Late the following Spring, I was in Ecuador, about to be shipped off-world, to fight hamsters in outer space. Ain’t that a kick in the ass. I was surprised how cool it was in the mountains of Ecuador, my mental images of South America always involved suffocating heat, like I'd experienced in Nigeria. It had been a cold winter in Maine, not cold in terms of temperatures and snow, which was about average for recent years. Cold in terms of, no electricity for a long time, and gasoline and heating oil in short supply. My hometown, and my folks, were better equipped for the winter than many others across the country; my parents had a wood stove in the house, and another out in the garage/workshop. A family from down state, who'd been frozen out of their apartment building, came to live in the garage after Christmas, my father bartered repairing a tractor engine for bales of straw that we packed into the garage walls as insulation, covered by canvas tarps. I visited my parents a couple times, the garage was cozy and warm, and smelled like new-mown hay. There was another family of three, plus a single woman, living in my parents' house, as part of a government resettlement program.

Everyone was on their best behavior, all winter.

The state and federal governments in the US had a rough start dealing with the crisis after the Ruhar attack, fumbling around uselessly, then they got their acts together and focused simply on getting people through the winter. The Ruhar attack hadn't been what we expected from watching sci fi movies, instead of hitting military bases and major population centers, they had mostly destroyed electric power plants and industrial facilities. It was weird, I saw satellite pictures of New York and DC after the attack, and other than lack of lights and traffic on the roads, the cities weren't touched. After the Kristang kicked the Ruhar out of our solar system, the US of A didn’t have much working electric-powered infrastructure left. Phones and the internet were down, electricity was spotty if you got power at all, the radio only broadcast emergency messages a couple times a day, TV stations and cable were out. The Navy brought nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers into port in major coastal cities, and hooked them up as floating power plants to provide electricity to critical facilities like hospitals. We were slowly regaining electric power across the country, the key word being slowly. When I left for Ecuador, my parents still didn't have power, other than the generator my father hooked up from the tractor's power takeoff. He ran the tractor on a 50/50 mix of alcohol and gasoline, with the alcohol home-brewed. The alcohol ate up seals in the engine, so my father and the guy living in the garage replaced the seals every month. They only ran the electricity in early mornings and evenings, anyway, there wasn't fuel available for much more.