Power cut

The light went out and the playback began

Pete looked up from his desk at the digital clock on the wall. 12.55.31. Jeff would be down any minute now to relieve him. Pete sighed. It wasn’t a lot of fun working in the basement on his own; it was the least favourite job in the IT department. They called it the crypt, where they had to bury the remains of mistakes made by the people upstairs, and resurrect them into usable programs and files again. They took turns to do it, sitting at a desk with the huge mainframe server belching heat behind them. Someone had to do it. Today was his turn. But it was almost his lunch break.

            Then the lights went out.

            The twinkling LEDs on the server blinked their last. The cooling fans ground to a halt and their gentle hum faded. The electromagnets holding back the thick steel security door failed, and the door slid shut with a heavy clunk.

Deep darkness enveloped the windowless room. An eerie silence descended. Pete was trapped.

“What the…”. Instinctively he stood up, sending his chair flying back on its castors. It clunked against the glass door protecting the server from inevitable human clumsiness. Also instinctively he fumbled for his cell phone, before remembering that it was upstairs in the security lockers. Mobile phones were banned from the server room. Stray microwaves could interfere with the sensitive circuits.

He waved his hands slowly across the desk like an insect’s feelers, groping for the internal phone. He wasn’t slow enough, and sent his coffee mug, only half empty, crashing to the floor. The ring of shattering china and the dull splat of spilled liquid was deafening and made him jump. His knuckles rapped the phone, and he drew them away sharply as the pain registered. He felt gingerly again, made contact with the plastic casing, and lifted the receiver. The line was dead. “Damn!”

Keeping one hand on the edge of the desk, he stepped carefully back, twisting at right angles and tried to locate the chair with his leg. His foot touched something but he had to let go of the desk and move a step or two into the unknown. He found the chair, and pulled it towards him. He turned and sat heavily on it, but missed the centre and hit his left thigh hard on its arm. “Shit!” He propelled himself back to where he thought the desk was, and banged his right knee on the central drawer. “Oww…!”

He turned the chair round slowly, using his arms behind him as a guide, so that he now had his back to the desk and was facing into the gangway between desk and server. The gangway led to the sealed door.

Anyway the emergency lights should come on. He thought they kicked in as soon as mains power failed, but they’d not had a cut before so he didn’t know how many milliseconds, or seconds, they took. They had lithium batteries, didn’t they? Like the clock on the wall. Should have been instant response. So maybe like the server they depended on the emergency generators which might take a few seconds to fire up. Not his department. That was Maintenance’s problem. The real drag was that he’d have to cut his lunch break short and help Jeff do a system reboot, checking every damned programme and fielding an overload of calls from them upstairs.

Pete felt dizzy. His legs hurt. His breathing was laboured. It was like he was drowning. He gripped the arms of his chair. Before his eyes there danced countless pinpricks of light, tiny photons like a myriad distant stars, almost too far away to see yet clustering together like a faint Milky Way filling his horizon. It was like sitting in a dark planetarium with the universe projected all around him.

It was a physical memory. He knew that. It was basic physics. Or biology. He’d seen a programme about it on TV. The brain clings to the last signals it received from his retinas and tries to make sense of the catastrophic environmental change. He was seeing the remains of the light that had been there moments ago. Proved that light was particles, not waves. At least, that was what Pete thought.

But instead of fading, the photons grew slightly brighter as his eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. Suddenly, something like a shadow passed in front of those over to the left. Pete jumped. Fear hit him like a thunderbolt. His heart was going wild, and he could barely breathe. “Hello?” His gasping voice reverberated around the bare walls and machinery. The shadow seemed to be going in circles making him dizzier still as he tried to focus on it.

Then another shadow loomed on the right, much taller than the first. He gripped the chair more tightly. “Hello? Anyone there?” There couldn’t be. The room was sealed. The only person there was him. Yet he could see shadows moving. There was no reply, no sound. Only the echoes of his own voice. The first shadow continued to circle. The second one remained still.

Pete clamped his hands over his eyes but that made things worse. The photons danced frantically and the dizziness was such that he almost fell sideways. The shadows remained, whether his eyes were open or closed. To make things worse, the brief attempt to reduce his vision just magnified his other senses, and the silence became a deafening roar in his ears. He uncovered his eyes.

Slowly, the shadows evolved their own pale glow. They were like the fuzzy images of the 1970s TV set he remembered from childhood, the colours pale and washed-out. Only much darker, like he was wearing sunglasses as he watched it.

When people are shut in total darkness and silence, they start to see and hear things. He knew that, too. He’d heard about it on a TV programme. The brain never sleeps. When it’s deprived of sensory input all the neural connections go into overdrive merging dormant memories and wild thoughts to create a kaleidoscope of sometimes bizarre images and weird associations. It’s what dreams and nightmares are made of. It’s why prisoners in solitary confinement go mad, or confess to anything just to get out. Realising that helped Pete’s fear subside. The lights were taking an age but they’d come on soon. He’d just have to endure the brief experience of shadows in his head.

The circling one took on a shape. A child. Maybe five, six years old. On a small bike with stabilisers, pedalling round and round. The image brightened a fraction. The child was wearing a blue sweater. Pete’s blue sweater. The one he’d worn all summer when he was five going on six and he’d just been given a silver bike with stabilisers. That was what? Pete did the maths. Thirty-eight years ago?

The child was him? It emitted a sound. “Wanna go to park.” It was him.

The tall shadow on the right moved towards the child. It was a woman in a long dark dress. An old woman, stooping slightly. Grey haired. It too spoke, if that was what the sound could be called. “Can’t. Do what you’re told.”

Pete knew that voice. Mother? She was always saying can’t. But she wasn’t stooped and grey 38 years ago. She was when she was 70, though. Here in the corridors of his mind he was five going on six and she was 70. It was disorienting and made the dizziness still worse. Especially as she was dead now. Died when she was 73, two years ago. He leaned forward to peer closer into the gloom, squinting his eyes even though he knew it wasn’t his eyes that were doing the seeing and that getting closer would have no effect except to topple him from his chair. He tried to steady himself on its arms, gripping them tightly. Mother was wearing a party hat.

They’d had a party for her 70^th. If you could call it a party. A few old codgers and biddies from the social club she went to gathered at her flat. The dutiful son ran around making pots of tea, which Mother said were either too hot or too cold, and handing out cake which was either, according to Mother, too crumbly, too dry, too moist, sliced too big or cut too small. Some old man started a sing-song. He couldn’t sing. Nor could any of the others. But they still joined in some rhyming doggerel from the 1940s or 50s.  Pete tried to smile politely but spent much of the time clenching and unclenching his fists in the galley kitchen and wishing it was over.

“Wanna go to park.” It was always thus. Park was where he was free. Home was where he was a prisoner guarded by a humourless warden. Grumpy Mumpy he called her. He was proud of that. He’d invented the name all by himself. Grumpy Mumpy. He chanted it to the rhythm of the pedals on his bike. Grumpy on the left push down. Mumpy on the right push down. Except when he was going really fast. Then it was one syllable for each push. Grum-py Mum-py.

“Can’t. You were naughty there yesterday.”

But it was just a laugh, a bit of fun. He jumped off his bike and onto the roundabout in the playground. Scooted it faster and faster so that a little girl already standing on it started to cry. Round and round, faster and faster. Wa-hoo! The girl was clinging on and screaming. Silly girl. Faster, faster. Then her dad came and grabbed the bars to slow it down. It spoiled his fun like grown-ups always did and Pete jumped off before he could be yelled at.

He leaped back on the bike, pushed it to the top of the slope, then shot down, pedalling furiously at first until his legs couldn’t keep up with the fixed gear and he lifted them from the pedals and freewheeled, the wind blowing through his hair. Wa-hoo! He’d not been this fast before. This was fun. He careered down the slope but steering was difficult at speed.

Ahead a family was having a picnic, mum, dad, two, three kids, he was going too fast to count, all spread out on a rug on the grass near some trees. Aim for the trees or go straight on? No contest. He didn’t fancy hitting a tree. It might hurt. Wa-hoo! He ploughed across the rug, somehow missing the people but sending paper plates of food and plastic cups of juice flying in all directions. That was a laugh. Faint cries of anger reached his ears but he sped on.

“You naughty boy! Stop! You could kill someone!” Mother’s hoarse voice from the other side of the apparition fell on deaf ears.

The spectres faded and the photons danced. The stabilisers grew larger, as large as the main wheels. The handlebars bent into a circle. A roof appeared over his head. He was shooting around country lanes in his silver Mondeo, bought for a few hundred earned during his summer job in a factory between school and university. The windows were wound down. The wind was blowing his hair. The needle crept up. 50, 60, 70. Wa-hoo!

“Faster, Pete” cried a voice from the back seat. “Yeah! Do a ton, Pete!” shouted another.

He pushed his right foot down. Mumpy. A tractor loomed ahead, close to a blind bend. Grumpy left pedal to slow or Mumpy right pedal to power past? No contest. Wa-hoo! He swerved out and round the tractor sending his passengers rocking violently from side to side. An oncoming car flashed its lights and blared its horn, pulling into the hedgerow on its near side. Pete straightened out and sped on. In the mirror he could see the car ploughing into the hedge and its nearside wheels sinking into a ditch. “Missed!” cried a victorious voice from the back. “Nice one, Pete”, cheered another. That was a laugh, that was.

“Naughty boy!” Mother was still there, and not amused. “You could have killed yourself!” The big shadow on the right moved menacingly towards the smaller one on the left, which was now circling slowly. Grumpy Mumpy could never see a joke. “Get in!” He was thrust through the prison door. “Go to your room! And don’t expect any tea.”

All went quiet in the shadow world then Pete saw himself creep down the stairs and steal drink and sausage rolls from the kitchen. He liked sausage rolls. And drink. There was a girl there. Big girl, a young woman. Hard to see in the gloom but she was wearing a short black skirt and clingy red top. She looked vaguely familiar. What was her name?

Other shadows were partying in the background. No idea whose kitchen it was. Some student pad, probably. She looked like a fellow student. Not from his course, though. They had drinks. And sausage rolls. He and the girl. What was her name? Couldn’t remember. More drinks. The sausage rolls had run out. They got talking. Well, dancing, really. Couldn’t hear to talk. Everyone was doing it. The room was crowded. All pressed up against each other. It was a good laugh. As the night wore on they spread out into other rooms. He couldn’t remember much else. The drinks had obliterated his mind.

He woke up on the floor. Cans and bottles around. One was digging in his left thigh. Tried to haul himself up and banged his right knee on the sofa he’d fallen off. A short black skirt appeared close to his face. An arm in a red top starting hitting him, pushing him back onto the floor.

“Bastard!”

Hang on, what’s she so upset about? Vague, shadowy memories re-emerged. She wanted it. He’d only done what everyone else was doing. That’s what parties were for. Just a bit of fun. He raised his arms to protect his head. Wished he could remember her name. She kicked his head and said something about going to the health centre.

“Naughty, naughty boy. You always go too far.” The girl grew taller and older and the skirt grew longer and he grew smaller. He was back on his bike with stabilisers, circling again, and Mother was aiming blows at his head before retreating back to her side of his optical range. The Milky Way in the background was glowing more brightly, and the stars seemed slightly larger. He was even more dizzy and his head hurt.

“Wanna go to park.”

“Mind you behave. Play nicely. Don’t go out of my sight.”

Grumpy Mumpy sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Or whatever stuff grown-ups ate when they sat in utter boredom in the park watching their kids have a laugh, passing the time staring into space and eating something in their handbag because there was nothing else to do. It was probably cabbage. Or spinach. Grown ups always seemed to eat cabbage. Or spinach. Even with sausage rolls.

The long slope again. It was his favourite. Wa-hoo! But it got boring after a while, just going up and down. He pedalled towards the café near the gate. There was a busker there. He was always there. Strumming a guitar and wailing something. People dropped money in his hat on the ground. The little boy in a blue sweater, five going on six, pedalled past him a few times. The little boy found that by approaching him at an angle, he could get up quite a speed. Wa-hoo!

He had several trial runs. Then he picked up speed and for the last few yards freewheeled with his feet off the pedals and his legs out straight. Right by the busker. And oh dear, his trailing leg made contact with the hat and sent it flying. Coins in all directions. That was a laugh, that was.

And the coins flew up like pigeons when he chased them and he reached out and caught one and sat on its back and sailed up into the air and the clouds were floating past the window and the stewardess was bringing drinks round.

“Go on Pete! Ask her for a date!”

So he did.

“That won’t be possible, sir,” she said politely.

“That won’t be possible, you fool,” echoed Grumpy Mumpy. She was sitting on the aircraft wing staring at him. Was there anywhere in his head where she wasn’t looking on? “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The stewardess leaned across the seats on the opposite side of the aisle.

“Go on Pete!” said his mate next to him, nodding towards her. “Yeah. Go on Pete!” said his mate in the row behind.

So he did. And the stewardess called the chief steward and the chief steward called the captain and between them they put him in restraints for the rest of the flight.

“We take assaults on the crew very seriously,” said the captain.

Assault? It was only a playful slap. So he got his mate to get the plastic antlers out of his bag in the overhead locker, and he wore them for the rest of the flight. It was his stag weekend, after all. Just a bit of fun.

Outside the window the sky was dark but the stars were bright. They were more differentiated now. Larger photons. The lake beneath them was still and unruffled, reflecting the universe in its glassy surface. “Lovely night,” murmured Clare, lying on her back on the shore and looking up into the endless void. Clare. His ex. He recognised her. You always recognise your ex. Some memories can never be erased. Some ghosts can never be exorcised. “They just seem to hang there and it’s like time stops. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Pete grunted. Time couldn’t go fast enough for him. Not here, anyway. And beauty was a pint or four and a pole dancer. Or at least Man United on Sky Sports in a crowded bar with his mates.

“Look! There’s a shooting star! Make a wish, Pete!”

He wished for a drink. She’d wanted to go somewhere quiet for their honeymoon. Said it would be romantic. Just the two of them. Quiet? What was there to do in Quiet? Quiet was boring. Quiet was what old people did. Quiet was country pubs with log fires, soft music and no TV or cabaret. Mother looked round at him and – smiled? She smiled? A wan sort of knowing smile, a sort of you haven’t got a clue type of smile. Grumpy Mumpy. What did she know?

The little boy in a blue jumper, five going on six, got off his silver bike with stabilisers, left the new bride, 29 going on 30, still lying on the grass. He ran to the edge of the lake. He picked up some stones and began throwing them into the water. He found some flat ones and skimmed them over the surface. One was brilliant: one, two, three, four – five! His best skim ever! The stone finally plopped under the surface which immediately glazed over. It left a little dark hole.

“You’ve spoiled it now,” complained Clare.

“You’ve really done it now!” shouted Mother. His best ball was now nestling somewhere inside Mr Granger’s greenhouse next door.

“Bird did it!” said Pete. “Flew straight in.” He’d seen birds hitting the house window.

“You naughty boy! You destroy everything. Go to your room!”

The disturbance made the stars dance violently, the dizziness became suddenly worse, his breathing shallow, and fear gripped him tightly. He climbed the stairs and sat down. Opposite him the interview panel stared at his application form on the table in front of them. He hoped they hadn’t double checked the grades and qualifications he’d written on it. Nor that they’d checked the highly inflated experience he claimed he’d acquired since leaving university.

The shadows were moving more quickly now. His breathing had all but stopped. His legs and head hurt. So did the tension in his chest. The panel listened to his blagging. They gave him the job. He’d had it for several years. Taking his turn in the crypt.

Waiting for the lights to come on. Shadows dancing crazily. Mother – no, it was Clare – flew across his field of vision. She had a bump in front of her. Around her were his mates. They were always there. Clare flew back, the bump had disappeared and she was pushing a screaming baby in a pram. His mates were looking on, laughing. Clare was crying. “You spend more time with them than with me.”

Not true. He spent more time at work than with them, but clearly that didn’t count. Down in the crypt. Boring, but it paid the bills especially as he was having to rent a flat and pay something to Clare for baby Sammy.

Mother hopped in. “Knew you’d have to pay for your excess one day.” And hopped out again.

Down here though he could have a quiet laugh. Not quiet as in Quiet, but quiet as in private. Having remote access to most of the computers in the building – being one of the privileged few in the IT department – he could plant little programs that would pop up unexpectedly. Usually just random pictures on random screens – celebrities, mainly, who’d say a few words and then disappear, giving the workers a thrill. Father Christmas, taking away presents instead of leaving them. Ghosts at Halloween. Harmless stuff like that.

On his mates, though, he planted videos of strippers, who disappeared just when their act got interesting. The real fun was that they never knew when the girl would appear on screen, which was a hoot if they happened to have a manager looking over their shoulders at the time. He hadn’t messed with accounts, yet, but was trying to find a fail-safe way of boosting his salary, not by a lot – just a few fictitious expenses here and there to make it look legit; no point in being greedy. That would be a laugh.

The images sped faster and faster. Glowing screens with cavorting strippers at work. Screaming kid and moaning wife at home. Old home, anyway. Grumpy Mumpy prowling round the edges of the star-bright background. Mates in the pub. Pole dancers. And the night he didn’t go home. That one seemed to be going round and round, as if he was out of his body and circling his living room.

“Where’ve you been?” screamed Clare. He couldn’t remember. “Who was she?” He couldn’t remember that, either. “We’re done,” she shouted. “Go.”

“You’re done,” echoed Mother. “Go.”

The little boy, five going on six, wearing a blue sweater, ran down the stairs, jumped on his silver bike with stabilisers and pedalled off towards what looked like the beginnings of a sunrise. The sky was becoming bright. The stars were disappearing. But there were still two shadows. A child circling on the left. But smaller, younger now. Three, maybe? Not with a blue sweater and riding a silver bike with stabilisers. This one had a red sweater, and was on a tricycle. There was a woman on the right. Shorter than Mother, more athletic.

The child had a mop of blonde hair. He spoke. “Go park.” The voice sounded familiar but it wasn’t his.

The woman had blonde hair hanging over her shoulders. Clare’s hair. She responded enthusiastically: “Yeah! Let’s go to the park!”

They were on top of a slope. The child mounted the trike. “Go, Sammy” yelled Clare. Sammy? His kid? It was Pete’s slope. In Pete’s park. And Sammy his kid was careering down the slope towards the trees. There was a family with a picnic spread out on a rug. Clare was running beside him.

“Wa-hoo!” shouted Sammy.

“Wa-hoo!” echoed Clare. And she reached down and gently steered him away from the trees and the family.

“That looks fun!” one of the adults on the rug said.

“Keeps me fit!” laughed Clare.

They reached the bottom of the slope. “Again!” shouted Sammy.

“Again!” echoed Clare. And she picked up the tricycle in one hand and held Sammy’s hand with the other and began walking back up the slope.

The light was really bright now. It was like he was looking into the sun. He tried to shield his eyes. The now-grey, semi-translucent figure of Clare looked up the slope. The light was starting to bleach out her face. She looked straight at Pete, and smiled. An I’m OK smile. A sort of “stuff you, mate, this is the life” sort of smile. And Sammy looked up too and grinned. A three year-old’s grin for which the boy’s brain had no words, no concepts, only feelings. A sort of “this is fun” kind of grin. An “I love my mummy” sort of grin.

The light was blinding. Pure brilliant white light. Chasing the shadows away. Clare and Sammy disappeared. Mother was nowhere to be seen. Pete stopped breathing.

The back-up generators spluttered into action, sending puffs of diesel exhaust through vents into the street above. The emergency lights flickered on, dimmer than the usual mains-powered fluorescent tubes but good enough to work with. The electromagnets revived and pulled the security door open. The digital clock ticked on, its internal lithium battery unperturbed by the environmental disturbance. 12.55.32.

A minute or so later Jeff came bounding down the stairs.  “Hi Pete! Workmen outside cut the cable, would you believe! Can you stay on a few minutes and…” He stopped just inside the doorway. “Geez! Oh my God! What?”

Jeff clamped his hand to his face to try to mask the stench. He was rooted to the spot for a few seconds as his eyes focused on the figure in the chair, its back to the desk, facing the server. He turned and ran. Nauseous, he stumbled on the stairs. “Help! Somebody, help!”

People came running. They hauled Jeff up the stairs and sat him down. Someone dialled 999.

A rapid response paramedic was there within ten minutes. Outside the target time, but the lunchtime traffic was bad. He took one look inside the mainframe room, called the police, and left. Easy one, this. Could attend another casualty and boost the response stats.

Two constables in a patrol car a couple of miles away heard the call over the radio, threw on the blues and twos and dashed to the scene. Best bit of excitement they’d had all shift, jumping the reds and weaving around the bollards. They arrived in four minutes. They took one look inside the room and called for a detective. One of them went to the car and got a reel of tape to seal off the room. “Police. Do not cross.” He stood on guard, his back to the room. The other went upstairs and started taking statements.

The detective arrived in an hour. He ducked under the tape, looked briefly around the room, and called for forensics.

A pathologist and her colleague turned up a couple of hours later. They clambered laboriously into white protective suits, white boots, white masks, white caps, and blue gloves. What was it about protective gloves? They were always blue. She always asked for white, and always got blue. The pathologist poked and peered. Her colleague took photographs. They both examined the shattered remains of a coffee mug and the still-wet puddle of cold coffee on the floor. They put the shards in an evidence bag and swabbed the puddle.

The pathologist called the detective in and showed them to him. “Here’s a riddle for you,” she said. “I know you like them. We’ll check this for fingerprints and DNA.” Then, outside the room, packing up her kit, and in an off-hand manner, she answered the question no-one had asked but everyone had thought. “I need to get him back to the lab and run tests to be sure. But at a guess, from the state of decomposition, I’d say he’s been dead for about 40 years.”

© Derek Williams July 2017