Chapter 27

Amy was combing her hair in her room when the light flickered. First there was a flutter, followed by it dropping out twice, and then darkness. Panic followed. Amy was afraid of the dark, and darkness in an underground house at night was absolute. She wailed helplessly, unable to see anything and felt her way to the hallway tearfully.

Maggie had found a candle and was walking from room to room lighting the lamps that had been installed in each room as a permanent fixture. Amy wrapped her arms around Maggie's leg and tearfully held on, sobbing.

"Oh it's ok," Maggie said, bending down to comfort the little girl who was rubbing her eyes and sobbing in fear. Picking her up she thrust the girl upon her hip as motherly women tend to do, and set off down the hall to light other lamps to drive away the darkness.

In another part of the house Bryan was stumbling around with a flashlight attempting to find his shoes so that he could go deal with the issue. He suspected that the power from the local electric cooperative had finally been cut. There had been a few days of sporadic brownouts now, but never before had the power simply dropped and not returned within a few minutes.

Thinking a bit Bryan pressed the talk button on the radio that he habitually carried on his hip. "OP-One," he said, using the code name for whomever was assigned to the Observation Post on the North side of the road. "This is Main-Zero-One. Come in."

"I read you Main-Zero-One," came back the reply, static filled but clearly it was Andrew. "This is OP-One. Go ahead."

"What's the status outside?" Bryan queried. "The lights just went down in here."

There was a pause, nearly long enough for Bryan to repeat the question.

"All dark," Andrew replied. "No lights within visual range. Even the glow from town is dark."

Bryan digested this for a moment before continuing. "Can you see anything in the dark at all?"

"Yes," Andrew replied. "The moon is about a quarter full and that's giving me enough to see the corner of the property and the gate fairly clearly."

"Good," Bryan said. "It's my shift tonight. I'll see you at shift change."

"Ten-Four," Andrew shot back, closing the conversation.

Bryan went back to searching for his shoes and then stepped out into the crisp air.

It was April sixth, so the air was cool but not cold. The frosts seemed to have passed for the year, though the traditional "last-frost-date" was still a week away.

He walked slowly, using the flashlight only sparingly as the batteries in it were not rechargeable. He noted that the sliver of moon which was about a third of the way across the sky cast enough light that his darkness accustomed eyes were able to make out the path as he wound his way down the hill.

About halfway down the hill to the north of the house, was a lump which looked as if it were part of the landscape, perhaps the root ball from some long-rotted fallen tree. There were bushes growing on top of it and a mass of honeysuckle vines. Walking along the back side of the lump he pulled aside the vines and his hand found a metal handle. The handle was attached to a door which after considerable pressure and prying finally lay open.

Behind the door was a ladder leading down into the hillside. It was twelve feet to the bottom and he climbed down confidently, knowing the layout of the room below very well. The air smelled of oil and grease, and there was a slight mustiness from being sealed up tightly for several months at a time.

At the bottom of the ladder was a single light switch. He flipped it, and a single bulb came on, illuminating the room. The light was powered by a battery pack attached to the regular power grid which ran through the room via a buried line. Next to the battery box was a massive shutoff switch. That particular corner was rather dim so Bryan held the flashlight in his teeth while he pried the switch to the off position. He turned, taking in the rest of the equipment in the room.

The device was called a Murilo Luciano Gravity Chain, named appropriately after a Brazilian named Murilo Luciano. Luciano had patented the device and then given it to the world as an open-source royalty-free design. As such inventions tend to be its proliferation was highly limited and it was constantly barraged by academics criticizing it as "impossible" and "perpetual motion."

Like other innovative designs of its type, it rested in obscurity and was categorized with such "witchcraft" as cold fusion and the like.

Though theoretically "impossible" Bryan had built first a working scale model and then, after minor changes and improvements, a full size working device.

The device was simply a wide roller-type chain with two hundred fifty some odd links going around in a vertical oval track. The pins in each link were three feet long and weighed about ten pounds. On the left side the links were collapsed on top of each other, mashed closely together. The track was wide here for the links to compress their masses together and the sprocket at the top turned at a speed that tended to mass the links together. At the bottom and leading up to the right-hand side was a much narrower track where only one link would fit through at a time. That and the way that the bottom sprocket turned, allowing the links loose one at a time made the mass on the left side about five times heavier than the mass on the right side.

When let loose the mass on the left would provide pressure both pulling and pushing the chain through its cycles and causing it to spin. Theoretically it had no input and created output so that it was impossible by the creed of modern physics. But the machine belligerently worked, apparently using the constant force of gravity as its feeding source of power.

Currently the device was stationary, not having been turned on for several months. Bryan pulled on a large lever which rolled the bottom sprocket back somewhat. Once done so, he pulled at a metal shaft that had been pushed through the machine to keep the two sides from turning in unison.

With a practiced hand, he released the lever and the machine began to spin. It climbed in speed rapidly, the sound of clattering chain links rising rapidly. Once it got to its assigned speed a governor that had been built into the design came into play and kept the revolutions constant. To let it spin ungoverned was a disaster waiting to happen as the machine would spin itself apart. Bryan then turned to the large stationary generator that the gravity chain was turning. The spinning shaft that ran the width of the room stopped at a transmission type of device. Bryan pulled the lever locking the generator into gear and a new hum, accompanied by the sound of the chain slowing somewhat filled the room. Additional lights also began to come on, several status lights showing that certain circuits were on, as well as voltage indicators and amperage readings came on.

He watched it spin for a few moments, marveling at the simplicity and yet complexity of it. It had so many moving parts that eventually wear and tear would get the best of it. It was for this reason that Bryan had left it shut off, opting to pay for power from the power company and use it as a back-up power source rather than worry about maintaining it for the long term.

Bryan figured that he had enough parts stowed away to keep it running for the better part of a decade. After that, it was anyone's guess whether or not it would even matter. If the power never came back on, it would be an ominous sign at best.

Satisfied that the machine was working as designed, he gave one last look around, flipped the switch at the ladder to turn off the main light, and climbed back out into the night.

After waiting for his eyes to readjust to the darkness, he headed back up to the house, where lights were shining out of windows as they should be in the best of times.

"Hmmm," he said. "I will have to do something about that."

The yellow glow cast a dim light across the various garden beds which had now been planted with every variety of garden vegetable. More were planted in the various greenhouses and were waiting to be transplanted into outdoor beds after the weather got a bit warmer.

"We need blackout curtains," he said to himself, quietly but audibly.

"What was that?" a voice asked from the darkness nearby. Bryan started.

"Oh," he said, recognizing Jack's voice after a moment. "I was just saying we need blackout curtains for the windows. With the lights out all over the countryside we're glowing like runway lights here."

Jack grunted his agreement in reply as he materialized from the darkness beside Bryan. "We should probably take the bulb out of that security light up on the shed too," Jack added after a moment. The two men walked up the path, getting nearer the house with each step.

"How much fuel do we have for the generator?" Jack asked after a moment of silence.

"Uh," Bryan said slowly. "I think maybe I should just show you. Suffice to say we'll run out of spare parts well before we run out of fuel."