Flare

“Can you imagine?”

Eagar could. He had guessed the question’s implication by the crowd of people riding the metro maglev, and by the speed of the train itself. After zipping through a tunnel in the blink of an eye, its rush to the next station matched the herd anxiety onboard. Only the lanky girl who posed the question and her friend, both of whom stood crowded inside one pair of waist-high partitions of the train car’s egress, had seemed carefree. They shared a vertical handrail off the furthest partition.

 “Yeah,” the friend had said. “It would be funny if the sun exploded all of a suddenly.”

Sunset gleamed Eagar’s smile, as he took in the subject of the girls’ conversation. Highlighting the angular and crumpled contours of buildings and trees, the sun’s redness tinted the cityscape fuchsia. City activities and its liveliness dismissed notions of the world’s eradication by it. Something the girls obviously knew little about. It would be billions of years before the sun ever went supernova.

The hysteria of the latest solar flare, as the girls probably suspected, was for naught. There really was nothing to worry about. Despite the media on the halo-boards at the upper corners of the train car and the stoking of an extinction-level-event that would never come in the lifetime of anyone onboard. Eagar resented the news, as the reporter’s image scrolled over passengers, along with various health ads and train information. Only those without basic knowledge of stars would buy into the hype.

  If anything, Eagar was glad to have boarded the train before it became crowded, and he directed his disdain for the situation to the car’s window, to the strolling city view just below the rail line guiding the train. All the while, he kept an open ear to the girls’ conversation; he wanted to know if he was right.

“Hey!” The friend had echoed some people’s surprise by a jolt in the maglev’s flow.

Jostled in his seat, as the people standing over him shifted in catching their balance, Eagar wished the conductor would slow down some.

“You stepped on my foot.” The friend’s bark preceded a frown up to the stranger, impressively so given she was all of a hundred and sixty centimeters—best guess. And thick, the lips of her pout lacquered in red. In combination, the deep shade of her eyelids was too heavy for Eagar’s liking. Sensing the stocky girl the unforgiving type, nor understanding to the crowded conditions around her, Eagar so wanted the next stop to be hers.

“My mistake,” the stranger had said with a curl of his lip, the puffiness of his jacket exaggerating his already burly physique. His respectfulness was odd to Eagar, for a tough guy persona. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Man. Watch yo’self next time.”

“Hey, come on, Averill,” the lanky girl said. “It was an accident.”

Eagar’s brows rose to the stocky girl’s name; her attitude and chest thumping made perfect sense now. At the same time, he mocked himself for thinking the two friends were birds of a feather; at least the lanky one exhibited some semblance of common sense.

“I’d rather have my foot stepped on … than some random groping my ass just because I’m wearing a miniskirt!”

Eagar covered his mouth to stifle his chuckle. The lanky girl was also witty, it seemed. In being loud, her eyes rolled over her shoulder, leading everyone else’s eyes to the stranger compressed against her backside. Flustered by the attention, the man turned about and worked his way through passengers. His retreat had vanished behind closed shoulders and the gray scale of people’s attire and shadows.

No, there was nothing really to worry about. Everyone on the train could take notes from the two girls. They lived as the city did for the most part, knowing there will be a tomorrow.

“Anyway, I can’t imagine a world without Andre,” the lanky girl said. “I couldn’t imagine being without him, period.”

“Skye,” said Averill, still upset about her foot, “I swear, if you start talkin’ some Zen life-after-death because our love is so strong shit, Imma bitch slap you. In front of everybody.”

Well, damn. Eagar’s grin presented to an older woman sitting left of him; she had shaken her to the girls, clinging to a deteriorating bag of … stuff, which was the best way Eagar could describe its contents. Though the can of pinto beans she carried had prompted thoughts of Mexican for dinner. 

“Ave, come on,” Skye had said. “Don’t be mad like that. If you would’ve called Snip like I told you, you’d have eternal love, too. And be a lot happier right now.”

The deepness of Averill’s exhalation had accompanied her squirming closer to the doors, to which Eagar had sat perpendicular.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the conductor said over the intercom, “Approaching High Tower station. High Tower.”

A check of the most visible halo-board validated the conductor; and Eagar was relieved that Averill was at least disembarking the maglev, as it began to slow. The train swayed people forward and backward through its entire process of stopping.

“I ain’t talkin’ to you right now,” said Averill.

“Suit yourself.” Skye had slipped past a couple of people to stand beside her friend. “But I still have Andre. I’m going to call him when I get home.”

“If he ain’t caught up in all this craziness.”

That reminded Eagar.

One more stop. Eagar reached into his pocket for his handset. “Call Charlene.”

The soft but rapid tone pulsed through the phone’s speaker and drew the girls’ attention, and Eagar smiled at them, as well as at some others.

The train slowed more as it neared the station.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Charlene. Eagar.”

“Hey, you. What’s up?” Charlene said as Averill had snickered to his name; Eagar could only grin to karma.

“Just calling. Wanted to make sure you were set for the year’s first flare.”

“Oh, yeah. As ready as can be, I suppose. I wish I had some batteries on hand though.”

Eagar smiled at some passengers corralling behind the girls. “Well, you should see this train,” he said as the maglev eased into the station. “I’ve got one more stop.”

“Then you’re at High Tower now?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Well, hurry. You don’t won’t be on the train when the blackout hits.”

“I know. Made that mistake last year, this season,” Eagar said. “I left work early this time. As did a whole bunch of other people.”

“Good,” said Charlene. “Last year’s were horrible experiences for me.”

“Don’t worry.” Eagar’s conversation at least quieted the girls, he catching them on more than one occasion eyeing him. “I’ll be there soon. We’ll get through this year’s first one. Together.”

“I’m sure.”

Eagar relished Charlene’s chortle, its sultry tenor. His smile had widened to Skye’s squeam and palming Averill to his and Charlene’s love language. “The train is at High Tower now.”

It had been as if Skye were a Geiger counter for relationships, the way she had worked herself up to the intimate phone conversation. Averill, conversely, had rolled her eyes in some prayer to the metro rail god; she was anxious to exit the maglev. It seemed the rail god heard her.

The train came to a halt, and after sitting for a brief moment its buoyancy settled to meet the station’s platform. A single ping at the egress had readied people. Once the doors of the car opened, the girls led the rush of passengers. It seemed a stampede of humans, and Eagar watched in horror as Skye twisted and turned in the middle of the foot flow. Then again, he wondered why she had stopped in the middle of everyone.

“Excuse me,” said the woman sitting next to him; she was smart, or so Eagar thought of her strategy to avoid the crowd exiting the train. He stood up long enough to let the woman out and, sitting back down, watched her as the last to leave the car.

Following her onto the platform, he found Skye’s shimmering eyes, staring as she waved at him. He looked for Averill, but looking back to Skye, she was all smiles and thumbs up. Eagar grinned, waving at her haphazardly as another ping signaled the closure of the car’s doors.

“Hello? Still with me?”

“Yeah. Leaving High Tower now, Char.” Eagar nodded to Skye as the train lifted from the platform. Glancing to the halo-board, a hum waving under the floor of the train with its levitation, he added, “Six minutes until Powel-Danby. Plenty of time before the flare hits.”

“Next station, Powel-Danby. Powel-Danby is the next station.”

“Well, just make sure you’re here before then,” said Charlene. “I’ll need you with me. And come here first. You have things here, so you don’t need to stop by your place.”

 “Hey, listen. You won’t be alone, okay?” Eagar turned in his seat; it was rather refreshing he could see from his seat one end of the car to the other. The few people still aboard were all sitting, too. Including the groper from earlier, in a corner at the front of the car. “I’ll see you soon,” he said to the train’s pull.

“M’okay. See you soon.”

The train’s momentum slow to leave the station, Eagar caught sight of its acceleration on the halo-board while terminating the call and slipping the handset back into his pocket. By which point, the train was up to speed, sliding along the rail at an amazing one hundred and ninety kilometers per hour. He favored the metric system, which was one of the little things he liked about riding the metro. It was one kind of technology integrated to benefit all kinds of people. As one of many systems of society. Thus, the halo-board was also with the Imperial one hundred and eighteen miles per hour as well.

In part, Eagar was relieved with his planned commute home. The last time he was caught in a blackout, in the middle of winter, he had sworn to take the event a little more seriously. Though not to the degree of acting like it was the end of the world as most. Blackouts were what they were for the exoplanet humans chose to inhabit. As common as rain was on the world, and its fragile magnetosphere.

That fragility, however, made quite the spectacle of solar flares, especially at night.

At the peak of darkness, waves of neon would swirl the sky. People had come to accept the natural barrier protecting them from the sun as magic more than fact. In a way, that was the allure of the planet’s aurora; but, it was anything but magic. Still, a lot of people rushed home to witness a blackout’s sky. If they were lucky and had equipment unaffected by the electromagnetic storm, as it were, and on as clear a night as forecasted, then they might capture the universe in all its beauty. Veiled by the planet’s aurora.

Eagar just wouldn’t recommend such an undertaking in winter. In light of the city repurposing its natural gas reserves to light up the city, he recalled, by candlelight, so to speak. An ingenious solution to blackouts becoming a hot topic issue. He just wished the idea had come sooner than later.

Eagar resumed his observation of the cityscape, smiling to the only good thing about his recent experience. He had met Charlene this season, last year. She lived a few blocks from him. They had in fact met outside a market between their homes; he had run into her just as she was leaving a supply store. She was literally freezing to death despite a heavy winter’s coat, a beanie, and boots. The cold had also made her heavy and weak. She could hardly carry the bag of batteries she had purchased then. Eagar had chalked her predicament up to the planet’s thinner atmosphere—compared to Earth’s—and helped her home.

Though their world was strong enough to withstand the coronal mass ejections, the quarterly events were taking a toll. The planet would suffocate from a thinning atmosphere, eventually, and long before the sun would ever die; but, that was all some future dismissed by most people. Eagar was a realist, though; he at least acknowledged his home, his city, and even his coming to exist as a fourth generation human, as a product of colonization, it would all be gone—one day. For now, he was content with life in the city, and happy having met Charlene.

“Oh, no,” he said under a breath. He checked the halo-board and faced the train’s window again. “No, no, no.” He jumped up from his seat to stand at the car’s egress. Even through the doors’ windows, the rising aurora over the horizon slithered its way over the cityscape.

Two minutes until Powel-Danby. Eagar’s chest sank, and the minutes had dragged more like two hours. From the horizon the city’s darkening, the news misreporting the time of the blackout, his blood ran cold. Eagar tittered and swayed to the train’s slowing, and closing his eyes he implored it to make the station’s platform. As long as he got off the train, he could run to Charlene’s.

Some of the remaining passengers joined Eagar at the exit. He guessed his agitation must have triggered their anxiousness, as everyone’s attention—both standing and sitting—was toward the left windows of the car, watching the blackout wave across the city towards them. The darkening kept pace with the glowing swirls of sky. Between the heavens and the earth, sharp and contrasting shadows were cast by sunset’s saturation and brightening. The light caramelized Eagar’s complexion and irradiated his brown eyes, before the shadow of the train station swallowed him, and all onboard.

Coming to a halt and settling, Eagar inhaled and exhaled with some relief. Waiting for the ping and the train’s doors to open came with other passengers pressing to get off. He thrust elbows behind himself in a twist to push back on people. Ping. The car doors parted and Eagar’s first step launched him into a sprint.

Station lights flickered before flashing off, and the clap of the train and its rail, a thunderous scrunch startled Eagar out of his run and panicked him with hesitation. Some passengers had fallen inside a car while others had fallen over one another at egresses along the entire length of the train, with it sitting lower than the platform. Those few Samaritans helping evacuate the cars assured Eagar his help was unneeded, or so he had rationalized in dread. Besides, Charlene needed him more and every second to reach her mattered.

A sprint down five cases of stairs transitioned Eagar from the platform to the head house where a dash through a turnstile began his start to Charlene’s. As had been twilight for the blackout. Pacing his way onto the street and guided by the fading of natural light, Eagar ran, unsure how much time there was before complete darkness enveloped the city. He was certain, however, the blackout would last the night, and had to make it to Charlene before he lost sight of familiar alleys, street corners, and landmarks, and even his own footing.

The nearly two kilometer-run to Charlene’s apartment was littered with blotches of shadows wandering about the streets and sidewalks. Some part of him kept his fists clenched and at the ready, having made the decision to stick to the streets, to follow the sidewalks for practicality’s sake, and to dodge and prance around pedestrians and stranded motorists alike.

Fortunately, the city had prepared for the blackouts. Amid solar and electric vehicles left lining the streets, and for all its dependency on electricity, city-sanctioned bonfires—its solution—erupted and illuminated every other intersection. The blotchy shadows of people were drawn to the fires for warmth and safety, though a couple had turned into communal block parties of sorts.

The municipal fires gave familiarity to indistinct and shadowy buildings and helped Eagar reach Charlene’s apartment building. With no power to her building, Eagar had been thankful the on-duty security guard recognized him. Upon admission, he hastened for the stairwell and climbed eleven flights to Charlene’s floor. Frayed and winded, his heart surging, Eagar had calmed enough to walk the eleventh floor’s dim hall, taking care to read apartment numbers. He would kick himself if he knocked on the wrong door.

Eleven thirty-seven. Concern for Charlene had unnerved Eagar’s hand so much that the knuckles of his fist wrapped on her door in a multi-toned tremble.

“It’s open!”

A bad sign, Eager rushed into Charlene’s apartment. “Char!”

“I’m here.”

Eagar scoffed; here could be anywhere in the darkness of her apartment, as he crept from its entry through a short hallway. “Where?”

“Here.”

Following her voice, Eagar was keen to its softening and her being nearby. He just made out her silhouette against the window wall; she was sitting down. Memory had filled in the lush white sofa they would often cuddle on.

“I’m here, too,” he said. “As promised. Are you—”

“I’m waiting for you.” Charlene’s eyes shimmered in the darkness as a cat’s would. “Maybe I should have bought some batteries. As a backup option.”

“No, no,” Eagar said, undoing his coat and shirt. “I’m here now. Where’s the cardio connector?”

“Here.” Eagar felt for the cord in Charlene’s palm. “What if next time—”

“That’s not going to happen,” said Eagar, taking one end of the cord and plugging it into his chest. “There’s a reason I had this adapter implanted. For you.”

“I know, but I should really keep some batteries on hand.”

Eagar sighed. “You’re right.” It was a prudent preference, and she shouldn’t have to rely on him or the bio-electrical activity of his heart to charge hers.

“Eagar.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember Skye?”

Eagar smiled in the darkness. Charlene’s kind—and how bioroids networked—was widespread.

END