Chapter 29: Alicia

Tuesday, August 16, 1983

Nothing had changed weather-wise on the morning forecast. Alicia was out there, dumping water on the Gulf of Mexico. It hadn’t formed an eye, and forecasters were cautiously hoping it might burn itself out.

We dropped off the completed LLC paperwork at the post office on the way to school. It should be out of the Houston area before the storm hit, probably.

School felt like the calm before the storm, too, at least for Angie and me. Jas, too. We knew what was coming, while no one else did.

Classes themselves were fine. Mr. Hannity was amazed by my first program and told me so. I told him I’d been programming for years at home on my own computer, which was true. More years than I’d been alive, but he didn’t need to know that.

I think what threw him was that I’d put in good comments. That’s something most people take a long time to develop. I chalked it up to having learned to be meticulous with organization in Debate, and he went with that.

As always, the real answer (‘I was a software professional for over thirty years and have a Masters Degree in Computer Science’) was impossible, so I had no worry about him guessing anything like that.

At lunch, I caught my first glimpse of Trish Harrison. Angie nudged me and nodded towards a fairly tall blonde, with hair in a ponytail halfway down her back, wearing a form-fitting cream blouse and a short red skirt. She had the school colors down. Perhaps she was campaigning for Homecoming Queen already.

She was holding court in a knot of socialite kids. By the body language, all of the boys were eating up whatever she was serving. About half of the girls were, too, while some were clearly a bit disdainful.

We’d see where that went.

Gene had, by far, the big news of the day. It really was big, too. Reagan had nominated Gene’s dad for the Fifth Circuit. The Senate had to confirm him, but that was considered extremely likely. Curtis Richardson was a highly-regarded judge, after all, with a sterling reputation.

Angie and I exchanged a look. In my first life, of course, Curtis Richardson had died before this. We’d inadvertently affected the composition of one of the federal circuits. That might swing the balance in some cases, at the least.

There was no way now to predict what might change, and I would probably never know, not unless the Fifth Circuit ruled differently on some significant case. My opinion of Gene’s father was that he was conservative, but not hidebound or dogmatic about it. If anything, he trended more towards the libertarian side of things, with a bias towards business but away from regulating people’s personal lives.

The Fifth Circuit had been easily the most conservative circuit in America by the 2010s. Anything that slowed that down seemed to me to be a good thing. Conservative jurisprudence isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but (like anything) it can go too far.

All we’d wanted to do was to spare Gene the loss of his father, and we might well have made significant changes to people’s lives throughout the Fifth Circuit, perhaps nationally. It was yet another reminder that you never know which butterflies matter.

Now that we had things to study, we studied. A little. It was still mostly fun and games.

We turned on the TV during the evening news. The weatherman showed a satellite view of Alicia, now with a defined eye. The possible tracks still covered a very broad area, from Brownsville all the way to near New Orleans, but the most probable paths were converging on an area much closer to Houston.

On the way back from Study Group, we made ourselves late with a trip to Safeway. Angie and I bought a bunch of stuff and Jas bought quite a bit, too, if less. Paige was a bit more conservative, saying they had supplies, but picked up some jugs of water and plenty of soup.

I doubted we would need it. If this was like my first time, and Angie’s first time, we would be fine. The roads would be passable within hours, water would never be interrupted, and stores would be open.

On the off chance that was wrong, though, better safe than sorry.

When we got home, I found a message from Michael:

“Hey, Steve! I read about you in the paper a bit ago! I have got to hear the story about how all that came to pass. Reagan, huh? Who would’ve thought?

“I wasn’t sure when you’d be back from your summer program, but it would have to be by now, anyway.

“Things are crazy here. Everything is full, and the kid next door is worried they’ll pull his scholarship because he can’t sign up for the minimum number of classes required. It’s a total mess. I’m glad I got into everything I signed up for.

“Anyway, give me a call sometime, especially if anything interesting happens!”

He added his dorm address and phone number.

I figured I might call in a day or two. A hurricane certainly qualified as ‘interesting,’ after all.

I had to wonder if I’d have gotten that phone call without the newspaper article? Probably, but ... well ... was Hockaday just a coincidence? Michigan? Did Reagan’s speechwriter just happen to find my quote? Did the other reporters just happen to connect an unattributed quote in a speech to me?

How much was happenstance or serendipity and how much was the universe sticking its nose into everyone’s business?

Ultimate Time-Traveler Solipsism. Gotta love it!

Wednesday, August 17, 1983

The morning weather had Alicia still a tropical storm, still with an unknown path. Mom was much more worried. Dad decided that we should tape the big windows tonight. We’d never boarded them, but tape was a good idea. It would greatly reduce the mess if our large windows shattered.

They’d hadn’t done that in my first life, and I doubted they would for future storms, but tape is a very simple precaution, and maybe the stress-relief aspect of it actually mattered. Who knew?

There was an undercurrent of worry throughout the day. For all anyone (but us) knew, the storm might clobber Brownsville, or New Orleans, or maybe Beaumont or Corpus Christi. Any of those would leave us a bit wet, nothing more. If it was New Orleans or Brownsville, we might not even get wet.

Teachers said ‘See you tomorrow,’ and there were no announcements to the contrary. When we all left, I’m sure most of the kids fully expected to be here tomorrow. Most weren’t even saying they wished school would get canceled. It felt unlikely, after all. Houston hadn’t been hit by a hurricane to any real extent since Carla in 1961. None of the students had even been born then, and Memorial itself hadn’t been built yet. What were the odds we’d break the streak?

We all wanted to go out for a bit, but it made much more sense to get home before dark. Our parents would likely be starting to fret, just a bit, even with the storm still a long ways away.

Angie and I wound up helping Camille and Francis, then Jean Seiler, tape windows. Tony was working late, and Jean kept saying that he’d better get home soon. We’d called Mom and Dad to let them know why we weren’t home yet. They were happy we were helping our friends get ready.

When we got home, we taped some more windows. The TV news was reporting that Alicia was now a hurricane, was strengthening, and looked to be headed much more in our direction.

Angie and I went to bed in our separate rooms tonight, but set alarms (quiet ones!) for two in the morning. As best as I could recall, that was about the right time.

Thursday, August 18, 1983

The alarm woke me right on time. As soon as I quieted it, I could hear the storm, though it was still moderate.

Angie came in a few minutes later. “It’s not here yet,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

I turned on the radio. The news station seemed to be all storm, all the time. It had made landfall in Galveston just a few minutes ago, and reports were that it was really wreaking havoc. As best as they could tell, it was heading straight for Houston.

We left the door open a bit, with just my desk lamp on. About half an hour later, I heard Mom and Dad’s door open, and then Dad looked in.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he said.

“Nope,” Angie said.

“We can’t either. What’s the radio have to say?”

“It’s a bit northwest of Galveston now and heading right this way. They say it’s a Category 3 hurricane now.”

Dad blinked. “It wasn’t supposed to get to Category 3, they said.”

“I guess it strengthened at the last minute.”

Mom came in. “Category 3? This is going to be a mess!”

The four of us hung out for the next couple of hours, listening to the radio and the reports of damage and destruction. The storm outside had intensified. Looking out, our backyard was flooded, and water was up to the first step at the back door, but not the second. In all the years Mom and Dad lived here, it’d never flooded over the second step (which would put at least some water in the house). I didn’t think it would this time, either.

Our power remained on until three-thirty, when it went out with a flash and a bang. I looked outside a bit later, and the power pole was still standing tall.

Just a bit later, we could hear the storm slacking off. It didn’t take that long until it stopped completely.

We all looked out of the back door. The patio was wet, but nothing bad. We went outside and looked around.

“We’re in the eye,” Dad said.

“This is ... eerie,” Mom said.

We could look around and see the eyewall, even in the dark. It was, at most, a bit breezy outside. We got the flashlights we had and looked around as best as we could. Nothing seemed damaged, either at our house or at any others we could see. Some small tree limbs were down, but that was it. Down the road, I thought I might see a larger tree down, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

The eye was over us for a little while. When the winds started to pick up just a little, we quickly headed inside. Just a few minutes later it was back to a full fury outside.

We hung out for a while until the winds and lightning had died down. The rain continued, but it would likely continue for quite a while. The storm would move more slowly the further inland it traveled, and as it began to disperse, it would spread and dump rain over a wider and wider area.

When there seemed little risk, we headed back to bed. Angie wound up in my bed, which surprised no one at all, I’m sure.

When we got up, it was still raining, of course, and the power was still out. The radio (we had several battery-powered radios handy — this was 1983, after all) reported that all schools were canceled within their entire service area, and the police were strongly advising everyone to just stay home. There were reports of downed power lines all over the place, and at least one person had already been electrocuted (though apparently he had survived).

That sounded like great advice to us. We got out a bunch of candles and had breakfast.

I tried to call Jas, and Angie tried to call Paige, but both of us got an ‘All circuits are busy’ message. I suspected the phone network was down for now. Simply having the phone respond at all made me breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Since the phone wires were on the same pole, that meant the pole had survived.

We gave up on reaching people and decided to play games by candlelight. As long as the rain kept up, we couldn’t see the neighbors’ houses very well.

Our next-door neighbors came by about noon and made sure we were okay. Dad went to visit a couple of the neighbors as well. No one had any injuries or any major damage. Several people had sizable trees down, but they hadn’t wrecked anything more than fences. The street was blocked several houses over by a fallen tree, but we could get out going the other direction. One of the neighbors had gone as far as the grocery store and hadn’t had any trouble (other than the traffic lights being out).

Around one the lights flickered, then came on fully.

The return of light prompted us to try the phones again. Dad called his office as I called Jas. This time the call rang twice, and then I got a ‘This number is out of service.’

I handed the phone to Angie, and she called Paige. In a surprise to us both, she got through. Paige and her parents were fine, though one of their fences had been smashed by a fallen tree. Angie apologized to Paige — obviously their beach trip might have to wait.

Dad’s office was fine, too. They didn’t want anyone coming in until at least Monday. Dad was supposed to check in on Sunday.

“Well, I guess it’s an extra vacation,” Dad said, chuckling. “At least we have power!”

We turned on the TV and found that the regular programming had been preempted and they were showing non-stop hurricane coverage. They had a largely useless map of the city on the screen at the moment with blinking markers where power poles were down. There were enough markers, and the resolution was low enough, that (except as a ‘stay home!’ reminder) it was nearly useless.

The newscasters assured us that Houston Lighting and Power was out either clearing or turning off downed lines as quickly as possible. As of now, they had reports of five fatalities within the county and over one thousand injuries.

Could I have changed that? And, whether or not I could have, had I been morally obligated to try? My answer, for now, was ‘no’ to both of those. Bad things would happen. Angie and I (and Laura, too) would know some of those were coming. We couldn’t possibly fix all of them. If we were found out, we might lose the ability to fix any of them, and we might also break the world.

I’d started thinking a bit about L. Ron Hubbard. One tale of the founding of Scientology had it originating as a joke between him and some other authors, a joke that had become too big, too fast, for Hubbard to back out of it. Once there were true believers, he had to either risk becoming a target for a lot of angry people, or he had to just ride the wave.