The power failed at exactly 1147 p.m., not with a flicker or a warning hum, but with a clean, decisive silence, as if commodity unseen had reached out and pinched the world between its fritters. One moment the streetlights outside Mara Ellison’s apartment window glowed their usual sickly amber, reflecting off rain-slick asphalt, and the coming they were gone, leaving the megacity naked and dark. The refrigerator cut offmid-rattle. The ceiling addict braked, soughed, and stopped. Indeed the distant noise of business sounded to pull back, swallowed by a unforeseen, unnatural quiet. Mara stood in her kitchen holding a minced mug of