Doors

[Text message to burn phones]

[A time and date. No directions, as Leo assumes they know this is a pick up.]

How could I forget all the righteous End of the World parties going on Friday? I usually have this town tapped. This place is going to be wild, and I am so in. I call it an exception for the night. If the world is ending, it is a call to indulge completely - and be way hung over the next day, because the Mayans just ran out of space on the calendar, or knew they weren't going to be around then so why bother.

[Oracle/Tim]
After receiving this, though he hasn't checked anything out yet.

Thank you.

You wouldn't at all be interested in a stuffy classical concert this Sunday afternoon, would you? I completely understand if you find Handel unbearable, but I'm playing -- I mean, in the back of the orchestra, not as far back as the string basses, but ...

Well. It's at 3. And I have a ticket, if you want it?

Sam. Dean.

I know you're here. I can feel that, but something is preventing me from locating you. And this device doesn't seem to have your number.

We need to talk. Contact me immediately.

I really enjoy the company of the voice in my head. I can't be the only one, can I?

...well, she's not my voice, she's independent of me. You can't own another person, even if they don't have a physical body here. They must, somewhere.

But I don't know what to make of the idea that she was a time traveler. ...is a time traveler. I don't think that's a profession that can exist in only one tense.

[After this.]

[It's all gone dark.

The range of the disaster is at first completely unknown, since the entire grid has gone dark from coast to coast. Eventually, on cell phones with dying batteries, it becomes clear that North America, as well as some of South America, Japan, and the Pacific island nations, have all gone dark.

Things that run on their own power still run, but feebly, shutting down every few minutes. Generators work, but nothing wants to hold a charge for long. It's as if every piece of machinery sheds the electricity pumped into it.

It's a strange outage on many accounts. Planes in flight when the outage occurs retain their power until they land safely on the ground. Hospital generators hum to keep patients alive, but cell phones won't charge from hospital outlets. Clearly, it isn't so simple as a series of power plants going out. The outage is selective, and it fights any attempts to circumvent it.

Power stations refuse to turn back on, but radioactive containment units stay online. Army choppers won't start, but government laboratories full of dangerous chemicals have power. Car ignitions no longer work, so when the cars are turned off, they refuse to come on again, but there are no massive pileups on the highways. So perhaps the outage is benevolent, the work of an eco-terrorist intending to teach a lesson.

The peace and apparent mercy of it all is complicated by the prisons. Electronic locks go down with everything else, and soon there are criminals breaking out of maximum security everywhere.

And communications, such as they are, are most definitely down. Radios meet with heavy interference. The internet works only in fits and spurts for those people lucky enough to still have phones and computers with battery power, just long enough to spread panic through the populace with scraps of information over how widely spread the outage is. Only the highest of high tech still works, the most esoteric and out of range of normal human communication frequencies.

In the end, the outage is not so much selective as it is calculated, coolly and professionally, to create panic without pure demonization of the person responsible. It is a canny thing, creating mayhem and chaos just by turning off the lights, and giving the people of a third of the world motivation to hold their children close and pray for a savior, as, in the northern climes, it begins to snow.]

[A crash can be heard from Damian's room. If investigated, the window is open, the room is nearly trashed and this is laying in the middle of the floor.]

[Comm to Batman from Nightwing - from his motorcycle]

Damian ran. I'm going after him.

[Comm to Babs - old habits die hard]

Oracle, I need eyes and ears on Damian.

[Comm to Damian]

Answer me.

[Chi has to take this present thing slow.]

[Ivy, Poison.]

There such a thing as a plant pound?

[Quasimodo.]

[Intentionally English.]

You got problems.

[Sam A.]

Next time you decide to send me something, don't.

[Public.]

[We're not at all afraid by the number of people who bother to send us things. No. We don't care. We are an island.]

People need to sign your damn Christmas cards. Otherwise it's like getting caught in a yard sale. With tinsel.

And don't think I don't know who is sending the shitty books.

[Significantly, Daniel has not yet given anybody one damn thing. He still has a couple days to do it, though. Theoretically.]

[Some drunk set off his fire alarm. It's localized, so no one is evacuated, but there's a nasty smell in the vents on the top few floors.]

[Locked to the Beast]

There's a monster in the upper levels of the castle. Did you know there's a monster in the upper levels of the castle?!