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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

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

Aaron's Journal Entry - Blackout theories

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