Power Outage
It was late in the night, though one would have not known it by looking with all the light that flooded my room. I sat and did what one from my generation does best, bingeing on multitasking through the cyberverse, when suddenly it seemed i died. There was no more soft heavenly 60 watt glow from above, no pixilated lights shinning brightly in my face, or even tens of LED's giving my room the softly nightly glow that allows me just enough to navigate through dumping ground of my floor. There was no hum from the refrigerator, no whirling of a half dozen fans from within my computer and around my room, no spinning of harddrive or humming of electricity shooting through probably a miles worth of cables gathered in a mess around the parameter of my room. Only pitch black, the ringing of silence I have become so unaccustomed to, and one other thing, the only thing to suggest life in this new found void I found myself in. A soft but determined, tick…tick…tick…tick. The battery operated quartz clock on my wall, the only thing left still pushing along in my room.
It was evident, the power had gone out. I reach behind me to a shelf, unfamiliar to my mind due to lack of use, and fumbled a bit to find my trust Mag-Lite (™) flashlight. The small button clicked under my thumb and light up the desolate room. A eerie feeling washed over me, what I might imagine one might feel looking at ancient ruins for the first time. Surely these were not ancient, despite the rapid aging of electronics, but the room had the same dead feel, at least to me.
I sat and I wondered what to do. Like a fool, I thought to myself, I had not charged my laptop, or my iPad, or even my cellphone. This room was essentially dead. I sat there like a lost child, unsure of what to do. Everything that I depended on for entertainment was now gone from me. Even my own body started to follow in suit. With out all the artificial light and entertainment, my mind was quickly realizing that it was night and remembering that night is a time for sleep. But I would not give in so easily to this "folly of nature". I decided to explore such a strange new world that was forced upon me by… whatever means they were initiated.
Putting shoes on I ventured out of my desolate room and into the streets of suburbia. It was an odd sensation looking at this new world in it's cadaverous state. The unusually wooded area of Minnetonka does a lot to filter out sound and light which only enhanced the unusual state it was in. I ventured through the streets and saw more evidence of the now electricly devoid city. There were no superfluous lights shinning on trees, or lighting up unused pathways. Windows were left black and empty of the late night television glow, or lights left on as a charlatan's sense of security. A careful listener as I was, I could not even hear the humming of hundreds of air conditioners during this sweltering night. Yet, as I wandered the streets and looked around, it was not an inert darkness, but a proper darkness. Dispite my thriving need and addiction to technology, there was a part of me that knew this was right, how things should be. I began to enjoy the quiet and darkness that emcompassed me, for though my old life was isolated, I now felt solitude. Most might find it distrubing but from my background, I appreciate the annonimity of it all.
All things must end though and soon I headed back to the remnants of my home for rest. As I approched, the breath of life breezed across the neighborhood. Motion sensor lights quickly turn on in a manner akin to a sleeping student suddenly being called on for an answer. Lights, having been turned on so the occupants might awake when the power came back, now flooded out from houses. I stopped and I looked into my room from the outside. There were all those precious LED's, the flashing pixels, the humming fans, that falsity of day and life. I looked back to the buzzing streets, now lit. I gave a soft disapointed sigh as I entered my room. I ran through the vexatious task of resetting alarm clocks and making sure my desktop computer was still working. Then, I paused. I sat down and took account of the event that had transpired. With this now done, I think I'll let my room rest once more, and I with it.
