Chapter 5: The One with the Blackout (And the Storyteller)
Friday afternoon had that specific quality that only existed on Fridays — the city outside moving with a little more intention, everyone doing their jobs while quietly thinking about not doing their jobs. Ethan sat at his desk in the biology department, staring at his computer screen with the expression of a man in a complicated relationship with technology.
The monitor was running Windows NT. The cursor blinked at him with what felt like deliberate slowness.
"This is fine," Ethan told himself. "Windows 95 is coming. Probably. Eventually." He tabbed through his research files and made a mental note, not for the first time, that the graphical interface situation in 1994 was something a person simply had to make peace with and move on.
The more pressing issue was the one that had been sitting in the back of his mind for weeks now, sharpening itself into something he couldn't keep ignoring: he needed to publish. The PhD was almost done, the tenure track was the goal, and the tenure track required a paper trail. Not just papers — good ones. The kind that got cited. The kind that made people in your field know your name before they met you.
He leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
The Flavr Savr project had already given him one significant win. Calgene had sent a letter that week — formal, professional, the kind of letter that made things feel real — confirming that the genetically modified tomato would be hitting US markets the following year. The patents were solid. The collaboration was ongoing. It was a legitimate foundation to build on.
But he needed something new. Something that wasn't just following the current current.
His gaze drifted to the stack of trade publications on the corner of his desk. Plastics. The word had been floating around in his head for a few days, coming from an angle that nobody in 1994 was particularly interested in yet. Everyone was focused on making better plastics, more durable plastics, plastics for every conceivable application. The environmental conversation was barely a whisper.
Which meant the field was wide open for someone willing to ask the other question: what happens to all of it?
Microplastics. The word didn't even exist yet in any mainstream scientific vocabulary. But it would. And when it did, the research foundation would matter enormously.
That's worth a paper, Ethan thought. Maybe more than one.
He wrote it down, closed his notebook with the satisfaction of a man who had answered at least one question today, and started gathering his things for the weekend.
Central Perk on a Friday afternoon was its best version of itself. The after-work crowd hadn't arrived yet, the light through the windows was doing something genuinely nice, and everyone had somehow ended up on the couch at the same time, which always felt like it had been planned even though it never was.
Monica was mid-thought when Ethan walked in. "—okay, but if you could have one superpower," she was saying to Joey, "what would it be?"
"Honestly?" Joey said. "Probably invisibility. You could go anywhere. See anything. Nobody knows you're there."
"That's surprisingly thoughtful," Ross said.
"I have layers," Joey said.
"What about you, Rach?" Monica asked.
Rachel considered. "Flying. Definitely flying. Have you ever tried to get a cab in this city in the rain?"
"Ross?" Ethan said, dropping into the armchair and picking up someone's abandoned coffee.
Ross straightened slightly, with the air of a man who had thought about this before. "If I could have any superpower, I would choose the ability to make myself more powerful. Indefinitely."
A pause.
"So your one wish," Ethan said, "is more wishes."
"It's strategic," Ross said.
"It's the answer that gets you disqualified in every version of this game," Chandler said. "There are rules, Ross. Even in hypotheticals."
"What would you pick, Chandler?" Rachel asked.
"The ability to think of a comeback immediately," Chandler said, without hesitation. "Instead of forty-five minutes later in the shower."
"That's weirdly specific," Monica said.
"I have forty-five minutes of material to support it," Chandler said.
"Ethan?" Rachel turned to him.
Ethan set down his coffee. "Honestly? I'd want to see slightly further ahead than everyone else. Not everything — just enough to know which direction to move." He paused. "Actually, I think I've already got a version of that."
"Oh yeah?" Monica said. "Then tell us something that's going to happen."
Ethan looked around the table with the expression of a man about to make a claim he was reasonably confident in. "Tonight," he said, "there is going to be a city-wide power outage."
Silence.
"Okay," Chandler said.
"A big one," Ethan continued. "Parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens. The whole thing goes dark."
"You got this from where exactly?" Ross asked.
"Premonition," Ethan said pleasantly.
"I'll take that bet," Monica said immediately. "Five dollars says you're wrong."
"Done," Ethan said.
Just then, Gunther materialized at the edge of the couch with the specific expression he reserved for enforcing policies he was personally conflicted about. "Rachel," he said. "Work hours. No chatting with—" He paused, registering the full group. "Customers."
"I'm on break," Rachel said.
"Break ended four minutes ago," Gunther said, and then, with the careful dignity of a man who had rehearsed this, added: "Also, your check is at the counter."
Rachel was off the couch before he finished the sentence.
She came back holding the pay stub the way you might hold a note from someone you had a crush on — carefully, with slightly too much attention to it. "Okay," she said, sitting back down. "Look at this. My name. On a check. That I earned."
"First paycheck," Phoebe said warmly. "That's a real thing."
"I remember my first paycheck," Phoebe continued, in the tone that meant a story was coming. "It was a Tuesday. I was working at the Dairy Queen on 72nd. And that same afternoon, there was a gas leak two blocks over and they had to evacuate the whole street."
Everyone waited.
"That's it?" Chandler said.
"I just remembered it very clearly," Phoebe said. "The smell of soft serve and natural gas. It was a whole sensory experience."
Rachel had opened the stub now and was reading it with the focused intensity of someone decoding something in a foreign language. Her expression shifted progressively from excitement to confusion to mild outrage.
"Ethan," she said. "Who is FICA and why does he have so much of my money?"
"Federal taxes," Ethan said. "Welcome to employment."
"This is — I wiped down tables for this. I learned how to make a flat white for this." She looked at the number again. "Okay, but it's still mine," she said, arriving somewhere that looked like acceptance via a complicated route. "I made this."
"You did," Ethan said. And he meant it straightforwardly, without any irony, which was why Rachel folded the stub carefully and put it in her pocket instead of throwing it away.
The group took turns sliding tips across the table in her direction, each one with a different degree of ceremony. Joey's was in quarters.
"Joey," Rachel said.
"I respect the work," Joey said.
After lunch, Ethan crossed back to campus for the law school lecture he'd marked in his planner three weeks ago. The auditorium was about two-thirds full — a Friday afternoon crowd, a mix of students and faculty and the occasional person who had just seen the poster and been curious.
Barack Obama was younger than Ethan had been bracing for, somehow, even knowing the year. Sharp, composed, with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew exactly what they thought and had organized it well before speaking. He was teaching constitutional law, specifically the tension between legislative intent and evolving civil rights frameworks, and he was genuinely good at it — the kind of lecturer who made the room feel like the topic was urgent, like it had stakes.
Ethan took notes. Not because he needed to, but because it was that kind of talk.
During the Q&A, he raised his hand. "You've talked a lot about law catching up to social reality. What about science? Specifically genetic technology — cloning, gene editing. The legal and ethical frameworks are basically nonexistent right now. How does the law prepare for something it doesn't have the vocabulary for yet?"
Obama considered the question with the same lack of performance that characterized the whole lecture. They went back and forth for a few minutes — genuinely, not the way Q&A sometimes devolved into the audience member just talking. He was careful where Ethan pushed, pushed back where Ethan was careful.
Afterward, in the corridor, Obama stopped him. "That's a real question," he said. "Not a lot of people are asking it in those terms yet."
"I think they will be," Ethan said.
"You're in the biology department?"
"Finishing my PhD."
Obama nodded. "Keep asking that question. The law is going to need people who understand the science well enough to translate it."
Ethan walked out of the law school into the late afternoon and stood on the steps for a moment, letting the October air hit him.
Huh, he thought. And then he went to get coffee.
He arrived back at Central Perk just as Phoebe was settling onto the small stage with her guitar, and Rachel was at the microphone doing introductions with the energy of someone who had found her footing behind a counter and was expanding outward from there.
"Ladies and gentlemen — Central Perk is very proud to present the one, the only, Miss Phoebe Buffay."
Phoebe beamed and launched into a song that was, in the most generous possible framing, experimental. It had a melody in the general sense, and the lyrics were specific to the point of being almost journalistic. Ethan sat with his coffee and listened with the expression of a man who genuinely appreciated the commitment even when the execution was its own thing.
When she finished, the small crowd applauded. Ethan caught her eye and gave her a thumbs up that communicated that was completely you and I mean that as a compliment.
He looked around. Something was missing.
"Where's Chandler?"
Monica looked up. "ATM. He needed cash."
Ethan checked his watch. "Before the blackout."
"You're still on the blackout thing," Ross said.
"I will be vindicated," Ethan said pleasantly. "Let's head back. And somebody should probably try to reach Chandler."
Monica pulled on her coat. "If you're wrong, you owe me five dollars and an apology."
"Noted," Ethan said.
He was not wrong.
By eight o'clock, Monica's apartment was dark. Not dim — dark, the kind of dark that made the city feel both very close and very far away. Candles had been found. The windows showed a landscape of scattered light and long shadows, whole blocks gone, the skyline doing something it almost never did, which was going quiet.
"My mom called," Monica said, a single candle casting long shadows across her face as she clicked through what little she could get on the battery-powered radio. "Brooklyn, lower Manhattan, parts of Queens. They don't know when it's coming back."
"I'd like to formally collect my five dollars," Ethan said.
Monica pointed at him from across the room.
"Also," Ethan said, standing up and adopting the particular posture of a man about to commit to a bit, "I want everyone to know that I take no responsibility for what happens from here. I warned you. I gave you the information. What you did with it—"
"Sit down," Rachel said.
"I'm just saying—"
"We get it, you're a prophet, sit down," Monica said.
Ethan sat down, visibly pleased with himself.
Joey appeared in the doorway holding a menorah, with the careful stance of someone carrying something he didn't want to drop. "Okay so I went through Chandler's closet looking for flashlights," he announced, "and I found these. His old roommate left them. It's actually Hanukkah, so—" He shrugged with the pragmatism of a man who had decided to just go with it.
"Happy Hanukkah," Ross said, holding up his glass in the candlelight.
"Happy Hanukkah," everyone repeated, with varying degrees of sincerity and full degrees of warmth.
Joey set the menorah on the coffee table. The flames did what candle flames always do when there are enough of them — they made the room feel smaller and warmer and more like a place where things could be said.
The phone rang. Monica answered, listened for approximately four seconds, and her expression went through three distinct phases.
"You're — what? With who?"
She held the phone out toward Joey with the expression of a woman who needed a second opinion on whether she was hearing correctly.
Joey took it. Listened. His eyes went wide. "Oh my god."
"What?" Rachel demanded.
"Chandler," Joey said slowly, lowering the phone, "is trapped in an ATM vestibule." He looked around the room to make sure everyone was ready. "With Jill Goodacre."
A beat of pure silence.
"The Victoria's Secret model Jill Goodacre?" Rachel said.
"There is only one Jill Goodacre," Joey confirmed.
Ethan put his head back against the couch and looked at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had predicted the power outage but had not predicted this. "Okay," he said. "I did not see that coming. But I would like to point out that I did say Chandler would have an adventure."
"You said he'd meet someone interesting," Monica said.
"I said adventure," Ethan said. "Adventure covers a broad range."
Joey lowered himself back onto the couch with the reverent expression of someone processing genuinely important news. "He's in a glass box. With Jill Goodacre. During a blackout." He shook his head slowly. "That man lives a charmed life and doesn't even know it."
"He knows it," Ethan said. "He just can't say anything about it because he'll make it weird."
"He's definitely making it weird," Monica said.
"Oh, definitely," Ethan agreed. "But there's a chance he's also being accidentally charming, which is Chandler's best mode."
Phoebe, who had been listening thoughtfully, said: "I once got stuck in an elevator with a man who turned out to be a professional mime. We were in there for two hours."
Everyone waited.
"He didn't speak the entire time," Phoebe said. "But his commitment was impressive."
"Was it romantic?" Rachel asked.
Phoebe considered. "It was something," she said finally.
Ross had drifted to the window, looking out at the dark city, and Ethan came to stand beside him. The view was genuinely strange — New York stripped of half its light, showing a version of itself that most people living here had never seen.
"You doing okay?" Ethan asked.
Ross kept looking out the window. "I keep thinking about Rachel," he said, quietly enough that it wasn't for the whole room.
Ethan waited.
"I don't know how to—" Ross stopped. Started again. "I've known her since we were kids. And now she's here, and she's going through all of this, and I just want to—" He stopped again.
"Tell her," Ethan said.
"It's not the right time."
"Ross."
"She just got out of an engagement. She's figuring out her whole life. I can't just—"
"You're not going to find a perfect moment," Ethan said. "There isn't one. There's just the moment where you decide to say the thing, and then everything that happens after." He looked at his friend. "The longer you wait, the more it becomes something you're not saying on purpose. And that's harder to undo."
Ross was quiet for a moment. "What if she doesn't—"
"Then you know," Ethan said. "And knowing is better than what you're doing now, which is circling."
Joey, who had drifted over with the natural gravitational pull of someone who sensed a conversation he should be part of, said: "He's right, Ross. I say this as someone who has never once waited to tell a woman how I feel: the waiting doesn't help."
"That's actually good advice," Ethan said, slightly surprised.
"I contain multitudes," Joey said.
Ross looked between them. "I'll think about it."
"That," Joey said, "is what the Friend Zone looks like from the inside."
Ross pointed at him. "I am not in the Friend Zone."
"Ross," Joey said gently. "You are the Friend Zone."
"I'm approaching the Friend Zone," Ross said. "I am not yet in the Friend Zone. There's a distinction."
"The distinction," Ethan said, "is about thirty days at your current pace."
Ross made a face that suggested he did not appreciate the precision of this estimate.
Monica, who had the instincts of a person who had grown up in a house where unspoken things became complicated quickly, materialized beside Ethan a few minutes later with a look of theatrical innocence.
"What were you three talking about?"
"Guy stuff," Ethan said.
Monica narrowed her eyes. "About?"
Joey, who under pressure immediately became a man who could not lie, said: "Nothing. Ethan was going to tell us a story."
Monica's expression shifted entirely. "Oh, I love a story."
Ethan looked at Joey. Joey shrugged with the expression of a man who had done his best.
"Fine," Ethan said. He looked around the room — the menorah on the coffee table, the candles, the faces of people he'd known for years arranged in the dark like something out of a painting. The city outside, quiet in a way it almost never was.
It was genuinely a good atmosphere for a story.
"Alright," he said, settling back into the couch. "Here's what we're doing. Tonight, I'm going to tell you a story. And everyone in this room is going to be a character in it."
Rachel sat up straight. "I want to be someone cool."
"Everyone's cool," Ethan said. "It's the Revolutionary War. We're in Philadelphia, 1776, and there's a traitor in the Continental Army who's about to sell battle plans to the British. And we have exactly one night to stop him."
Monica, immediately invested: "Who's the traitor?"
"You won't know until the end," Ethan said.
"Oh that's good," Phoebe said, pulling her knees to her chest.
"Ross, you're a spy," Ethan said.
Ross sat up slightly. "What kind of spy?"
"The good kind," Ethan said. "Mostly."
"What does mostly mean?"
"It means the story has texture," Ethan said. "Joey, you're a soldier with terrible aim but exceptional courage. Rachel, you're a tavern keeper who knows more than she's letting on. Phoebe, you're the one who figured out the traitor's identity three days ago but didn't tell anyone because she wanted to be sure."
"That tracks," Joey said.
"Monica, you're the one running the whole operation and you're furious because nobody has been following your plan."
"That really tracks," Ross said.
"And Chandler," Ethan added, glancing toward the dark window, "is currently trapped somewhere very inconvenient and will arrive in the second act."
"He's always late," Monica agreed.
"And what are you?" Rachel asked Ethan.
Ethan smiled. "I'm the narrator," he said. "And occasionally a mysterious traveler from the future who may or may not know how this ends."
"Does the narrator know how this ends?" Phoebe asked.
Ethan looked at the candles on the table. Outside, the dark city hummed and waited.
"Let's find out," he said.
And he began.
[Support Goal: 500 PS → +1 Chapter]
[Support Goal: 10 Reviews → +1 Chapter]
Your review helps the story grow.
P1treon Soulforger (20+chapters ahead)