The Age of Miracles

by Karen Thompson Walker

A bleed of brightness was spreading directly overhead, a sliver of sun returned to us, as if by miracle. Now we could see the outline of the whole thing, a thin circle of light with a blinding bulge on one side, like a diamond on a ring.

If they saw diamond ring as it was getting brighter, and if it were dark for four minutes, it must’ve been a total eclipse, so why didn’t she mention the enormous black hole in the sky? :/

I gathered up my books and left the house, not knowing then that I would cross that threshold only a few more times in my life.

Tiring of the use of “I didn’t know it was ha last time I’d...” :(

I’ve never understood why the slowing didn’t affect the orbit of the earth right away, or why, on the last day of that first year, we found ourselves at roughly the same position in the solar system as we had the previous year on that day. The earth made its usual swing around the sun, its 400 billionth loop, one of the very few things that year to actually remain on course.

Didn’t explain if it kept in sync with clock time days/year or real time days? I guess clock time. Weird, are people fighting over what day/month/season it is yet?

Two hours later, the power was restored. Officials blamed the outage on the sunlamps and the greenhouses—they were straining the electrical grid. That was when the energy rationing began.

I like this conjecture: peak power consumption now comes during darkness—due to the grow lights in every yard.

Now, we were told, radiation was streaming into our upper atmosphere. Aircraft and satellites were rerouted throughout the region. The government insisted that the threat to humans was minimal, but we were advised to avoid all exposure to the sun—just in case. It would take time to determine the true risk.

Loss of earth magnetic field leading to radiation risk from sun. Everyone moves to darkness and artificial light as the norm. Couldn’t this bring about reconciliation between the real timers and clock timers? Can only go out at night now. Kind of ironic as the real timers wanted to go out during daylight in the first place....kind of like this twist. Earth should lose its atmosphere too though without magnetic field, right?