Naturally, I wasn't thinking about ancient mythology at all at 4:10 on Thursday afternoon. All I had on my mind was the eighty-odd articles for the Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America that I had to whisk through the ether from my computer terminal to the typesetter. Afterwards, I was going to go to the karate dojo for a quick workout, hook up with my fellow Fark.com forum moderator, Gwinny, and meet my girlfriend, Amanda, for dinner uptown. It was, I believe, as I was in the midst of editing Patrick Califia's article on sex clubs when something went wrong in distant Ohio, the electric Prometheus decided to unshackle himself from his bonds, and my evening plans were instantly deleted.

Once everyone was assured that this was only an ordinary emergency, and not the foreign policy of past decades coming around to bite us in the ass once again, the experience of two Septembers ago served us in good stead. Office workers commandeered the intersections, keeping the vehicular exodus from Manhattan from becoming impassable gridlock, and the only looting that went on was passers-by snapping up my local health food store's swiftly softening stock of organic ice cream, which was being given away by the milk crate. Though millions of people had to find some way home over the Hudson and the East Rivers, by virtue of paying $1200 a month for a fourth-floor East Village walkup, Amanda and I had suddenly became one of the lucky ones. Being Luddites, we don't even have an air conditioner-all we had to do was walk home, light a few candles, and eat our Reed's ginger-green tea ice cream.

As soon as the Cecil B. DeMilling cast of thousands existed stage left, a sea change came over the city. New York runs on electricity: The music in the clubs and bars is created by computers, played by men plugged into machines, and made to be consumed faster than inkjet cartridges. The omnipresent bass thump and high-voltage hum of the city in August was replaced by my Mexican neighbor sitting on his stoop with a harmonica. Since the cell network was overloaded and the monopoly on walking rapidly down the sidewalk while having a one-sided conversation had, at least temporarily, been restored to the homeless, Amanda and I even actually had to walk to Gwinny's apartment see if she was still available for dinner. Manhattan had become Gilligan's Island: No phones, no lights, no motorcars, and, except for free ice cream, not a single luxury.

Having my life abruptly brought to a screeching halt, on the other hand, wasn't entirely unwelcome. It even occurred to me, from my relatively comfortable perch, that it might even be a good idea to pull the plug on purpose now and again. The Swedes have over a month of legally mandated vacation time every year; the French abandon Paris to the tourist hordes in August. Only we crazy Americans keep working fifty-two weeks a year, going miles beyond the Seven Wonders of the ancient world-inventing air conditioning, drive-through Starbuck's, and thirty-minute workouts at the gym-to make sure that nothing interrupts our breakneck place. God (or was it Charlton Heston?) ordained that we work six days and rest one; New York was being forced to take an enforced shabbos. In keeping with the city's pancultural embrace, the impromptu holy day had even begun on a Thursday, a day beholden, as far as I know, to no particular religion.

As night fell on the city, restaurants pulled their tables out onto the sidewalks and became open-air cafes. Hidden by the darkness, New Yorkers dared to once more puff on their cigarettes in bars and drink bottles of rapidly warming beer on the streets as the Fourth-of-July scent of orange police road flares mixed mingled with the particular perfume of a humid August evening in New York.

Overhead, undimmed by the omnipresent glare of the street lights, the stars shone down on Manhattan for the first time I could remember.