The Instinct We Buried: At The Command of Convenience
by Mark Thomas
Staff Writer
HOW GRACIOUSLY WE SURRENDERED: TO THE EFFICIENCY GODS
“What I had not foreseen, was the gradual day, weakening the will, leaking the brightness away.” (Stephen Spender)
Is this really happening? Just like that? The air brightens for a fraction of a second and everything dies? Without a warning? The street scene is insane. Your students on the steps staring into their phones; their parents streaming in on foot to collect them.
And out there – people abandoning their cars – clustering in groups – looking for someone, anyone with news.
This is so crazy. Like everyone, you snap a glance skyward wondering. What? A warning? Extraterrestrials drop by to tell us to get peaceful and stop with the nukes and rockets or take a crash course in the Middle Ages?
Another look down at your phone then your smart watch – then back at the school. Phones, cars, lights. Everything electronic. What could cause something like that?
“Any ideas?”
A quick spin to one of your parents.
“You mean besides panic?”
She throws an arm around her daughter who is still trying to get her phone to ignite. Then follows your eyes out across the street.
“You should see downtown.”
“Thanks, I’m plenty terrified right here.”
She pulls her daughter close and gives you a look before heading off. “Get to a store, Doug. Don’t wait.”
Store. Supplies. Right. Somehow, with the flash and everything going dead, that one missed you. It was just; get the kids outside, try to keep everyone calm, including you, while trying to figure out what the hell happened and where. The city? The country? The world?
You’re the physics teacher, and the only thing you can think of is an electromagnetic pulse? But what? A quiet, unnoticeable one? Is that even possible?!
Something occurs to you while watching more worried parents peel their sweating through phone-withdrawal children away then head out into the jungle of the unknown. Walking with their eyes forward – petrified and insecure – having to look at people again. Besides how weird and unexplainable this is; how unprepared we are.
To your knowledge, there’s no action plan for this. And with an action plan for everything: hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods, Godzilla – how is that even possible?
Get to the store, she said. Then what? Use your nonworking phone, smart watch and AirPods as barter for bottled water, kerosene, and canned foods? Maybe with a promise, should normalcy return, they can access your digital wallet and charge you?
Who overlooked this? How dare they overlook this?! And if you grab your phone once more to Google who to call in case something like this happens, it’s going into the street not to the store for barter.
A quick turn, you’re smacked with another unsettling realisation. You’re alone in front of the ghost-ship of your once vibrant Monday morning school – somewhere in the vicinity of 09:30, and nobody, not a parent, student or fellow teacher thought to tell you you could go now.
And really? Now heading for the market with your watch and phone, not even checking your wallet for actual cash, you know this is just the beginning. Impolite and self-absorbed today – homicidal survivalist maniacs should it go a week.
With that picture in mind, you reverse course and head for the gun store.
INSTINCT, INTUITION, SELF-RELIANCE: ASLEEP OR DEPARTED
“Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them.” (DH Lawrence – Phoenix)
Image by StockCake
How did pre-industrial, pre-technological age people manage? They had fires, earthquakes, floods and bad guys who stuck up grocery stores. Carriage accidents in the street. How’d they call their first responders? Fire department, paramedics, cops, or anyone?
This comes to mind while running up the fourth flight of steps of a high-rise apartment on your way to rescuing a woman’s child stuck in an elevator – after she spotted you on your way to the gun store and aggressively persuaded you into her rather luxurious building.
Now at the 6th floor, you stop to get a breath and check your pulse – futilely on your smart watch. The woman, obviously a practiced emergency stairwell Olympian looks down at you from the next landing.
“Really? You’re going to break, now?”
Gasping like fish on a dock, certain your smart watch in some alternate, still functioning universe is beckoning you to rest or head to your nearest Urgent Care facility, you manage a nod and start again spiralling up into the endlessness of the rising emergency well.
Moments perhaps minutes but who would know, later, you emerge on 16 to find a senior couple, three of the kids who abandoned you in front of school, and four women dressed in dojis all talking through the door to Daniel – telling him to stay calm – that help just arrived and he’ll be out soon.
Turning, the pressure on, assuming this event has abolished gender equality and feminism in general, you, the man here, scan the corridor looking for that glass fronted cabinet with the axe in it. The mother looks at you. “I know, right?”
“Seriously?!”
She shakes her head and reaches for your arm to console you.
This sends you searching through other movie scenes for potential remedies. Bruce Willis – Die Hard. Matt Damon. Keanu Reeves. Tom Cruise – Mission Im… Wait! A quick look up at the ceiling – there’s a utility access hatch near the end.
The mother, following your eyes – probably having seen the same films, gives you a smile and jets off to her apartment – returning moments later with a butter knife and chair.
Within minutes, you’re up through the access in pitch blackness feeling your way across the ceiling, bypassing the ducts and light fixtures heading for the hatch to the lift that you’re certain must be there.
“Daniel?”
“In here!”
Now using the kid’s voice, you find your way to the lift and yup, just like in Die Hard, there it is lit by a celestial, or at least cinematic and extremely convenient glow leaking in from a roof light above.
After only minor complications with the hatch and pulling Daniel up through it into the ceiling cavity, you drop down filthy - covered in probably toxic, asbestos dust from the plenum to hugs, praise and applause from the seniors and especially the karate babes who are looking at you as if you are Bruce Willis.
A few hugs and kisses later; ‘we love your movies’ from the old folks, you’re on the stairs back down the 16 flights heading for the lobby – hoping the gun store guy has seized this as the obvious opportunity of his life and stayed open – selling rifles and bullets by candlelight if necessary.
Though your faith in our technological infrastructure has been shaken, you’re sustaining unfettered belief capitalism has been left intact – if not emboldened.
TRADING THE INVALUABLE: FOR THE INESTIMABLE LOSS
“Life has no meaning. It is up to you to give it meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)
Image by StockCake
What fascinates you nearly as much as the unfolding techno-pocalypse after leaving the building on 5th, is how well people seem to be handling it. And how well-behaved they are.
No rioting. Or looting. Lots of drinking, and jaywalking, but, you know, without cars, or traffic – the collective abandonment of certain norms seems reasonable. The feeling is almost festive. More The Day the Earth Stood Still and everyone chilled rather than got swept into some desperate frenzy.
Little porch parties. Kids playing soccer in the street – running out from between cars without concern of getting squished or yelled at.
There’s even a guy there on a ladder painting his gutters. A cello and violin somewhere ahead. Soft but beautiful. And the people walking? Not one with their eyes glued to a phone or sealed off from nature and tribal engagement with earbuds.
But now approaching Bob’s Guns on 7th, it changes. The apocalypse is back. People are crouched behind cars - others hiding between buildings. You see Nancy Rawlings the school nurse signalling you from the doorway of a bike store.
Head down, dodging the unseen menace, you cross at a sprint – joining her and two others in the doorway of East Bay Cycles.
“Dear God, it’s good to see you.”
“Me?”
Before you can ask about the developing drama, a guy with a rifle runs over from the next doorway and scrunches in next to you.
“He’s got two in there. One is down. Not sure about the other.”
“Who?”
Nancy gives you a perturbed look then softens having remembered you’re the school physics teacher not the psychic. “The owner of the gun shop. I don’t know. Something happened; he started shooting.”
Grasping you’ve wandered into an in-progress hostage crisis – you sneak a look out from your doorway. Neighbours, like a trained citizen task force are moving trash bins to block off the streets at the intersections.
There’s a woman moving stealthily from doorway to doorway delivering bottled waters and bullets to the neighbourhood militia. Others are clustered in the doorways to the cafes and shops – their function in this yet unclear.
The rifle guy looks across the street at the row of townhouses, points and speaks to you indicating some assumed operational cooperation. “If I can get to that rooftop from the back, I may be able to distract him before you go in.”
“Wait… what?!”
With a strong look of assurance and comradery, he pats your shoulder. “Wait for my signal.” Then runsoff back towards 6th.
Turning now to Nancy ready to protest, you hear a woman’s anguished voice ring out from the gun shop. Crying – pleading for help. Accepting your position here, somehow, you turn to Nancy. “What’s his name?”
“The owner of Bob’s Guns?!”
“Right.” Taking her arm, you pull her back into the doorway planting her against the glass. “Okay. Nancy. Whoever she is, she’s hurt. When we get her out of there, she’s going to need treatment. And, the way I’m seeing this, there’s no ambulance, no hospital and no skilled paramedics in her immediate future.”
With her taking a moment to ponder your dramatic presentation; you take a moment to ponder your hostage negotiation skills and how exactly you, the high-school physics teacher, are going to convince Bob to lay down his weapon and surrender.
“The Pharmacy on University Way.” Nancy gives you a cheery smile before heading off to break into a pharmacy during this potentially world-wide emergency.
After watching her off for bandages, disinfectant and all other gunshot supplies the corner pharmacy may have lying about, you turn to the neighbour and are suddenly talking like a crisis management specialist or family therapist.
“Does he have any family? A wife or parents – maybe children?”
“I think a wife – over on Shattuck and Grove.”
Realising, Google Maps would say that’s over 20 minutes away, and this may be over in 40, you stare into each other’s eyes like two Middle schoolers taking your first plunge into experimental problem solving. After what may have been minutes, nearly bowing to failure; you turn your eyes into bike shop, and smile.
Moments later you watch her pedalling a shiny new Trek Mountain Bike heading north weaving through abandoned cars and the trash-bin barricade. And with a quick look across the street; you find your buddy with the rifle waving from the roof.
Your signal to go in.
ONLY THE TRULY ADVENTUROUS: WOULD ELIMINATE ADVENTURES
“What is this spirit in man that urges him forever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger?” (HG Wells)
Image by StockCake
After leaving the warm safety of your doorway at the bike shop, you close in on Bob’s. The tension is that of western with you the town sherif heading into the final gunfight scene – in this case, the participant without a gun.
People watch from doorways, apartments and from behind cars. A curtain in an open window moves – ever so slightly above a shop to your right. You give it a passing glance and continue.
Now at the wall outside the gun shop, you look across the street to the rooftop and find your cover. Positioned and ready like a sniper, with his rifle planted – aimed at the front door; he gives you a thumbs up. He’s ready.
After a deep breath to steady your nerves; and a look at your remarkably unshaking hand, you call out: “Bob?”
“Who’s out there?”
“Bob, it’s Doug.”
“Doug?”
“That’s right Bob. Doug McCormack. I’m the physics teacher over at the Highschool.”
Minutes pass during which you assume he’s either trying to remember if he knows you or decide if shooting the local physics teacher might be beyond his moral boundary. Finally, he responds, in a rather friendly, very articulate voice.
“Did you say physics?”
“That’s right Bob. So, what do you say we end this. Without anyone else getting hurt.”
During this next pause, you snap a glance across the street. At your rooftop cover ready and dangerous. Then back at your old position - the bike shop to see Nancy returning from her pharmacy break-in laden with emergency essentials.
Before turning back, you shelve your eyes and check the sky. Nearly midday. The shadows – minimal glare – everything seems right. Now to the gun shop. “So, what do you think Bob?”
“Ending this sounds fine. But I have a question for you.”
The breakthrough, like in every hostage negotiation. That moment when you the negotiator gains trust. You’ve reached that moment and respond casually.
“Anything Bob.”
“Explain to me how all the hydrogen in our atmosphere could reach critical density, fuse into Rydberg atoms with a quantum number of at least 90, then undergo antihydrogen synthesis releasing enough energy to ionise our magnetosphere causing electron degeneration rendering all Quantum Electrodynamic processes on the planet electrically neutral.”
Huh!
Pondering long enough for the shadows to change - that lucid, logical and probably accurate explanation from Bob the gun shop guy – something theoretical physicists conceivably worldwide are debating, you begin modelling it in your mind – never reaching for your phone to jump on Google Scholar.
From there, you and Bob hold an engaging conversation delving deep into theoretical physics, cosmology and atmospheric sciences – mostly with you asking him questions about how something like that could even happen.
Ultimately coaxing him out to argue whether the atomic structure of hydrogen with its single proton and single electron could fuse at a quasi-cooled, significantly above absolute zero, state – changing the charge density of the valence energy structure of the atmospheric envelope.
“Wouldn’t that be like cold fusion on a planetary scale?”
Bob, now on the steps with the neighbours rushing in around him to free the hostages and Nancy heading in to perform triage on the wounded woman – who it turns out started the whole thing by demanding Bob give her a Browning AR-15 on credit, shoves his hands down into his pockets and considers your question.
“Well, you know Doug, it’s a typical misconception that intense heat, above 5000 Kelvin is required for hydrogen fusion.”
“Isn’t it?”
From there he launches into a full lecture on how in 2025 two CERN scientists modelled a gaseous mini-Neptune that underwent fusion of all its hydrogen in a spontaneous chain-reaction that lasted in their lab for three nanoseconds before converting the planet to an energy neutral super-Earth with an energy density of w = -1.
“About the same time our flash took.”
Bob gives you a thoughtful smile and a nod. “Pretty strange, eh Doug?”
At that moment, staring him in the eyes, something happens inside you. Like you’ve just now, on a gun shop porch acquired something. Or found something you’d lost.
And looking at everyone – all assisting, assuming roles for which they never rehearsed, you can see; they’re finding it too. Something special maybe. Something they would have fought to hold onto, if they’d known.
SHARING THE RESPONSIBILITY: FOR THE CLEVER INVENTOR
“While technology can be an important advancement to any society, it also comes with flaws and warnings.” (Ray Bradbury)
Image by StockCake
Before leaving the 7th street hostage crisis, to award the neighbours, participants and victim closure, you were pulled yet again into an odd but oddly fitting role.
That of provisional, mid-apocalypse magistrate.
People were traumatised, upset, and the lady who started it had suffered a moderate flesh wound to her thigh. The citizens of the newly chartered People’s Republic of 7th Street wanted justice. Restoration of the rule of law. Safety for all within their rigidly defined borders.
What swayed your decision, and the light, suspended sentence after hearing the many witness testimonies during the street trial, during which tables, chairs and refreshments were brought out, were three extenuating circumstances:
1) Had the lady not rushed Bob – demanding he give her the semi-automatic assault rifle without a credit check and mandatory mental health certificate, he probably wouldn’t have shot her – and may even have given it to her. 2) Everyone else in the neighbourhood quite liked Bob and saw this as a really bad time to see the only gun shop in the republic shuttered.
And 3). Bob apologised. And promised not to shoot customers for the duration of the apocalypse.
With an additional promise to you that he would, after closing (at around sunset) venture out of the PRS and head over to the campus to help the theoretical physicists figure out what happened - what caused it and work on getting his theory to government labs in the neighbouring republics and to those in Europe and Asia for their Scientists to start working on it.
Now turning onto 16th with groceries after a trek through the market, you reflect on something you noticed there – and everywhere. The kindness and willingness to stop and engage. To work together. This isn’t a hurricane or flood with everyone even more closed off staring into their phones listening to the latest through their earbuds.
Texting, emailing, talking. Everyone is here, not away or able to get away. Uninformed, all scared together – but drawing strength from being together. Because that person shopping next to you or the one ahead – for the moment, they’re all you have.
And it’s inspiring, somehow, watching people embrace that. And there it is again. That feeling. Something new inside – but maybe not so new too.
Now turning into your driveway, anxious to see Ally, with so much to share – not only because so much has happened, but because the space between now and the last time you’ve spoken is so much wider, you stop at the sound of footsteps and someone calling you.
“Mr McCormack – Mr McCormack, wait! Please!”
FROM THE WELL OF EFFICIENCY: THE WARRIOR EMERGES
“Fate whispers to the warrior: ‘You cannot withstand the storm.’ The warrior whispers back: ‘I am the storm.” (The Voice of Doubt – Anon)
Image Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Spinning there on the walk to Jessica one of your students from 7th Street, influential during and after Bob’s trial serving legendary refreshments from a republic rich in local tradition and culinary significance, you put one bag down on the walk. “Whoa – whoa, Jess. What’s all this then?”
“You have to come, Mr McCormack! Everyone – they sent me!”
Shaking your head, you give the breathless girl a look. “Don’t tell me. Did someone else try to…?”
“…No no! It’s not Mr Bob the gun man this time!”
“What then, sweetie?”
“Look!” She turns and points at the trees rising in the distance to the Observatory – at the rather large alien spaceship dropping down quietly, gracefully, impressively into the clearing.
Shelving your eyes from the late day sun, you stare, puzzled by its size and the obvious, advanced technology. No sound. No clunky gas guzzling engines. Propelled perhaps by some type of anti-gravity drive on our recently neutralised negative energy atmosphere.
Shaking your head, you can only think: If only Bob were here to confirm that for you.
“Would you look at that.”
“They sent me to come get you! Ms Rawlings, my mother! Everyone! They want you to come and negotiate for the Republic – and for Earth!”
Still marvelling at the uniqueness of the alien craft, while trying to imagine the power they command, you find yourself repeating – once again: “Would you look at that.”
Sensing you’re stuck in some enigmatic physics moment; Jessica takes hold of your arm and shakes the be-joozies out of it. “So, you’ll come then?!!!”
Turning to her with a smile, you nod while collecting your groceries. “Sure Jess. I’m just going to drop these off, say hi to Ally and get right over there.”
Pleased with the news and relieved, she releases your arm and spins. “Okay, fine. I’ll go tell everyone they can cool down and stop yelling!”
After watching her run off, you take an additional glance at the alien craft before heading inside to drop off the groceries, chit chat with Ally about her day, yours, and tell her you have one more thing to take care of before dinner – and to expect you home, oh, around sunset.
Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)
