Sheltering in Place: Blackout
And I will shew them the usual state of things on Earth: blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
Neon Joel 2:30 (Unified Standard Edition)
- - -
Hitomi handed over her cell phone to a soldier, who placed it in a clear plastic baggy. He had written down her name on an index card and placed it together with her phone. It was then taken and placed with a dozen other pieces of personal electronics into a large blue bin.
The guest Wi-Fi network had been disabled, and all non-executive staff personal communication devices had been confiscated about an hour after the simultaneous group discovery about the "dream problem."
Japan's government was officially ahead of the news becoming public, but Hitomi figured that wouldn't last long. The nations of the far east were just waking up for the third morning after "Day Zero" (as someone had called it, referencing the old zombie apocalypse movies).
Confirmation of the phenomena took only a few minutes. Every single government employee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the same thing: no dreams.
Each department in the government had been checked, then members of the municipal governments.
Everything said they experienced the same thing: just a moment of falling asleep, and then waking back up again.
With nothing in-between.
And when the rest of the world figured out there might be yet another "sign" that "God" had taken their "souls" away?
Hitomi could imagine how easily it could spark a second wave of unrest and violence.
It was 9PM on America's eastern seaboard, which meant it was 10AM in Japan. 9AM in China. And 3AM in Germany. It was just a matter of time before the western world began waking up and families would start talking by the millions at breakfast tables.
One night of dreamless sleep was nothing, a curiosity. Two? Coincidence. Three? That's a pattern.
And when they started idly searching the internet, reading similar posts and questions on message boards, and then - with growing uncertainty - started calling friend and coworkers all with the same experience... well.
Her fellow Japanese in the embassy had all wargamed it out, talking in groups, theorizing, thinking about what everyone else would do. And by "everyone" they meant the superpowers: the U.S., Russian, China, the EU.
Someone had called it an "anti-miracle" and the name stuck.
But, in the end, the fear of a rolling, chaotic worldwide reaction to such a disturbing global phenomena was not the reason for the embassy's sudden communications blackout.
It was, as she figured out about twenty minutes after the blackout began, because JSDF soldiers were escorting in three Chinese dignitaries who quickly bustled into one of the main conference rooms: the one equipped with audio-visual equipment and a secure link to the Ministry in Tokyo.
She knew this because she and Sakura had been tasked with standing by with another JSDF soldier (who apparently handled AV equipment regularly in the line of duty) in the room, ready to assist in the case of any technical difficulties.
They weren't actually able to hear what was going on, because they were separated by a glass partition in a small control booth that looked into the room, but Hitomi recognized the Prime Minister of Japan on the screen, flanked by several members of the her government's Diet.
This was big.
Even the American government hadn't come to visit the Japanese embassy yet (or provide an inkling of support!), but here was China's ambassador to the U.S. meeting with her own country's top leadership.
This was the sort of thing you saw before a war starts.
Hitomi had studied the history of WW2 and Japan's role in the Pacific Theater at length after arriving in the United States. She didn't really have a choice: Americans had strong opinions about WW2 and more than one racially/nationalistically-charged argument had broken out between students just because Hitomi happened to be in the room.
She found it disturbing how her own public school education in Takasaki had left out certain undeniable and utterly crushing truths about WW2, either failing to mention them or glossing them over as the extengicies of war. The Rape of Nanking. Comfort Women. The Manila massacre. Even how Americans felt about Pearl Harbor (on part with how she felt about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it turned out).
So, to see China, one of their most bitter cultural enemies, sitting down with Japan for what looked like a backdoor peace or war summit, especially given the three or four hours of "heads up" the far eastern countries had before another possible conflagration erupted...
Well, she was a clever girl, she could connect the dots.
Hitomi was witnessing the birth of some sort of new alliance, something huge, unheard of since the advent of NATO or the fall of the USSR.
And she was tech support?
She hadn't been told not to watch, exactly, but she really felt she shouldn't since she obviously wasn't meant to hear. The large screen in the other, dimly lit room, flipped back and forth between the faces of various speakers, charts, maps, and digitized communication dispatches with Simplified Chinese overlays.
The DMZ between North Korea and South Korea had its own slide, with numerous red circles and arrows drawn towards the south. To Hitomi's surprise, she saw another slide with arrows pointing towards North Korea's border with China.
What was happening?
Sakura was holding her hands in her lap with head slightly bowed, almost demurely, but Hitomi could see her eyes reading the slides with just as much curiosity as Hitomi. After two nervous but ultimately boring hours the meeting ended. There were a series of bows from all parties, which surprised her - the sheer level of cordiality being exhibited was somehow reassuring.
It turned out that neither girl had to fix or do anything; they just ambled back to the IT department afterwards with a few words of thanks from Mr. Yamada and one of his staffers.
Meanwhile, the communications blackout was in effect until further notice.
- - -
"Do you think it's real?" Sakura asked, spinning slowly in her seat, tapping a pen along the edge of the desk she sat behind.
"What?" Hitomi asked.
"The whole 'God' and 'souls' thing. You have to admit it's 'supernatural' that everyone, everywhere hears a 'voice', and then none of us have 'dreams' afterwards when we sleep, at least, that we can remember," her older companion explained.
"I dunno, honestly," Hitomi said, "I'm in the Arthur C. Clarke camp, I think: there's a rational explanation for it and just because it looks like magic doesn't mean it isn't just an advanced technology."
Sakura put her pen to her lip, tapping it there now instead, and considered what Hitomi had said.
"Aliens, huh? I never read a lot of Sci-Fi..." she started, but Hitomi interrupted her, leaning forward in her own seat with a look of shock on her face.
"Wait, what? You do computer stuff! How do you NOT read Sci-Fi? Did you grow up in a barn?"
Sakura laughed gently, putting her pen in her vest's pocket. "Kinda, actually - I have a lot of brothers and sisters. I was always helping out."
"Wow, how many is a 'lot'?"
"Three brothers, two sisters."
"WHHHHHAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaat!?" Hitomi said, setting herself spinning in her chair just to playfully exaggerate her disbelief.
Sakura waved her off, "I know, I know, but whatever. I learned computers and then got assigned here. It's nice, actually, I think I like it here. I just worry about my family, you know? Hard to get a hold of them since they're in... I mean, they live in a really rural area."
Hitomi nodded, "Well, hey, I'm going to go get a drink from the vending machine. You want anything? Fanta? Coffee? Zena?"
The staff break room had a vending machine that didn't cost anything but kept beverages cool and hot (depending on what they were), and they'd been encouraged as "such helpful contributors" to raid it as necessary.
Especially since they had been asked to pull an evening shift so they could keep an "eye on things" because the diplomatic staff where doing tons of video conferences with the homeland. This meant sitting in the IT department, just the two of them, watching a row of blinking green and amber lights.
"Ummm, yeah, coffee sounds nice. They said another hour, right? Does the machine have BOSS?"
"Yeah, and yeah I saw some, OK! I'll be right back!"
- - -
Hitomi turned the corner to come back into the IT department balancing a BOSS coffee can (hot!) tucked in the crook of her right arm while holding herself a grape Fanta in her right hand. She had been trying to take it easy since her left arm strength was pretty weak from being so sore all the time.
She heard a scream. Sakura!
Hitomi pounded down the hallway, colliding with their usual JSDF escort who had also been absent from the room for a bit.
The cans went clanging to the floor but it didn't matter: there was a haze of smoke coming from the IT department!
FIRE!
"Help!" she heard Sakura yell again, and they both came into the room, Hitomi rushing over to Sakura, and the soldier began barking into his radio. They could hear more feet pounding elsewhere in the building.
Sakura was on the ground, pointing to curls of smoke coming out of the metal slats that were part of a vent at the bottom of the IT server room's secure steel door.
"It just started smoking! One of the server's must be overloaded!" Sakura exclaimed, pointing to the door, "We don't have access, call Mr. Yamada!"
Moments later that same man came running in, stopping to stare at the door with confusion for a moment, and then pressed a series of buttons on the keypad, coughing as he did so.
There was a click.
Sakura burst forwards and opened the door, stepping into a pillar of billowing grey smoke that obscured her completely. Hitomi thought she saw her bending down, but couldn't be sure.
Then Sakura yelled: "Hitomi! Screwdriver! On the desk!"
Hitomi turned around wildly and spotted a screwdriver set on one of the desks. Mr. Yamaha and the soldiers were fanning the smoke out and now they could see Sakura next to a server rack where smoke was pouring in gouts from behind one of the many machines.
Hitomi ran into the thinning smoke and helped Sakura unscrew the unit from its rack mount, which really only took two screws - it was mounted on rails and slid forward, its heavy weight balanced in their hands as Sakura yelled further commands:
"Help us lift it out!"
A soldier stepped in and braced the server from beneath, giving Hitomi and Sakura the leverage to unclip it from its rails and pull the smoking machine free.
"What now?" Hitomi asked hurriedly, not exactly confident in holding her side of the weight with one out of two arms being still mostly out of commission.
"Out of the server room! I think it's just the exhaust fan in the back of it!" Sakura pointed, handing her part over to a soldier.
Hitomi helped wrestle it out of the server room while Sakura fanned away the smoke trailing them, but then Sakura must've remembered Hitomi's arm.
"Hitomi, no! Your arm!" she objected, grabbing the load from Hitomi and helping the soldier set the server down on the ground with the front on the floor and both of them balancing it so the back end, still smoldering (but without any real heat, Hitomi had noticed), was facing up.
SWOOOOSH-KER-BWOOOSH.
Another soldier had appeared with a fire extinguisher and shot the nozzle's content straight down the fan blades in the back of the server, putting out the source of the smoke.
Finally the server got unceremoniously dropped to the floor and everyone stepped back, staring at it.
"Wow," Sakura said, "The power supply must've burnt out..." she observed.
The smell was awful. Acrid and stinging smoke still lingered.
"So much for the fire alarm," Sakura said, looking around.
Hitomi stepped into the server room, looking around. Sakura must've been right about it just being the one machine because there wasn't any other source of smoke. The vents in the ceiling were already sucking up the light wisps of grey smoke, and she could see all the rest of the machinery clearly.
The rack they had just pulled the server from had several other servers and pieces of equipment mounted above and below the now empty slow. Wow, Sakura had managed to undo the power cable and the network cables without even being able to see them, just by feeling around!
She was so brave! Her hand must've been right next to the fire!
"Everything looks OK!" Hitomi called out, looking around. "I don't think anything else is damaged!"
She looked around, and noticed something black on the thin carpet near the door. Hitomi reached down to pick it up, but pulled her finger back quickly, having burnt it a little.
It wasn't a "thing" - it was a smoldering hole in the carpet. Oh, the server must've dripped out some burning plastic, she reasoned.
Hitomi was just about to point it out to Mr. Yamada, who had poked his head through the door, when at last the fire alarms went off.
"Oh. There they go," Sakura said, smugly.