The birds began nesting inside the transformer housing behind the substation during the same summer the outages started. They were small gray things with translucent eyelids and feathers that seemed darker whenever the current surged. Nobody could identify the species. The utility crews called them shockingbirds as a joke, and the name survived because removing the nests would require shutting down half the district.
The outages were brief enough to be blamed on heat, aging equipment, or overloaded lines. Months passed before anyone noticed the timing. Every evening near dusk, the birds gathered along the busbars and began a rising metallic chatter. Streetlights dimmed in response. Televisions blinked. Elevators paused between floors. Then the birds would settle, and the grid returned to normal.
One veteran lineman became fascinated by the pattern. She spent lunch breaks beside the housing with an insulated meter, recording surges that made no electrical sense. The birds appeared to absorb charge through their feet and release it in coordinated bursts. When one bird called, current shifted through three transformers at once. When the flock answered, power flickered across several neighborhoods in patterns resembling repetition.
She started leaving the gate unlatched.
One evening she entered the yard after everyone else had gone. The birds were already calling. Static lifted the hair on her arms and pulled loose strands from beneath her cap. Then the chatter changed, falling into pauses long enough to feel deliberate. Lights across the district began blinking in sequences. Apartment towers darkened floor by floor and returned in reverse order. Traffic signals flashed red, green, red, green, then held yellow for almost a minute.
She stood there until the flock went quiet.
Afterward she claimed the outages were conversations. The birds had learned the grid the way songbirds learn an environment, discovering that electricity could carry feeling farther than air. The first interruptions had been instinctive. Later ones had become structured. She refused to explain what she thought they were saying.
She retired that winter but still drives to the fence several evenings a week. The crew leaves the gate unlocked for her. Lately, residents have begun reporting unusual dreams after outages: fields seen from impossible heights, the taste of copper, the conviction that something enormous is listening through household wiring.
The birds have multiplied every year. Last week the utility company approved construction of a new substation across town. Before the first transformer was installed, three gray birds were already waiting on the empty frame, chirping softly toward wires that had yet to carry current.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
Leave a Reply