Free Digital Winter by Mark Hitchcock Page B

history’s banana peel.
    At least the US had some moral sense. Not much, but some. In his dark hours, he wondered if the best days of the country were behind it.
    He pushed those thoughts away. Negative thinking never achieved anything in his life. Focus did. Dedication did. Determination did. Optimism—well, that just made life a little more pleasant. But the dark cloud that hung near the ceiling of the Oval Office couldn’t be blown away by the winds of positive thinking. It was nearly impossible to be an optimist in this city, in this building, in this famous office. At least one problem was off his plate. He had never been so happy to see the lights come back on. To prove the point, he pulled the chain on the green-canopied banker’s light at the edge of his desk. The lamp was a cheap knockoff of the old lights popular decades ago, but his daughter had given it to him when she was twelve and he had won his first term in congress. She had saved her allowance to buy it, and the lamp had sat on his desk ever since. When he took the White House, he saw no reason to change the tradition.
    The 60-watt bulb glowed beneath the curved green diffuser. Larger 100-watt light bulbs became illegal to sell in 2012, and 60-watt incandescents followed suit earlier this year. He wondered what the political repercussions would be if the country learned their commander in chief harbored an illegal product right on his desk. The thought made him smile.
    Then the light went out. All the lights went out.
    The door to the office opened, and Frank Grundy poked his head in. “Mr. President—”
    â€œI know, Frank. We’re on lockdown.”
    Three Secret Service agents poured into the room. Barlow had a bad feeling.

8
Descent of Darkness
    NEW YORK CITY
POPULATION 8.5 MILLION
    R udy Watt was one in a million. Maybe one in a hundred million. He spent his life in what his grandparents would have called an iron lung. But there was no iron in his cocoon. He was in a clear acrylic cylinder with a suitcase-sized ventilator resting on the floor.
    Rudy had spent the last two years in the device—a small amount of time compared to those who lived during the days of polio. Some, he had been told, had lived for years on devices that did their breathing for them. Negative pressure breathing they called it.
    He called it prison.
    His mother and father reminded him daily how lucky he was to be alive. He didn’t feel lucky. Instead he cursed fate for not letting him die in the gutter where his head hit the curb after he fell from his motorcycle. Back of the head, above the Atlas vertebrae. His spinal cord remained intact but not the portion of his brain that governed autonomic respiration. The fall killed the medullary respiratory center but left the rest of his brain alive.
    Most people in his condition would be attached to devices that forced air into their lungs. He had been on a ventilator like that for a while, but it failed to do the job. This was his only other choice.
    Yep. Lucky.
    When the lights went out for the second time that day, Rudy prayed they would stay off just long enough for the battery backup in his respirator to die. A thirty-year-old man shouldn’t have to live with his parents and be cared for day and night.
    The backup generator kicked in again, and Rudy cursed his luck.

    LOS ANGELES
POPULATION 4 MILLION
    Harold Dack was unlike his peers. He loved driving a school bus. The noisy children made him feel young again. Sure, they could be nuisances, but those nuisances would one day run this world. The burdens of work and family would settle on them soon enough. Let them make noise as long as they didn’t fight.
    The elementary students had been stuck in school for hours while teachers waited for the power to come on. Finally, school had been canceled and the bus summoned early. Those who had adults waiting for them were released, and those who didn’t were allowed to stay at the school