(Uri)
We rolled past the security gates left wide open and deserted. It is a little weird, even now. We're entering critical facilities for the previous country.
Thankfully this nuclear reactor didn't go critical and explosive after the end. There's little radiation in the air.
Perhaps it was already shut before that fateful time.
We park beside the administrative building, still some distance away from the main reactor buildings.
We disembark and proceed as usual.
The doors are open easily or forcefully. I find some way to restore power. Some generators using gasoline still work. The fumes are nasty. It won't hold for days on. But it will give us enough time.
Mushio starts looking into the computers easily found. I explore everything else.
Some weird mould covers some of the walls, but it's nothing as ominous as before.
I eventually just leave my friend behind and head for the reactor building. I use the car given the distance.
I roll across what could be an airport tarmac, given how wide and flat is this concrete road and plane.
The transformers are as big as houses. The cables then go underground through the Cliffside. There are tunnels through this mountain side?
I roll through a wide puddle of mineral oil that leaked from one of them. I guess some were pierced by corrosion. It's a little fun to drive there, along this seemingly salt flat, but I keep heading for the main building.
I enter again rather easily and occasionally forcefully, toward the holy of the old nuclear technology. Fusion was better, but fission far cheaper.
I kind of tap dance my way to the sanctum, so long I can open the doors. I'm feeling merry and my Geiger counter detects nothing.
And behind the real core doors, I almost trip and fall. My counter now screams how it's radioactive.
All I saw was a deep molten hole. Not only did the reactor had a meltdown, it even pierced the basin meant to collect its corium safely. It just dug straight through and deep.
I felt like I had a look in the chimney of an active volcano, and I had a gasp before I stepped back and shut the door in panic.
My heart is beating fast and I had a sweat of terror.
My counter still clicks a little, but nothing nearly as bad. I step away and leave this now toxic and deadly tomb for highly energetic and unstable materials.
~
I find my friend between the soft glows of computer screens showing data and systems to him.
U - The core is in meltdown.
M - Are you okay?
U - Should be alright. Any luck?
M - Well, maybe. Here, look.
I pick up the system and begin investigating my own way.
Networks are still down. Did every satellite really go offline?
But here it's also looking through military frequencies and it's not picking up much more.
Except... I open the records and logs. Something is detected every fifty seven seconds, but not long enough to reconnect.
U - A regular signal only aligned for a very short instant...
M - The satellite is probably spinning. We likely had a Carrington event on the white day. A very big one.
U - That would explain a few things.
We did see an aurora after the first night. But it wasn't massive. So most satellites have been disturbed by solar plasma.
M - The moon's relays seem off as well.
U - Can we send realignment commands to the satellite rotating in the time window?
M - Tough... Challenging.
We like challenges. And some must be more resilient and still good, like this rotating one.
I open other files, with records of seismic activity. Through the ground networks, things remained a little better.
Here at least.
Some softwares automatically triangulated seismic events, and then as the network failed to allow it, the general estimated spheres of happenings.
We had some ground activity everywhere. Nothing world changing, but still. Shores changing clearly yes.
The tremors were real. We had some levels ten or more, scattered around the world. For what the seismometers here recorded at least.
U - That's a weird pattern. It doesn't follow the continental lines.
M - We need more data. I think the system wasn't calculating the intensities correctly. It's likely exaggerating them all significantly.
U - If these were all aftershocks of a big event, what could it have been?
M - Given the Carrington event, I'd say a meteoritic plasma perhaps? Not a massive rock like a meteorite that would have caused more damage, but rather a comet that was charged in unusual intensities. No nuclear winter, but still quite a wreck.
I'm sceptical. A Tungunska event, many times more intense, with a high Weber plasma corona alongside?
M - Well, we need more data. It's pure conjecture.
U - Yeah, I guess we do. This is a good start still.
Mushio keeps looking for data. I dig further through the open computers.
I try to recompose a set of orders for the satellite we regularly detect. So we might send them in simple short packages in the right order.
I get my zone programming something like I haven't done since I was studying.
Mushio is looking rather intense as well, digging through the other systems.
U - I hope they'll pay our overtime.
Night has fallen outside after all. Mushio does notice it just now and laughs.
M - If we don't repair this fast, the ministry will be all over our asses again.
U - What a pain. They break, we fix.
We keep chuckling. The moon is bright outside.
We built ourselves beds like children. Using the occasional couches and all sorts of carpets and curtains we could gather. We're camping again.
I hear him snoring softly. It takes me a little longer this time.
I saw some connections requests, now obsolete, but recorded.
Since the end, many others are like us trying to repair the digital bridges. All is well with that generally. Except for one signal that repeated over for a while.
There was peculiar string of requests, from the blue sun forbidden frequency.
I'm not sure what that really meant or implies.
From a twist of fate, it's now likely this fascist city has fallen like the rest of us. Good luck to them now.
I don't know...
We really need to learn more. The world has turned strange and unknown. We're still too much in the dark about most things.
U - We need more data...
~