Write a new poem, story, post, or piece of flash fiction that contains an element of foreshadow.  A weekly writing exercise.

From the pen of Mr Latimer Naseby. 

The Event of 1859

Not a few of my older readers will remember fondly the workings of the electrical telegraph. If records had been kept, I wonder at the number of historic announcements that passed along its wires. I also think of the many human tales, engagements, estrangements and family affairs that it must have carried. I believe that some engineers had almost succeed in connecting the apparatus directly to a steam printer. The world could have had instant newspapers, all of us informed of the same news within minutes.

It was universally felt that the telegraph lines stretched far beyond our own time. We would travel along this electrical conduit to a glowing future.

As we know, this was not to be. The happening known as ‘The Carrington Event’ gave us the first straws from a great wind that was to follow. I know, from sources I cannot reveal, that there were many more problems experienced than were expressed in the newspapers of the time. Lives were lost, but the matter was almost completely covered over. In fact, in certain quarters, the magnetic effluxions that were felt were even welcomed.

A number of scientists believed that they may have discovered an inexhaustible source of energy.  Indeed, who would have not assumed that such a bounty lay within our grasp?  The electrical telegraph was able to function, although the current had been disconnected at both ends. It was recognised that the glowing skies were not the sole cause of this phenomenon. They were, however, believed to be another symptom of this great gift from the stars. It was, as we know now, the first properly recorded geomagnetic storm.

The Great Shift of 1863 was another matter entirely.

The glowing pathway. Paris.

NB. The Carrington Event was real.

This is another excerpt of an ongoing fiction work ‘Mr Faraday’s Cage & Other Tales of Obscure Science’. I will be publishing new parts twice weekly.

Mostly Frank

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