Brightly Lit

by Penalt


Chapter 27: Once in a Lifetime

    “I tell you Madison, there’s a hell of a lot of corruption going on up here,” Cummins said, into the phone, cigarette smoke wafting up from the ashtray on his nightstand.  “The fire chief, who also happens to be the mayor, is making time with a local woman who just happens to be… get this, the town witch.”

    “Hang on, did you say ‘witch’?” asked Madison Chou, Cummins’ producer back at Global TV.  “That’s a twist.”

    “Oh, it gets better,” Cummins said, pausing to take a drag on what he swore would be his first and last cigarette of the day.  “I’m about 80% sure she was at the dam, and that she had something to do with what happened there. That’s why they’re all clamming up about what happened.”

    “That doesn’t make any sense, Brian,” protested Chou.  “Everything worked out. If this witch, as you call her, had something to do with it you would think they would be praising her, not hiding her.  Besides, I want you to put that aside for now.”

    “Are you crazy?” Cummins asked, stabbing out the cigarette.  “This is corruption. Misuse of political power for personal gain.  We could get a Webster Award out of this.”

    “John, you need to get some perspective here.  You aren’t in the Lower Mainland,” Chou said, cutting off her reporter.  “You’re grasping at straws and besides, Brightly’s entire operating budget last year was barely four million dollars.  No matter how big anything is there on the local scale, in the larger market no one is going to care. Besides, I have something else for you to work on while you’re up there.”

    “What?” Cummins said, trying not to grumble at Chou’s well made point.

    “We got a press release after dinner last night,” Chou said, and Cummins could hear her working a keyboard.  “Horgan is going to be in Brightly on Sunday. Seems someone fast-tracked awarding the fire crew the Citizenship medal, and he’s going to be awarding it in person.”

    “Okay, you want me to keep getting background on the crew then?” Cummins asked, thinking of how he could combine that with what he really wanted to dig into, namely the obvious local shenanigans.  

    “Yes,” Chou said.  “Oh, one other thing.  Our Ottawa bureau picked up a juicy rumour that Trudeau might show up as well.”

    “Wait,” Cummins said, sitting bolt upright in surprise.  “The Prime Minister? The PM is coming here?”
   
    “The federal election isn’t that far away,” Chou said, chuckling.  “and no matter what the opposition parties may think of his leadership style, Justin’s a master of social media and ‘feel good’ photo-ops.  This has all the hallmarks of an intentional leak to make sure the press is there to record him doing just that. I need a good point man up there to try to slide him some tough questions, and you’re one of my best.  Think you can handle it?”

    “Oh, I am all over it,” Cummins said, feeling a familiar fire in his veins.  “The power came back on last night, and Hydro is just fixing the last outages now.  I shouldn’t have any problem calling in and keeping you up to date.”

    “Good man,” Chou said, and Cummins could hear her tapping away on her computer again.  “Drop the local corruption bit, and keep working up background for me. I’ll have a camera crew up there on Saturday.  Good luck.”

    “Bye,” Cummins said, hanging up the phone and rising off his hotel bed.  The Prime Minister, here. It all made sense now. Montcalm was probably some old friend of Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s famous father.  Or perhaps even of Justin himself. The younger Trudeau had spent a few years in BC and was an outdoorsman, just like his father and brother.  Cummins left his room, heading for breakfast with purpose in his stride.

    In the Global offices far to the south in Burnaby, Chou set down her phone with a sigh.

    “Why do you even use that guy?” asked her assistant, who had heard every word of the conversation. “There’s nothing up there, and even if there is, it’s small potatoes.”

    “I use him because he’s a blunt instrument and he does have a good nose for news,” Chou said, rubbing the bridge of her nose.  “He pounds away at things and almost always something story worthy does fall out. Besides, worst case scenario is we have a reporter on site for a mid-level political story.  Now, go get me some coffee.”

    “That’s going to be your third cup and it’s barely six,” her assistant objected.  “Let me get you some nice soothing chai tea.”

    “Coffee, now,” Chou said, half teasing-half ordering.  “Chou needs caffeine.”


    Ernest Harding stepped with purposeful, but quiet, steps through the sleeping house.  The power had come on in the past hour, waking him and he had spent the predawn hours going through the house, and turning various switches back off or on as need be.  Now, with the sun up he paused outside his son’s bedroom door as an uncharacteristic nervousness gripped him.

    Chiding himself at his delay, he gripped the doorknob and opened the door with as much care as he could, so as not to wake his sleeping son.  There, hair mussed, covers askew, lay the peacefully sleeping body of his son. Ernie smiled and nodded in satisfaction as he took in Zak’s human arms and legs, and he closed the door as softly as he had opened it.  

    After a quick peek into Kylara’s room to confirm that she too had reverted to being his little girl again, Ernie went into the kitchen to make breakfast.  About five minutes into bacon sizzling in the pan, his wife came downstairs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Ernie wordlessly passed Lynn a cup of Jean’s special breakfast tea.  Lynn took a sip and her eyes popped open at the potency of the brew and the excessive amount of honey her husband had put in.

    “You always make it too sweet,” Lynn complained, even as she gave her husband a peck on the cheek.  She noticed his happy expression as he moved the bacon around in the pan. “What’s got you so pleased with yourself this morning?”

    “The kids are human again,” Ernie said, and Lynn’s eyes went wide again.  “I’ll have to check with Jean and Arnie, but I’m pretty sure I was right how their changes are running.”

    “And that would be...?” Lynn asked, hugging her husband to keep herself from looking in on her children herself.

    “If the other kids are back to being kids as well, it means that their humanity is solar powered now,” Ernie said, shrugging his shoulders.  “For lack of a better word.”

    “Solar powered,” Lynn said, frowning for a moment then brightening as she realized what her husband meant.  “You mean how they reacted to being out in the sun yesterday.”

    “Yeah,” Ernie said, scooping out the bacon onto some paper towel and beginning to crack some eggs into the hot cast iron pan.  “There’s something in sunlight that they need now. It was that reaction of theirs the other day that gave me the clue.”

“What about Jean and Arnold, or even Jessica for that matter?” Lynn asked, passing Ernie some sour cream to mix with the scrambled eggs he was making to go with the bacon.  “What about me?”

“None of you have reacted to the sun the way the kids have,” Ernie said, stirring in a heaping spoonful of the dairy product.  “I figure it’s because they’re kids and you’re adults. Their bodies are still changing and growing as they get older. For you and the others, your bodies are set in place.”

“Makes sense,” Lynn said, watching her husband laying out portions onto breakfast plates.  “Kids! Time for breakfast!”

“I’ll go give Arnold and Jean a call,” Ernie said, setting his utensils down.  “Save some for me, eh?”


   
    It was a cool morning, just the way John Wilcox liked it.  He’d rolled out of his cot five minutes before his alarm went off, dressed quickly in the cold air by the lake, and fired up his old folding Coleman stove.  While coffee began to burble a happy tune in a camp percolator, he covered a frying pan in eggs, slices of ham, some local wild mushrooms he’d picked up at the town store, and even some sausages from the Harding Farm.

    Buying the sausages in town had let him ask a few discreet questions about the farm and the Harding family, who owned and operated it.  Turned out, the Harding farm was a local employer with five regular hands and Ernie Harding was popular for hiring a lot of extra help when things got busy.  Interesting side information was that apparently the Hardings had been neglecting their farm lately, in favour of staying home with their kids who seemed to be sick a lot.  

    He’d also found out that the Harding farm had exactly one horse.  An old gelding who was happily living out his older years being cared for and taken on the occasional gentle ride.  Asking around, he learned that despite the ruralness of the area, there were only a handful of horses locally. None of which were colts or ponies, which made the identity of the hooved animals that had been on the hill all the more curious.  

    Scooping himself out a hearty portion from the frying pan he opened up his laptop, and after securing his connection to an overhead satellite, checked his email.  There were several messages from his bosses back at the station, but nothing that looked like it couldn’t wait. What did catch his eye was an email from his contact at UBC, marked “Urgent”.



To: John Wilcox, CKNW
From: Heather Burgess, Zoology Department, UBC

John, those samples you had couriered out to me… Where did you get those hairs and feathers from?  I couldn’t ID them and when I showed my professor it all hit the fan here. First, he accused me of trying to pull a fast one on him.  Then, he said it was a hoax and was threatening to report an honour code violation. So, I told him you had sent them to me and why.  Then he went and put the samples under the electron microscope we’ve got here. Came back about a half hour later in a frenzy.

He called up your bosses trying to get them to tell him where you are and they would only tell him that you were on assignment.  That’s when he told me not only could he see no signs of fakery from the samples, but that they belonged to “unknown equine and avian species.”  

Anyway, get back to me as fast as you can.  The whole department is going nuts here. You’ve GOT to tell me where you got those samples.

Heather


    Wilcox was just starting to frame a cheeky reply along the lines of, “I can’t tell you. Ha ha ha” when the slamming of truck doors interrupted his train of thought.  It was the dam repair crew and it looked like they had brought some of the linemen with them, along with the truck used for replacing power poles. Probably to start getting the new microwave tower put together, seeing as the old one was definitely good for nothing more than scrap.  

    He was making notes and snapping pictures from his camp stool, when he noticed a long, lean woman walking towards him from the dam.  She had a grim look on her face as she approached, looking decidedly uncomfortable in a mismatched outfit of office wear, that was overlaid by a somewhat tattered fleece vest and a pair of old, but obviously comfortable sneakers.  

    “Hey,” said the woman, whose face was a cross between nervous and angry.  “Look, I don’t like playing the heavy here, but I need you to stop bothering my people.”

    “Your people?” Wilcox asked, pouring a cup of coffee for himself.  “You are…?”

    “Shaushka, Te—Manager Shaushka,” the woman said, and the search engine in Wilcox’s head scrambled to connect the name to a memory.

    “Sorry if I’ve been a bother,” Wilcox said, putting genuine apology in his voice.  “I thought I was staying out of the way and following the guidelines.”

    “The guidelines are that we shouldn’t even be talking, mate,” Shaushka said, the British slang sliding into her speech.  “We aren’t exactly around the Media Center though, are we?”

    “No, we aren’t,” Wilcox agreed, realizing that the source of the manager’s stress wasn’t over him, but worry over what her bosses were going to think.  “Like some coffee? No strings attached.”

    “I’d kill for a cuppa,” Shaushka said, and Wilcox kept the smile from his face as he poured a second cup for the crew manager and passed it over.  Shaushka took a deep sip of the hot brew and sighed in appreciation.
    “It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,” Shaushka began to recite reverently.

    “It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,” Wilcox added, no stranger to the eldritch power of coffee himself.

    “... the hands acquire shakes,” Shaushka said, continuing the mantra.

    “... the shakes become a warning,” Wilcox chanted back, no longer hiding his smile.  

    “It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,” Shaushka said, concluding the ritual and taking another swallow of the ebon elixir.  “That love, is some fine coffee.”

“My father served on HMCS Halifax,” Wilcox said, smiling at the happy memories.  “He taught me how to make ‘Navy coffee’. Stuff will keep you going halfway to forever.”

    “More?” Shaushka asked, holding out her drained cup and Wilcox raised an eyebrow, but refilled the stained enamel cup anyway.

    “As I was saying, I’m sorry if I’ve been a bother,” Wilcox said, doubling down and passing the manager the leftovers from breakfast on a plate.  “Is there anything I can do to make things easier on you?”

    “Love,” Shaushka said, between bites as she wolfed down the offered food.  “As far as I care you’re invisible to me from now on. Just let me have some of that coffee in the mornings and you’ll keep being invisible.”

    “Like I said to your crew,” Wilcox said, with a laugh, “my camp is always open.  And, I will try to stay under the radar.”

    “Appreciate it,” Shaushka said, setting down the plate and turning to leave.  “Just keep everyone’s names out of things, okay?”

    “Not a problem,” Wilcox said to the manager’s retreating back, and his mind finally made the connection.  

Not “Manager” Shaushka, but “Tech” Shaushka.  As in the tech who had been in direct contact with the Brightly Fire Department. The tech who no one had been able to find to get an interview with.  Wilcox’s mind went blank for a moment as he realized the incredible chance he had for an exclusive look at a side of the dam crisis that no one had uncovered yet.  He started to clear down his camp from breakfast and get ready for the day.  He had a lot of work to do.


   

    “So, what are we gonna do today?” Billy asked the others as they stood around in his yard.  He was struck by a sense of having been in this spot before. There was some word for it, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

    “I dunno, what do you want to do?” Zak said, looking over toward Rowan.  

    “Me?” Rowan asked, and realized the other four were all looking at her for direction.  “Why are you asking me?”

    “Because you’re in charge,” Romy told her sister, smiling.  “Power Ponies forever.”

    “Seriously guys,” Rowan said, “I’ve got no ideas, and mom says with the power back on, school is going to be back open tomorrow.”

    “Dad says there’s going to be a big party at the Rec Centre for the Hydro workers tonight,” Zak said.  “The whole town is invited, so everyone is getting ready.”

    “Guys,” Billy said, snapping his fingers.  “We’ve forgotten something. Something huge, and we should go fix it, right now.”

    “What?” Kya asked, her eyes going wide.

    “Remember what we were doing when we first found the book?” Billy asked, and he saw the realization hit each of his friends in turn.  “Ya, we left all the tools, plus all the stuff we dug up, back there.”

    “We need to go get it all back,” Rowan said, stepping into the leadership role held out for her.  “We’ve got a mission, Power Ponies. Let’s go!”

The group charged out of the yard with the instant energy and enthusiasm of youth as they headed off for the old townsite.  As they ran out the gate, Jean watched them through the window of Arnold’s living room. The big man came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her in a gentle hug.

    “They’ll be fine,” Arnold said.  “Short of an emergency, I’m pretty sure Rowan won’t do any magic again.”

    “Probably not,” Jean said, sinking back into Arnold’s warmth.  “It’s just, all this. Magic, transformations, powers. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

    “What do you mean?” Arnold asked, resting his chin on the top of her head gently.  

    “The magic,” Jean said, stepping out of Arnold’s embrace to turn and look at him. “It’s getting stronger.”

    “It is?” Arnold asked, looking at Jean anew. They hadn’t been close for more than a few days, but as he studied her now he could see the lines of tension in her body.  

“I can feel it in me now. It’s like I’ve grabbed onto a high voltage line with one hand,” Jean said, sharing her worries.  “Only, all the time, and I keep hearing that chant in my head, getting louder every day.”

“Chant?  You mean the transforming spell?” Arnold asked.  “Maybe you should cast it, get it out of your system.  I wouldn’t mind spending a little time horsing around with you.”  

“You’re lucky I like you, otherwise I’d see if I could turn you into a toad,” Jean said, rolling her eyes.  “Much as I’d like to though, it’s probably not a good idea. What if that reporter comes snooping around again?”

“He seems really focused on finding out who Seeker is,” Arnold said, sighing.  “I can understand it. It’s a part of what happened that no one has any explanation for and for a guy whose job is finding things out, not knowing must be driving him nuts.”

“Let it,” Jean said, smiling and sliding back into Arnold’s arms.  “Right now, I have other things I’d like to talk about…”


He’s late, Wilcox thought, as he sat at the picnic table near the dam, a picnic lunch spread out on its surface.  Nearly two. He did say to meet him for—

Wilcox’s thoughts broke off as the door to the dam’s inner workings opened and a group of very grubby individuals emerged.  He barely recognized Scotty, as the power engineer emerged from the group busy collapsing against work trucks breaking out box lunches and cigarettes.  Scotty dropped onto the bench seat opposite Wilcox like a sack of potatoes, and wordlessly grabbed a sandwich, eating it in the manner of someone who is truly hungry.

“You guys o—” Wilcox stopped speaking as Scotty held up a hand.

“Let me get my blood sugar back up first,” the man said.  “It’s been a hell of a morning.”

Wilcox nodded, taking in the utterly filthy condition of the man across from him.  Scotty’s coveralls were smeared in a mixture of grease and sand. His hair was in wild disarray and his face nearly completely blackened with dirt.  Wilcox watched the man inhale his second sandwich with three quick bites, barely chewing. An opened bottle of coke was grabbed by a hand ingrained with filth with barely a nod of thanks, then found itself upended and emptied in a single, long pull.

“Oh, dear God, that hit the spot,” Scotty said, punctuating his remark with a thunderous belch and letting his shoulders slump into a relaxed pose.  Wilcox shot a glance over to Scotty’s coworkers, who seemed in as much a daze as the engineer across from him had been.

“What happened?” Wilcox asked, genuinely concerned.  “You guys look like you’ve been dragged over ten miles of bad road.”

“The dam,” Scotty began, shaking his head.  “It’s screwed. Completely, totally bunged up.”

“Why?” Wilcox asked, discreetly turning on the recorder in his pocket.  “I know you said yesterday it was bad, but not like this.”

“That was before we opened up one of the turbines and did an inspection,” Scotty said, pulling out a dirty cloth and wiping his face with it.  “All the turbine blades are showing significant wear, half of them are actually cracked, the main bearings are worn and their seals are contaminated.  Remember what I told you about the last time the dam had a maintenance cycle?”

“Yah,” Wilcox said, nodding and passing over a cloth that might actually do some good.

“We found out why,” Scotty said.  “Y2K.”

“Y2K?” Wilcox asked, repeating the phrase. “You mean that end of the millenium computer glitch that everyone was freaking out over?”

“That’s the one,” Scotty confirmed.  “I still remember the panic during the Nineties. All that wound up happening were a few glitches in some databases.”

“Database, like maintenance records,” Wilcox said, making the connection.  

“Bingo,” Scotty said.  “I’m not a computer guy, at least not like our new boss is, but I know enough that I was able to find that the glitch changed the date of the last maintenance to the year 3001.”

“So, it never came up that it was time for a maintenance cycle, and with the dam ticking away just fine no one thought anything of it,” Wilcox said, nodding in thought.  “Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Exactly,” Scotty said, rising.  “Sorry to eat and run, but we’ve got to get back to it.  We’re going to try to do some spot repairs and get the turbine back together before the party in town tonight.”

“I’d heard about that,” Wilcox said, frowning slightly.  “I’d go but I don’t really like the idea of riding my bike back here at night.”

“I’ll give you a ride,” Scotty said, after a moment’s thought.  “You’ve got another supply run coming in tonight, right?”

“Every evening,” Wilcox said, smiling at the thought of a big party with several important people happy and relaxed from good food and drink.  He might even be able to get an interview with Shaushka during it. “Thanks for the offer, appreciate it.”

“You’re a decent guy, for a reporter,” Scotty said, smiling.