Kill Switch

PROLOGUE

Where were you when the lights went out?

That’s the question, isn’t it?

What’s your answer?

Were you caught by the dark, frozen into the moment, suddenly reminded that civilization and the comfort of infrastructure are just a garment we wear? A fragile convenience. Did the sudden dark remind you that all of the things we expect to be there for us, to protect us, shelter us, provide for us, are fleeting and finite?

Were you one of the cynical ones, the doomsday-prepper types who saw everything go dark and, for one moment, stood there with a smug smile, gratified by the substance of your own prophecy? And then a moment later it caught up to you that there are a great number of things about which you never want to be right.

Did you think it was all a mistake? An error? A fault in the system, or bad wiring in the grid? You were absolutely sure someone was going to come and fix it.

Any.

Second.

Now.

Were you one of the unlucky ones who slept through the first hours of it, accepting darkness as ordinary and correct, only to be called awake by something we civilized people have forgotten about? Silence.

Did you try your cell? Your landline? Your laptop? Did you go old school and turn on the TV only to find that the cable was as dead as the lights?

There was a moment, wasn’t there? When you realized that the lights weren’t coming back on. That maybe they wouldn’t. That maybe they couldn’t.

What did you feel right then, at that moment when the truth whispered to you from the darkness?

What was the content of your thoughts, the constituents of your prayers?

Tell me.

When it all went dark, did you think it would last?

And last?

Or did you think — as so many did — that this was the end? The actual “it.” The stopping place, not just of the world as it was, but of your life as you needed to live it?

In that moment, what did you think? What did you believe?

Where were you when the lights went out?

Me?

I was trying to keep those lights on. Trying to hold a candle in the darkness. Losing ground with every step.

And when the lights went out I fell into the big, bottomless black.