Blackout

The turncoat turbines die;
Street-lights down-glow to invisibility;
Nanosecond fadeout
Lasts for mankind’s own eternity.

Brother and sister enthroned
On the sky-deck of an electric bus;
Travel through the urban wasteland
From school to dwelling,
Heading into unconscious infinity.

Outside, dark stars hyperexpand,
One into the other;
Vehicle lurches toward imaginary chasm;
The transported ones rise up as one,
A human tsunami of inhuman scale;
Bag of barbecue-beef crisps slips from his fingers,
Crushed in slow-motion stampede.

In the blackfall, his eleven-year-old hand
Grabs her nine-year-old hand;
Hangs on because in this temporal fragment
Nothing lasts unless it is vanadium-grounded:
All they have now is one another
And the hope of a better tomorrow.

When all power-lines lead to nothing
The only conduit is despair;
But, as the cybervirus spreads around the world,
The last hope catapults
From the heart-minds of the young --
For they alone can see magic within logic.

Her black shoes barely visible,
They crash up the steps to their flat;
She trips, hope cascading down underneath her,
Big brother raises her
Like a titan from the sea-bed.

Nightmares of never-ending dread,
Empty tenth-floor flat;
Moonlit window illuminates the zeroity beneath:
No mother, no father,
No light, no heat --
Just possessions without purpose.
It is the familiar made unfamiliar.

The detritus of their former life
Mixed with the advance-guard of the next:
Oven, laptop, smartphone, television, lights,
Half-finished prawn sandwich on the table.
Dead technology awaiting resurrection
From a god not yet envisioned.

Girl bursts into tears;
Hand that only an hour before
Tugged her hair to make her voice crack
Touches her shoulder
With shocking compassion
As he contemplates their parents’ last meal.

Brother-parent, protector-gatherer,
Tells her they will survive,
They have the final foodstuffs
Still within their electrolarder.

When those are exhausted,
Disintegrated inside their howling bodies,
Brother will transform into the ancient-modern hunter,
Bringing meat to the deserted table,
Start a blaze in the sink
To firewall the outside cold.

They walk inside,
Brother and sister alone in this stark new world,
Now outlanders exploring their life-space:
Teddy bear neatly tucked in her bed,
Night-time torch carefully placed
On his bedside table.

Their pyjamas folded,
Stacked side by side on her bed;
Their scarves and gloves
Hung over the chairs by the beds.
Boy’s face morphs into tears
At the finality of parental care revealed
As the blackfall flooded in.

The cybervirus has infinite reach;
Brother and sister have mutated
Beyond the mere future of society;
Entrapped between daybreak and nightfall,
The way back is a zero road
They must travel on
With the courage of the accidental.