Aurora shift

1950, June

Southwark, London

The fusspot, the grumbling old man, the one I can’t stand to be without but also sometimes roll my eyes by all of his stickler ways—-had his hands firmly planted on his hips—his eyes in a solemnly petty position.

He wouldn’t let this go.

“Davie, you need to cover the cans or else the birds will carry our trash out again, all over the yard and to the yard across the way.. you must… must cover the bins!”

I go over to ruffle his light brown hair, and he shuffles back, growling lightly but I see a slow grin upon his lips, making me smile.

“I’ll see about it, but I have a few things to do first, luv,” I say as I grab my old mug of coffee off the kitchen table.

I see his fingers digging into his hips and his expression turning into one of aggravation.

“You impudent oaf. Are you off to check the telescope?” He musters out in a grumpy way that still manages to sound sweet.

“Rob, really, you know it’s my job, I have to. I’ll make it up. Promise,” I lean over as I stretch out my arm and hand carrying my coffee, and whisper in his ear, “I’ll make you your favorite.”

He smiled sideways and says in a tickled voice, “Shepherd's pie?”

“Course. Just give me some time. I’ll fix the bins.”

He nods. “Fine. I will be reading the paper. Do you want some tea?” He looked over at my mug and stuck out his tongue in disgust. “That acrid stuff looks positively like watery mud, I wouldn’t touch it.”

I chuckle. “I’ll have tea, if it’s no trouble.”

He finally flashes a smile, his green eyes widening and I take my chances and lower down to sneak a quick peck on the cheek.

He leans into my touch and my hand goes around his back, but once our eyes meet, he grumbles again.

“You sneaky devil, wanting a bit of patty-cake before we even had evening tea?” He snarkily barks out.

I laugh openly and he blinks at me in a bit of annoyance and yet I see the twinkle of mischief in his countenance.

“You really are a grump. Huh? Well…I just want you to know you look like a scholar today, so handsome and smart, Robin, okay?” I wink at him and I see his cheeks reddening. I only use that line (the same one I used in Uni to get his attention) to perk him up if I sense him getting frustrated enough to send those warning flares—the ones where I sense he is up to something. He likes pranks, you see. It’s his Achilles heel, in a way.

His eyes waver and he looks at me with a stare that says something quite passionate. Over the years, even as he’s five years older than I am, I’ve grown accustomed to his tastes as we merge our flavors together quite often. It was my weakness.

Robin was my weakness.

And yet, my greatest strength.

He was someone I truly looked up to, and I saw as my best confidant.

He finally seems to have woken up from our intense gaze and gives me a stern look, “Fix the bins, I’ll make tea.”

He grabs my old mug before I realize it, dumping it out in the sink.

“Waste not want not,” he says to himself and I shake my head and sigh.

“Is that your way of saying you don’t think we need coffee?” I ask under my breath.

“What was that?” He asks loudly and I shrik back.

“Nothing, dear!”

Nodding, he turns to start the kettle, as I softly laugh and go up to my study. I do go out to fix the bins first, of course.

Later, I come down, as I had some very strange observations about the sun I had just perceived through my telescope. I was wanting to cross reference it to something I had heard about before.

“Hear about that action by the North Koreans?” I hear Robin say in the living room as I make a sandwich.

“Huh? What’s that, luv?”

“The Soviets are backing it up. Could be the start of something quite inauspicious to the Americans. Ties are all over the place. Don’t like the look of it, Davie.”

I almost break apart my bread as he’s talking, as my nerves are already frazzled by my observations earlier and now this.

“How’s that?” I shakily ask.

“Truman is bringing in the army into Korea, don’t you know.” I hear him sigh. “The Americans are afraid of a commie takeover.”

“Ah, that’s not our concern…” I mumble and I hear him scoff.

“You can’t be so far off the map. You must see the geopolitical tension here, don’t you, David?”

He cringe as he only says my full name when he’s upset.

“I.. I do, of course I see it…” I say and I realize I tattered my sandwhich to pieces in my stressed induced panic.

I hear his chair squeak and I hear his steps come over and he immediately starts cleaning up my mess.

“Oh, what’s going on with you this morning, my dear?” He mumbled as he frantically cleans up the crumbs and our eyes lock for a moment.

“I think there’s a big possibly of a huge geomagnetic storm hitting the earth. I saw some extremely troubling signs. Some sun spots… then… A huge flash of white light on the sun. It lasted about four minutes. I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t keeping track.” I start pacing around the room, “I remember reading about this. In London, Carrington… 1800’s… I’m not sure. This was an intense amount of electricity.”

He frowned, and some crumbs from a napkin fell to the floor.

“Davie? I mean.. how? Is.. are you quite positive?”

I nodded. “Yes. Do you know where the New York Times archives are? By chance?”

He looks down in thought, and says, “Yes. In your underwear drawer.”

I blink in shock. “My.. m-my.. what in God’s name is it doing in there, Rob?”

He chuckles sheepishly. “Well? Funny thing was I had been dusting and it was difficult as all your scientific journals and archives were strewn about…” he shrugs. “I put them in your unmentionables… sorry!” He grins and I sigh.

“You may not get that pie, after all, you silly duck…” I teased and he growled.

“I do not quack often!!” He stomped as I went to our bedroom to get my archives.

“I hear you quack often enough for the nickname to stay!” I countered and heard him scoff again, making me laugh.

Once I gather my journals and archives, I go back up to my study.

Reading on the scientific phenomenon of geomagnetic storms, I found this:

On Thursday, Sept. 2, 1859, at roughly 11:18 a.m. in the town of Redhill outside London, Carrington was investigating a group of dark specks on the sun known as sunspots, when he detected what he later described as "a singular outbreak of light which lasted about five minutes."

Reading further on, the most important part was that these events matched up almost perfectly, in synchronized measure with how it began in 1859.

I decided to go outside and check some samples of the earth, and then call my colleagues in Canada and the UK.

It was strange.

As I was out walking, I found a very strange material, a mineral called Trinitite.

I went to my university office that parented my work at NASA, and I saw something absolutely flooring.

This was an old sample of a plutonium, sand based glass crystals were only an after effect of use of…

I started to feel my insides twist and I felt my breath quickening, yet my vocal cords tightening to scream. I wanted to, but I felt like I couldn’t let out any noise. The panic resided inside, a boisterous and clamoring clang inside my whole body that felt like a horror picture had come to life.

This was from a nuclear bomb test.

I tested it by use of an autoradiograph and saw that yes, small traces of radioactive cesium-137 were detected.

It was definitely from a nuclear blast.

—

I had to do something because the way I had traced this, something felt off. The way the patterns of isotopes—had a strange covering of photons ghosting over it. I couldn’t place it, and I thought I was going crazy.

We seemed to be in state of limbo, and though the news sources had caught wind of my discoveries, I had not quite decided to put out there anything about the nuclear fallout crystals.

Energy was going out in mass quantities all over the world and in some parts were creating huge bursts of light in the middle of the night, waking people up and giving them the illusion of dawn.

“The Cold War keeps raging, do you think they’ll fire off their stashes of nukes?” Robin asked me as I was going over the state of photons and trying to make sense of the surges of some of the largest power outages the world had ever seen. I had been testing out photons in various vaccums and trying to figure out how to alter this potential situation.

“I think it has already happened.” I mutter and Robin gives me a wide eyed, questioning stare.

“How can you say such a thing?” He sighs, cuddling under a large wool blanket on our couch. “Come here and rest with me, dear.”

“I can’t, luv. I want to, but I have to keep working.”

“Why? You can’t change anything.”

“Yes I can!” I yell.

“Davie, please. You are overworked. Come here and hold me.”

I hear in his voice. He’s exhausted. I nod and go over as he lifts the covers and I crawl into his lap.

“I’ll shave your face, you look like a homeless man, Davie,” he teased.

“Darling, I think we’re in the middle of what could be called… an inverse situation, an in-betweenness that I can only describe as.. an overlapping pattern of fallout patterns that significantly indicate we could be in a deep state of nuclear war. It is in the half state of course correction as it hadn’t quite happened yet. The signs are all there.”

“Davie, please..” he rests his arms around my head, as if to protect me. “You’re not making sense.”

“Again with the tropics and Cuba and all of South America, for Christ’s sakes, Robby, it’s happening. They all saw the Aurora. I saw the signs of a fallout. My colleagues are also seeing similar effects.”

I try to massage my temples, as I’m getting a headache, but I feel smooth hands caress my head.

“Hush now, darling.”

“You’re a professor, Robin, you must’ve of heard the time progression of photons in the scope of time?”

“Oh, but darling, you know,” he sits up and I adjust as he holds me close. “You know that I’m only an English professor.”

“CME’s can cause radiation poisoning in large doses…” I mumble incoherently, and I look up and see my boyfriend of seven years is looking at me like I’m a loon.

“Davie, did you fix the bins?”

I frowned. “Yes. I did. Why?”

“The birds got in anyway. There’s trash everywhere.”

I sigh. “I’m sorry, luv.”

“It might be a larger animal, maybe, it’s not your fault.”

I get up suddenly and I hear Robin whine from the lack of contact.

“I gotta work this out, luv. I gotta find a way to send a large quantity of this plutonium crystal sample back in time to warn… warn everyone.”

Robin gets up. The same fusspot, hand on hip stance. I expect he’ll scold me, tell me to stop, be rational, and to calm down.

He instead goes over and takes my hand.

“Let me help you.”

I smile a tired smile and he mirrors it.

The sincerity in his lovely grump-like statement gave me strength to understand the Aurora shift, and we move forward with a destiny of an alternative Cold War, one where we all can see a brighter and better future.

The shepherd’s pie came later, as the electricity was on. It had always been on.