The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best books to read non fiction .TXT) 📕

must’ve been a while because when Avery started speaking, I was disoriented to the point of being startled by his voice.

“There are multiple resister and capacitor failures in the circuitry of both phones.”

“IC?” I asked.

“Simplified, an IC is a processor or microchip.”

I didn't have to know what either one of those things were to know that was a bad deal. The important part of what he said was that this represented one more piece of the puzzle laid upon the table. I wasn't smart enough to put it together, but I hoped Avery was. "None of this makes any sense," I said.

Jack was sleeping or passed out by that point, or at least his loud snoring indicated he was.

“The commonality here is everything I have checked, including the boards in the generators, have bad ICs – chips as you might say. These failures being the result of some random event is simply implausible without applying a root cause.”

Something appearing to be a smile materialized on his normally stolid face. He gave me a quick glance before waving his hand over the doodads and electronic thingamajigs scattered across his desk. I wasn’t sure what point he was trying to make other than assuming none of it worked, but I already knew that. I waited patiently for him to make his point.

A wave of irritation washed over his face as he repeated the exaggerated movement with his hand. “Well?” He finally asked.

“Well what?”

He waved for the third time—

“Will you please get on with it?”

“All of this is Fluke.”

“What – huh? I thought you said this couldn’t be a random event?”

“You don’t get it?”

I sighed. “No… I really don’t.”

"My voltmeter and oscilloscope are both manufactured by Fluke. It was a play on words, William. Get it now?"

Sometimes Avery would take a step out of his self-defined world of rules and predictability to take a stab at being funny. He had a difficult time with understanding Sam, but there was something about him that Avery always tried to mimic, at least on some basic level. He almost always failed miserably, but he tried.  Normally I would at least try to laugh, but this time I didn't have any patience.

I rolled my eyes. “Fucking really? Nerd jokes at a time like this. You realize Titouan wouldn’t care if you were tied up and thrown into the Chukchi Sea. Damn, man.”

“That was bad. Even for you, dude,” Jack said, seemingly jolted out of his booze-induced catatonic state.

“It is frozen,” Avery said.

“Huh?” Jack said, confused.

“The Chukchi Sea is frozen.”

“I know it’s frozen,” I said, frustrated but still amused because of the expression on Jack’s face.

Changing the subject, I asked, “I take it you have a theory on what has happened?”

Showing no expression that would lead anyone to believe he was upset about being rebuked for his lousy joke, he tapped semi-rhythmically on the table with his knuckles. That was always a sure sign of him being nervous about something. He would wiggle a leg, tap on things with his fingers or knuckles, make different noises with his mouth, and a multitude of other ticks. Whatever it was he was thinking he didn't want to share. He began to say something but stopped. Instead, he went about tapping at the desk again, looking back and forth between me and Jack.

I waited for Avery to gather his thoughts. “Before I delve too deeply, I want to also mention something worth noting.” He pointed to several flashlights and headlamps on the table. “This pile here works.” He pointed to another pile. “These do not.”

Jack was getting impatient. “You think you can just cut to the chase, bro?”

Avery went back to tapping. Jack was making him nervous. “Most of the ones still working are of the incandescent variety.  I have one working LED flashlight. The others are non-functional. Just as with my test equipment, if it has ICs then it is probably dead right now.”

I’d like to think I’m a decently smart guy, but I didn’t understand what Avery was getting at. I think he assumed everyone knew as much as he did and would instantly make the connection he was making. The problem was, we didn’t. All I heard was gibberish. "Just tell me what all of this means."

“I was not finished, William. The difference between the older incandescent and the newer LED lights is the incandescent lights do not have the sensitive components that LED lights have.”

I shook my head. I still didn’t know what he was talking about.

Jack was up on his feet and putting on his gloves. “Men, I think I’m going to go check on things at the Commons, throw up, and take a piss, but not necessarily in that order.”

“Jack, it wouldn’t hurt to have the Polar Bear gun around just in case,” I said.

“Will do,” he said, giving me a nod, before leaving.

Jack’s departure seemed to alleviate some of Avery’s anxiety. “Do you know what they call me here?”

I hesitated. “Well, I know some of the names--”

“The nickname.”

My first instinct was to think about the baby seal I saw being eaten the first day I stepped foot on the Patch. Even as stressed out as I was, thinking about Sam talk about "Ol' Faux Mulder" made me laugh nearly every time he said it. "Yeah, I’m not completely sure, bud."

“They call me Faux Mulder, but you know that.”

“Well, I knew something about you and the X-files, but I wasn’t for sure.”

He knew most people working on the Patch wouldn't be receptive to some of the ideas he had about things, or at least I thought he knew. But at the beginning of the rotation, Avery would sit in the Commons and talk about his theories on aliens and who knows what all else. By about day three, a few guys had started making fun of him, causing him to spend most of his time alone in the COM shack.

“One scenario.” He paused several more seconds, contemplating his next words, before finally saying, “An EMP