Aaron's Journal: The Power of Nanites

During my freshman year at MIT, most of the guys in my dorm would stay up insanely late trying to think up an idea that would change the world. Unfortunately, this pursuit usually just turned into betting someone to do something stupid. Case in point, I remember one night I bet my friend Gary 50 bucks that he couldn't down three flaming vodka shots in under a minute. He gladly accepted the challenge and we set them ablaze. However, as we were stupid college freshmen, we didn't know that you have to blow out the flame before drinking and sadly, Gary didn't realize this until it was too late. Terrified, he spit the vodka out - momentarily resembling a screaming dragon - and lit the common room ping-pong table on fire. Luckily, someone else grabbed a fire extinguisher while I hid in the corner laughing, fairly certain I had just witnessed the best fire story of my life.

I was wrong. Yesterday, I saw two men spontaneously combust in front of me. Apparently the nanites that are constantly absorbing the flow of electricity are also able to expel it on command, turning our would-be rapists into Kentucky-fried Militia. Sorry, Gary. Dr. Warren wins. But what has really boggled my mind since witnessing this event is - the Blackout is potentially the LEAST amazing thing these little machines can do.

Aaron's Journal: RIP Danny Matheson

A few months ago, when Charlie was first setting out to get Danny back, I stood in my house, hyperventilating, holding the damned pendant that Ben handed me before he died - and in that moment, if there was any way out for me, I would have taken it. I'd spent years after the Blackout in the wild, fighting just to eat. I'd lost everything to it, even Priscilla. And the truth was, I was scared of what was out there. I wish someone else could have taken the burden from me... but they couldn't. Because I owed Danny too much to stay behind, even if it meant ending up bloody in a ditch halfway to Philadelphia. His parents brought me in from the cold, but it was Danny and Charlie that showed me there was still something worth a damn in the world.

When I first met Danny, he was this scrawny, asthmatic kid who could barely keep up with his big sister. I couldn't help but see myself in him. And there weren't many people like me left. Danny and Charlie, they had something that nobody has anymore - innocence. Ben and Rachel shielded them from the worst of things. Let them be normal kids, most of the time. I'm not saying they didn't have to learn to field dress a deer when they should have been watching "Bambi," but to them, the world outside their cul-de-sac was still, somehow, a beautiful place. Because it was full of possibility and things they'd never seen or even heard of - these kids had no memories of movies, or planes, or even of riding in cars. To see the look on their faces whenever they saw some new artifact from before the Blackout, the sheer wonder... it let me see the world that way again, too.

Do electric eels still work? Aaron explains his theories on the Blackout

Aaron's Journal Entry

   I'm more exhausted than I've ever been, but I can't sleep. Ben Matheson was one of my best friends. Kind of my only friend, considering the rest are probably dead or concubines to the warlords of Silicon Valley. Ben was the kind of guy you'd walk a thousand miles for, if he asked. I just never thought he'd really ask. But here I am. Chafed and sore, trying to repay Ben's - I almost wrote kindness, but it wasn't that. It was humanity. He still acted like a human, even after everything. And the human thing to do is help get Danny back, no matter the blisters and risk of personal dismemberment. I have plenty of time to think while marching across the continent, and my mind keeps getting caught on one nagging question, so answer me this one, universe - and I'm being totally serious, I want an answer: Do electric eels still work?

   Look, no one's gonna argue that the world didn't go totally bugnuts the night of the Blackout. Things that should work, now they just... don't. Planes fell from the sky, toasters stopped toasting, and the Internet... maybe the greatest invention in human history, it was snuffed out like a big, porn-filled candle. And if it was because of an EMP, some kind of terrorist attack, well, the next day, we would have started to rebuild. But that's not how it went. Something fundamental changed. Physics changed. Electricity doesn't flow down a wire the way it used to, and that just can't be, because by those rules, we should all be dead. No electricity means no impulses from your brain to your heart telling it to beat. Or from your feet to your brain, telling it that you're sick of walking 20-some miles every day. And lightning - lightning still works, we've all seen it. I don't know how to explain the things that shouldn't work, but still do.

   Which brings me back to the damn electric eel. I feel ridiculous to even speculate on this, but I have to know - if the electricity inside a human body still works, if there's something inherently different about organic, flesh and blood energy (Electrons versus ions? Something about the electrolytes?), then what's to stop us from grabbing a school of electric eels and hooking them up to a light bulb? Besides, you know, the electrocution. I can't be the first person to have thought of this. Actually, you don't see that many scientific, analytical minds still standing after the Blackout, so maybe I am the first person to think of this. That's not depressing at all.

   Once we find Danny (if we find Danny) then I'll solve this mystery once and for all. Or I'll just take a long nap.

Source: NBC