Chaco

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

“You’re a Ph.D.?” Abigail asked Chaco. “I knew you were educated, intelligent, but I had no idea.” She leaned forward in her patio chair, her eyes fixed on the Salvadoran. The warm evening breeze heated Chaco’s skin, but Abigail pulled her sweater around herself as though to stave off a chill.

“You mean to tell me the handyman who lives in my guest cottage is a university professor?” Russell took a sip of water from a plastic bottle. “How in the hell did you end up here?” He stood and paced the flagstones.

“He’s here because he’s an illegal alien. You hired him without even checking his papers, didn’t you?” Rocky grinned at Chaco. “He’s running from something. He’s bullshitting us, can’t you tell?” He scanned the faces of the others. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but he’s making this up, and I can’t believe any of you are buying his crap.”

“Oh, fer gawdsake, pipe down and let Chaco speak. Y’all aren’t lettin’ him get even one, single, solitary word in edgewise,” said Margo.

“I’ll answer all your questions in time,” said Chaco. “But we have more important matters to discuss first. I’m afraid we are confronted by a dire situation. We need to formulate a plan, and if we’re to survive, we must stick together.

“What do you mean we must stick together?” Rocky shook his head. “I don’t have to ‘stick’ with anyone if I don’t want to, least of all you.” He stood his ground, his legs wide apart, feet firmly planted, arms crossed.

Chaco’s back stiffened. Ignorant hijo de puta. He kept his voice low, steady. “This is what we are faced with. A few days ago, and again this morning, I observed a series of solar prominences so large they expanded way beyond my telescope’s viewing capacity.”

“What the hell’s a ‘solar prominence’?” asked Rocky.

“A giant eruption on the Sun’s surface that releases superheated gas called plasma composed of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. These prominences are natural occurrences. Most are harmless, even beneficial in that they ‘charge the Earth’s batteries,’ you might say. But what concerned me about the ones I observed—their size.”

“So what?” Rocky asked.

“Even a small M-6 class eruption has been known to create severe electrical disturbances on Earth, such as the one that hit Canada in 1989 knocking out power to six million people in less than two minutes. If a large enough electrical particle wave resulting from a plasma surge, known as Coronal Mass Ejection, CME, as we call it, strikes Earth it can do quite a bit of damage. The prominences I observed were hundreds of times larger than an M-6 class CME.”

“And you know about this how, exactly?” Rocky asked another question, then another.

Chaco put up his hand to halt the other man’s string of inane questions. “If you give me a moment to explain…. I completed courses in heliophysics, and participated in postdoctoral fellowships over several summers in El Salvador and Colorado.”

“What exactly is ‘heliophysics’?”

“The science of the Sun-Earth connection, and it includes physical processes found in laboratories as well as in our solar system and the universe as a whole.”

“What do these CMEs mean to us?” Russell ceased his pacing and scooted his chair across the flagstones closer to the verdigris wrought iron bench where Chaco sat.

“In 1859, two amateur astronomers in England, one named Richard Carrington, and another, Richard Hodgson, observed two bursts of light within a group of Sunspots that Carrington had been mapping. At the same time Carrington observed the flashes, a measuring device called a magnetometer located in London’s Kew Observatory registered a wild disturbance. Carrington and Hodgson had witnessed a massive solar superstorm, the largest ever recorded. The storm launched tons of charged particles toward Earth, and when those electromagnetic waves collided with Earth’s atmosphere, several strange things happened.”

“Like what?” Rocky asked. “And when exactly do you get around to answering Russell’s question about what all this claptrap has to do with us, that is if you can actually answer the question.” The hairy man snorted, still standing legs apart, spine rigid.

Margo crossed her legs and bounced one high-heeled foot. She held her arms tight over her abundant breasts and threw her most withering look at her husband. He ignored her.

“Give me a moment. I’ll get to that,” Chaco said.

“You better get to it,” Rocky said. “Right about now I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t make up all this baloney to avoid my calling Immigration once electricity is restored. I guarantee you, I will figure out what game you’re playing, even if everyone else here has their head stuck in the sand.”

“Rocky, we’ve all had enough of your attitude,” Russell said. “Let the man tell us what he knows, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“It’s your house and your boy. You do what you want, but I’m done listening to this bullshit. I’m outta here. C’mon, Margo. Let’s go.”

“No, Rocky. You go right on ahead.” Margo’s foot ceased bouncing. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’m stayin’ here and listenin’ to what Chaco has to say. You got the manners of a peckerwood, and I’m ashamed of how rude yer bein’. I’ll come in and fix supper later.” She unlocked her arms and motioned him away with both hands. “Go on, now.”

“Suit yourself.” The hulk of a man turned heel and stomped off toward his glass mansion.

“Please, Chaco, continue,” Abigail said.

“When the magnetic wave of 1859, known as the Carrington Event, slammed into the planet, it knocked out power to telegraph lines over large areas of North America and Europe. Oddly, though, some stations disconnected their batteries and could resume operations using only geomagnetic power. Some telegraph operators even reported the signal as clearer than it had been with battery connection.”

“Fascinating. I don’t recall hearing about any of this.”

“There have been many articles in scientific journals about solar flares and CMEs, and there is quite a bit of information available on-line and in print about historical solar disturbances, but if astrophysics or heliophysics are not topics you are fervent about, you probably would not have taken notice, Mrs. Walker. According to various articles, and other accounts I’ve studied, people reported seeing the Aurora Borealis as far south as Hawaii and Central America. In Colorado, campers observing the northern lights thought it morning and rose to make breakfast.”

“What do northern lights have to do with them CME thangs you’re talkin’ about?” Margo asked.

“CMEs create the Northern Lights, Mrs. Pennymon. I saw them the other night.”

Margo’s jaw dropped. “You mean to tell me there was Northern Lights right over Green Lake? You shudda woke us up. I would like to see that.”

“I got some good photos with my cell. I’ll show them to you when cell service is restored. Besides, there may be more. You very well could still have a chance to view them yourself.”

“If a CME that size hits Earth now…I mean,” Russell said, “with our reliance on technology, electricity…I can’t even imagine. What, exactly, would happen, Chaco? I’d think the results would be devastating.”

“Until now, no observatory or solitary astronomer has recorded a solar storm nearly as large as the Carrington Event so it would be difficult to ascertain what a comparable impact would do. But you are correct. It’s a certain bet the results would be catastrophic. Depending on where the CMEs hit, power grids and circuit boards with microelectronics could be destroyed throughout half or more of the planet. Hundreds of nuclear plants would run out of diesel fuel for their backup generators. The result would be mass nuclear meltdowns rendering vast plots of land uninhabitable for centuries.” Chaco held up his hands and counted on his fingers. “Any vehicle with a computer chip will most likely not run. There would be no lights, no way to pump fuel, no potable water, no sewage disposal, no cell phones, no land lines, no computers, no satellites, no way to get prescription meds, no banking, no radio service, no police or fire services, no…you get the idea. Mr. Walker, I’m going to take the truck down the hill and see what’s going on.”

“I’d rather you not. If what you say is true, we’ve got to conserve fuel.” Russell sat forward in his seat. “How long will it be before we can expect power?”

“If we received massive CMEs, some scientists speculate it could be years, even up to a decade, before full power might be restored. When the Carrington event occurred…”

“My God!” Russell bolted out of his chair. “Is that what you saw, then? Solar storms as large as the Carrington Event?”

“No, Mr. Walker. I’m fairly certain each of the storms I observed were several times larger.”