Morning all and happy Monday to you. Tomorrow I will be taking the Fourth of July off. So there will be no posts. I know, most of the activities, barbecue, fireworks will all take place in the evening but a very important event will take place in the daylight hours. And that will be a quest for a new computer. Yup my old desk top gave up the ghost this weekend. It is twelve years old so I am not terribly surprised but I was hoping to get another year or so out of it. Admittedly I said the same thing last year and possibly the year before but it has been a rough couple of years with things other than the age of my desktop on my mind. The thing that really bothers me is that I moved several things to the desk top so they would be in easy reach for me to work with on a daily basis. Yeah, not copied to the desk top moved. Like an idiot.
So now I have lost three manuscripts and about fourteen short stories. Because I was an idiot. I knew better, I just didn’t do better. Let me serve as a warning. So today I am going to work on seeing if anything can be salvageable by a computer necromancer and tomorrow the quest for a replacement begins. I am working on my back up laptop in case anyone is wondering. And kicking myself about the lost documents. Which sadly I can’t blame on anyone but myself.
So with all of that, let’s start the morning prompt.
I sort of know how he got from the office to the road, but I think the story is actually about how he got to the road. It has that sort of feel. It will talk much longer than fifteen minutes to get me there.
Monday, July 3rd, 2023: He drove deep into the night.
He drove deep into the night. His headlights made a tunnel through the darkness as the strip of gray asphalt led him on. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he had to go. He hadn’t planned to leave this morning. This morning everything was nice, normal, routine. He woke up. He had his breakfast. He drank his coffee. He said goodbye to his wife.
Traffic was heavier than normal on the drive to work and he fretted about being late. Still he managed to leave early enough that he just squeaked in five minutes early instead of his usual ten. At his desk, he booted up his computer.
That was when things started to go wrong for him. About the time his computer warmed up, he received a text from his wife. She was leaving him. She would not be there when he returned and there was nothing he could do about it. The text was longer, talking about finding her true love and moving on, but that was the gist of it.
His mind was whirling as he set aside the phone.
Then the lights flickered. All around him his coworkers joked about a storm. As the sky was clear blue when he arrived, he didn’t think that was an option. The lights stabilized and then the computer screens started flickering. Tom watched his screen go from his normal desktop to blue, to green, to yellow and then to white before it flicked off like a television set after the off button was pressed.
Exclamations from the others let him know that he wasn’t the only one staring at a completely blank screen. Supervisory staff told everyone that the IT department was called and they were to simply wait. Tom sat back in his chair and looked at his cell phone. He read over Claire’s text. He looked for details, answers. There were none. She said it wasn’t his fault. She was gone and loved another. There was nothing he could do.
The cell phone went blank and he heard more exclamations. His wasn’t the only one. All cell signals seemed to have been lost. There were jokes about unreliable carriers, but it seemed no matter whose cell service you used, your phone was dead.
Then the lights went out again. By the light coming in from the large bank of windows, he saw people start to get nervous. Something was going on. Something out of their control and possibly out of the control of their IT department.
It was beginning to feel supernatural.
Then someone realized that the sky was not so blue any more. It had darkened to gray. A storm was approaching. Lightning flashed in the dark clouds that seemed to have rushed in when no one was looking.
“Rain was listed as possible,” someone said. “When I checked the weather report, but it looked like the storm was going to pass south of here.”
Tom didn;t know what storm she was talking about. His checking of the weather mostly involved looking out the window to see if he needed an umbrella.
Sirens started going off around the city. He knew they were there to warn of hurricanes coming ashore, but given their position they were rarely used. There hadn’t been a storm to make landfall in their area in more than twenty years.
Ten til Midnight 