Please stand by

  • So I was work­ing along on my com­puter this after­noon when the elec­tric­ity sud­denly just twinked off.

    How odd.

    I sat there for quite a few sec­onds just look­ing at the black screen. I wasn’t wor­ried that the com­puter was bro­ken, because I noticed with­out notic­ing that things were … dif­fer­ent. They were …

    … quiet.

    The air con­di­tion­ing wasn’t on. The appli­ances weren’t run­ning. Fans and motors weren’t hum­ming. When things didn’t start back up after a minute, I got up and went on a lit­tle tour upstairs and down. Nope. The house was pow­er­less. I could hear the occa­sional car go by, hear the cicadas start­ing up.

    Hm. Well, the still­ness was nice, but it was late after­noon, and it was about 97 degrees out. So I shut down the lap­top, in case I would need the bat­tery later, closed off the coolest room in the house and tossed paja­mas down­stairs, just in case.

    Oh, and I pol­ished off some ice cream. Waste not, want not, y’know.

    I was lucky that it didn’t hap­pen with dead­lines loom­ing and clients fret­ting. As it was, there wasn’t really much going on any­way. So I picked up a book and some iced tea, got into my comfy chair and promptly fell asleep. Then I woke up, and just lis­tened to more quiet, and fell asleep again.

    And I heard every­thing in the house go on for a moment, and then still­ness. And it hap­pened again, like tech­nol­ogy was blink­ing, and off. And a minute later, it all came on and stayed on. Fans started up, phones beeped to let me know they were alive. The blessed thrum of air con­di­tion­ing was heard. The house was on again.

    It made me think of the Ray Brad­bury story “There Will Come Soft Rains.” As so often in early sci­ence fic­tion, the moral of the story has to do with immi­nent nuclear attack. But the part I really think he got right is how auto­mated and mod­ern­ized houses seem to almost have their own life going on — and it’s very nice and hygienic and ori­ented around com­fort. But it can be kind of dis­con­cert­ing, when the house seems to be adver­tis­ing a level of per­fec­tion that we all know feels just artificial.

    In the liv­ing room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morn­ing house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeat­ing and repeat­ing its sounds into the empti­ness. Seven-nine, break­fast time, seven-nine!

    I’m awfully glad to have my air-conditioning back on. But it was kind of nice to have an hour or so of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties this after­noon. I won­der if I can arrange for it tomor­row as well.


    Related posts:

    1. Two wolves
    3. Stand back. I’m thinking
    4. Thiev­ery and ret­ri­bu­tion in the elec­tronic age
    5. Sun­day after­noon and a feast about a robe

    July 21st, 2011 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Word­mama 07.21.2011

    See, you have exactly the right atti­tude about unex­pected events like that. Me, I get all panicky/anxious/freaked and prowl around the house rest­lessly fret­ting about how hot it is and how unhappy I am. How useless!

  • Grace

    Well, I’m not sure mine was the smartest response; if the elec­tric­ity had stayed off for very long, I would’ve been get­ting myself to a hotel at about the same time as every­body else. I’m glad it worked out okay this time, but wor­ry­ing can be the right thing to do.

    BTW, doesn’t the Brad­bury house above remind you of the mag­i­cal gad­get or “smart­phone” that the main cop guy has in one of the Terry Pratch­ett nov­els? I for­get which one, but it chimes on with this relent­lessly cheery ‘bingly-bong. Time for your pedi­cure!” type of thing. Fig­ured you’d know what I’m talk­ing about.

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