Aurora(28)

Normally, plasma in the solar wind is deflected around the earth into the long magnetotail, which then caroms harmlessly into space or is disbursed, without significant impact, into the atmosphere. In this case, the sheer volume of the coronal mass was overwhelming. Ten thousand billion metric tons of charged electronic particles surged into the earth’s magnetic field like a Mongol horde and cascaded toward the polar regions. Once there, they ricocheted back and forth between the polar mirror points, creating a current flow of unprecedented ferocity that roared above the earth at an altitude of 100,000 meters. Once inside our atmosphere, the resulting voltage potential on the surface of the earth shot off the charts, and the overpowering pulse of direct current invaded power lines through their ground connections.

The Aurora Generating Station—an 878-milliwatt, simple-cycle, natural-gas-fired facility on the outskirts of town and part of the Upper Midwest power grid—picked up the charge within ninety seconds of first polar contact. From the Aurora station, the super-intense power surge spread through the lines, both above and below ground, in DuPage, Kane, and Kendall counties, tripping breakers, blowing transformers, and melting power lines everywhere within a sixty-mile radius.

In the living room of Aubrey’s house, the seventy-seven-inch Sony TV winked, unceremoniously, and went dark. Scott, who had fallen asleep on the couch, failed to notice.

The light woke Aubrey. Not its intensity but its weirdness. Even asleep, her brain knew something wasn’t right. She blinked, looking at a sideways, blurry image of her bedroom curtains. She’d never liked blinds, preferring to have natural light wake her in the morning, and it was doing that now, but the reddish hue coming through her bedroom window was anything but natural.

She sat up on one elbow, waiting for her eyes to focus. Outside, the sky was alight, which meant time to get up, but when she picked up her phone and looked at it, the time was 4:11 a.m. Even in April, that was way too early. She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She stared dully at the sky outside her window, awash in a blood-red glow, and looked back down at her phone to double-check the time. She noticed there was no signal.

Her breath quickened. She reached for the bedside lamp and clicked the switch. The bulb failed to light. She clicked it two, three, four more times with the same result. She glanced over at the TV mounted on the far wall, which always had that maddening little red light in its lower left corner, even when it was off.

Except for now. Now, there was nothing.



“Wake up. Scott, wake up.”

He rolled over on the couch and squinted up at her, but she was already leaving the room, headed outside. She’d pulled on a pair of pants, her shirt half-tucked in. The room was bathed in a reddish glow, and when Aubrey threw open the front door, more colors streaked across the floor. It was nighttime, and it wasn’t.

Scott got up and followed her. She walked down the front path, her head back, taking in the huge, weird sky above her. It was majestically streaked with a half dozen vivid colors: reds, blues, and the most otherworldly swirls of electric green he’d ever seen. The aurorae were spread in great, soft arcs across the sky, with patches that had billowing surfaces like clouds. But they were completely different from moonlit clouds, in that the stars beyond were clearly visible through them. There were rays of lighter-and darker-colored stripes that undulated through the sky, radiating upward, increasing rather than fading in intensity the farther they rose from the ground. The sky seethed and billowed.

Scott drew up next to Aubrey and they stood there, at the edge of the sidewalk, staring upward in disbelief. Aubrey heard voices and looked down, seeing Cayuga Lane turned into something not quite daytime and certainly not nighttime. Some of her neighbors had walked into the street to get out from under their trees for a clearer view. Mrs. Chen and her boys lingered in their doorway, afraid to come out any farther, and a few were inside, their slack-jawed faces visible in their windows, lit up by the rainbow-colored reflections on the glass around them.

All of them were staring up at the sky, then at each other for confirmation, and then back up at the heavens. Scott drifted over toward Phil, the amiable pothead in his mid-forties who lived across the street, and they muttered together. There was something Aubrey didn’t like about their rapport, but she had no time to think about it at the moment.

Norman Levy stood in the middle of the street in a pair of torn khaki pants, a flannel shirt, and enormous, unlaced hiking boots, staring up at the sky, hands on his hips, his face lit up with the widest, most childlike grin Aubrey had ever seen.

“You OK, Norman?”

The old man looked at her, opening his mouth and trying to find words, but he couldn’t. He gestured back up at the sky, as if to say, “Have you seen it?” Then he turned away from her again, his eyes back on the heavens.

“Norman? Are you all right?”

He answered softly, without looking at her. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “But goddamn it’s glorious, isn’t it?”

Up and down the block, and as far as Aubrey could see in any other direction, not a single window, door, or streetlamp was lighted.

Aurora, Illinois, had gone dark.



Seven hundred and twenty-nine miles away, Perry St. John stood in the parking lot of NOAA headquarters, shoulder to shoulder with his co-workers from the solar monitoring station and stared up at the same sky. It was just after 5 a.m. on the East Coast, and Perry was approaching his twenty-fourth hour on the job, in what was the longest, most terrifying and exhilarating day of his professional career.