[ TT ] The world is an infinite flat plane . The furthest known points of this realm take days to contact by telegraph . Slowly communication ceases from the far west , and slowly the silence pushes closer and closer to home ...

There's electricity in my blood. I ’ m a lineman, like my dad, like his dad, like his. You go back far enough and maybe my great great great grandpa was an old-fashioned Pioneer, trekking without purpose, but as far back as I know, my lineage is tethered by power lines. 
 
 When the Pioneers of today went silent, they said it had to be the lines. They wouldn ’ t just fall off the grid, they said. They wouldn ’ t just cut us off. 
 
 And yet. 
 
 It ’ s not like we have one row of poles running out into the Distance. They fall—everything falls eventually—but there are rows and rows of poles with miles beyond number of lines. It ’ s near impossible for all of them to fall at once. 
 
 That ’ s what I told them, but I know that they had to blame someone. Politics. The easy answer is one that you can actually conceive of. 
 
 When the Outposts started going silent, one after the other after the other, the politicians had no choice but to revise. They were going silent in reverse order—farthest first. Officially, it ’ s a pulse of some kind. A slow-moving electric storm that ’ s causing interference along the lines. 
 
 Could be it ’ s our fault that we can ’ t see what it is already. We use generators to make our power, to send our messages and drive our machines that churn up the ground so that we can make more machines to make more power. We spread farther and farther. We ’ ve clogged up the air. If it were crystal clear you could see miles and miles and miles. You could see three Outposts in either direction from the roof of one. Now you can ’ t see anything. Birds fly in and out of the smog, directionless. Stupid. 
 
 The charge at the top of the pole I ’ m on is fine. No fluctuations. I check the message box and it says another Outpost has gone silent. They were on edge. They were ready to tell us as soon as whatever-it-is that ’ s coming our way hit them. 
 
 Nothing. 
 
 I pass caravans by day and night, heading east. Expecting I don ’ t know what. There ’ s a different kind of electricity—one that doesn ’ t need lines and poles. A current that floats both behind and in front of the air itself. It makes the hairs on my arms and neck stand up, and it tells me that something is coming. It ’ s subliminal to some, making them shy away. Making them run. 
 
 I pass people and they say, don ’ t go that way. Head east. Get away. 
 
 But they don ’ t understand. I have to follow the lines. The electricity that repels them, it calls to me. Maybe this storm or whatever it is, maybe it will be all right with me, see me as an equal. 
 
 I climb down the pole and my feet hit the dirt again, grounding me. I look east. I really, truly consider turning around. But I head west anyway. 
 
 I ’ ll find the storm or it will find me.
