning?” he asked.

Several diners were eavesdropping, and one of them pointed to Alejandro, saying, “He’s the one! That’s the guy who made the prediction about technology!”

“I wish I could tell you,” Alejandro said. “But I can’t.” This was a shading of the truth. He did wish he could reveal more, but didn’t think it was wise to do so under the circumstances. He had not even told Lotus about the last series of events that had flashed through his brain while he sat on the edge of the cot. A dancing, foul-mouthed computer keyboard? Conversations with Sophocles and Kafka?

Wild and crazy stuff, by anyone’s definition, and not in the least bit funny. Yet somehow the weirdness did not detract from the deep truth that he knew.

Alejandro had tapped into something huge and unprecedented. And it scared the living hell out of him.