ATD: unanswered questions #2

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          bandwraith:
          What, given the promise of the pre-release auto-blurb. . . .
          . . . .was the nature of the historical "adjustment," that was
          supposed to have taken place? Despite the Chums flight
          to grace, it seems that life on the planet is also biz as usual.

Well, yeah, bizness as usual to you—listen to the characters in the 
novel talk about light, in one form or another, throughout the book,
back to front. So there has been a 'slight' adjustment in the lighting.
We are witness to the first incursions of electrification everywhere
manifesting itself plainly as a new and rather alien light, exhumed
from hell and leaving little pockets of hell everywhere in its wake.

Of course, that slight adjustment in the light would also include
the Michelson–Morley experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment

The first moment of the new age came when Merle picked up
Dally's broadcast, synchronicity linking Merle's old-world
alchemy with Dally's new world technology. Now of course
Merle and Dally would most likely hook up via cell-phones or
Skype. But in Against the Day we are witness to the first time
that happened, a fictional moment [and yet another sign of the 
author's developing 'Grace'] where there would be a first 

"I was just thinking of you and then the phone rang. . . ."

. . . .from one end of the world to the other, without wires.