New Dark Age Prologue and Ch.1

NEW DARK AGE




Prologue


“Here it is.”
“This is a nice place.”
“Thanks, it’s what we’ve been looking for.  Took us about eleven months but we finally found it.”
“How much did you give for it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“$1.6 million, which is about $200,000 less than it appraised for.  Come on in and I’ll show you around.”
         Syn opened the door to his small family’s home to let Tristan, his best friend since age twelve, take a look around.  The front door opened in to a small foyer with maple floors.  The foyer opened into the family room and led to the master bedroom.  The colors of the walls and the lighting changed to match the mood of the people within based on aroma sensors and brainwaves.  The walls turned a deep blue and the lighting toned down as they entered the foyer.  In the family room a set of stairs led up to a loft overlook.
“I plan to make this loft into an entertainment room, projector wall, astronomer dome and one of those new virtual barkeeps, the one that’s fashioned after a nineteenth century pub.”
“You sure did well for your self Syn.  I can’t believe you finally sold your first book.  Everything’s coming together for you and your family.  I bet A. is really proud of you.”
“Well she sure is proud of the money I made off it.  No, I’m kidding.  Yeah, she is glad.  Our little family is finally going to have a home of our own.  All my dreams are coming true.  After dropping out of college to take care of Aris and the baby, then slaving in that damn factory for years, living in stacked housing, we finally got the break we deserve.  I can’t believe it.  I tell you its all God’s work.  You just stay faithful and he will deliver.”
         The two men walked to the dining room and out on to the deck.  The deck led to an hourglass shaped pool.  Surrounding the deck were ornamental cherry blossom trees, in full bloom.  The deck stepped down on the right to a little alcove covered by an enormous oak tree.  Within the alcove was a small hot tub.
“My god man, this place is amazing.  I’ve never seen anything this beautiful.  I’m really happy for you.  This beats the hell out of our little dorm room back at college.”
“Yeah, it does.  Oh, by the by, we are having a little soiree here Friday night.  Kind of a house warming.  No presents, unless it has alcohol in it.”
“Sure thing.  I’ll bring Mary.”
“Yeah, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen her.”
         They went back inside and sat down at the small bar off the kitchen that spilled over into the family room.  Syn poured them both a drink and turned on the television.
“Late breaking news,” the reporter said “Energy crisis still out of control.  The price per barrel went up another ten dollars this morning.  Chairman Davis of the newly founded International Consolidated Energy Committee released a statement this morning.”  The screen cut to a middle aged man at the U.N. press conference.
“The people of our great planet are worried that the global energy crisis will continue unchecked until we loose all means to sustain the way of life we now know.  I can guarantee that will not happen.  The U.N. is doing everything within its power to find a solution to the root of the problem.  The oil fields in the Middle East are exhausted, no one is disputing that, but with the discoveries in hydrogen batteries, the need for primitive fossil fuels is at an end.  We will, as a race, survive and conquer the demons facing the world, as we know it.  Thank you.  Now any questions.”
“Chairman, Patsy Rien Global Weekly, is it true that there are less than 100,000 barrels of crude pumped out of the Middle East every day?”
“Yes, that’s true.  More than thirty percent of the world’s populations drive vehicles that are not powered by fossil fuels.  The biggest majority of those that use fuel are commercial vehicles.  The U.N.’s immediate plans are to replace commercial vehicles with energy saving alternatives.  We have, as of yet, no alternative to jet fuel but remain assured that we are working on it.”
“Mr. Davis, John Seener, New York Times.  What about the number of electrical power plants that are shutting down due to bankruptcy?”
“We believe those places were a product of bad management.  A natural weeding out process if you will.  We continue to believe….”
         Syn finished off his glass of whiskey and slammed it down on the bar causing Tristan to jump.
“What a load of crap.  This new global government is washing us all out to sea.  Mark my words we are going to plunge into a dark age if they don’t fix it.  The end is nigh my friend.”
“You’ve been saying that shit since we were in college.”
“And now you should see that I was right.” Syn laughed to himself “I’ve always been pragmatic, just like my dad.  It’s the best way to be.  No surprise when it all hit’s the fan.”
“No, that’s being pessimistic, and I’m optimistic.  It always works out for the best.  Well, anyway I have to be going.  I have to pick Mary up at work.  We only have one car, I’m not a rich writer like you.”
“You know I used almost all the money I got for the book on this house.  I figured might as well go ahead and pay it off that way it’s mine no matter what happens.
“Good plan.  You still at the factory?”  Tristan stepped out onto the garage.
“Yeah, I want be comfortable quitting until I get at least the same amount of money coming in off my writing.”
“You always have it all planned out, don’t you?”
“I try to.  It was good to see you again.  Don’t forget to come by Friday around 7:00.”
“We’ll be here.  I might have to walk.  I can barley afford gas to and from work.  I need one of those little electric jobs like you have.”
“There about the same price as a new sedan, and I never go to the pump.  Just plug her in when I get home.  The battery lasts about 300 miles.”
“I may get one.  Tell Aris I said hey and kiss baby A.J. for me.  How old is she now?”
“One and half.  You and Mary should have kids.  It will change your life in ways you couldn’t believe”
“Yeah, I’m sure.  Well, I’ll see you Friday night.”
“See ya.”

         Syn watched his friend leave then turned and went back inside.  He sat down to watch the remainder of the news brief.  More talk of energy crisis.  Syn thought that the new global government had seen its peak the few years before when they took over the failing oilfields in the Middle East and stopped the endless wars.  Syn could hardly remember the United States of North America.  The new government had swallowed one country at a time until all looked to the U.N. for guidance.  That guidance had led them down a slow road to oblivion.  Now the only thing to do was to sit back and watch the show.

Chapter One
In the Dark

         Aris drove in the rain.  She was headed home; A.J. in the backseat when a news broadcast came on.
“City wide power outages threaten the New England states.  Never before has this kind of shortage of power been seen in North America.  Officials were not available for comment.”
         Aris thought back to what her husband had been saying for years and it was all coming true.  Well with our technology we can bounce back from any thing she thought.  She looked in the backseat at her daughter, lost in peaceful dreams.  She turned into the gas station to fill her tank and noticed the man changing the price sign.  Her breath caught in her throat, $15.95 per gallon.  When would it end?  She knew that she would have to get rid of the old gas burner and get an electric car like Syn.
         Aris got out and swiped her gas card that would take money directly from her bank account or, if money were lacking there, garnish her next check.  She pulled the pump handle when prompted and started to fuel car.  Three gallons pumped in and the pump shut off.  She pressed the intercom button and was told that the station was out of gas.  She got back in and started home.  Three gallons would get her about 200 miles.  She turned into the long driveway that led to their new home.  She had already planned how she was going to decorate the house, with touches of ancient cultures here and there.  She had loved ancient culture since she was a small child and read through her first history book.  Now that Syn had published a novel maybe he could push her book about the effects of history on modern governments.  The book was almost finished and with Syn helping with some of the embellishments to the fictional characters that brought a little excitement to the history she knew it would find a good market.
         As she rounded the bend in the driveway a flash of lightning illuminated the house.  No lights were on and she didn’t see light from the television.  She prayed that the power wasn’t out again.  The weather was not normal for this time of year.  She remembered August as being the hottest time of year when she was a kid, now the highs stayed around 85 degrees and had been that way for the last fifteen years or so.  Scientists believed the earth went through certain cycles in global temperature.  After studying air pockets in glaciers they determined that the cycle occurred over 500 years.  In the beginning of the cycle the atmosphere contained more carbon dioxide and became hotter, the last time this had happened was in the early part of the millennium, then as the earth naturally absorbed the excess amounts of co2 the temperature dropped at a rate of about one half degree every ten years.  The scientists believed this cycle was what caused the great famines of England and allowed the great plagues to flourish.  Since the “Global Warming” theory was proved wrong with the evidence of the “greenhouse gases” starting to disappear a new theory was born, “Global Climate Cycle”.  The theory put the earth currently at the end of the cycle.  Over the next one hundred years the global climate would start to rise again.
         Aris pulled into the garage and shut off the car.  The motion lights didn’t switch on.  No power again tonight.  The last power outage lasted two weeks.  Most people had learned how to deal with no power.  Syn said it was a natural instinct to prepare for what was to come.  As Aris gently lifted A.J. from her seat and headed for the door she saw the soft glow of candle light.  As big a nuisance as a power outage was there was something romantic about candle light that just calmed her.

         Drakuv didn’t know where to go.  He had lost his job when the local power company went under from the pressure of the bigger, statewide company.  His wife filed for divorce shortly after saying he was headed nowhere and she didn’t want to go down with him.  The court had awarded full custody of there twin children, Mollie and Ollie, no job means no way to support the kids and the courts had decided that it was better on the kids if joint custody was done away with all together on top of all that the judge had given her the house, too.  He was left with the gas burning utility truck while she kept the hydrogen cell van.  His parents had died in a hospice while the auctioning of their estate had paid for the extensive medical bills and the funeral arrangements.  Drakuv was left penniless with no one to turn to.  He had no friends, having given everything into building a life with his beautiful bride and his children.  Now he just drove on an almost empty tank of gas across the Fault Bridge into the  Southern American Territories of North America.  He hoped he could find work here and maybe start a better life but his prospects were dismal, at best.
         He stopped at a small roadside diner to get something to eat and weigh his options; he knew it would take a very small scale.  Inside he caught the end of a newscast about volunteers heading east to the coast to work on the new Panhandle Dam.  The project was a government funded effort to stop the encroachment of the Gulf of Mexico further into what used to be Mississippi.  The city of New Orleans had disappeared about one hundred years earlier after the fault had finally caused the 9.4 quake that split the Mississippi river in two and caused the coast to sink about six feet allowing the waters to run inland about two hundred miles.  Through the following years the waters had moved inland at a rate of one mile per year.  The project would give him the opportunity to work in exchange for food and lodging.  He could probably get some good leads on jobs in the area and begin to rebuild his decimated life.  He paid for his small meal and bought five gallons of gas and headed into the night for what he hoped would be a new start.

         Rhis had long ago dreamed of leaving New York.  The place had lost all its magic when the energy crisis had reached it.  Now she just maintained a sad state of existence that lacked the appeal of even the small hope of love.  She had given up on dating, knowing she wouldn’t make it through another heartbreak.  The last one had almost killed her by way of a bottle of vodka and a hand full of pills.  Luckily, or not, Sarah had been there to take her to the emergency room.  Sarah had always been there for her.  Ever since they were kids she had taken care of Rhis.  Now even she was gone.  Somehow Rhis had made it through the funeral but it all had left her numb.  She found no joy in life anymore.  The only reason she didn’t finish what she had started was Sarah.  She knew Sarah wanted her to go on and try to be happy, so she went on.
         Rhis stopped in at her favorite pub and ordered a pint.  She sat sipping it as she watched a news broadcast about volunteers heading south to the coast to work on the Panhandle Dam.  She saw it as a sign.  She determined to go there and start over.  If she couldn’t be happy for herself, she could try for Sarah.          The next morning she called her boss to tell him she wouldn’t be back.  He said he hadn’t expected her to remain much longer after the funeral.  He said he would send her a check for the remaining vacation and sick days she had acquired and wished her the best.  Rhis paid her rent and packed what things she wanted and left the rest with the local shelter.  She had always wanted to help the people she saw there.  Noticing the same sense of purposelessness in their eyes as she saw in the mirror.  She hoped her things would bring some of them a little comfort.
         Rhis sold her car at a local dealer.  She bought a bus ticket and headed south.

         Barney cheered on the Armada as they scored another goal.  He drank with his platoon in the local bar as they watched their team fight for the cup.  He looked around the room at his friends and comrades and felt a pang of sadness at leaving them.  He had served in the small battle against the Canadian Nationalist, a small guerrilla force that wanted the nation of Canada to gain its independence.  As a soldier in the UN forces he had served his government proudly because he had a strong sense of duty even though he didn’t believe in a world government.  He had been reading the Bible and believed that man was meant to be different.  The tower of Babel had proven that.  Now his term was up and he was heading east to help in the dam project.  He had felt he was being called there to help with it.  He couldn’t know what was in store for him.

         “Bye, baby.”  Syn whispered to his sleeping wife as she lay in their bed next to A.J.
Aris stirred but didn’t wake.  Syn smiled and gathered up his briefcase and headed to work.  On the drive he noticed that the roads were unusually empty.  As he looked around it struck him as odd that a  usually packed, three highway was virtually empty.  A car or two here and there was all he could see.  He glanced at the multimedia center of his car and switched to the news channel.
“…are.  The solar activity is at maximum, seriously affecting communications world wide.  Many have holed up, scared of the immediate future.  Astronomers say this is a normal part of the 22 year solar cycle.  ‘This is normal activity for the sun in its cycle.  This maximum just happens to be very strong.  We can look forward to geomagnetic storms caused by CMEs or coronal mass ejections.  The only danger is a CME optimally placed on the solar disc where it points directly at earth.  Over the last 500 years or so only a handful of these CMEs have been remotely close to being placed so.’ said Dr. Jim Yves of NASA.  Syn changed through the channels looking for some relaxing music, found a classical station and enjoyed his commute to work.          When he arrived at the plant he wasn’t surprised to see the first level lot empty.  These people would miss work for any reason they thought they could get away with.  He eased up to the top level and parked in his spot.  Walking into the plant he glanced at the sun, nothing looked unusual about it to him.  Syn swiped his card and entered into the building and walked to his office.
         Since starting at Home in Motion, Inc. Syn had worked his way up from the very bottom.  He dropped out of college when Aris became pregnant with A.J.  They hadn’t been married at the time and he had to find a way to support his new family.  Syn had started on the frame mill floor working on a manual saw cutting synthetic wood into predetermined lengths.  He had worked as hard as he could with the options available to him.  Working late hours and doing anything that was asked of him.  Pretty soon the bosses had begun to notice him.  With his college background he was entered into the Junior Management training program.  From there he moved quickly through the ranks becoming the youngest employee to reach the level of Floor Manager.  Only one year later he broke through another barrier, moving up to Vector Chief.  Now as the new V.C. he was in charge of two lines, both producing stress activated, one man recliners.
         Home in Motion produced revolutionary furniture for the working class.  Innovative pieces that proved both functional and luxurious.  He had tried his hand at research and development and produced an office chair that could be linked with the mind to allow a virtual landscape of what the user was working on.  Allowing the operator to see his designs in a 3D, functional model or, in Syn’s case, a writer to see what in real time what he was writing.  Virtual energy allowed for prolonged sessions at the proverbial drawing board.  This piece had been more selfish than anything.  The prototype didn’t make it past the “Brass” because it was too costly.  Syn had bought the “Mind Chair”, taken it home and enjoyed it on his own.  After that mishap he had moved into upper management, putting him on the fast track to his current station.  He had always been more attuned to analyzing problems and coming up with solutions where no one else saw hope.          Janice, his secretary greeted him with a warm smile as he walked through to his office.  He had seen a potential in her when she started as an intern making copies.  She was intelligent and dedicated, not to mention fiercely loyal to him.  Hiring her had been one of the best things he had done.  Aris had once accused him of having an affair with Janice.  She had stopped questioning him after he threw a chair through a window.  He could not convince her that he had no reason to look for anything from anyone else.  The vows he made on their wedding day were still as fresh in his mind today as they had been the day he said them to her.
         Syn pulled his mind out of the past and got to work on the day’s business.  It appeared that the receiving department was having trouble getting materials on time and this was pushing the finished products off schedule.  He would have to investigate to see if he could work out a solution.  The frame mill was having difficulties producing enough pieces to fill the orders from final assembly, after the explosion of new orders incurred from the last salesman’s market.  Syn would have to approve the new equipment that Chase, his frame mill manager, had requested.  So many things needed his personal attention that he knew he wouldn’t get to see the sun again today, no matter how maximum it got.