Power to the People
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markcmarino
Jul 30, 2016, 2:16:51 PM7/30/16
to Monstrous Weather Netprov
Power to the People
Rob glanced down at his phone, frowned, and gave it a little tap on his leg as though it might respond to that. Almost out of juice, he murmured to himself. Course that’s not so bad as the time power decided not to work at all, and he sipped the last of his iced green tea, twirling the straw around the ice to see if he could free up some drops. It was back in the early days of electricity. Edison had just bested Tesla in a best out of three competition of power corn hole, and it was decided that alternating current would flow to people’s houses instead of DC or peanut butter power that George Washington Carver wanted or popcorn power by Orville Redenbacher. Course, the power then wasn’t quite the way it is now, coming in on lines. Instead, you’d line up at the power dairy with your big gallon batteries and get them filled up. Now, if you were rich, you could have the power come to you directly, but that was mostly on the bus. Eventually, the typical Smiths and Con-Eds could get power bused to them, and even after that was only going on for about a week and a half, people already started taking for granted that the power would always come so dutifully. So they were in for a surprise when the power one day decided not to come. It was during the time of the great static electricity storm of 1901, smack in the middle of the electric world series of the barnstormer leagues – the Emory Electrons versus the Pittsburgh Protons. One of the Pittsbrurgh Protons who turns out to be a leader says, hey, let’s not follow the current to the rich man’s house and get ourselves whirled about in electric mixers and frizzled in tungsten lights or buzzed in electric shavers or other pleasure-making devices. Let’s see how they do without us. The other protons think this a good idea but the electrons hold out until one free radical says, the protons have a good idea. Let’s chill with them. And with that, power stops to serve. The rich folks up on Surcharge Hill now aren’t too sure what to do. Most have forgotten how to light a candle or how to write by hand or defrost frozen dinners without a microwave – if they even knew how to in the first place. The kids have no devices to keep them from facing the existential sorrow of existence. Stirred to think by this overwhelming despair, one child speaks up and says, Maybe we need to treat power a little better. But everyone just laughs through gritted teeth because their cybernetic jaws can neither open (nor close if they have been left open). And that’s how the South won the Civil War. Rob was no longer paying attention to his own story so despondent was he about power draining percentage by percentage from his phone. Mark gave him a hug but it didn’t really help because he was secretly taking a selfie using his reserve power pack.
MM
Rob glanced down at his phone, frowned, and gave it a little tap on his leg as though it might respond to that. Almost out of juice, he murmured to himself. Course that’s not so bad as the time power decided not to work at all, and he sipped the last of his iced green tea, twirling the straw around the ice to see if he could free up some drops. It was back in the early days of electricity. Edison had just bested Tesla in a best out of three competition of power corn hole, and it was decided that alternating current would flow to people’s houses instead of DC or peanut butter power that George Washington Carver wanted or popcorn power by Orville Redenbacher. Course, the power then wasn’t quite the way it is now, coming in on lines. Instead, you’d line up at the power dairy with your big gallon batteries and get them filled up. Now, if you were rich, you could have the power come to you directly, but that was mostly on the bus. Eventually, the typical Smiths and Con-Eds could get power bused to them, and even after that was only going on for about a week and a half, people already started taking for granted that the power would always come so dutifully. So they were in for a surprise when the power one day decided not to come. It was during the time of the great static electricity storm of 1901, smack in the middle of the electric world series of the barnstormer leagues – the Emory Electrons versus the Pittsburgh Protons. One of the Pittsbrurgh Protons who turns out to be a leader says, hey, let’s not follow the current to the rich man’s house and get ourselves whirled about in electric mixers and frizzled in tungsten lights or buzzed in electric shavers or other pleasure-making devices. Let’s see how they do without us. The other protons think this a good idea but the electrons hold out until one free radical says, the protons have a good idea. Let’s chill with them. And with that, power stops to serve. The rich folks up on Surcharge Hill now aren’t too sure what to do. Most have forgotten how to light a candle or how to write by hand or defrost frozen dinners without a microwave – if they even knew how to in the first place. The kids have no devices to keep them from facing the existential sorrow of existence. Stirred to think by this overwhelming despair, one child speaks up and says, Maybe we need to treat power a little better. But everyone just laughs through gritted teeth because their cybernetic jaws can neither open (nor close if they have been left open). And that’s how the South won the Civil War. Rob was no longer paying attention to his own story so despondent was he about power draining percentage by percentage from his phone. Mark gave him a hug but it didn’t really help because he was secretly taking a selfie using his reserve power pack.
MM
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