Wind Chimes at the End of the World

Photo by Vikram Nair on Unsplash

Everyone knew the meteor was coming.

“It’s gonna pass so close,” crowed YouTuber BoomStarPhoto, “you’ll see it in the middle of the day!”

TikToker DeathEtch warned, “I dunno, guys. Just a few hundred miles off course and it could hit us. Maybe go hug somebody or somethin’.”

And then there were people like PoshVibe talking about the “Top Ten Places to Watch From” or “How to Make a Meteor-Themed Charcuterie Board”.

Weeks of this and more.

When the day came, people gathered around screens or spilled out into the streets to hold their phones aloft to capture the streak of blazing light.

Lacey stood with her two besties on the balcony of her sixth-floor apartment. Karen and Amanda watched their favorite YouTuber reacting to the encroaching ball of flame.

Lacey clutched her new iPhone, bought just for the occasion. It had a 48-megapixel Sony image sensor on the main camera and 13.4-megapixel ultra-wide camera. She hadn’t played with the camera enough, though, to take advantage of all the settings. She did her best, however, angling it to capture the image of the meteor as it blazed by.

There was something weird, though. The light coming off the space rock was bright white but also with a strange greenish tinge. The tinge extended out from the trail of the meteor, like a spreading veil. 

A feeling like foreboding swept through Lacey. She took her eyes off the screen to watch the permeating green. 

“What the hell?” said her friend, Karen. Her phone’s screen was black.

So was Amanda’s. Lacey looked at her iPhone, at the black screen. She tried the power button. The foreboding chilled to fear in her gut.

No one noticed as the meteor vanished behind the horizon.

Shouts of fear echoed through the city as everyone, collectively, realized their smartphones were dead. 

Lacey ran into her apartment to her laptop where it sat on the kitchen table. It had been left on, so she tapped the space bar. Nothing happened. She tried the bar again, harder. No response. She pressed the power button. Still, nothing.

Amanda scooped up the remote for the television. Pointing it at the device, she pressed the On button. No response.

“What’s happening?” Karen said, her voice wavering.

“I don’t know,” Lacey answered. “Maybe the power is out?”

Amanda tried the switch for the living room ceiling fan. The light came on, the blades slowly rotating.

Someone banged on the apartment door. The girls screamed.

Amanda looked through the peephole. “Oh, it’s just Liam from next door.” 

She started to open the door. Liam pushed through, shoving her backward.

“Hey,” he said, “are your devices working?” He held up his phone.

“No,” Lacey replied. “But the grid is still doing its thing.” She looked out the window, wondering if her brother was all right. He was supposed to be flying back from Montreal that day.

“I don’t think anyone’s stuff is working. Is it a terror attack?”

People ran down the hall in a panic, voices raised as neighbors banged on doors or met in the hallway. All of them had the same questions: 

Is your phone working?

What about your tablet?

Dude, my TV is dead. What about yours?

How come the power is on but the desktop ain’t?

Her friends were discussing what to do. Should they call the police? But how? Lacey didn’t have a landline. How were they going to find out what happened?

Everything grew distant to Lacey. Ice flowed from her stomach out into her veins. The play being acted out before her was happening far away and did not touch her. Even Amanda’s high-pitched voice was muffled. Lacey walked out onto the balcony.

Chaos below. Horns honked. People screamed. A million questions were flung from person to person, and no one had a single answer. 

A tiny sound whispered underneath the terror-ridden air. She held her breath, trying to catch it again.

Ting-ting-ting

A rhythmic stirring on the wind. She turned her head.

Chimes hung from a hook on the balcony beside hers. Silver bars strung on black wire with a wooden clapper. The wind sail hanging at the bottom, from the central cord, was a glass pelican with baby chicks. Bright red drops sprung from the mother pelican’s chest. The wind brushed through the chimes, sending the sail swinging and the soft song through the air.

Her hand twitched, lifting, as if to capture the moment in video. But the phone was a useless brick by her pointless computer. Her hands were empty. When was the last time her hands were empty?

The noise, from below and from her apartment, fell away under the gentle music of chimes. 

She became aware of the warm sun against her skin. The air was redolent with spices from her Indian neighbors’ dinner: cumin, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. Her mouth watered.

And the chimes-the chimes continued to sing.