(Uri)
We've settled in the higher levels of the building. I mean the wider commercial centre, not the small clinic it held hidden in a corner.
The little child still hasn't recovered enough to awaken. Mushio is looking after her quite kindly.
As for I...
I cough. My lungs expel a little more gunk. My headache grows into fever.
I can't really foresee it, but I think I am condemned. I don't have much time left.
We eat together. It's been days, and I try to make fun of it.
U - I'm thinking of retiring.
M - ...
He didn't laugh. He didn't try to smile.
M - How long will you keep working with us?
I check my hand computer that monitors some of my vital signs. The cocktail of nanomachines evaluating my blood metrics in real time has been activated the other day. They won't last long, but from what they see, I will be gone before they crumble and deactivate.
U - Maybe two weeks.
Mushio throws his fork down, visibly annoyed.
M - How am I supposed to handle two people's job on my own? It's too short!
U - I'll see what I can handover by then, but you know how it is. We don't have the budget to hire any replacement.
My friend is really annoyed. I still manage to smile.
More glory for him later I want to say, but really I wish I could live long enough to find it myself.
U - How long can we leave the girl alone?
M - About a day. Preferably not much longer. She's still very weak.
U - I'd say we should hit the nearby universities and heavy industries while I still can. I'll teach you, and perhaps I'll be lucky. I'll find the key to imperium over these things that have changed before anyone else.
My friend crosses his arms, looking beside us, thinking about it.
M - Okay. But let's hit the nuclear research centre first. I have something I want to check.
U - Deal.
~
We left the girl to rest in a rather safe place, with the generator to keep the machines supporting her lit on. She's in a much cosier slumber now.
I drive us rather fast toward our next target. The sky over the horizon looks rather dark. Is there a storm occurring this way? Hopefully it won't hit us.
I cough more mucus and spit it outside.
M - Anything we can do?
U - Ah... Not really. My immune system is collapsing apparently, so even if I was kept in a sterile room, eventually even the opportunistic strains of bacteria and yeast that are already in me would eventually just take over and eat me. I think.
M - We need a real doctor.
U - We don't have antibiotics anyway. But I'm not against checking their medical bay when we get there. At least they may have some painkillers.
We ran through the gate of the outside entrance and rolled straight through the other abandoned military base.
There's no one else anyway.
I'll teach my friend what I can about electricity and quantum physics he wouldn't already be familiar with.
And my notes, my hypothesises... I'll bequeath what little I still own to him. But I'm not dying yet.
For now I rush into the tunnel at slightly dangerous speed, to reach the next laboratory. The third generation enrichment laboratory and processing facility.
Centuries of experience accumulated in good engineering are buried in these lands. We need to find the better ones that were in use before the end, more than the historical libraries. And I think we're on the right place.
The tunnel's walls grow brighter as we drive near. That's an impressive piezoluminescent technology around these lines along the walls. They just shine slightly as we approach. I wonder what they're made of, to activate like that just from the sound of the approaching car or its pressure on the road.
I push the horn, and its loud sound makes the walls shine brighter for a moment. It's not the weight, it is the sound. I'm still laughing like a child at things like that.
Mushio is looking altogether ashamed and amused.
U - What do you want? I'm a physicist. I have fun with the simplest transfers and transformations. So talk about the unfamiliar ones!
He sighs but he smiles, as I play a little more with the horn. He can relate. We were the kind of kids playing with prisms, lenses and lasers, or toying with birefringent calcites.
~
We reach the old facility that is sufficiently self powered mechanically so that doors open and corridors are lit a little with emergency colours.
Some of our cutting edge technologies were so mundanely used to paint these walls.
We find the electron beam microscope for direct view and diffraction studies, along mass spectrometers he was looking for.
An off yellowish stone grown from some gold jewellery and its oddly new crystalline structure are today's samples to study.
But this facility doesn't have that kind of power left to work.
U - Let's look for generators.
We're deep beneath the earth so solar panels are unlikely. Old diesel engines would also be odd.
But we find a pool with cylindrical pods in it. I think that's it. The light is dim, the olympic looking swimming pool is dark. But it's not for swimming. There are cranes above and other machines set on workshops along the sides.
U - Find the one that still emits heat.
M - Are they what I think?
U - Yes. That's the level above. For small ships needing more power, airplanes, and bases isolated like here. If one hasn't shutdown fully, we might be able to reactivate and connect it.
My friend wasn't in the electrical engineering department. I show him what I can now, to salvage even these other kinds of technologies.
U - Check the transformer's frequency there?
M - 60 Hertz.
U - That should work.
We activate manually that old power. The turbine attached to the reactor starts rotating and humming. It sounds off balance. I shut it down before it goes too fast.
U - Let's find another one. We'll connect this reactor to another turbine. Its alternator is off centred.
M - You can hear that?
I plug it on again to the heat exchanger it's attached to. So he hears the growing song of mechanical strain.
Then an hour later perhaps, we manage to get a better one rolling instead. He's learning.
It's leaking the heat exchange fluid, but that should do it.
Everything goes.
We short circuit a few too many securities for it to go, but we don't have much choice. Things illuminate and buzz in the building. Better lights flicker and start.
This won't hold for years, but hey, what would be now?
U - Let's do your readings fast though.
We rush to the lab and begin preparing his samples for observations and identification.
Crystallographic spectroscopy is such a fun field of materials science.
U - So you think there's something exotic about these gold crystals? More than the impurities?
M - Something like that. It looks far away from its natural cubic geometry. I want to check it is indeed some lighter gold allotropy.
I still don't follow why this oddity would be an important key, but I don't mind. It's fun.
We start observing as best we can with these machines.
~