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and attempted to ruin his reputation, calling him a crackpot and fear monger.  Although most had been silenced over the past couple of years, as many of his theories proved correct, few had embraced his dire prognostications.
    Then in 2012, it happened.  A solar flare was released from the sun which was bigger than the Carrington Flare was, by almost 50%.  It was just dumb luck that the enormous CME emitted subsequently missed the Earth entirely.  Had it been discharged a couple days sooner or later, the Earth would have been brought back to a new Stone Age.  We were lucky then, but it looks like our luck may have run out , he lamented.
    He looked at the data from multitudes of sources, and the analysis from his scient ists, again and again, but the result was always the same.  This time was one that he wished science supported one of his doubting peers and could prove him wrong.  The current solar activity appeared to be far more excessive than had been estimated in this expiring solar cycle.  He was frankly more than a little worried about the potential CMEs that were going to be launched.  They might be even worse than the Carrington Flare which would be devastating to his generation’s world.

5.
    Miguel
    6:00 P.M.
    Rocky Point, Mexico
     
    I make mucho people angry at me , Miguel Fernandez thought to himself, feeling a growing nervousness about being late.  This was the second time in a month he caused his band to be tardy for a gig.  Miguel was pretty sure Lupita would yell and dock his band’s pay for it.  His wife Maria would be disappointed if this happened and so would his band.  Worse of all, Señor Max would be disappointed. 
    Miguel knew he was pushing it by spending that extra time with Maria and their unborn baby, Anna, who would enter this world in the next two weeks.  He just couldn’t interrupt his solo.  It was his special engagement, at a far more important venue than any his band played, certainly more than Lupita’s bar/restaurant.   He was playing “La Consecuencia” to his daughter, whose applause was her happily kicking in Maria’s abdomen and his wife’s tender kisses of appreciation.  There could be no better payment for his music. 
    Then, mindlessly, Miguel left his guitar by Maria’s bedside and was a mile away before realizing it, causing Pedro to turn the car around to retrieve it.  Pedro and Juan, his older brothers and part of Los Hermanos Mariachi, picked him up every night for work.
    “Lupita is going to kill us for being late,” Juan said, as Miguel got back into the car, this time with his well-worn guitar.
    “Com permiso?” Miguel asked plaintively to his brothers.
    Although Miguel was related to Lupita, when it came to the business of her restaurant, it meant nothing.  Lupita’s closeness to Señor Max was the difference of his losing some pay versus being fired.  Miguel could not shoulder the loss of this job.  With Maria not working recently because of the pregnancy, they were saving every peso they could get their hands on.
    Praise Jesus for Señor Max .  He had always taken care of him and Maria, starting with that first day they met many years ago, when he was barely 20, without a job, before Maria.   
    There had been a gang of cholos from the local cartel.  For no reason, other than his being at the wrong place at the wrong time, they started picking on him.  Miguel had never run away from a fight, but this was four to one, and they had knives.  He instantly grasped the trouble he was in and desperately looked for a way out, but there was none.  The rest happened so quickly, it was mostly a blur.  He remembered seeing one of the gang advancing on him with what looked like a machete.  Then, this stranger, he later learned was Max, came out of nowhere.  In less time than it took to recognize what happened, Max removed their knives and reduced these “bad asses,” as Max referred to them, to whimpering children who ran away in fear for