Eudoxus of New York
On August 14, 2003, the electrical system began to fail. Just after 2 p.m. overgrown brush near a powerline in Ohio caused a fault in the power grid that would lead to the largest electrical blackout in U.S. history. 50 million people on the east coast would be without power for two sweltering summer days.
At first, the outage was an inconvenience. When the computer at his desk flicked off it was an excuse to go home early. He hoped his work had saved ok. Eudoxus was an editor for a small publisher in Manhattan that made pocket-sized travel guidebooks. He liked the work enough but as he pushed in his desk chair in the eerie muffled light he glad to be done for the day. At first they waited for the power to come back on but after half an hour other people in the office began to get shifty so they decided to call it a day and head home.
Before leaving his desk, Eudoxus grabbed a few pens and his unlined notebook and put them in his messenger bag. He put them in a pocket next to a copy of Timaeus that he had been reading on the #7 earlier that morning.
When Eudoxus walked outside there was chaos. The traffic lights were out and cars cluttered the roads. The heat was almost unbearable and streams of people walked everywhere. Busses were overloaded but not moving and subway stairs belched more people onto the streets from trains that stopped in their tracks below. He began walking like everyone else.
He walked through the city. People sat on steps outside drinking and watching as people in suits trudged back from wherever they came. The sky turned orange as the sun began to set and no one was really sure what would happen next.
The power to the city and a large portion of the entire northeast had been out for hours. The summer heat still radiated and Eudoxus’ shirt clung to his back. He continued on and into the darkness.
It had gotten late and the walking was slow. People who had given up on making out of Manhattan were laying on the sidewalks. He stepped over people and in some places broken glass. The cover of darkness hides more.
Around 108th street Eudoxus was feeling exhausted, he stopped walking and his legs twitched. He found a spot of grass to lay down alongside the Harlem Meer and looked up into the sky.
The bright dots glowed in the darkness but he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Elaborate shapes and constellations of lights looked like figures in the dancing, leaping, like a play of drawn across the sky. He rubbed his eyes. What he thought looked like a swan diving across the sky and into the water. It was phenomenal and nothing he had ever seen before. Eudoxus fell asleep in the light of the stars.