Lost Republic by Paul B. Thompson

frat-boy movies her brother used to like before he was old enough to go to college.
    The LEDs around the rim of the light were dim and red. Even Julie knew that meant not enough electricity.
    She had a tepid shower and put on some dry clothes. There was a porthole in her cabin, but opening it didn’t improve anything. A strong ocean smell crept in. It reminded Julie of trips to Kure Beach in North Carolina when she was a kid, when everything smelled moldy and faintly rotten, but you didn’t care because it was the beach. Funny. She thought it only smelled this way at the coast, not hundreds of miles at sea.
    Her cabin mate slept on, sprawled out with her arms and legs splayed wide, seeking coolness even in the depths of sleep. Julie looked over the useless hardware on her dressing table: PDD, Your/World glasses, pocket phone, Info-Coach. She hadn’t gotten a peep or gleam out of any of them in three days, so she kicked the footstool and decided to go up on deck.
    The overhead light in the passage flickered and buzzed. All else was quiet. What an ugly old tub this ship was. Why couldn’t her parents have booked her on
Sunflyer
? She could be going to New Man concerts every night and enjoying carbon-free air- conditioning . . .
    It was then Julie realized the usual constant vibration of the engines was missing. Nor was the
Carleton
bobbing up and down in the waves. The ship was so still, it was like being in a not-so nice hotel, one with riveted steel walls and no piped in music.
    Wind, warm and damp, wafted down the open stairwell. The light above was gray and colorless. Julie emerged on deck and saw the Atlantic was dead calm, like a lake of glass. Where sea and sky met was an indistinct gray zone. Whether there was mist the color of the sea rising, or the sea had gone pale as the sky, Julie couldn’t tell. It gave the horizon a strangely flat look, like a painted backdrop. Julie felt like if she could lean out far enough, she could touch the featureless place where sky and sea met.
    She went aft and found other passengers leaning on the rail or talking in small groups on the
Carleton
’s quarterdeck. Julie looked for someone she knew. The German guy, Hans What’s-his-name, was standing at the far end of the ship, writing in a notebook—actually writing with an ink pen in a paper notebook, something Julie had only seen her grandmother do.
    She walked up, hands clasped behind her back.
    â€œHey,” she said. Something about the situation made her keep her voice low.
    â€œHello.”
    Hans didn’t look up from his writing. Julie peeked over the top of the notebook and saw columns of figures.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œTrying to estimate our position, based on our speed, elapsed time, and our location yesterday,” he said.
    â€œOh. Where are we?”
    He met her eyes. Hans’ hair was mussed, and he looked like he’d slept in his clothes.
    â€œI can’t tell! It would be easier if the sun was out—”
    Julie smiled. “It should be up soon.”
    Hans shook his head. “It was supposed to have risen ninety minutes ago.”
    That didn’t make sense. The sky was uniformly light, but in a soft, diffuse way. Gray horizon slowly melded into blue sky overhead, with no distinct clouds anywhere—and no sun.
    â€œThat’s just weird!” Julie went to the curved stern rail and looked down. The usual turbulence of the ship’s screws was little more than a swirl. “We’re hardly moving!”
    â€œYes, power is out to many of the ship’s systems,” Hans said. He came to the rail beside her. “The captain has not told us why.”
    He was good looking, in a clueless sort of way. His constant lost-in-thought manner was not Julie’s favorite look in guys, but his enthusiasm was rather cute. She noticed Hans chewed the end of his pen when he was thinking and had long, expressive fingers. Musician fingers,