The latest Die Hard movie makes much of the chaos which would inevitably ensue when essential services are maliciously disrupted by hackers out to prove a point. It isn’t pretty: cars explode, helicopters are knocked out of the sky, and highway overpasses tumble like dominos. I shudder to think what might have happened if Bruce Willis and the Apple guy had not been there to do what needed to be done.

In an odd (and by comparison, very faint) echo of that movie, one of the two power transformers which serve the downtown core went out of service yesterday and in response to a call from a BC Hydro spokesperson the managers of our building have been diligently conserving power until it can be repaired. So our air conditioning has been operating at 40% of normal and the large glass doors which face Hastings Street are wedged wide open in an effort to coax a breeze inside; but there are few breezes between the office buildings, and the inside temperatures continue to rise. Many of the hallway lights have been turned off entirely, creating an atmosphere which is strangely romantic; suggesting a new kind of club, perhaps, more than an office building. Pools of light from the remaining bulbs create a pleasing dappled effect, with indefinite figures padding quietly along darkened corridors to be briefly illuminated before returning to the gloom. We now tend to talk in undertones, murmuring at those we encounter in the halls.

These voluntary deprivations have created a kind of siege mentality among us all, a feeling that we’re in this ordeal together, and it will be a shock to go back to the full flood of fluorescent lights, and the blast of air conditioning turned on high.