The rain woke me up some time later. Buckets of water falling from the sky turning the dirt into mud and threatening to drown everything. I crawled to the front porch and collapsed there, listening to the rain pound against the tin roof and solar panels. Thunder grumbled continuously in the distant south. Good. The rain would help put out the fires.

From under the edge of the roof I could see the clouds were shifting and changing colours as the aurora burned overhead. A growing brightness in the east told me that dawn was near at hand and I had lay in the mud all night. Or maybe it was a forest fire and I was about to be burned to death. I got up and removed my soiled clothing with shaking fingers, dropping it on the porch. Standing naked in the rain, I let it wash the mud from my feverish body. Existence is pain. Every joint, every muscle, aches and burns with fever. Hacking up gobs of dark phlegm, I fought for breath and stood shivering in the cool summer rain.

Shuffling back inside the house, I collapsed in my bed and wrapped the sheets around my shaking body.

I floated up from my body again, my thoughts clear and bright. The golden aura[1] that had surrounded me earlier crawled over my body like a living thing, tiny multi-coloured motes filled my lungs with each breath, rushing around my veins, up to swish around a pulsating core in my forehead and change colour, then swirling out to caress my joints before running through my guts and exiting when I exhaled. I watched it ebb and flow for a while, then grew bored with the show. It was like watching waves on a beach. Relaxing, but not terribly interesting.

The walls felt like nothing more than a thick fog and I could pass through them easily if I avoided the electrical wiring that stung my spirt body when I touched it. Outside, the world was a pale green mist limiting my visibility to maybe a hundred yards. The air was filled with microscopic life, swirling like fog, and I moved further away, testing the limits of this new ability. The silver cord at my navel pinched uncomfortably as I stretched it floating above the treetops.

If I had emotions here, I’d probably be giddy with the joy of flight.

Zooming back over to the barn, I phased through the wooden wall and checked on the horses. The beasts were comfortably sheltered in their stalls, surrounded by a soft turquoise aura. I could see a dense spark inside of them where their heart would be, surrounded by a tiny cloud of motes fed by channels running throughout their body like a circulatory system. Every once in a while, a mote would slosh too close to the core and be drawn in with a small flash. Floating closer, I pushed my arm through the thin aura surrounding my horse Sparky and made contact with the glowing ember buried in his heart. Alien horsey thoughts filled my mind — running under the summer sun, eating crisp morning grass covered in dew. A longing for oats mixed with molasses.

I felt that if I wanted to, I could merge with Sparky, crawl inside this glowing core. I would have to experiment with this later, perhaps.

Exiting the barn, I floated down the driveway towards the main road. The trees grew thicker in this area and created a wall of softly glowing light as I passed by. I travelled further, maybe half a mile, until the pinching in my navel became painful. Grabbing the silver cord I envisioned being back in my body and was reeled in like a fish on a line until darkness enveloped me.

Jerking awake, my mind was much clearer this time and the aches and pains nearly gone. There was a pressure between my eyes, like a sinus headache, but I felt good. Energetic even. The sun illuminated the window on the western wall of my bedroom, indicating that I had slept well past noon.

The first thing I noticed when I rubbed my eyes was that my vision was clear. Age related presbyopia had robbed me of my near vision, demanding that I wear reading glasses to see anything up close. Now I could see my fingerprints again, for the first time in maybe twenty years. I could also see a golden sheen surrounding my hands, the same aura that I’d seen in my out of body experiences. I watched, fascinated, as it swirled and flickered around my fingers like dancing flames. Concentrating, I shaped and stretched it, twisting it into fantastic shapes.

Elongating my new ghostly hands, I moved them around the bedroom. As they passed through the knickknacks on the dresser, I could feel the texture and composition of each item. I flexed the fingers and grabbed at a picture of me and Astrid. The picture tumbled over, falling to the floor.

I sat up in disbelief.

Reaching out with my new ghost arms, I tried grabbing another picture from the dresser. It felt slippery to my mental touch but after moment’s effort I managed to pick it up and float it over to me, grinning like a madman. Telekinesis. Somehow, I had acquired the power of telekinesis. I spent the next half hour in bed playing with my new telekinetic powers, moving and levitating things with ghostly hands before I couldn’t resist nature’s call any longer.

With the air-conditioning out, the late summer heat and humidity had filled the farmhouse with an uncomfortable level of stickiness. Rolling out of the sweat stained sheets I headed to the bathroom to have a shower. The power to the well may be out, but the cistern on the roof is full of water, especially after the storm last night. I hacked up the last of the phlegm in the shower and my lungs felt clearer than they had in weeks. I could take a deep breath now without breaking into a coughing fit.

Humming R.E.M’s “It’s the End of the World”, I was feeling strangely upbeat about the whole mess as I lathered up and rinsed off in the chill water. Or in denial. Surely the entire world didn’t go to shit, this was probably some localised event.

Right. It’s time to bury Robert Caldwell and his horse. They can dig him up later for a proper burial. Grabbing an old sheet from the closet, I set out to perform the grim task of wrapping up Robert’s corpse.

The living room was coated in yellow chemical dust from the fire extinguisher and I noticed the grandfather clock in the corner had stopped at 9:42, somewhere around the time I was talking with Astrid on the phone. It was purely mechanical, so there was no reason for it to stop. Distracted by the discrepancy in something non-electrical having problems, I put off the inevitable task of burying the corpses for a minute. Examining the guts of the thing revealed nothing out of place. It was only when I tried to wind it did I notice the problem. The weights were slightly magnetised and sticking to the chains. If the whole thing was magnetised it would stop. Another mystery. How do you magnetise brass and steel?

My keys and pocketknife in the bowl by the front door were in the same condition, clinging to all the spare change and each other. How the hell do you magnetise zinc, copper, silver, and aluminium? I set the mystery aside for the moment. I’m an mechatronic engineer, not a physicist. Hell, I’m not even employed anymore, I’m retired. Let the boffins at NASA worry about it.

The blue skies of early afternoon were stained by a dingy fog of smoke and the pastel streaks of the aurora overhead. In the centre of the driveway was an unrecognisable lump. I had mentally prepared myself for the burnt corpses of horse and man, but this was unexpected. There was nothing but desiccated husks left. I started walking to the barn to grab a shovel, then realised that I have telekinetic hands.

Let’s find out how useful they are.

A bit of experimentation taught me that the smaller and denser I made my new auric extremities, the more solid they became. With a bit of mental effort, I was able to create spades which tore into the muddy soil and lifted it away. I also learned that I could drag a couple hundred pounds of human and horse with them, and they had an effective range of about ten yards, anything after that just let me “feel” what I was touching. I wrapped the leathery remains of Robert in the sheet and buried him and his horse in separate spots near the main road.

The world was an incredibly beautiful place now. Every living thing glowed with soft pastels of health and vibrancy. I could see streaks of colour as birds flew by, spot rabbits hidden in the brush and squirrels in the trees. Every living creature had a bright spark near where its heart would be, and some plants glowed brightly with a shimmering aura. Something to investigate later.

I paused at Robert’s grave after it was filled. “I’m not a religious man,” I said to no one in particular, addressing the dirt. “But I have a feeling that your death allowed me to survive last night. Thank you.”

I ‘high stepped’ back to the barn, pushing aura through my legs, creating a giant set of invisible stilts for me to walk on. Wobble on, would be more accurate. With a twenty foot stride, it took mere seconds to cover the distance on ghostly legs to where Sparky and Miguel waited patiently in their stalls for their afternoon feed. I ran an open barn so they could roam around a ten acre fenced off area and still seek shelter if needed, and the two geldings were in the habit of showing up for an afternoon feed and treat. A flake of hay and a scoop of molasses feed in the trough for them to nosh on, then a quick trip to the outbuilding for kerosene so I could fill and light the hurricane lanterns tonight. Chores pile up if you don’t keep on top of them.

The remaining sunlight was filled with chores made easy by practising my new powers and marvelling at how control and implementation was so natural. I learned to create a bug barrier with my aura that kept the mosquitoes away, or zapped them if I put some effort into it. I could ‘rocket jump’ by explosively pushing my aura through my legs, leaping nearly 60 feet in the air. Nearly shit myself doing that the first time. I could swing like Spiderman, grabbing trees and buildings ten yards away, pulling myself through the air and pushing off the ground when necessary. I could also make my aura nearly frictionless and skate along the ground, or ‘dig in’ and remain planted in place while I pulled something heavy to me. By the time the sun was a golden glow in the west and the aurora bright overhead, I was instinctively using these new powers like I was born with them.

The calm turquoise aura of a rabbit hidden in the weeds caught the attention of my new visual powers and I had a sudden ravenous craving for rabbit stew. I reached out, snagging it with one auric tentacle and dragged it from the high grass screeching and kicking. Instead of wringing its neck immediately, I pushed one tentacle through the now fearful yellow aura surrounding its body and it screamed as if it were in pain. It was like pushing your fingers through jello as I reached through the aura and into the rabbit itself. My tentacle touched the bright core of its heart and panicked rabbit-thoughts filled my mind, fighting to push out my intrusion. I sent soothing, quiet thoughts back. Just go to sleep. You’re tired and sleepy. Take a little nap.

The rabbit kicked once or twice more and went limp, apparently asleep or hypnotised. I couldn’t help but grin at this discovery. With a quick motion of my auric hands, I wrung its neck with a loud crack. It jerked once and red motes began to swirl around the now lifeless body. Thinking back to my first experience with this effect when Robert was struck by lightning, I probed through my auric fingers to sense what was happening. I could feel the life force of the rabbit leaking out from its body, no longer contained by biological processes. It was evaporating into the air.

Curious, I envisioned the motes being vacuumed into my aura. They swirled around and stuck to it, changed colour, and were quickly absorbed. I could feel some hunger being satisfied, or perhaps a thirst. It was like sip of cool water on a hot day. Refreshing and satisfying.

Maybe I’m some sort of psychic vampire? Some sort of day walker that feeds on the life force of others? …But I don’t feel like a bloodthirsty vampire. In fact, I feel pretty good. Better than I’ve felt in years. Certainly better than I’ve felt this past fortnight, I thought I’d have to go to the hospital last week because I was so weak and couldn’t catch my breath.

I could vaguely sense where I was pulling the motes from inside the rabbit and concentrated on just the organs, pulling all the motes from the heart, liver, kidneys, moving on to the blood and the marrow. I was absorbing the life energy that held the rabbit together. As I sated my psychic thirst on the blood, bone, and organs, the rabbit grew lighter, shrinking in on itself until it was nothing more than a rabbit shaped bag of skin. Pulling out my pocket knife, I sliced open its belly while supporting it in my auric tentacles. The inside was filled with bloodless meat, ready to be diced up and tossed in a stew. All the organs and blood were missing.

A small red stone caught my eye, the spark I had noticed earlier. No bigger than my little fingernail, it was the colour of a ruby and just sitting there among the meat and bone. I plucked it from its grisly resting spot and examined it closer, wondering how it managed to get inside. Did the rabbit eat it? Poking at it with a mental thread I could feel power inside it. Something like an aura, but different. It wasn’t alive, more like a battery of some kind but I couldn’t tap into it. I shoved it in my pocket for later. [2] Yet another mystery to solve. I headed back to the farm house to prepare my dinner, stopping by the storage shed to pull out a 20lb bottle of propane and burner because the electricity was out.

While waiting for the stew to cook over a flickering and popping propane fire, I took the opportunity to empty out the refrigerator and freezer. The items were going to spoil anyway since the generator and solar panels were fried, and there was no way in hell I was going to come back to 60lbs of rotting meat in a deep freeze. The waste pissed me off and I channeled that aggravation into catapulting the frozen packages into the back pasture using my new psychic powers. Just concentrate a moment to build up the energy, then release it like a rubber band. After the first few I was managing to fling them near the tree line a fifty yards away. The raccoons and opossums will feast like kings tonight. I yeeted frozen meat under a technicolour sky while the red, baleful eye of Methuselah’s star watched from overhead.

I felt drained afterwards, like I had run up a couple flights of stairs and couldn’t quite catch my breath. Maybe I had overdone it with the yeeting.

The stew was delicious, by the way. I felt a bit better after eating, but there was a deep exhaustion in me like I had spent the entire day tossing hay bales.

The rest of the evening was spent dusting the house and packing for the trip. Anne, my ex-wife, lived on the other side of Springfield with her husband Troy. I figured that I could cover 20 or 30 miles a day with the horses and arrive in three days, sometime Sunday around noon. The question was should I stick with the main highways or take the back roads. The distance wasn’t much greater, but the opportunity for danger was.

Just how bad was it out there? Springfield wasn’t a large town but it was big enough, maybe 20,000 people. That’s a lot of opportunity for trouble just looking for a target. I didn’t plan on being a target.

Guns [3] and ammo were the obvious travelling companions, so I selected a 9mm for the hip holster, my trusty .38 revolver for the shoulder holster, and the ever-faithful scattergun for the saddle. I hated to dig into my MREs, but this is what they were there for. I’m just sorry I didn’t buy more. And more ammo. Is all this really necessary? Am I panicking over nothing? Maybe it was nothing but a freak lightning storm. I added a 10 inch bowie knife to the pile for my other hip and slipped a hatchet into the saddlebag with the tarps.

I’ll travel the main highways first and see how bad it is. I talk to myself too much. I miss the quiet company of Astrid. Maybe I should get a dog.

I pulled the emergency radio out of the closet, hoping to get some news on the AM. It was crank powered, designed for situations just like this. After cranking it a few dozen times, it sparked and belched white smoke. Looks like even basic electronics are vulnerable. Maybe I can set up a crystal type AM receiver? That’s nothing but magnets and copper wires, for the most part. Some iron pyrite and I could make a ‘cat whisker’ detector. Maybe I can even build some vacuum tubes to amplify the signal, assuming I can recall anything from my university days.

After another cool shower and a change of sheets on the bed, I fell into an exhausted slumber trying to remember my electronics courses.

Footnotes

1. Aura. A field of energy that surrounds every living creature and some non-living things. Learning to harness this energy was the first step towards creating magic.

2. The first recorded Mana stone. Also called a Heart stone when formed in the heart and Spirit stone when formed in the brain. See also: Soul stones.

3. Guns and ammo. Unlike the alchemical firearms we have now, before the aurora apocalypse guns used something called chemistry to propel metal slugs at high velocity.

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