Situated halfway between York and First Avenues, 421 East 81st Street was a narrow six-story disco-era white-brick apartment building.
Waiting for us out in front of the building were agent Ashley Brook Clark, an intense FBI technical analyst, and Dr. Michael Aynard, a pudgy, aging hipster in a yellow-and-brown flannel shirt and big glasses who was a physics professor at NYU and one of the foremost experts on NNEMPs in the world.
There were a lot of mirrors in the building’s small, low-ceilinged lobby and even more tenants—a tense crowd of mostly older people and a few young moms with toddlers. Several had flashlights to ward off the dimness of the unlit lobby, and some had packed suitcases with them.
Everyone except for the children looked distraught and confused. I thought of the thousands upon thousands of people who lived and worked in the area and felt truly terrible for them. The power was out, and all arrows were pointing to it staying out for a long, long time.
This really was a disaster, I thought, not for the first time that day. Like a flood or a hurricane, it was affecting multiple thousands of random innocent people. It was what insurance companies used to call an act of God. I wondered if that was what this was. Someone who believed he was God.
I was snapped out of my wonderings by a wiry middle-aged woman in a ratty green bathrobe who began arguing loudly with the Filipino superintendent by the front door.
“What do you mean you can’t? ” the woman cried. “Why do you think we bought the damn thing after Hurricane Sandy? As vice president of the board, I demand that you get that portable generator on now. My medication is going bad as we speak!”
“But I keep explaining. It’s broken, Mrs. Schaeffer,” the young, stocky super said soothingly. “Everything is broken. No one’s phones work, right? See, it’s not just the electricity. There must have been some kind of crazy surge or something. I talked to every super up and down the street. This isn’t a normal blackout.”
“But my medication!” Mrs. Schaeffer insisted.
“Your medication is toast, ma’am, unless you get out of here with it as soon as possible,” Dr. Aynard interrupted in a bored voice. “In fact, unless everyone here is interested in what it’s like to live in the Dark Ages, I recommend you pack up your valuables, pick a direction, and start walking until you find yourself in an area where there’s electricity.”
He cleared his throat.
“Ding-dong! It’s fact-facing time, people,” he said. “The power isn’t coming back on today, tomorrow, or probably for some six months at least, and sitting around here isn’t going to change it.”
“Way to sugarcoat things, Dr. Bedside Manner,” Brooklyn Kale mumbled behind me as we stepped up to the super.