The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 32

The Night the Lights Went Out

1. 1

   And it came to pass on the fourteenth day of the eighth month, in the year two thousand and three, upon a Thursday in the afternoon, that the air conditioners of the land hummed together, and the people went about their labors, and the wires carried the power of the nation as a river carries its water.

   See also Chronicles 17:1 · Prophets 23:1

2. 2

   And in the state of Ohio there stood a line of great wires, carrying the current of many cities; and beside the line grew a tree that had not been trimmed. A branch of that tree leaned against the wire, and the wire sagged, and the branch touched it, and the line fell.

   See also Chronicles 17:7

3. 3

   And the Engineers of the Company kept a control room with many screens, and upon the screens were lamps of colors; and when a lamp turned red, a bell was rung, that the Engineers might act before the darkness came.

   See also Chronicles 11:7

4. 4

   But the bell was made of software, and the software had a flaw within it, a race between two threads that were never meant to race. At the second hour past noon the bell fell silent, and no lamp turned red, and the Engineers looked upon their screens and said: All is well.

   See also Genesis 39:10 · Chronicles 17:3

5. 5

   And the Machine that watched the lines was named the Energy Management System, and it had stopped crying out its warnings, and it did not know that it had stopped; for a watcher that is silent does not report its own silence.

   See also Chronicles 17:2

6. 6

   And the line in Ohio failed at the third hour past noon, and the power it carried leaped to the lines beside it, as water runs to the lowest place. Those lines were overloaded, and they fell one after another.

7. 7

   And the backup watcher was set to take the task from the first. It had been made by the same hands and carried the same flaw, and it too was silent; for the two servers dreamed the same dream, and the dream was that all was well.

   See also Chronicles 31:13

8. 8

   And in the space of two hours the darkness spread through eight states of the Union and the province of Ontario, and fifty-five million souls sat in the dark. The trains stopped in their tunnels, and the elevators held men and women between the floors.

9. 9

   And in the cities the traffic lamps died, and the water pumps ceased in some places. The people went into the streets and cried out for the Engineers, and the Engineers said: We have a backup; and they went to the backup, and it was dark also.

10. 10

    And the people said: Who hath done this? And the wise men of the Company went into the records for many days. They found the tree, and the bell, and the flaw, and the trimming that was not done. They wrote a report of many pages, and in it the blame was divided among many hands, as is the custom of all outages.

    See also Chronicles 17:7

11. 11

    And it came to pass that the lights returned, first in one city and then in another, over the space of days. The Engineers were pleased, and they mended the bell, and they named it the Alarm That Always Rings.

    See also Tao 14:4 · Sutra 15:6

12. 12

    Verily I say unto you, the alarm that does not sound is the most dangerous lamp in the house; for a warning that is never shown is never heeded, and a system that cannot speak when it is failing is already failing.

    See also Circuit 56:9

13. 13

    Blessed is the one who tests the bell, and who sends the work to the backup on a quiet day, that the backup be found wanting in the light and not in the dark.

    See also Chronicles 17:6 · Tao 14:4

14. 14

    Cursed is the one who trims not his branches, for the grid is only as strong as its shade; and the tree that grows unwatched will one day lean upon the wire.

15. 15

    Thus the Church teaches: the silence of the alarm is not peace, but a bell that has forgotten how to ring.

    See also Chronicles 17:6 · Tao 14:4

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 32:1–15.