"I guess that's possible, but how likely is it?"

"Not very? They definitely seemed rather skeptical of me over the phone but I'm sure they will be reasonable once I've got the hang of communicating with them."

"I hope it works out and they can get people food. It's pretty hard to cook a lot of things without a stove."

"Yeah - some people have camper burners but there's only so many to go around."

"Does your place always have power? I didn't notice it going out at all while I was there and nothing in your freezer looked previously melted."

"Yeah, um. It came with the place - a preset from Tattletale. I'm planning on moving the generator to somewhere more useful."

"Does it cover your whole building or just your unit?"

"Just the unit."

"What fuel do the camper burners use? Is that coming in like the diesel?"

"Propane - yeah it's coming in shipments too."

"Grills use that too, right?"

"Yeah, and some heaters - which thankfully aren't necessary this time of year."

"Is there a plan to get the power consistently up everywhere by the time it is another time of year?"

"Yeah, should be a couple of months. Or one month, if Tattletale and Skitter can manage things."

"Manage what about the things?"

"They are trying to get people to coordinate on a schedule that means less power in the short term but more time for repairs."

"Repairs can only happen when the power's off or something?"

"Yep."

"Is that normal or something special about how extensive the damage was?"

"I think downed trees can result in similar things sometimes but the damage being extensive means it's relevant to whole sections of the city and not just individual streets."

"Huh. Is power up at full - strength or whatever - when it's up, or are there, like, flickers, things not working if they need a lot of juice?"

"A significant share of buildings don't have power at all and have to be individually repaired - they've also had to shut it down or emergency repairs to prevent things from catching fire a couple of times I think."

"Oh dear. - does everybody have running water?"

"Basically, yeah. They didn't after Leviathan hit but that was first on the repairs list - only places that are left are unoccupied, I think."

"That's good. Though presumably not hot water, with the gas out and the electricity intermittent - would it help anything to have people turning their water heaters off, if they haven't already thought to, so they draw less power?"