88/70
Callahan sat at the piano, a beat-up and very old Yamaha upright, riffing on Bill Evans' B Minor Waltz. He was playing an ancient blues lounge a few blocks up from the Wharf, playing for tips the occasional patron left in the jar above the keyboard. The place was crowded and dead quiet, because after events of the past few days there just wasn't a whole lot left to be said, and people had grown too upset to talk about matters in public.
After years of runaway wildfires in northern California and Oregon, and years after water had been cut off from the Colorado River, life on the West Coast had been growing increasingly insane. The past summer had been so hot that sidewalks had buckled, then streets started to break apart so badly that the city's cable cars could no longer run. But in the past few days the entire world had watched, aghast, as finally Russia moved on Europe and hushed whispers of 'another world war' could be heard everywhere, and that was before Amsterdam and St. Petersburg disappeared in blinding flashes spilling out nuclear fusion on an uncomprehending world.
And then, to make matters more interesting, the sun had gone crazy. The earth's magnetic pole had started vaulting around unpredictably just as satellites in low earth orbit started failing. Communications between the continents fractured, the internet disappeared and all the various GPS constellations went offline. Air travel ground to a halt, electric cars could no longer be charged and gasoline remained in underground tanks -- because the electric pumps that controlled the flow had all failed. Suddenly there was a lot of talk about the utility of horses and that it was high time to set about revitalizing the areas railroads. High rise buildings with no windows had become uninhabitable within hours, and grocery store shelves had long since been picked clean. Now people were scared, their money next to worthless, their very survival an open question.
Callahan had been in the city when the latest X-class solar flare had slammed into the atmosphere. He'd been staying in his old apartment building, one of the first projects he'd undertaken with DD, because he'd been spending a lot of time in the city recently. He and DD had been working nonstop hardening all of Callahan's various buildings against the effects of increasing temperatures, first by installing operable windows and then by installing ultra high efficiency air conditioning systems. Aerial hydroponic gardens were being developed in green spaces while solar panels and wind generators popped up wherever their installation made sense. Harry had purchased this old speakeasy decades ago, but just recently the building had been modified extensively -- because Callahan wanted people in the area to have a place to gather when everything else became too overwhelming. Hence...the crowds around his piano.
But Callahan was an old man now, well into his eighties, anyway, and that counted for old these days. He enjoyed his music more than he had in years, and he finally felt at home playing in front of strangers, though something else had changed. He studied the people in the lounge more often these days, watched their reactions to his music, but he was looking for something in particular, a certain kind of reaction. Something he'd earned from Debra Sorensen. Was it really possible?
And so it was that a few nights after the week long war ended, something strange but not completely unexpected happened to Callahan. Winding up the B Minor Waltz he was looking at a young couple and he thought he could see the worry on their faces and in their eyes when sudden light erupted from their being. Almost like flames, he saw rippling blue light dancing around them, pale blue tinged with glowing silver embers -- and as he watched he changed tempo, drifting into Peace Piece -- and the light around the couple reacted to the change of tempo. It was an aura, just the thing Sorensen had told him about, and he was fascinated...
Next he looked at a brooding old drunk at the bar and he watched deep jade colored waves dance and flare around the man, and certain chords released torrents of sparkling red while other, more relaxing minor chords seem to release the man from his cares, and again Callahan watched the pulsating aura as it subsided into swirling pale blues...
The windows that looked out on the sidewalk were wide open now and a warm evening breeze was coming in through the Golden Gate and Callahan felt himself drifting along with the music, thinking about Old California when San Francisco had been little more than a collection of whiskey bars and whore houses and clipper ships at anchor off the Embarcadero. So much had changed. So much change waited...for those willing to go on.
He drifted inside Kurt Weill's September Song for a while -- until he saw a pale pink sphere no larger than a sweet pea hovering near the ceiling -- and he sighed the sigh of an old man who understood the finite limits of time. He had broken one of their rules, and now they were angry. Change would come for him soon enough. That much he could see.
Deborah had passed almost two years before and he was surprised by the pervasive loneliness he'd felt ever since, and he'd been surprised how frightening those feelings had become. The first time he felt that pain he'd thought of other times, of a time when expectations were different, when everything felt limitless. He thought of sitting in class when he was elementary school on Friday afternoons, looking at the clock while waiting for the last bell of the week to sound. Each and every second was so precious, now as then, yet how many minutes had he wasted waiting for something so mundane. He smiled at the trivial nature of this latest epiphany -- as he changed tempo once again, and he fell into Moonlight in Vermont, casting yet another spell over the room. He cast his net wide, looked around the room and into the ocean of swirling auras, and for a moment he thought he felt something probing his thoughts.
What was that feeling. Oceanic? What, or who, was reading his thoughts?
No one seemed to want to admit that nuclear annihilation had literally been just moments away, but now that humanity had stepped back from the abyss it was as if some sort of collective sigh had been released. At least among the living, anyway. But...much more than humanity had been put at risk.
What was it? Who was inside his head?
He found his way into The Crystal Ship, and old song by The Doors, and he watched as people around the piano began to sway and slip away -- almost like tall pines inside a windswept forest. He closed his eyes and saw his Looney Junes swaying to the music of even more ancient rhythms, holding her hands as she moved on top of him, perhaps as they'd made the baby that took her life. He took a deep breath as the memory shuffled away, and when he opened his eyes again he saw the pink sphere up in the beams above, only now the sphere was swaying with the crowd of listeners around him.
He saw DD and the Doc walk in, and it took a while but they finally found two seats at the bar. They listened -- politely -- with the rest of the people in the lounge...but Harry could tell by the expression on DDs face that it was time to take a break. He motioned for his backup to take over the keys and he walked straight out the front door then across the street to his old apartment building. DD made her way out a few minutes later and joined Harry in the elevator that took them to the top floor.
"Where's the Doc?" Harry asked as she entered.
"Nothing of concern to him," she said dryly.
And Callahan wasn't used to seeing her like this. DD was always upbeat, always had a can-do attitude, but right now she looked worn down and beat up by events that seemed beyond her control.
"Okay," he said, "you've got my attention now. What's wrong?"
"Cash flow," she sighed after they entered his apartment. "We've got thirty helicopters and twenty six fixed wing aircraft sitting on the ramps, and our payroll now covers three hundred people. With our cash on hand we can keep going for six or seven months, but then what?"
"What's on your mind?" Callahan asked as he stopped at the 'fridge and poured two glasses of pineapple juice.
"Temporary lay-offs, for one thing."
Callahan shook his head. "No way. There are already too many homeless on the streets as it is, and I'll be damned if I'm going to add to that goddamn problem. Besides, I thought we had enough spares on hand to keep our birds in the air?"
"We had all our aircraft operational within a day, Harry, but that's not the problem. What we don't have is air traffic control. There's no internet and no cell service, so no reservation system, and that means zero in the way of paying passengers."
"Things'll turn around in a few days."
"Okay, but what if they don't? Harry, I mean it...what happens if this is it?"
Callahan could hear the anxiety in DDs voice. He could see fear in her eyes. And now he could see her aura: Flinty gray with deep red waves of anxiety filled the air around her face... "What makes you think we're at that point, DD?"
"Oh, Harry, I don't know. All the stuff on the news recently, I guess."
"The news? The Russia stuff? What else have you been watching?"
"Oh, the Doc's been watching this new series on the Eagle Network, stuff about the end of civilization..."
Callahan nodded. "They're the ones running the series on homelessness, right?"
"That's right."
"Aren't they advocating we rebuild the camps we used to intern the Japanese during the Second World War? Put all our homeless out there in the desert?"
"Yup. Something's got to be done about the situation, Harry. Have you been down in the Tenderloin recently?"
