Page 8 of Inventing Mr Darcy

“Hold on,” he cautions, sliding the chair between me and it. “Rebooting a mainframe is a little more complicated than powering down your personal computer.”

“Oh, I never power down my laptop.”

That really gets his attention. “You never—what? Why not?”

“Well, look at it,” I say, directing his eyes to the device, which still sits tucked beneath the monitors. “If that old thing shuts all the way off, it may never turn on again.”

“Computers don’t really work like … you know what, let’s stick to one issue at a time. I’ll initialize the shutdown sequence now,” he says, turning away and starting to type, “and on Monday, I’ll come in first thing and start it up again. Then you can reload those new files.”

“Monday?” I repeat, certain I must have misheard. “If AUSTEN-C is down all weekend, Pedersen will have my head.”

“That may be, but given the problems you’ve already had, it’s safer to keep it shut down until the storm is over.”

He works in silence for a moment, until I venture another question. “That thing you said before, about going back to the dark ages—that’s just a theory, right?”

I’m sure some people imagine a blackout would be romantic, all candlelight and a return to simplicity. But given how much we rely on our electronics and the internet, I’d say the rom-com vibe would last all of three and a half seconds before it devolves into something more like The Purge.

“Sure,” he readily concedes, glancing back at me. “But most of science is theories. And we’re talking about the sun, Elle. It has the power to rewrite our universe.”

The overhead lights flicker again, this time accompanied by a dull clunk near the door, as if someone in the hallway kicked it in passing. Fisher gets up to investigate. “You’re not being very reassuring,” I scold him, intending my words to be playful, though I am starting to get a little freaked out.

He’s between me and the door, so I can’t see what he’s doing, only hear the handle rattle. There’s another thunk and it takes me a minute to realize that was the sound of him dropping his forehead against the door.

“Elle,” he says, “we’re locked in.”

At first I’m sure he must be joking, though it doesn’t seem like the kind of joke he would make. I reach for my phone to call campus security, momentarily forgetting I don’t have a signal. There’s a crackle in the air, followed by an audible zing as the power cuts out again.

Only this time, everything goes down and stays down—mainframe, monitors, phone, lights—and we’re left in total darkness.

Now, when you hear the phrase total darkness, you might be thinking of, say, how hard it is to see anything in your bedroom if you get up to pee in the middle of the night. But I’m betting there’s a seam of light under the door, or a streetlight outside your window that your curtains don’t quite block out, or something electronic—the power signal on your TV, even a smoke detector—that gives off the tiniest glow.

Total darkness is different.

My phone might as well be a brick; even the flashlight function won’t come on. I can’t see my hand in front of my face—and I know, because I try. I blink, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

They don’t.

When a disembodied smile appears a few feet away, I think to myself with surprising calmness, I’m hallucinating. But gradually I realize it’s the same smile I’ve been looking at for half an hour. Fisher must have turned away from the door and the maniacal grin of the Cheshire Cat on his shirt glows in the dark.

I stretch out my arm and move toward that cartoon smile like it’s a homing beacon.

When my fingertips collide with Fisher’s chest, he hisses in a startled breath at the abrupt contact. “Sorry,” I mutter automatically and start to draw back my hand, but he catches it in his fingers—a little clumsily, because everything’s harder to do in the dark—and then, to my surprise, pins my palm to his chest.

It’s true what they say about your other senses being heightened when one is lost, because I’m hyper-aware of the texture of the screen-printed design on his shirt. I feel the curve of his pecs, too. And beneath that, the pounding of his heart.

“Don’t be,” he says, in a gentler voice than I’ve ever heard him use.

I curl my fingers against him and whisper, “Fisher? I’m scared.” This scenario has all the hallmarks of a disaster movie: we’re trapped, and since it’s Friday night, no one is likely to come looking for us for days.

He wraps his other arm around me and pulls me close for reassurance. His warm breath tickles my scalp when he promises, “We’ll be all right.”

“You don’t know that,” I point out in a voice that’s dangerously close to a whine. At the same time, I snuggle deeper into his strong, pine-scented embrace. Fisher might have a knack for getting on my last nerve, but right now, I appreciate how he’s trying to make me feel safe.

I’m not sure how long we stand like that, just holding each other. Time loses all meaning in total darkness; it’s as difficult to judge the distance between minutes as it is to judge the distance between anything else.

So I can’t exactly pinpoint how long it takes for a simple reassuring hug to become something more.

“Elle?” His breath strikes my cheek. “Should we be doing this?”