“Yeah. The hardware and software systems that control everything from pipelines to chemical processing plants to dam operations had to have gone down with the power surge or whatever it was,” Emilio said. “There’s not much in modern society that those systems don’t control. We’re fucked.” He leaned back and gestured to his friend. “We mostly get how it works but have no idea how long it’ll take to get fixed over such a large area. All we know is we gotta get home where the lights are hopefully on. Our folks have gotta be freaking. What about y’all?”

We’re fucked. I swallowed, overcome again by yet another piece of information that sounded too big to truly grasp while we were standing in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road. “We’re trying to get home to California,” I said. “From what we’ve been told, the power is down from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to here.” And now we knew it extended down to Tennessee too.

“Pittsburgh? Damn,” Emilio muttered, looking down for a moment as he obviously digested that. He glanced over at his friend. “We were hoping it was more contained…maybe a couple states. We’re double fucked.” He gave himself a small shake, obviously choosing to think more about that later too. “We’re headed to Nebraska but we could drop you near Topeka before we continue north. Hop in,” he said, nodding toward the bed of the truck and then winking at Charlie. “Any friends of Professor Tecton are friends of ours.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, his posture and radiant expression speaking of his new lease on life, despite the additional bad news we’d just received. He paused at the driver’s side door, perhaps measuring whether or not there was room for him up there or whether he’d have to ride in the back with the second-class citizens.

Regardless of having to endure Charlie’s self-important smile for hours, or whether this was a stolen truck or not, I wasn’t going to turn down a lift by a couple of college kids who appeared trustworthy enough and could cut several hundred miles from our trip. “That’d be great,” I added.

We climbed up to the bed of the truck and sat down, Emily and Charlie on one side, me on the other, before the truck jolted forward, bumping along the road.