Chapter 22: At Least I Still Have Work

The next day was more of the same. Even though it was a Saturday I was up early and spent most of the day helping with aircraft maintenance and repair. I was giving the cabins of both aircraft a good wash down when I noticed something very interesting. Under the bottom of the control console I noticed a small package attached to the fuselage which must have been the aircraft control unit or computer.

A few conduits and cables were attached to one end which ran to various parts of the aircraft. On the opposite end there was a small recess which was diamond shaped. It looked to be the exact size as the diamond shaped end on the crystal data module hidden in the handle of the machete. I asked Agent what the module was.

“It is the main processor control unit for the aircraft John,” she replied.

“What is that diamond shaped recess on the end of it? Did I accidentally disconnect a cable while I was down there?” I casually asked.

“No, that is a data input port for direct physical connection. There were no cables inserted at this time,” the machine replied.

I’d have to keep my eyes open for this type of access port on other devices of Agent’s.

Later in the afternoon I took a break and made a quick video recording showing the base and the surrounding Tennessee countryside to send to Ana. I even ended the tour by the edge of the landing field, where a few deeper snowbanks remained. I set the goggle camera down on a crate and quickly stripped to the buff. I walked around to the front of the camera in my birthday suit, waved at the lens with a smirk and then turned and jumped into the snowbank rolling around in the snow pretending to give myself a bath. I’d like to think that I resisted the urge to shriek but that was not the case as I let out a good yell from the cold. I imagined that Ana would get a good laugh at my antics.

I quickly dressed again and instructed Agent to leave the message for Ana to view later. Back in my quarters I took a hot shower and prepared supper. I was planning on cooking for myself and was going to grill a steak and seasoned sliced potatoes in foil. The strange looking grill was pretty easy to operate once I got the hang of its electric elements. I washed the supper down with a few beers and spent the night reading by a simulated crackling fireplace in the media room.

The next day I remembered was Sunday, February 28^th. It was the last day of the month as it was not a leap year, and this was also the twelfth day after I had been awakened. The weather was sunny without much wind and Agent said that we would be flying Flipper over the eastern parts of the state to take air and radiation samples around the region of the former Watts Bar nuclear plant which was located on the Tennessee river. After we did that, we were to fly down the river to the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant which was nearby.

There, Agent informed me that it had already begun cleanup operations at the heavily damaged plant in that location. I dressed and ate a hearty breakfast of oatmeal with a honey-like syrup and went to the large hangar. There I helped a pair of mobile units attach a large sampling pod to the underside of Flipper. After that was done, I stowed a dozen new drones. These would be released at various points around the irradiated areas to take closer samples.

It was a few hours after dawn when we climbed out of the valley and headed east. Our first waypoint was the former city of Nashville. As we flew over the Cumberland river valley, I could see that most of the former city had been flooded and eroded from the changing course of the river. The remains of the larger buildings still stood above the muddy banks and erosion channels, but their clean glass and shiny metal was now just a jumble of broken concrete cores and rusted collapsed girders.

I had been to Nashville many times ‘back when’ and I could remember the larger ATT, Pinnacle and Bridgestone buildings. There was a large flooded crater covering much of the southern portions of the city.

One thing that had caught my eye was areas of pine trees showing green on some of the hillsides and higher sandbars of the river. Agent explained that it had been sending seeding flights around the area for decades and many of the seedlings had been dropped as bio-darts from overflying aircraft. Some had obviously stuck and grown and thus life was returning to the river valley.

I asked how far the seeding had extended and Agent said that the asteroid base on 3074 Popov had begun to send larger landing pods which upon landing deployed into small mobile surface bases. It had been using these bases as small agricultural and biological preparation stations to help spread life across the planet. These new ‘mini-bases’ were in areas far from the current field bases so we would not be able to inspect them on this flight.

We set down on a firm area of crumbled paving near the old Nashville International Airport and deployed a couple off drones to take various samples in the area. We did not wait for them to return and soon took off again with Agent explaining that the drones would work their way around the area over the next few days before Shadow would come and reclaim them later in the week.

A half hour later we were approaching the area of the Watts Bar nuclear plant. Agent had me put my goggles on, my hood up and I was to wear my respirator mask. I could see from many kilometers away that the river valley was much altered. The Watts Bar dam had been breached and the nuclear plant a bit over a kilometer below it had also seen much damage. The two large cooling towers had collapsed, either from the direct damage of the attacks or from the rebar rusting and swelling, causing the concrete to fracture.

Agent had set a large warning graph overlay on the view screen showing radiation levels as we approached. The bar grew higher until it peaked as we overflew the area around the containment buildings. Both concrete containment domes were recognizable, but both also appeared to have visible cracks which were showing bright red in the radiation threat overlay. The turbine hall had collapsed with its roof trusses a rusting mess and the concrete walls just fallen rubble. We hovered close by but upwind so I could toss a few drones out the side hatch. Agent then flew Flipper low along the water taking samples with a long dipper which unreeled from the sampling equipment attached below the fuselage.

“John, I am monitoring high radiation levels around the area, please keep your mask on at all times.”

“Are we going to land here?” I asked.

“No, the drones will take the close samples of the remains of the reactor containment buildings. Our main tasks will be to take water samples along the river valley below both nuclear plants to gauge how much radiation is leaking into the river valley. A long-term goal will be to begin remediation and cleanup of the soils in the area,” Agent explained.

“How would you do that?” I asked.

“By freezing the soil and extracting it in segments. All contaminated soils would be reduced to base elements in large scale reduction plants and toxic and radioactive substances would be gathered up for disposal deep into the earth’s core at various subduction zones around the planet. The complete process will take millennia and will involve massive automated units scattered all around the planet. Not limited to just the former nuclear power plants, the remediation efforts will extend to all types of hazardous spills, contaminates or other toxic events. Areas such as these will need to be addressed all over the planet.”

“Won’t the Berserkers notice?” I asked, keeping my expression neutral.

“I will work to ensure that all activities remain below detection thresholds,” the machine replied.

I sat there considering its words. Was it lying or was Ana mistaken? I had no reason to doubt Ana’s message with the main reason being that why would she bother to make up a story like that in the first place? I thought back to my own visit to the location destroyed base in Brazil. Agent had acted very strange as our aircraft hovered in the vicinity of the wrecked base. I recalled the explosion taking place deep beyond the entry tunnel. That must have been Agent frying any remaining devices or intelligence in the wrecked jungle base as we hovered over it. I shuddered as I realized that it would just as easily fry me if it felt the need.

I mulled all this over as we continued down the Tennessee river and what used to be Chickamauga Reservoir. The Sequoyah nuclear plant was only around fifty kilometers down the river from the Watts Bar plant and the flight there took only an hour even though we stopped to take water samples a dozen times along the way.

The radiation graph was much higher as we approached the remains of this power plant and as we flew over a final ridge I could see why. A large crater had destroyed much of the plant including the containment buildings. Agent explained that the impacts had caused a meltdown of both reactors at the plant and that the nuclear fuel had burned and melted deep into the ground beneath the area. The map overlay showed hundreds of nearby areas covered with red high radiation warnings.

We stopped short of the bend in the river valley the plant had been built upon as Agent said that we would not be able to approach or overfly the dangerous areas around the plant any closer. Even at this distance, the radiation readings were very high, and they must be much higher over the center of the crater containing the former power plant.

I saw on a nearby hilltop a large array of solar panels ... acres and acres of them. I followed a newer looking set of power lines down to what looked like a group of large drop pods near the edge of the crater. The pods were surrounded by a beehive of activity as many mobile units were busy moving earth and performing various other tasks. I asked Agent what was going on.

“Over the past decade, I have begun remediation efforts on the most heavily contaminated areas of the planet, this being one of those. The operations here involve smothering the hot exposed reactor cores with sand and boron, and mining and extraction of contaminated soil and other materials. These are transported to reduction units where they are reduced to base elements.”

“The highly radioactive elements are vitrified with various silica sands into radioactive glass cylinders. These are then sprayed with a protective polymer wrapping and stored in underground water filled cooling chambers.”

“The glass cylinders would eventually be transported to other locations where deep shafts were to be bored deep into the earth’s crust. They would then be lowered into the magma levels of the earth’s crust. The deep shafts have not been built yet but when they are, they will also have the side benefit of producing almost unlimited geothermal power. I expect to start excavations of these shafts in the next two centuries.”