The sky was perfect.
Nathan didn't use that word often—perfect—but tonight there was no other. Crescent moon, low humidity, no clouds. The stars shone with a sharpness that seemed almost unreal, as if someone had cleaned the glass between him and the universe.
The telescope was pointed toward the constellation Cygnus—Deneb gleamed in the viewfinder, blue-white, impossibly distant. Fifteen hundred light-years. The light he was looking at had left when the Roman Empire was collapsing in on itself.
This, Nathan thought. This is the only place that makes sense to be.
And for the first time in that endless day, The Noise was silent.
It hadn't disappeared—Nathan could still feel it there, somewhere in the back of his mind, like a distant hum. But when he looked at the stars, The Noise retreated. As if even it knew this space was sacred, untouchable.
Nathan pulled away from the eyepiece, stretched his back. The lawn chair creaked under his weight—the same chair his father used to sit in, on those evenings that now seemed to belong to another life.
Wexler's book was in the backpack on the kitchen table. He hadn't opened it. Not yet. But the fact that he hadn't thrown it away meant something, even if Nathan didn't know exactly what.
You don't get to decide who bears your weight.
Maya's words. Still there, like an echo that wouldn't fade.
Nathan shook his head, trying to chase away the thought. Not tonight. Tonight there were only the stars.
He went back to looking through the telescope. He shifted the mount slightly, looking for another target. The Ring Nebula, perhaps, in the constellation Lyra. It had always been one of his father's favorites—a ring of glowing gas, the remains of a dead star. Death can sometimes have its beauty, Daniel had told him once. If you know where to look.
Nathan found the nebula, focused. The ring appeared in the viewfinder—pale, trembling, perfect in its symmetry.
And then the lights went out.
Nathan didn't notice right away. He was already in the dark, his eyes adapted to the darkness of the backyard. But something changed—a subtle absence, like a note that stops playing in a symphony.
He looked up.
The house lights were off. The streetlight at the corner was off. The neighbors' windows—all off.
Blackout, he thought. Strange. There's no bad weather.
He looked at the sky. Not even a cloud. The stars shone sharp, impassive. No wind, no sign of an approaching storm.
He got up from the chair, crossed the lawn toward the back door. The house was immersed in complete darkness—no standby lights, no LEDs, no digital glow.
Nathan looked for the light switch. Click. Nothing.
Okay. Serious blackout.
He pulled his phone from his pocket to use the flashlight.
The screen was black.
Nathan pressed the power button. Nothing. He held it for five seconds, ten. Nothing.
A small spark ignited in his mind. Not fear—curiosity. The kind of curiosity he hadn't felt in months.
Strange.
He tried to remember how much battery he had. At least fifty percent, he was sure. A phone didn't turn off like that, not instantly, not without warning.
He fumbled his way to the kitchen, looking for the drawer where his mother kept the emergency flashlights. His fingers found cold metal—an old battery-powered flashlight, one of those with a mechanical switch.
Click. The light came on.
Nathan stopped.
The flashlight worked. The batteries worked.
But the phone didn't.
He pointed the beam of light around the kitchen, looking for other devices. On the table was his stopwatch—one of those cheap digital models he'd bought to keep time during lab experiments at school. LCD display, battery powered.
The screen was black. He pressed the side buttons. Nothing. Not even a flicker.
Nathan felt that spark transform into something else. Into a fire. Into something he hadn't felt in so long he almost didn't recognize it.
Focus.
His mind turning on. Starting to race. Seeing a pattern, a schema, a puzzle, a problem to solve.
Stop, said The Noise, but the voice was weak, distant. These are things that don't concern you. Go back to the stars.
But Nathan couldn't stop. Not now. Not when his brain had finally found something to hold onto, something that wasn't the constant void.
He sat at the kitchen table, the flashlight propped on its side, and started reasoning.
Observe.
First principle of the scientific method: Observe the phenomenon.
Nathan closed his eyes, mentally visualizing everything he'd noticed. Total blackout of the electrical grid. Dead phone. Dead digital watch. But the battery-powered flashlight working perfectly. Instantaneous blackout, without warning. Clear sky, no sign of bad weather.
Nathan opened his eyes. His mind was racing now, fast, hungry. For the first time in months—maybe years—he felt alive.
Hypothesize.
Second principle. Formulate a hypothesis that explains the observations.
What can turn off all electronic devices simultaneously?
The answer came before he finished formulating the question, crystal clear, perfect in its logic.
EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse.
Nathan felt something ignite in his chest. It wasn't fear. It was something that resembled the old feeling—the one from when he solved a difficult physics problem, when everything clicked, when the universe suddenly made sense.
An EMP generated an electromagnetic field so intense it induced electrical currents in any exposed circuit. Those currents fried delicate electronic components: transistors, microchips, integrated circuits. But batteries were different. Batteries were chemical systems, not electronic ones. They stored energy and released it through chemical reactions. An EMP could discharge them slightly, but it certainly didn't destroy them.
Test the hypothesis.
Third principle. Check if the hypothesis is consistent with the observations.
This explains everything, Nathan realized. The smartphone had integrated circuits and thousands, if not millions, of transistors—dead. The digital stopwatch had an electronic board—dead. Everything with delicate electronic components had been fried. But the battery-powered flashlight—just a mechanical switch, an incandescent bulb, and a chemical battery—worked perfectly.
It was the first time in two years that his brain had worked like this. Fast, lucid, hungry for answers. And the sensation was almost painful in its intensity, like atrophied muscles suddenly tensing.
But this raises an even bigger question, Nathan thought as he got up from the table, pacing nervously through the kitchen. What can generate an electromagnetic pulse of this magnitude?
Nathan got up from the table, pacing nervously through the kitchen. His mind was racing too fast to sit still.
Hypothesis one: lightning.
Lightning generates electromagnetic pulses. Lightning close enough could theoretically fry electronic devices in a limited radius.
But Nathan looked out the window. The sky was perfectly clear. No clouds, no wind, no rain. And most importantly, no flashes. No thunder. Lightning generated a visible flash and audible thunder. And anyway, lightning had a limited range—maybe a few hundred meters. This blackout seemed to cover at least his whole neighborhood, probably more.
Hypothesis one discarded.
Hypothesis two: solar storm.
Solar storms—coronal mass ejections from the sun—could generate electromagnetic pulses when they hit Earth's atmosphere. The most striking case in history was the Carrington Event of 1859 which had done exactly this, frying telegraphs throughout North America.
But Nathan looked at the sky again. It was night. The sun was on the other side of the planet. And even if it were day, an event like that would be detected hours or days in advance by satellites. There would have been warnings.
Hypothesis two discarded.
Hypothesis three...
There remained the most dangerous hypothesis. The one that made his wrists shake just thinking about it. The most terrifying of all.
Detonation of a nuclear device.
Nathan stopped in the middle of the kitchen, his hands gripping the edge of the table.
A nuclear device detonated at high altitude—above forty kilometers—generated a massive electromagnetic pulse. The phenomenon was discovered during nuclear tests by the United States and Soviet Union in the 1960s. A single thermonuclear bomb at four hundred kilometers altitude could generate an EMP powerful enough to cover an entire continent. There was a reason nations kept their nuclear arsenals hidden and protected: the fear that an enemy could launch an EMP attack to disable electronic defenses.
But even a surface explosion could have done it. More limited in range, more devastating locally, but with the same electromagnetic effect in a smaller area. Even in this case, a nuclear device could have explained the total blackout.
Nathan's heart accelerated. His hands started sweating.
No. Wait. Think.
He closed his eyes. Mentally visualized what would happen if a nuclear bomb exploded near Pine Hollow.
First, the flash. The initial flash of the explosion—visible hundreds of kilometers away, so bright it would blind anyone who looked at it directly. A flash that would turn night into day for a blinding second. Nathan hadn't seen any flash.
Then, the boom. The sonic shockwave of the explosion, arriving seconds or minutes later depending on distance. A deafening thunder that made windows shake, that set off car alarms. Nathan hadn't heard any boom.
Finally, the physical shockwave accompanied by a wave of extreme heat. The pressure wave propagating from the epicenter. If the explosion had been on the surface, the shockwave would have been devastating—buildings pulverized, trees uprooted, glass shattered for kilometers. But most of all people vaporized by the enormous amount of heat generated.
Even a high-altitude explosion would have generated visible effects—flashes in the sky, artificial auroras, strange optical phenomena.
Nathan looked outside. The neighbors' houses were intact. The trees were still. No broken glass, no visible damage. The sky was clear, without traces of anomalous optical phenomena.
Hypothesis three discarded, he thought, and felt relief wash away the fear. It's not a nuclear bomb. It can't be. No flash, no boom, no shockwave. But most importantly I'm still alive. No one was vaporized instantly.
But if it wasn't a nuclear bomb, what could it possibly be?
Nathan stopped in the middle of the kitchen, flashlight in hand, his mind racing in circles.
He'd eliminated all conventional explanations. Lightning, solar storm, nuclear device—none of these explained the observations. There was something else. Something he hadn't considered. Something he perhaps had never been able to consider, because it didn't fit into any known category.
There's something else, he thought. Something I'm missing.
Nathan, said The Noise, louder now. Enough. This isn't your business. Go back outside. Look at the stars. Let someone else deal with it.
But for the first time in two years, Nathan ignored it.
For the first time in two years, the voice that had kept him safe, that had protected him from feeling too much, that had convinced him the best way to live was not to live at all—that voice no longer had power.
Because finally, finally, Nathan had something to think about that wasn't the void.
No, he thought. No, I need to understand. I need to know.
A new spark ignited in his mind. An EMP generated an intense magnetic field. A magnetic field that could be measured or at least detected.
He went to the garage, turned on the light. Nothing. Obviously. But the flashlight was enough. Dusty shelves, garden tools, his father's bike still leaning against the wall. And in a corner, an old plastic box with a faded label: Camping Stuff.
Nathan opened it. Inside were forgotten objects—a canteen, a Swiss Army knife, ropes, and what he was looking for: an orienteering compass. One of those old ones, with the rotating bezel and directional arrow printed on the transparent bottom. His father used it during hikes, when Nathan was little.
He picked it up, illuminated it with the flashlight. The needle was oscillating—not slowly, as it did when seeking north, but frantically, as if gone mad. It went right, then left, then spun on itself, then stopped for an instant before starting again.
Magnetic field distortion, Nathan thought. This is definitive proof it's an EMP.
A compass reacted to magnetic fields. If the needle oscillated like that, it meant there was something—something nearby—that was disturbing the magnetic field.
Nathan went back to the backyard, approached the telescope. He knew the polar alignment—he'd pointed the mount toward the North Star hundreds of times. He knew exactly where north was.
He looked at the compass again and observed the needle. Slowly, the oscillations were settling. Not toward north. Toward... northwest? No, too far west. The needle was definitely pointing west, maybe slightly northwest.
Nathan watched the needle as it trembled. Then, slowly, he started walking in the backyard, holding the compass in front of him.
When he moved east, the needle shifted slightly north. When he moved west, the needle shifted even more west. The deviation was more pronounced when he looked in a specific direction. Toward west-northwest.
His heart was beating hard now. His hands weren't shaking anymore—they were steady, controlled, guided by a mind that had finally found a purpose.
Maybe I can use the compass to find the source of the anomaly.
Nathan went back inside. He grabbed the backpack he'd left on the kitchen table—the one with Wexler's book still inside. He started filling it with things that might be useful. The flashlight. Spare batteries. The Swiss Army knife from the camping kit. The compass. A water bottle from the fridge.
He paused for a moment, then added a notebook and a pen—if he found something, he wanted to document it. It's what his father would have done. Observe, record, analyze.
Nathan, said The Noise, more insistent now. What are you doing? Stay home. All of this is dangerous.
But Nathan loaded the backpack on his shoulders, went to the garage, grabbed the bike.
"I'm going to look for answers," he said out loud.