The Progression Switch (3 page)

At that, Stacy turned, tried to ignore the growing knot in her stomach, and came in to deal with her innocent child.

“Mommy, I want to watch a movie,” she said drowsily, wiping her eyes.

“I know, Honey, Mommy does too, but look, the power is out. Without the power the movie won’t play.”

Hazel was looking at the DVD player, trying to grasp the implications of what her mother was trying to explain.

She began to whimper and whine, letting the entire universe know that taking away movies was unacceptable. However, within seconds of realizing the fact that a movie wasn’t going to happen, her mind switched gears.

“I’m hungry.”

Great…

Stacy went into the kitchen, and realized that soon the apartment would be dark. In fact, it was only about five hours away. No microwave, refrigerator, stove, heat, hot water, or communication with the outside world.

Panic hit like lightening, cutting sharply into her ancient instincts to flee from danger, stay on the move, and one other thing… find some males.

The last part kept her in place. Grabbing Hazel, packing up necessities, and charging out the door on their own wasn’t wise. Her mom lived too far away, and in her haste to leave the past behind and start anew, she was a ways away from any friends who would watch her back.

While Hazel pretended not to notice something was off, Mom stayed busy taking stock of what they did have. It wouldn’t last long. Within two days Hazel would be getting really hungry.

What about school? What about work? How will I pay the rent? Do I need to pay the rent? What’s Mother doing right now? And on and on, incessantly, as she paced around doing this or that, her mind was ablaze.

Stacy kept trying to remind herself that she didn’t believe in any of the end of the world nonsense.

Earthquakes happen, tsunamis happen.

She distinctly remembered hearing about almost a billion people losing power in India not too long ago. It came back, though. The net would come back. But why was a virus causing that man’s car not too work? How could it be all over the world at once?

A knock on the door finally came, and Hazel jumped to get it. Night drew near, and the power hadn’t returned.

The boy came in first, smiling, and then his father did. He was trying hard not to look awkward or be disrespectful in any way. Stacy decided to go with a dark jacket, blue jeans, a colorful beanie, and a fluffy scarf, just to be safe. He was in a nice blue snowboarding jacket and dark jeans with boots.

“Hazel, Honey, Mommy’s going to the store with her friend to get some things really quick.” With excited eyes Hazel yelled out, “Can you get a movie?”

How strange, as she was about to introduce the boy and try to keep her daughter focused she realized she didn’t know either of their names.

“My name is Stacy and this is Hazel, she’s five.”

The man stepped forward and shook her hand, “Greg,” then he bent down to Hazel’s level, “Nice to meet you Hazel. My name is Greg and this is my son Chad. He’s going to be 12 this summer.”

The uncharacteristic sound of a car’s screeching tires in the distance made its way through her sliding glass door and told the adults that the time for pleasantries was over.

She explained that Chad was going to stay back and watch her, and then said she would get a movie so that Hazel stayed excited and happy. No sense in alarming her, she wouldn’t understand.

As she locked the door reality hit her again. Hazel was being left with the neighbor kid, and she was leaving with a perfect stranger. Things were happening too fast.

The air outside grew tense in the last couple hours, but less people were moving about the parking lot. The sun was setting on a beautiful sky of light green shades and red streaks.

“Do you want to drive?” She asked, because to be honest, anxiety caused her to be a bit jumpy behind the wheel.

“Sure.”

They hopped in, and thankfully the engine started right up. As they pulled out Greg asked a jarring question.

“Do you have any cash on you?”

Stacy looked through her wallet, dug through her purse, and came to grips with the fact that all she had was her bank card and some loose change.

He smiled.

“Don’t worry, I have like seventy bucks, but, believe it or not, it’s from Chad’s piggy bank. Don’t feel bad.”

Greg seemed harmless enough and was actually an aircraft engineer. His commute was farther than Stacy assumed. He traveled all the way to the south end of the island and from there he needed to catch a ferry. Once on the other side he endured a long drive in city traffic for another 30 minutes just to get to work.

In fifteen years he had never been sent home. There was always work to be done, and he moved up the ladder rather quickly. While he was by no means in IT guy per se, the HR rep he spoke to on the phone that morning, before losing service himself, spelled it out.

It was global alright and unstoppable. Nothing that was being done by anyone anywhere was doing any good. Believe it or not, people who barely knew what the word “hacker” meant found themselves glued to powerful hacker Twitter feeds.

Suddenly, hackers were out in the open as though they had nothing to lose. They were openly trying to tell people what the establishment would not. However, whether it was a Facebook timeline, a Twitter feed, a message board, whatever... they went down. Silenced.

Before they went down they circulated pictures, graphs, info graphics, hard data, personal videos,
etc.
That right there should have told governments all they really needed to know.

Over the last decade they spent far more trying to find these guys and gals than other more mainstream terrorists. Then out of the blue, just as everything goes haywire, they all come out of hiding, as in ALL of them like rats jumping a sinking ship.

They wanted everyone to know it wasn’t them who caused it. Sure, they hacked governments and got into plenty of virtual mischief, but they had nothing to do with what they knew full-well was happening.

“So, hey, do you know much about computer viruses? How long do you think this is all going to last?” Stacy wasn’t enjoying the silence in the car as much as Greg was. She had too much to worry about if she let her mind slip.

“Without any means of communication it’s really hard to tell, Stacy. To be honest, I’ve never experienced anything like this. I mean look.” He raised his left hand and pointed at the amount of spendy and cherried-out cars that were left stranded along the sides of their lazy city roads.

The weirdest thing was all the people standing or sitting around trying to get their smartphones and iPods to work.

It was a small town, alright, but liberal, and with plenty of baby boomers. Local taxes were a bit high, but that way they got to keep the old drive-in theater, with a new high-tech projector, a free local transit system, and… the city went digital with as many things and as much infrastructure to modernize as it could.

Thank you Agenda 21, Greg thought to himself in silence as he rounded a corner hoping no one was speeding with all the traffic lights out of order.

“It looks like the power is out all over town,” she commented as she stuck her head partially out the window. She could smell trouble, the way birds sense a disturbance and take flight in the opposite direction before it hits.

The lack of data streams in the atmosphere made life feel, well, clearer somehow. No more hot spots, no more mobile gadgets, no more immense amounts of power moving throughout the air.

Streets were relatively quiet until they got to the main strip. It was packed; didn’t matter though, because the gas station was gridlocked. Nothing moving anywhere, like a used car lot.

“Where are all the police?” Stacy wondered aloud.

It was a good, reasonable question, but Greg put a pin in it and didn’t answer. First of all, there weren’t enough of them on the island and secondly, state resources were likely stretched and faltering.

No one could call the police… and they were having a hard time communicating with
each other
.

***

Getting to the supermarket by car was out of the question, but he quickly pulled a U-turn and took a side street that came to a dead end behind Blockbuster.

“Want to walk there and see what we can get?”Greg asked without betraying his own thoughts on the matter.

Stacy surveyed her surroundings, and answered honestly.

“Not really.”

Greg looked around as well and silently agreed with her. There would be time still before a town like theirs got overtly dangerous, but it didn’t feel safe to leave the car.

He looked at the dashboard; about half a tank of gas. That could get them off the island, but not very far inland. If gas was a no-go there as well, they would be on the streets looking after two kids with seventy dollars and change to their names.

“Here’s the question we need to ask ourselves.” Greg undid his seatbelt and turned in his seat to face her. Stacy returned the favor.

“First, how much food do you have?” It seemed odd to ask that question aloud.

“I figured maybe two days worth, for Hazel and me, but if two more mouths were added to the mix, it would be thinner. And you?”

“Maybe a little more than that. Regardless, if this doesn’t get fixed for say, a month, by then the grocery stores will be pretty much empty.”

In reality, the shelves were emptied within hours.

“Do you really think it will last that long?” Stacy pestered.

“There’s no way to tell, but can we take the chance that it won’t?” Greg had a point.

“Nothing has ever lasted that long before, has it?” Stacy’s voice began to rise.

“In modern history?” He thought for a second. “Well, there were the hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and that other one, Isaac, I think. Those people in New York went without power for a couple weeks, but I’m not sure. Tornadoes and things, but nothing has knocked out massive power grids for months on end, no. Hmm, only Katrina that I can think of.”

“But this is like, the whole country at once?” she stammered as she looked distantly at her thoughts out the front window.

Again, Greg didn’t find the need to answer. What to do? It was hard to tell.

“Screw it.” Stacy stammered. “Safeway is only maybe 4 minutes walk from here, if that. Let’s scope it out, see what we can get, and then get back to the car so we can be at the apartment before dark.”

Stacy realized she had no way to contact Chad, or know what was happening at the apartment, period. It really put some bounce in her step.

They left the car, stayed away from the sidewalk along the main road, and were on the outskirts of Safeway before she knew it. Other than tons of people and cars in the road nearby, things didn’t sound too out of control.

No fighting, gun shots, wrecks, or even car horns could be heard.

Safeway was a part of a decent-sized strip mall with a Thai restaurant, a pizza joint, a gamer store, drug store, and a pet store. All of their lights were out, but they looked crowded, anyway, and the huge newly paved parking lot was a mechanical labyrinth.

They made their way through the cars, and as they did it was hard not to notice all the others who were apparently doing the same thing. Greg and Stacy were a part of the next wave. Many had already come and gone.

Once they got to the door, they saw the first police officer. He was standing sentry hoping that his presence would discourage shoplifting, looting, and chaos.

So far it was working. No such luck in bigger cities.

No one was out of line yet. People looked hurried, and pissed off, but there weren’t any arguments and everyone understood the situation.

“Cash only”. They passed the big makeshift sign stretched across a couple shopping carts.

All the stuff that would have usually been decoratively placed near the doors was gone. No fruit, no specials on potatoes, no muffins, soup from the deli… in fact, the deli was completely empty.

A sense of urgency penetrated every piece of plastic and square of marble floor where something or someone wasn’t standing. Greg and Stacy split up with the silent instructions to grab whatever they could.

Stacy headed deeper into the produce section but it was empty. Not even a bag of peanuts or a box of tofu. Then she took a left around the corner into the spaghetti aisle. There were a few stray boxes of noodles; no sauce, no canned tomatoes, no macaroni and cheese - too few options.

She started grabbing what she could, went through the next few aisles, and had a collage of random things taking up some space across her chest.

Chad met her in the chips aisle with a red basket that had eggs, a loaf of bread, some shredded sharp cheese, a little yogurt… perishables.

Other than frozen goods beginning to melt in the freezers, there really weren’t any non-perishables left.

It was frightening.

They both realized it was only moments before the entire Safeway would be empty. What would people be acting like then? What about those just showing up who would be asked to leave empty-handed?

As they stood in line together it was hard not to notice how close night was. It took forever because the registers weren’t working. It got to the point where people waited around while cashiers rounded up to the next dollar and people paid in cash. For items whose prices varied from day to day, clerks went off the last posted price.

No one had very much stuff by the time it was their turn. And already, because it took them about 8 minutes to get there, yelling was starting.

Fights were minutes away. The vibe was intense and order hung by a string. All were aware and readying themselves. Men looked around nervously avoiding eye contact, while women wore masks of normalcy.

Finally, it broke. A woman screamed, men grunted, and the officer could be seen hurrying over to the area with all the wine. Greg managed to grab a few bottles, which was a good idea. They were cheap, local brands, but it was something.

The cashier wasn’t looking anyone in the eyes and seemed really distant. She was eyeballing things, tallying them with a pen on paper covered in numbers, and then… still holding Greg’s dozen eggs, she turned around and walked off.

They didn’t say a word, but stood there shocked, and yet not surprised at the same time. What was the point? Were they supposed to tackle her or start a scene over some eggs?

After scooping up their stuff and sticking it in the basket, they also walked off. Who would say anything? At that, so did everyone else, and that was all she wrote for Safeway. Same thing went for the Albertson’s and after the look of things, the couple was happy to avoid Walmart.

If they hurried they would be back before dark. Walking away from the store was freaky. Greg stopped, then started stuffing things in his pockets and inside his jacket. The rest Stacy put in hers.

It was obvious they were holding stuff, but not too obvious. People were still heading towards the door from the parking lot, despite the exodus from within.

Eyes around them began to narrow, light disappearing, and predators, or those with malice in their hearts, emerged. Police presence was near nonexistent, and within a matter of eight hours the stores in the small island town were bone dry.

Looting would come next, in a desperate move to acquire objects of value. The irony was that at the moment, anything technological was worth squat.

Thank god, the car was still there and no one had broken into it. They hopped in and headed back. The place looked fine; calm even. The kids were OK, but Hazel was none too pleased that Mommy didn’t bring back a movie.

“I guess we should all stick together, what do you say?” Greg plainly stated.

“I agree, do you have any candles upstairs? I have one in the bathroom, and two in my bedroom, I’ll grab them,” Stacy said and then scurried off down the hall.

“Chad, see what you can find, Buddy.” And with that the boy was thankful to be free and on his own again.

While grabbing the candles, she understood that they hadn’t accomplished much other than getting an idea for how serious the situation was on the island.

Cheese, eggs, bread.

About the only thing that could last awhile were some condiments, along with the wine and noodles. But how would they boil water?

My god… they would be out of food in at most four days, maybe five. There was only half a tank of gas and no way to get more. She was completely broke and cut off from her savings and checking accounts. Greg seemed to be in the same position.

The power was out and there were two kids to worry about. The situation was grave.

That night they all stayed upbeat, Greg kept pacing in front of the sliding glass door, and Hazel was treating things like a game.

A tussle ensued after Stacy got irate when Hazel didn’t eat her yogurt and cheese. She wanted hot food, normal food, but the perishables they possessed needed to be saved.

Eventually everyone was satisfied, but they ate far too much. In the desire to keep normalcy near, it turned into a quasi-celebration. Deep down Stacy allowed herself to pretend she was enjoying a family, despite the circumstances.

Greg could’ve been her husband and Chad a birth from her teen years. It happened all the time.

That thought brought to mind the hospital where Hazel was born, were they also without power or any digital technology whatsoever?

It was hard to sleep, but no one had anything to do tomorrow. There was nowhere to go for more supplies, they weren’t desperate enough to leave the island yet, and unless a miracle happened while they dreamed of better days, no one else had a job either.