THIRTY-EIGHT

If asked to name the worst moment of his life, Michael Fisher wouldn’t have hesitated to give his answer: it was when the lights went out.

Michael had just rolled the spool off the catwalk when it happened: a plunge into blackness so total, so consuming in its three-dimensional nothingness, that for a heart-seizing instant he wondered if he had rolled off after the spool and simply failed to notice—that this was the darkness of death. But then he heard Kip Darrell’s voice—“Sign, we have sign! Holy shit, they’re everywhere!”—and the information shot into his brain that not only was he still alive but the lights, in fact, were out.

The lights were out!

That he had managed to make his way back down the catwalk and descend the ladder at something close to a dead run, in utter darkness, was a feat that, in hindsight, seemed completely incredible. He had taken the last few meters at a drop, tool bag swinging, knees bent to absorb the impact, and sprinted toward the Lighthouse. “Elton!” he was shouting as he skidded around the corner and mounted the porch and blasted through the door. “Elton, wake up!” He expected to find the system crashed, but when he reached the panel, Elton lumbering into the room from the other side like a big blind horse, and he saw the glow of the CRTs, all meters in the green, he froze.

Why the hell were the lights off?

He lurched across the room to the box, and there he saw the problem. The main breaker was open. All he had to do was close it, and the lights came on again.

Michael made his report to Ian at first light. The story of the power surge was the best he could come up with, to get Ian out of the Lighthouse. And he supposed a surge could do it, although this would have been logged by the system, and there was nothing in the file. The problem could have been a short somewhere, but if that were true, the breaker wouldn’t have held; the circuit would have failed again the moment he flipped the switch. He’d spent the morning checking every connection, venting and reventing the ports, charging the capacitors. There was simply nothing wrong.

Was anyone in here? he asked Elton. Did you hear anything? But Elton only shook his head. I was sleeping, Michael. I was sound asleep in the back. I didn’t hear a thing until you came in yelling.

It was past half-day before Michael was able to reassemble the frame of mind to return to work on the radio. In all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten about it, but as he exited the Lighthouse in search of the spool he had dropped the night before, then found it lying undisturbed in the dust, the long wire arcing up to the top of the Wall, he was convinced anew of its importance. He spliced the wire to the copper filaments he’d left in place, returned to the Lighthouse, pulled the logbook down off the shelf to check the frequency, and clamped the headphones to his ears.

Two hours later, lit with adrenaline, his hair and jersey drenched with sweat, he found Peter in the barracks. Peter was sitting on a bunk, spinning a blade around his index finger. No one else was in the room; at the sound of Michael’s entry, Peter glanced up with only passing interest. He looked like something awful had happened, Michael thought. Like he wanted to use that blade on someone but couldn’t decide just who. And come to think of it, Michael wondered, where was everybody? Wasn’t it awful damn quiet around here? Nobody ever told him anything.

“What is it?” Peter said, and resumed his melancholy spinning. “Because whatever it is, I hope it’s good news.”

“Oh my God,” said Michael. He was struggling to get the words out. “You have to hear this.”

“Michael, do you have any idea what’s going on around this place? What do I have to hear?”

“Amy,” he said. “You have to hear Amy.”