“I think he’ll want to see the turbines first,” Daniel said. “He’s my number-one engineer.”
“Got me a boy just like that,” Aiden said. “Thinks he can run this place better than me.”
Meg walked beside them, but with her head scrunched down, preoccupied. She was unfurling the winged tabs on the side of her hand-me-down, digital tablet.
“How do you protect the power’s transmission?” Cessini asked.
“Warrior ants. Little digital packets, actually,” Aiden said. “The ants scuttle around the network, always on, eyeing for threats. Like real ants, they put out a scent that others from the colony can follow. So on the monitors, when you see a cluster of them little digital buggers somewhere, something’s wrong in the grid. But no matter if it’s only one ant by itself or more running in to attack, they’ll always sting the threat until it is dead. Power transmission secure. Roger that?”
“Cool,” Cessini said, then elbowed Meg at his right.
She scowled and turned her eyes back into her game. The main roaring spillway of water to his left was contained in its distance.
The pinpoint of a dreaded sound drew his attention straight ahead to the front of the building. A worker had attached a garden hose to a wall-mounted faucet. The knob squeaked as he turned it. The water sputtered and then gushed from the loose end of the hose. The worker opened the cap to a fifty-five-gallon drum resting on the bed of his mini-truck. He swung the loose end of the hose and the water splashed, overflowing the lip of the drum before he stuffed the nozzle through the open cap. His water care was an absolute wreck.
A smaller puddle on the asphalt lot also grew ahead to the left. An air conditioner mounted in the wall above the western bay door dripped with predictable timing. In a few summer months, the clogged overhead fan would spill out a couple of gallons of water a day. The spill could be prevented, he thought, if only these locals could unclog the copper condenser pipe. Two workers strolled through the parking lot with crumpled bag dinners. They sipped from cups with straws. Their cups were only ounces each—nonetheless a measureable number to watch. But the man with the hose out front and the fifty-five-gallon drum could be devastating. That careless man would be watch-point number one.
Gerald Aiden thrust his fingers into Cessini’s chest. Cessini stopped and blinked when he saw what he’d nearly run into. The main assembly bay’s mammoth hangar door was directly upon him.
“Watch yourself there, son,” Aiden said. “You don’t see forty-odd foot of this door in front of your face, you ain’t gonna see much inside, neither.”
Cessini disengaged his mind from the man working the hose and sidestepped through the adjacent, man-sized entry door.
Inside the turbine hall, five inverted cones sat like tips of icebergs atop a polished concrete floor.
He marveled behind Meg, then pushed forward to see. “Now those are turbines!”
“Those tops are the exciters,” Aiden said. “The guts of the turbines are under the floor.”
Under each assembly sat a vertical shaft with rotating blades. The blades spun from the high-pressure water that poured down from the orange pipes. The spinning shaft generated power in motors—motors that were now upgraded and wrapped with superconducting coils. The power of water filled the air and it was alive. He drew in a sweet, tangy smell. It was one he would never forget, it was the sweet smell of shop oil, and it filled the air of the power station humming with well-lubricated machines.
Cessini scanned back for Meg. She followed a step behind, missing it all. She clacked away with a deft touch at the side-mounted finger tabs of her tablet. The skin of her hand-me-down tablet was a mangle of color over old, childhood scribble. Her tablet was not the sleek, modern ScrollFlex that retracted into a suede case, but her old tablet was still somehow better. Her tablet used to be his.
“Hydroelectric power is power from water,” Aiden said as he led from the front. “Not power by water itself, but by the entire system. How we catch it, control it, and convert its potential energy into kinetic energy that we see and use every day.” He tossed a casual nod up toward an LED-light basket hanging from the roof.
“Yes!” Cessini slapped his palm atop his fist. “Control the water before it takes control of you.”
Aiden stopped and shifted his weight. “Son, water don’t ever control you. Weren’t you listening to me? Here is where we control the water. It’s what I do. I help people get control of their lives. You young kids need to get your mind out of them ScrollerFlexes and pay attention.”
“I was. I notice everything. And I didn’t say—”
“Whoa, kiddo,” Aiden said. “Stop right there. I’m just saying, with lights on I don’t fall down. ScrollerFlexes can drop free from the sky and I’d have no more use for them than a dead boy bouncing. You get me? I like things simple and easy.”
Meg glanced up without lifting her head from her game. She snickered and nudged Cessini with her shoulder. Then she returned, head down, to her Sea Turtle world.
Aiden leaned against the framework of a black, metal ladder. He folded his arms and raised his brow, waiting. A horizontal gangway ran high above his head across the midline of the four-story warehouse windows.
“Okay. I get you. Simple. Can we go up there?” Cessini asked.
Meg paused for a look. “You sure? It’ll be high.”
“If it suits you,” Aiden said. “My leg don’t let me go. But you’re free to power on up.”
Meg folded in the wings of her tablet and handed it to Robin, who took it and nestled her arm into Daniel’s. “Go on up. We’ll be fine,” Robin said.
Cessini ascended first, clinging to the almost vertical rails of the ladder as Meg followed. He stood up onto the gangway’s platform and held tight to the hand bars. His back was to the windows over the valley and spill-off water below. He focused on the warehouse’s floor, the power potential of the five turbine sets. The sight of their tops from his height was an uneasy perspective. He turned around. Through the windows and down below was the water’s rush. Its mist rose, passed through a rainbow of fear, and condensed on the window. On the outside of the glass was a smacked hand and finger smear. The wet imprint hovered high and exposed out over the pool of water. Beads held and then dripped from the tips of its fingers—fingers from a ghost that hung in desperation outside of the window’s pane. He was jostled.
“Close enough to walking through clouds for you?” Meg asked.
He braced himself on the rail. “I just need to stand here a second. Get used to the height.”
“Tell me, what’s the count of this place?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I stopped counting after the fire,” he said.
“Come on. What is it?” She knew him too well.
“It’s a five-number watch with a four-count drip on two outside.”
“What’s the drip?” she asked. She didn’t know.
“Outside, the condenser above the annex. It’s clogged. It drips to the pavement. A slow one-two-three, then a long four and a drop falls.”
“I didn’t notice it when we came in,” she said.
“There’s also a workman with a tank and a hose. He’s careless.”
Gerald Aiden hollered something from the floor below. He gestured out the windows. “The power runs out onto the grid through the new superconducting cables,” he yelled as loud as he could. “Each carries a hundred times the power of copper.” He spun his right pointer finger around his outstretched left pointer. “The superconducting cable’s wrapped with liquid coolant running at minus a hundred and fifty degrees Celsius.”
“You want to play ‘Without?’” Meg asked as she turned back to Cessini.
“Without what?” The window-side railing dug into the small of his back. He gripped as tight as he could, both sides. The knuckles of both hands were white. The spill water’s flow increased, if not in his mind, then by its raging sounds from below. The turbines revved up into a high-pitched whirl.
“You have to keep the thin wire coils chilled or they lose their superconducting properties,” Aiden shouted.
“You know,” Meg said, “a bike, a car, a truck, a train. Whatever you want.” She came closer. She was right in front of his view. She blocked out the height. “Go bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller. But at each, you have to say what happens without—like a bike without a rider falls down. A car without a family goes nowhere. Your turn.”
Aiden widened his arms out from his sides and shouted “From here, you can see. . . .”—but no one was listening.
Cessini braved a smile
at
Meg.
“Three seconds without a brain and you die.”
“Seriously? That’s lame. But okay. Three minutes without a heart and you die.”
“Three hours without checking Sea Turtle Rescue,
you
die. Three days without water,
I
live.” He turned around to the window.
“Hey, that’s not nice. And you took two turns.”
“Three years without sunshine,” he said. He wavered. A droplet’s vein of water ran down the pane. Was it inside or out? He closed his eyes. “Three years. That’s 94,608,000 seconds. Is that good?”
“No. And you don’t have to show off to me.”
“Three millennia—”
“Come on, stop it. You’re ruining the game. Open your eyes or I’m not playing.”
“A civilization dies and its souls perish with it.”
“That’s not true,” she said, miffed. “All the old souls come back when the next civilization comes along. They pick up where they left off.” She caught him as his knees buckled.
Aiden hopped up the first few rungs of the ladder. The gangway jerked and shook. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Afraid of heights, you two?”
“We’re okay,” Meg said.
Cessini balanced. The skywalk rattled. If a wall of water rose up the side of the glass, it would never reach their height up on the skywalk—but the mist? What about the mist? If the skywalk nicked the window, one hole in the glass would be enough. Droplets would land on his arm, or worse, his face.
Aiden stomped on the steel. “Is what I’m showing you not good enough? You don’t want to look anymore?”
“It’s not the height!” Meg said.
Cessini breathed in his nose and out of his mouth. He focused on Meg. “If I could bear all the clouds in the sky,” he said to her caring, patient smile. “I still would never want to come back to this world. Nothing here is good for me anymore.” He inched his way along the railing toward the stairs.
Meg managed her poise so well. She held on. What he said was wrong, and he knew it.
“But,” he added, “I’d most likely come back for you. Come on, let’s go down. Get out of this old rusty box. What do you say?”
“One step at a time. Okay?”
Aiden hopped clear from the bottom of the ladder. Daniel pushed past him. “He’s okay. We got him,” Daniel said.
Cessini’s feet were back on the ground. “Sight of all that water,” he said, “makes me feel like I’m falling, or worse, that’s all.”
“Worse?” Aiden said. “What could be worse? We’re upgrading as fast as we can. Water out there. Power in here. You seen it. You like it. But you ain’t gonna fall. What’s the matter with you?”
“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Robin said.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry,” Cessini said.
“What happened?” Robin asked as she handed Meg back her old tablet.
“Take a guess,” Meg said.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Aiden said. “If you like to fix things, we got every tool you can imagine out in the shop. We’ll get you some whatnots or a souvenir to go.”
“Sounds good,” Daniel said.
Cessini nodded.
Outside the main hangar, Cessini covered his eyes from the sun and turned to the right. He skipped a few steps to avoid the spill from the fifty-five-gallon drum. He was safe. The workman of watch number one and his mini truck were gone. His hose was coiled on the ground.
Watch-point number two, with its four-count drop, was right on schedule. The condenser above the annex door was okay. After the count of one-two-three, and then a slow four, a drop fell to the asphalt. Its growing puddle broke through a sand-pebble damn and trickled toward him. It was easy to step over. Then the fan of the condenser bucked with a loud grind. It sputtered and the old, clogged unit shut off.
“Your air conditioner coil is plugged,” Cessini said. It kicked on with a bang and spit its condensate out from above.
He wrenched his neck forward to dodge an instantaneous blur. A single droplet struck below his left temple. He threw himself against the rusty corrugated wall and slammed his fist for a sheet metal’s pang. He hid his face. He bottled a scream. The single water drop had evaded his count. He failed to control. He spun away from under the conditioner box. He was outside, but caged. What else did he miss? Right then and there, he knew, counting was as useless as dead.
“I said you have to clean it!” He kicked the pebbles of the worthless dam on the ground. He paced back and forth. Meg gave him his room. He cupped his hand over the side of his face. Robin broke away toward the lot; her hand was over her mouth. “I can’t do it anymore,” he wailed as Meg came back. “I can’t.” Anguish turned to his body’s physical reaction and he doubled over in pain. He muffled a frightful cry. He bounced his foot on the ground.
Aiden grinned. The corner of his lip was raised halfway up toward his squint. He gave the puddle on the asphalt a swift, limped-in stomp. “Come on, kiddo, it’s only water. I’ve been necked a hundred times before from that crotchety old box. No harm.”
“What is your problem?” Meg asked. She shoved Aiden against the warehouse wall.
“Hey, go on then,” Aiden said as he held up his hands. “You called me to do a favor for a sick kid, remember?”
“Hey, he’s not sick,” Daniel said. “You’ve got no idea what kind of sick we’ve been through. Don’t talk to him like that.”
“Tour around by yourselves all you want. I can’t fix you, nobody can,” Aiden said.
Cessini breathed to himself. He rose back up and straightened his shoulders, then lowered his hand from his face. A ringed welt radiated from the strike point at his temple. It stung down past his cheek. A red streak looped around to the back of his neck and disappeared below his collar.