The four just looked at him, and he could sense his old students were now prepared for and would politely endure his launching off on some professorial run of thirty minutes or more about just how fascinating this moment was.
But he stopped there, aware that they were standing in a cold, dank, mildew-laden basement, and if Makala found out that a young mother still recovering from giving birth to twins had been forced out of politeness to stay and listen, there’d be hell to pay. Besides, with all the rush of emotions this experience had triggered, he was suddenly very tired.
“The point is that apparently every computer in use on the day we were hit got fried. We go without electricity for over two years until you two”—he nodded gratefully to Becka and Paul—“bring us back at least to the late nineteenth century world. But then in all the rush and excitement that created, none of us actually thought to look at the old electronic tools stashed away and forgotten in places like this. So thank you, Paul and Becka, for this discovery; you two are our Galileos.”
He was pleased to see that his words had hit; both of them were smiling at each other, Paul’s arm slipping around Becka’s waist as he kissed her on the forehead.
A thought struck him.
“We lost our house in the fight with the Posse, but my mother-in-law, Jen, God rest her, was a regular pack rat. Beside the old cars, she hung on to everything. I remember when we moved in, there must have been half a dozen old cell phones in a desk drawer.”
“No good without the towers,” Ernie interjected authoritatively.
“I know, but just curious. We all used to joke how we could remember phone numbers from when we were kids, but once the cell phone craziness hit, and then the smartphones, one simply just said a name or tapped a screen and the number was there. We lamented all the photos lost, all the text messages that touched our hearts and were saved being lost. Just curious now—I’ll dig them out and bring them into the office tomorrow and see if they light up again.”
“No good in that,” Ernie replied, “other than nostalgia. The question really is what to do with this computer and any others we might get running again.”
“Go on,” John offered, for it was indeed the question that had hit him the moment the screen had flickered to life and he was staring at that damned grinning Pac-Man.
“Databases,” Ernie replied. “Lone computers, like this Apple IIe, are nothing but toys.”
John was silent, not leaping to the defense of an old friend of a machine that had enabled him to write a master’s thesis in near record time.
“It was linking them together. The Internet back in the mid-’90s that truly launched the revolution. A machine alone, okay, it’s entertaining, and kids can play that dang Pac-Man and Mario on it until the motherboard finally fries off, and the way this one is smelling, I don’t give it very long unless I take it apart and clean it. I’m thinking about databases—uplinks, for example. Those guys up in Bluemont, don’t tell me they don’t have systems up and running. I’ll assume the low-earth orbit sats got killed off when the war blew, but the ones up at geosynch? I’d give my left—”
He paused looking at Becka.
“Excuse me. I’d give my left arm to be able to tap into that data flow and they don’t know I’ve hacked in.”
After mentioning losing an arm, seconds later, he realized the faux pas he had committed in front of Forrest, who had indeed lost an arm. He looked over at the veteran anxiously, and Forrest forced a smile.
“At least it wasn’t the arm I use for important things.”
Ernie offered a weak grin of thanks.
John, however, was looking at Ernie wide-eyed.
“Could you actually do that? Eavesdrop into Bluemont’s comm system?”
“I already knew the story about Galileo, Professor Matherson. And yeah, maybe I could.”
John looked over at Forrest, remembering the reason his friend, a former enemy, had ventured over the obstacle of the Mount Mitchell range in what was becoming a driving blizzard with word that someone who had once served with his closest friend in the prewar army had trekked two hundred miles to eventually reach them.
“I’m giving you whatever gas you need, Ernie, to move whatever you want here, to this basement. If you can get any of these machines up and running, do so ASAP. I’ll put the word out in a town announcement for folks to start rummaging through attics and basements to see what can be found.”
“I’d advise against that,” Forrest interjected.
“Why?”
“We learned that our old bastard friend Fredericks had one or more people of his planted here. Let’s assume the same. For now, I’d suggest keeping this nugget quiet, and let’s talk to that Quentin fellow first.”
John took it in, hesitating.
“Galileo, don’t you think he regretted blowing his mouth off about his discovery?” Forrest interjected. “He should have stayed quiet a few years, done his research, gotten it out to a trusted few others; instead, he invites the church officials in, and bango, he’s on trial for heresy and under house arrest for the rest of his life.”
John looked at his friend with surprise.
“Hey, a lot of long nights when deployed, plenty of time to read history, same as you, even if I didn’t get a fancy degree.”
John smiled and nodded in reply.
“Until this storm lets up, we’ll focus on what Paul and Ernie are playing with,” John said, though at this moment his thoughts were far more focused on who Quentin Reynolds was, if indeed Bob Scales was alive in Roanoke, and what portent that was for the future.
CHAPTER TWO
It was two days before the storm finally abated, the morning of the second day dawning bright, clear, and still. John was up first, shivering as he pushed kindling into the woodstove, the sole source of heat for the house, watching it flare to life as the kindling ignited from the hot coals from the night before, and then carefully feeding in split lengths of seasoned hickory and oak.
Memory of another time hit him every time he did this. His abandoned and burned-out home up by Ridgecrest had a fireplace. Of course everyone wanted one when they moved to the mountains, and it was a source of comfort for Mary in her final days, wrapped in an old family quilt and nestled in an overstuffed chair pulled up close, John making sure the fire was blazing cheerily. The fireplace was purely psychological for Mary, though young Elizabeth, fed some propaganda in her middle school classes, would sniff, saying it was inefficient, polluted the atmosphere, and contributed to global warming.