The interviewer packed up her camera and departed, leaving Charles Safreth sitting behind his desk facing the frowning expressions of his campaign manager Arthur Norris and PR director Carol Tolbert.
“Well,” said Arthur at last. “That could have gone better.”
“What did I do wrong this time?” Charles asked.
Carol rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Charlie, this isn’t your first campaign, you ought to know enough to realize when a reporter asks a question out of left field they have a reason in their pocket.”
Charles had seen both Arthur and Carol making panic-eyes at him when the question came up, but couldn’t figure out what they were worried about. He frowned. “I ran unopposed for Colony Congress two years ago, so it actually is my first real campaign. I plead amateur status. Now tell me, what was wrong with a reporter asking about my surname?”
Arthur said, “What’s wrong is that you’ve tied your campaign for governor one hundred percent to the referendum on an offworld continental directorate. The Taylor campaign is already painting the referendum— and you along with it— as disloyal to our parent continent. They’ve been pushing hard on proud North American heritage, purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain, et cetera, et cetera.”
“So?”
“So you happily tell your little homespun story about how your Dad, when he moved your family offworld, changed the family name to ‘Safreth,’ which he made up himself because he wanted to sever all ties to the planet he left behind. Don’t you see how that plays directly into Taylor’s narrative? I can write his next campaign ad for him: Charles Safreth, the candidate whose very name means ‘disloyal.’”
“Not to mention it’s just kind of weird,” added Carol. “If he’s making it up, where’d he get something like ‘Safreth?’ Why not ‘Orbitson’ or ‘Rocketman’ or something that makes sense?”
“Because those sound like something out of a pre-spaceflight sci-fi video about space cadets. He played around with the sounds of his original name, which was Schaeffer.”
“You should have said that instead of talking about severing ties. ‘My Dad decided to symbolize his new home by giving his name a modernist-sounding spin.’ That’s at least marginally better than ‘wanted to sever all ties.’”
“Look.” Charles found himself getting annoyed. “Couldn’t this actually help us with our supporters? After all, the referendum really is about severing ties with the continents.”
“No it isn’t,” Carol said. “Not if you want to win, anyway. Polls show the continental directorates are viewed favorably, and cultural ties to the continents are overwhelmingly popular— even when you only count strong supporters of the referendum. That’s consistent across every Colony toward every parent continent, not just Star City and North America. Supporters see the referendum as a move for efficient government of the Colonies, which have needs and priorities in common, not as a rejection of the directorates. Change the wording of the poll question to even imply that it’s about separating from the continents, and support plummets. That’s what Taylor is going to use, against you and against the referendum.”
“Although that may be a moot point anyway,” Arthur added. “The planetside population so outnumbers the offworlders that the Colonies could be unanimous in one direction or another and it wouldn’t affect the overall outcome. What we have to worry about is how the vote goes in Star City.”
Charles rubbed his eyes and leaned back from his desk. With eyes still closed, he said, “If the question only came up in the interview because the reporter already had something, that means Taylor already decided on it, and leaked to the press it was coming. I’ve told that story to plenty of people over the years, if I tried to hide it now he’d just call me out for lying about it.”
“You could have spun it better,” Carol said.
“Well, it’s done. What do we do about it?” He opened his eyes and looked at his two chief advisors for ideas.
There was silence for a moment. Finally Arthur said, “Try to turn it around on him. If he does bring it up, we say it proves how desperate he is, to try an argument that’s nothing but a joke.”
“It’s a joke all right,” Charles said.
Carol shook her head. “Saying so might work, but the reality is that it’s going to matter. Almost everyone agrees on the substantive issues about the referendum. This is going to be an election about emotion, about how much we value our cultural heritage over practicalities.”
“Fewer than ten percent of the offworld population was born planetside,” Charles said. “The Colonies are our cultural heritage.”
“Don’t let anyone outside of this room hear you say that.”
Charles sighed. Would it really make a difference if he was Charles Schaeffer instead of Safreth?
Dust it, I am Charles Safreth. Safreth! He was six months old when his family moved offworld, into the temporary housing for the construction crews on Star City, construction still less than a year underway and four years from completion. He had no memory of any prior surname, no memory of any prior home. His father worked in Colony engineering, his mother was a doctor in the construction clinic and later in Star City’s first hospital. As far as he was concerned, he had no ties outside of a history book to North America or anywhere else on Earth. Surely people in the offworld population felt the same?
Carol said, speaking slowly as if turning over a new idea in her head, “Charles Safreth runs against Charles Taylor, in whose previous administration he worked as Senior Colony Engineer. Comedians and political cartoonists have been calling it the divorce of Charles versus Charles for a while now. What if we embrace that? Start telling some of those jokes ourselves, make Charles Versus Charles our own. Don’t even try to answer Taylor if he brings up the family name business, we just make it a first name only race. Then he has to insist on using the last names if he wants to make his argument and comes across as a guy who can’t take a joke.”
“I think that’s even sillier than Taylor making an issue of my name in the first place,” Charles said. “What time is it? We could think about it over lunch.”
He looked around for his handscreen to check, but before he found it Arthur said, “It’s about twelve thirty.”
“Okay then, let’s—”
The lights went out.
“Oh, dust, what’s this? A power failure?” Charles asked.
After a few seconds, the emergency lights came on.
“Here’s another wonderful surprise two weeks before election day,” Arthur said, looking up at the dim, battery-powered lights. “You’re running on having been Colony Engineer, this better not trace back to some problem you ignored then…”
“It’s happening on Taylor’s watch,” Carol said.
But Charles was no longer paying any attention to his political team. Past engineering experience had taken his attention. Power failures happened from time to time, there was always such a thing as malfunctioning equipment or accidental overloads— especially as the Colony’s population continued to grow and the systems had to continually adapt— but there hadn’t been an outage in years. Most of the population would probably see it as a mere inconvenience, but Charles knew Colony lifesystems maintained a delicate biological balance and even a few hours down could cause damage that might take months to recover. Months that would have to be covered by increased supplies from Earth at a time when, down below, the Born to the Earth party was making an issue of every oxygen canister.
But it was even worse than that. After a minute or so, he heard shouting outside and then a staffer burst into the room yelling, “It’s the Sun! The Sun’s gone out!”
Charles, Arthur and Carol just stared at him. “What?”
“I’m telling you! People started saying it, and everyone’s going up to above-decks to look. It’s dark everywhere, you can see the Sun in the mirrors and it’s just black and red!”
Charles didn’t believe it. This had to be just hysteria. The Sun mirrors must have lost tracking, that’s all.
All? That’s a disastrous malfunction. He dashed around his desk and headed down the corridor at a run, his advisors and the rest of the campaign staff— those still in the office— trailing behind.
The elevator would be no use in a power outage. Charles made straight for the stairs and headed upward taking three steps to a stride. He shoved his way past other people milling around, some heading back down and relaying the same news: “It’s the Sun, the Sun is gone.”
He emerged into the above-deck reception area. Glass walls gave him a clear view out into Midway. Even in a power failure the “outdoors” should have been flooded with light, reflected into the Colony by the Sun mirrors. But it was dark as planetside night.
Charles was aware of Arthur and Carol catching up to him as he continued on out of the building, onto the sidewalk and then half walked, half stumbled out onto the manicured lawn, staring upward, paying no attention to his footing.
Up above he could see the vast transparency that normally let in the sunlight, and through it he could see the Sun’s disk, reflected by the mirror outside. It was black, with a red corona. It was true. The Sun had gone out.
This wouldn’t hit just the recycling systems, it would halt oxygen production in its tracks. The algae in the lifesystem tanks might survive as living organisms for quite a while in the dark— Charles didn’t know how long but certainly down on the planet they’d have to survive a long period of night every 24 hours— but they wouldn’t be doing any photosynthesis, and that meant no oxygen getting produced, right now. If this darkness lasted…
Suffocation in the cold dark within days. For everyone.
But the moment the thought occurred to him, there was a blinding flash. He was looking right at it and the pain seemed to stab right to the back of his skull. Though he reflexively closed his eyes and turned away in an instant, at first all he could see were shining afterimages, accompanied by a sudden pounding headache.
“Dust!” He rubbed his eyes. “Dust, what the bloody dusted hell just happened?”
As his vision cleared, Charles saw Arthur sitting on the grass, trembling, his skin an unhealthy gray color. He was also rubbing his eyes. Carol stood nearby, bent forward, her hands on her knees. Other people stood scattered around, trying to make sense of what they’d just seen. It took Charles a few moments to realize he was seeing all of this in restored, seemingly normal daylight.
“I think… I think…” Arthur laughed suddenly, and too loudly. “I think the apocalypse just happened, and then someone decided to call it off.” He squinted up at the Sun for an instant. “If it really has been called off.”
Charles let himself drop to the grass beside Arthur, and knew he was more collapsing than sitting. He glanced toward Carol and tried to find something to say.
All he came up with was, “So how do you think that’s going to poll?”
TO BE CONTINUED
