Wasteland: Dawn of Ruin Book 2: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) by Stacey Upton & Mike Kraus

Author:Stacey Upton & Mike Kraus [Upton, Stacey & Kraus, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muonic Press Inc
Published: 2024-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Irwin, Tennessee

Day Five. 3:00 P.M. EST

Peter leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands in frustration. Across from him, John Robinson, his jacket and tie long discarded, shirt rumpled and untucked, raised a questioning eyebrow. Peter held a thick three-ring binder with laminated pages aloft and shook it.

“We’ve been through the manual twenty times,” Peter said, his voice seething. “We have safety precautions that will work, but I can’t get the computer to comply and execute them. According to everything in this binder, there’s absolutely nothing, nothing at all stopping the centrifuge, and then the relief valve in the main fuel conversion line from releasing so we can vent the UF 6 back into the subterranean vaults where it will be safe from the fires, which will then release the safety valve to shut and lock.”

“And yet.” John intoned as he flicked the red warning light on the console in front of them. “It isn’t shut or locked, and we still have massive amounts of nuclear fuel in both gaseous and powder form in an area that is accessible to fire.” He spun in his chair and waved a hand at the monitors. “We have the visual proof as well as what the instruments are saying to back it up, so it’s definitely not just a glitch.”

Peter spun his chair to look at the monitor of the fuel chamber, and the valve, which was clearly still turned to the left, as well as the pressure gauges that had been steadily climbing as the machines continued to do their job of converting the gaseous hex into a more stable powder.

He scrubbed at his wiry white beard with his fingers. “I’ve done all the work-arounds on the automations your boss put into place I can think of. I did a binary search as well.” Peter reiterated for the tenth time as he got up to pace the square control room. “There’s a wonky algorithm somewhere. I’d bet money on it. It’s a Taylor series expansion, so not anything outrageous. I even used an alternate quadratic equation like that guy who found a fifty-five-year-old bug in a Lunar Module lander game in case that was it, you know, something as simple as missing a two in the denominator of the square root.”

“Simple, huh?” John’s eyes were bleary.

“It is, but that wasn’t our answer. The computer took my revised algo and applied it, but it didn’t change the results.” Peter stopped his pacing, all of his limbs heavy. “I can’t think of anything else we can do.”

“You need a break.” John stood and gave Peter a push to get him out of the chair. “Let’s hit the employee lounge for some more bad coffee and moldy oranges.”

Peter groaned as he followed his friend up a long flight of stairs to walk along a metal walkway. Below them, the empty plant still hummed as the backup generators did their work, but the place was eerie without the bustle of workers inside of it.

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