Last Exit to Atlantis

In which our Hero sits in the dark at the end of the world for a while

The rain was coming down so hard by lunchtime, a week ago, that it seemed like the end of the world. And then things really went nuts. A downtown sewer line backed up and suddenly a tidal wave of rain-engorged sewage poured into a transit hub that serves a quarter of a million people per day, shutting it down from midday to midnight.

I don’t pass that way so I wasn’t affected by the public transit nightmare that took from noon to nearly midnight. I had a ride home, through a cold and angry summer storm, so I came back to my nice warm house, sat down to read and then heard the punched-in-the-gut thunk-and-huff of the house losing power.

At work, many floors up in a corporate tower, losing power is a vividly tangible thing, as a silence you didn’t know was missing takes the place of computer fans and phone and light hums and the perpetual and thunderous rush of the ventilation system. At home, after the body blow, the quiet is more subtle, but still there. Like the soul of the house has left for an out of body experience.

But power glitches happen, it’s no big deal. And in a big urban city like Toronto, glitches are normally restored in the mere minutes for the operations center to redirect power around the breakpoint. But it was dark under the angry thunderheads. The power stayed out.

It’s annoying when something disrupts your habits. On the other hand, the middle of a blackout is a little illuminating: Internet, not an option. Computers, no power, or need to save battery for urgent need. Television, no power. Video games, no power. Phone, need to save battery. What’s left is analog.

And the world has gone a long way from analog since the last time I’ve had to really think about it. Had to dig to find a radio, which of course needed new batteries. Similar mental groping uncovered the flashlights stashed around the house, and the candles, and the lighters and matches.

I live in a house about half a mile away from some apartment buildings. After it got late enough for some people get get home we started to see lights, which was nice because it put an edge on the outage. When there’s no real information at all, it’s all just a little scarier, but the lights in the distance meant that civilization wasn’t all that far gone, that a short drive away was food and warmth and light against the fall of night.

But for the hour or two that the power was gone, we just sat in the house that was growing slowly cooler, and looked out from our puddle of flickering light at the vast clouds and the bi-polar rain, and the trees whipped in the wind.