The Porter’s house was even calmer than the Davis’.
Despite having five extra little girls plus Eddy, everything was going as well
as could be expected. Jill was getting the children back to sleep, and Bob had
just finished sealing off the house. Thank God the baby did not wake up. Based
on his training Bob was confident they were safe from conventional fall-out,
and he had done all he could to safeguard his family and little guest.
As he was taping up the front windows, he saw the
majority of his neighbors out in the cold getting into their cars and driving
off. Just after he got the last window sealed on the back of the house, he saw
it. Gray ash falling from the sky very light, but definitely there it was
against the newly fallen snow. He had no actual data to go on, but he reasoned
that with the wind uncharacteristically, coming off the lake to the Southwest,
the fallout was coming from downtown Chicago. Not good, he thought … not good
at all.
They were having another winter like they had in 2014,
cold and snowy as hell. The last 10 had all broken records for being warm, so
it was a shock to people who were not used to the way winter used to be. Hardly
anyone doubted climate change anymore. The few last deniers, who were being
paid by the dying fossil-fuel industry, were on the old Internet and cable news
shows once again lying through their teeth for money.
Somehow the Porter home still had power, and they were
staying warm. He guessed the wind generators just out of sight from Chicago on
Lake Michigan were running at full blast. The wind was blowing quite well
outside, and he knew it was howling on the lake.
He actually had two pallets full of bottled water that he
was going to deliver to the Ice Cycle Bike Race scheduled for next Saturday on
Lake Michigan’s frozen surface. The things people think of to do. Exercising
longer than to keep in shape, was stupid in his mind and a waste of time. That
race is not happening now, he thought.
He moved both pallets of water a couple of gallons at a
time from his heated garage down to the basement where it would always be 50
degrees or so despite what was going on outside. With the wind farms offshore
their power was cheap, he could afford to have a heated garage.
They were in relatively good shape if nothing else
happened. He managed to get a text message through and a reply from all the
parents of the little girls but then nothing since. His radio died, and it used
the old-fashioned kind of batteries and not the LiFePo that everything else
used nowadays. These types of cells powered both of their cars and were why he
still had power. The vehicles could be used to power the house in emergencies.
Battery technology had really taken a leap in 2018 when
that single Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada started pouring out more lithium
batteries per annum than had previously been produced worldwide; just one
factory.
Time to go to bed. His mind was wandering.
***
Jill’s mind was running on overload, but she kept it from
showing. She knew that if she panicked, the kids would all feel it, and then
all hell would break loose. She had to trust Bob, and thankfully that was easy
to do. He was messy and sometimes pretty thoughtless, but there was nobody
better in a pinch than good old Bob. He had taken every course on disaster
management from the old FEMA and now the new NEM, all via the Chipnet and the
aging Internet.
Both he and his wife had implanted Chips, and they both
loved them. It really helped keep their sexual drives alive. The most popular
app on the Chipnet was one that basically fooled your brain and made your
partner look like anyone you wanted them to. The inventors of the Chip must
have known that it would be used for this kind of thing. Bob had been making
love to the old movie star Jennifer Lopez (as she looked in 2009) for the last
three weeks. Jill had been loving it up with that new heartthrob Kid Karsten.
It wasn’t cheating. They both knew exactly who they really loved. It just kept
things fresh, and boy did it work.
Anyway, enough of that, she thought, time to concentrate.
We have plenty of water. Martha will take some extra care, but nothing they
couldn’t and hadn’t handled before. They had baby-sat for her when El and Brian
had gone on their second honeymoon. Because of the Chip, she and Bob never had
to leave the house again to keep love alive. El and Brian were kind of old-fashioned,
which was why they liked the Porters so much. Boy, the thoughts that run
through your head at a time like this.
Back to Martha. She would need that medicine that keeps
her lungs clear, and that could be a problem. They only were given a three-day
supply which should have been enough. We’ll work on that challenge later, she
thought.
The Chips were not working either. They lasted a bit
longer than the cell phones and fiber optics, but not much longer. Bob had been
able to connect with Brian and the other parents’ phones or Chips for a brief
time, but then it had gone dead. She missed it already. Chip withdrawal she
surmised. She had downloaded an article on the subject and thought about it or
placed it in her Memory, as they say.
Bob had mentioned that many of the neighbors were
panicking and doing the worst thing you could do: going outside while the
fallout was its most deadly. Many would be dead soon if the experts were right.
She hoped the Davis’ were smart. They had the old Internet, but not the
Chipnet, so maybe they had time to tap into it and get the facts about the
fallout.
That was one of the coolest things about the Chipnet.
Everything on it was vetted and proven science, or it was not allowed on.
Unlike the old Internet; the scientific community, backed by the Federal
Government, made sure everything was factual. There were many checks and
balances, so it was sometimes very slow to have the newest ideas placed on the
Chipnet; However, if it was a regulated fact or vetted theory, it eventually
made it on.
The ChipApp Bob and she used to spice up their sex life
was a sanctioned App, so there were some other very exciting things in the
Chipnet besides science as well. I guess the folks that studied human sexuality
knew their stuff because it sure worked for them.
The science was always exact, and you could count on that.
In this case, Bob had all sorts of knowledge about fallout and dirty bombs in
his Memory and that was why they were not going anywhere. They would shelter in
place until told otherwise.