Blackout

Blackout

Monday 19th July 2013, 22:15pm

Sara paused outside her dad’s office. She could hear angry voices coming from inside and was afraid to interrupt what sounded like a hefty argument between her Uncle and her dad.

“I know you’re hiding something Kevin. You don’t think I didn’t notice all your stay at home days or research trips when you weren’t really where you said you were. I’ve stuck behind you and your companies project one hundred percent. And what do I get in return? Nothing. Where were you when I needed you brother?” Gavin was slurring his words and Sara could hear her father sighing. It sounded as if he were packing a bag. “Do think you can just run and way? That I won’t tell everyone about the double life your leading or about how easy it would be for you to cause the power cuts with a little bit of man power… ”
“You’re drunk Gavin.” Sara’s dad’s words were as hard as ice. “Just go home. I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Why not? You don’t have time because you’re off with those demented terrorists to complete your little plan to ruin SIM, your own company?” Kevin was silent. “You didn’t think I wouldn’t notice? You see I’ve been watching you and I saw that underhanded order you made for those plastic explosives. Now I wonder what those could be for?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sara’s dad sounded scarily desperate. “It’s not my company Gavin. In case you haven’t forgotten I don’t own SIM like you did with Gadgets’ r’ Us’. You ruined that on your own brother. I tried to warn you.”

“So that’s what this all about. I knew it. I knew all this time you were jealous of me. Just because you were always the mummy’s boy, always the one to make our parents proud. You couldn’t stand the fact that for once I was the one in the spotlight…” Sara sprang away from the door. The doorknob was turning and within seconds her dad had burst outside. He wasn’t wearing his suit anymore but was dressed fully in black and had his coat on and his back pack was slung over his shoulder.

“Sara?” he questioned his face forming a frown as he noticed his daughter in the shadow of the hallway.

“Dad,” she smiled innocently.

“Did you hear that… uhm… conversation Uncle Gavin and I were having?” he gestured behind him too his office.

“No,” Sara said sarcastically. Her dad breathed a huge sigh of relief. “What did you mean did I hear? Of course I heard! Everyone down stairs could have heard you the way you too were shouting. And before you tell me off for eavesdropping I should tell you that I’m not going to stop you or tell mum. I came up here to tell you, that I want to come with you.”

Her dad looked at her like she was crazy. Sara was so sure he was going to refuse, but instead her simply asked, “Why?”

“Because I don’t think you entirely know what you’re doing or what you’re giving up. Also, I’m coming with you to make sure you come back. ”

Kevin sighed again and ran his hands through his hair. “Family,” he muttered, but to Sara he said, “Okay. But you can deal with your mother when we get back.” Then he turned back to the office and picked Gavin up from the corner he had slouched in. “I’m already late and now I’m going to have deal with the two of you,” Sara’s dad complained but Sara could see from the turn of his lips that he wasn’t really angry. She watched as her dad slung Gavin’s arm over his shoulder and together they hobbled down the hallway. Sara ran to her room and grabbed her mobile and jacket before she rejoined them downstairs. The trio managed to sneak down the stairs completely unseen and slip out the back door where her dad had the car already parked. Inside Sara could hear her mum giving a speech and a toast to SIM. It would be a while before she noticed Sara’s disappearance but how long it would take before everyone noticed the host, her dad was missing?

In the car Kevin, Sara’s dad was quiet. Uncle Gavin had pretty much passed out and was snoring loudly in the backseat of the car. Sara sat up in the front and kept sneaking quick glances at her dad. She was admiring his ability to stay calm and collected in what was a pretty chaotic situation. Sara had always known that she looked more like her dad than her mum. They both had the same dark brown hair and hazel eyes. It was only now that Sara was realizing that she also acted a lot more like her dad too. While she told herself that she was only coming with him to keep an eye on her surprisingly rebellious father, Sara knew that her dad definitely did not need her and that she was only along for the ride because she wanted too. When they were halfway there Sara’s mobile began to vibrate and she had been ready to ignore a call from her mum when she realised it was her Nina calling her.

“Sara! Sara is that you?” came a frantic voice. Before Sara could answer Nina continued. “Oh thank God it’s you! At least you’re still talking to me. So you haven’t heard any of that dirty gossip and lies going around about me? You don’t believe it do you Sar?”

Sara bit her lip hesitantly. She didn’t know what to say. Luther wouldn’t have lied to her and despite what he had said she couldn’t have thought that would be any reason for her to stop talking to Nina anyway.

“Are you okay Nina? You sound kind of… ill?” Sara fumbled for the right word to explain the girl’s sudden change of demeanor.

“Ill? Ill? No I’m not ill! I don’t know why everyone keeps saying that, when there is nothing wrong with me. It’s everyone else who has been acting up. You remember that teacher you know the new one we had today. Well him, my parents and the head teacher are all ganging up on me. They’re trying to prove that I’m not the genius I make out to be and that I’ve been cheating all this time! Honestly, me cheating? A Cable student doesn’t cheat. It’s all just lies, Sar. And the worst part is that everyone actually believes it. All my friends are leaving me on Lifebook and Flitter. No matter what I text or fleet the numbers just keep going. Even Sadie and Keira won’t talk to me anymore…” Nina sniffed in to the mobile. Sara was having trouble making out every word as Nina kept hollering down the mobile. Where had the cool and confident girl that she knew disappeared too?

“Who are Sadie and Keira?”

“The girls that I was hanging with today at lunch Sara, duh. Seriously have you been listening to a word I have been saying? …Or have you been only pretending to listen because you’re really with them right now and are only planning to tell more lies to bring me down from my high social status too!”

There was a pause and a gasp in which Sara finally found her chance to speak. “Look Nina. Just calm down okay? I am on my own and not everyone’s out to get you. You’re not the only one having a hard time right now. In case you haven’t noticed in the last week I’ve been deserted on an island, forgotten by my friends, dragged off to therapy by my mum and…”

“Therapy! See I knew you were in on it too. That’s all my dad’s been talking about now; counseling and therapy. Well I don’t need talking too. I just need everyone to stop spreading these lies because I AM NOT INSANE. I am a good student and I will go to Cable…” Nina’s little tantrum was cut off as the line went dead.

Sara sighed heavily. The world as she knew it had officially crumbled. “I’m sorry about that Sara. I should have warned you the power was going off,” Sara’s dad said as he checked his watch.

“That’s okay. I was about to hang up anyway,” Sara replied. They were approaching SIM now. In the darkness Sara could SIM’s large foundations looming up in front of them. Kevin parked the car directly in front of the doors. With all the streetlights out and due to the fact that it was ten at night, the street was eerily dark. From out of the shadows stepped five or six more people who Sara assumed were more people from Dove.

“Wait here, and if anyone else comes, get out of the car and walk home,” Kevin ordered looking seriously at Sara. She nodded numbly flashing him what she thought was a reassuring smile.

“So are you going to just walk right in?” she asked innocently.

“Nope. Someone may have accidently forgot to lock up tonight, and with no power there will be no alarm to disturb us. Considering that, I will be back here within five minutes and I expect you to be right here.” And with that her dad was out of the car. Sara counted to twenty in her head and gave a quick glance back at the peacefully sleeping Gavin in the back before she also hopped out of the car.

Just as her dad had explained the double doors of SIM opened easily. Sara remembered the building easily from the days when she used to visit as a child. Then she had always been more than interested in her daddy’s work. Today she wandered through the reception to the research labs with uncharacteristic confidence. She didn’t want to stop them. That was evidently too late. Instead Sara wanted to make herself see her dad destroy the technological singularity. Maybe then when she literally saw it with her own eyes she would snap to her senses and stop accepting the actions of Dove and her father.

One or two security guards lingered at some doors but they didn’t stop her. They knew she was Kevin’s son and all of them had to be hired Dove members anyway. In fact everyone she came across was leaving the building and heading the other way. Sara quickened her pace to the place where she knew her dad would be and didn’t hesitate as she wrenched the lab doors open.

“Sara!” Jude smiled as he pulled her into a hug. “I knew you’d come around. But what are you doing in here. We’ll have a better view from outside or from the hundreds of times it’s replayed over and over and over again on the news,” Jude sighed contentedly looking far away into the distance. Sara only nodded weakly and looked beside him to where her dad, Mr. Ford and a woman were standing.

“What are they doing?” Sara asked and pointed towards them.

“They’re just finishing up. Everything’s been pretty much set up already. I can understand why your dad wanted to be here now though. Despite everything he pretty much created the computer, super or not he must regret it having to be destroyed. Not that thousands more can’t be created. It’s simply too…”

“… make a statement,” Sara finished.

“Room for one more?” came a voice behind them making the two teenagers whirl around in shock.

“Who’s that?” Jude frowned pointing at a sobered up Gavin who was standing in the doorway holding a very real semi-automatic pistol that was pointed directly at Sara’s head.

“Sara!” the horrified voice of her dad reached Sara’s ears from across the room as he ran towards her. He was immediately stopped in his tracks as Gavin swung the pistol towards him an unreadable smug look splayed across his face. “Brother,” Kevin said lowly as he edged slowly towards his daughter. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Just put the gun down and we can talk about this rationally. You’re drunk; you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Sara felt Jude’s hand creep into hers. Suddenly she felt rooted to her spot, paralyzed with a deafening fear that had seized hold of all her limbs. She couldn’t move or even turn around to check if Jude’s parents were okay. She flinched as the gun was trained back on her.

“I don’t think so, brother,” Gavin spat the word as he leaned against the doorway for support. “I cannot believe you. Here you are so happy and eager to destroy all this. Well now I’m going to take something back from you and then see how you feel when you have nothing.”

“Gavin, please think about this! This is your niece standing before you. Your own flesh and blood…” from the desperation in her father’s voice and the horrifying look of her determination on her Uncle’s face, Sara quickly grasped the fact that the situation was hopeless. She was going to die. She was going to die... Gavin cocked the gun.

“Wait!” came Mr. Ford’s voice from the back of the room. “Let Sara and Jude go. It’s us you’re angry with. And besides I have the detonator…”

As soon as Mr. Ford said the word Gavin’s attention shifted. His grip visibly shook on the gun as he tried to peer behind Sara and Jude. Seeing his chance, Kevin ran towards his daughter. At his sudden movement Gavin instantly fired the gun his aim going wide but still managing to catch Kevin.

After that it was like time slowed down for Sara but magically sped at the same time. The room around her blurred until all she could see was the sight of her dad hitting the ground with a sickening thud. She ran towards him, adrenaline quickly overpowering any fear she felt. She cradled his head in her arms willing his eyes to open. She shook him, slapped at his cheeks and called his name. But nothing would revive him. It was like being in some sickening nightmare but the shouts around her and Jude pulling incessantly on her arm was no illusion. She didn’t see Gavin disappear or exactly remember the trip outside of SIM as Mr. Ford half dragged her outside. All she could see was the image of her dad’s head in her arms with his eyes closed.

The explosion was enough to snap Sara to her senses, or out of them depending on the way you look at it. They had just made it outside and were still thrown of the feet from the massive shock waves that radiated through the building. Sara hit the pavement and she grabbed her ears as a shrill ringing sound radiated through her ear drums. For over a minute it was all she could hear and Sara curled up in a ball, hugging her knees as fiery debris rained around her.

When the ringing was over Sara gingerly placed her palms face down on the hard asphalt of the road. The very ground itself appeared to be shaking. Looking around her Sara could see that despite what felt like a nuclear bomb, SIM was still standing. Its lower floors however weren’t visible as they were shrouded in thick black smoke. Coughing and wincing from where her arms and knees were covered in cuts from glass, Sara crawled over to the other side of the road where she thought she could see someone.

To her relief the figure that spoke to her wasn’t Gavin, but Jude. He sat down beside her on the road. In the dark Sara could see his eyes were wide and his arms were also bruised and bleeding. “What happened?” she shivered as she pulled her shaking arms around herself.

“We were never supposed to bring the whole building down, just mainly the research labs and stuff. Everything has gone according to plan.”

“I know. But the ground it’s shaking!”

Jude ran his hand through his hair and stood up. He offered Sara a hand and when she didn’t take it, he reluctantly said, “I think the cities being bombed.”

Sara didn’t even flinch. “Where’s my dad, Jude?”

And Sara was thankful when he looked her in the eyes and told her very seriously, “I don’t know.”

Still in shock, Sara finally took his hand and pulled herself to her feet. In the distance she could hear the faint sounds of sirens and even a helicopter thudding overhead. It had been the perfect plan. The explosion was going to be the headline news maybe tomorrow or the day after that or even next week if Jude was right and Media City was under attack, it was going to be a while before things would go back to normal. But they would go back to normal eventually. SIM would recover, continue their work and start again if they had too. Maybe another country would over take them in the big important race too our future. Whatever happened, the world would go on. Famines would still exist. Earthquakes and tsunamis would only worsen. Humanity would continue to tamper with their world and release the deadly CO2 gas emissions into the atmosphere. Life and death will go on, but now the once perfect Media City, the city that was the most technologically advanced city in the world had shamefully been bought to their knees by one little organization.

Sara dusted herself off and took one last heavy look at SIM before she began to search for her father.