Submission (#5782) Approved

When the solar flare hit, Fishbone didn't even notice. He had been reading in his bedside nook enthralled in the plot of the novel. His roomate, Quinton, was playing an online game in the living room. They occasionally shouted explictives when frustrated at their game, which Fishbone was used to and thus ignored the noise. Quinton had shouted, but Fishbone thought nothing of it. After a few minutes however, he heard things being tossed about. Fishbone shut his book and headed into the living room to see what the commotion was about.

‘What's wrong?’ Fishbone signed.

“My game–!!” Quinton was on the ground, unplugging and plugging in various wires to his console. “The TV, my console- everything just shut off!!”

Fishbone pulled out his phone to see if there was a power outage, even though it'd be strange for such a thing to happen in the middle of the day. Much to his surprise, his phone didn’t work either! He looked at the device funny.

“What?” Quinton inquired.

‘Phone’s dead too,’ Fishbone signed in reply.

“Dang it…” Quinton sighed. “That's so weird…”

‘Let's go ask the neighbors,’ Fishbone signed as a suggestion.

“Good idea.” Quinton got up and the pair walked outside. “HEY NEA!!” Quinton shouted.

From the apartment above, Nea looked over the railing. “Yeah?” Nea responded.

“Your power out too?”

“No duh,” Nea scoffed. “It's the solar flare! Knocked out everything. I've had it on my calendar for weeks. Do you know how much ice I had to buy in preparation for this?!”

“Oh really? I didn't know that was going on.”

“Ha! Well I'm sure now you do. Hey, it'll be out for a few hours. Maybe Fishbone can finally teach you how to read.” Nea laughed at her own joke.

Quinton waved her away, “Yeah yeah, hardy har har. Go inside before the ice cream man thinks you escaped from his freezer.”

Nea stuck her tongue out at him before disappearing back into her apartment.

“Guess that answers that,” Quinton mused.

Fishbone tapped Quinton on the shoulder. He signed, ‘Would you like me to read to you?’

“For the record, I can read.”

‘I know,’ Fishbone reassured him. ‘But I'll read specially for you.’ He smiled at his friend.

Quinton smiled back. “Fine, but only because you make it interesting.”

Fishbone did jazz hands in excitement and headed back to their apartment with Quinton in tow.