by Ryan King
Chapter 8 – Shut Down
Nathan and Harold quickly made their way through the winding corridors of the interior of the enormous Kentucky Dam complex. John Downing, the TVA Director, had sent an urgent message saying they needed to come see him immediately. When Nathan tried to put him off, John became nearly frantic and screamed at him that there was nothing more important than what he had to show him. Nathan grabbed Harold and a couple of horses and headed north from the center of the park.
Although John Downing was originally in charge of the entire park as the TVA Director, he had wisely abandoned those duties to focus on what he saw as his most important duty…keeping the dam functioning. This was even more crucial considering that the dam director had disappeared after N-Day, and no one had heard from him since. Nathan knew John did not have the technical expertise, but despite this, was doing a good job.
The Land Between the Lakes Park was a thin strip of land between Kentucky and Barkley Lakes and traveling the distance from the center to the north end took all morning, even on horses. John was not a man to get excited easily, but Nathan wasn’t willing to consume precious gasoline on an unstated problem. They slowly, but steadily, made their way north along The Trace which was the main road running north and south through the park.
"This is bad timing," said Harold. "We have several things on our plate right now that need to be dealt with and oh, by the way, Anderson says we need to get ready for a full scale invasion. John better not be wasting our time."
Nathan had thought the same thing, "I don't think he would do that, he sounded pretty frantic which is rare for him."
"How bad could it be?" asked Harold. "The water flows and electricity comes out the other end. He's probably freaked out over one of those giant catfish getting caught in a turbine or something. We need to get the regiment ready, not this."
Nathan didn't disagree. An attack could come any day now and the regiment wasn't ready. But they were getting there, be it ever so slowly.
The LBL regiment was organized into three companies. Captain Jason Green of Fort Campbell commanded the southern region with the primary responsibility of preparing strong defensive works to the south as quickly as possible, and to defend that border. Captain Jim Meeks commanded the northern region which included the dam and Camp Beaver refugee camp. He also had the task of managing the convicts who worked the iron mine, although many of these quickly saw the light and volunteered to join the regiment.
Sergeant Major Luke Carter had indeed been commissioned as a Captain and placed in charge of the central region with the additional task of training new troops and controlling the small refugee camp to their east. Johnny Robels from Fort Campbell was placed in charge of all headquarters functions in addition to his role as quartermaster for the regiment. Although they needed more troops, more supplies, and more time, Nathan felt they were beginning to get out of dangerous territory.
Harold meanwhile stayed busy improving the quality of life for everyone. LBL was mostly an unpopulated park before N-Day, but now it was the home of nearly one thousand troops and their families. Living quarters needed to be found. Harold decided to build housing areas around old camp grounds because those areas already possessed good roads, electrical hookups, and a clean water supply. Sewage was a problem, but they were working on that. Harold begged, borrowed, and commandeered all the mobile homes, campers, trailers, and houseboats that he could to provide lodging. Although these met the immediate need, it would not be enough come winter, so Harold put everyone he could scrape together building large communal wood cabins that would each probably house eight to ten families. Privacy would be lacking, but they would be warm in the winter. He also directed the other companies to build barracks for their soldiers.
Nathan and Harold continued to talk about all these issues while traveling and were still doing so as they entered the dam facility. Their conversation began to trail off as they noticed the hectic and worried expressions of the dam workers hurrying from one area to another. Up ahead they saw Jim Meeks waiting for them.
Jim walked up and shook hands with each. “I would have called you, but John said he already had. Nearly beside himself.”
“What’s this all about, Jim?” asked Harold.
“Well, I should probably let John give you the details since I don’t completely understand it all myself,” answered Jim, “but it sounds bad. I think we’re going to have to shut down the dam. That’s assuming it doesn’t just blow up before then.”
“What?” asked Nathan. “We can’t shut down the dam!”
"That's what I told them," said Jim, "but they seem serious about it. Worse yet, they seem scared."
Harold grunted, "We better go find John."
They quickly walked down into the bowels of the dam. After a few minutes Nathan came around a corner and spotted John looking at a set of computer screens with several technicians gathered around him. He turned and saw Nathan and the relief in his face was evident.
“Thank God! What took you so long? Never mind.” John was speaking so fast Nathan had to concentrate to understand him. “We’ve been monitoring the dam’s general internal temperature for several months due to a slight elevation indicating a major electrical problem somewhere.”
“Slight elevation?” asked Harold.
“Yes,” said John exasperated. “About half a degree a week for the past few months. We knew it was something we needed to track down, but we had time.”
“Why is the temperature important?” asked Nathan.
John took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself before continuing on. “An overall temperature rise indicates electrical resistance somewhere. Resistance is not a bad thing if we want resistance in the circuit, but when it’s not part of a planned circuit it could lead to a short or a meltdown. A non-localized heat rise throughout the facility indicates we have a major problem that we need to deal with, but again we thought we had time.”
“What has changed?” asked Nathan.
“Well, I told you the rise was a half a degree a week. Starting yesterday morning, it began rising a full degree an hour. Since we noticed the change, it’s risen nearly forty degrees.”
“Doesn’t seem that hot in here,” said Harold.
“That’s because we’ve got the air conditioning going full blast, but that is only a band-aid to a gushing wound. Also, the AC is putting even more pressure on the overall electrical systems. This is a short term fix. The core temperature in there is now about 178 degrees, nearly one hundred above where we want it to be. Once it gets around 200, things start melting and shorting out. If that happens, we can’t replace what is destroyed, we just don’t have the expertise or the equipment anymore.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Nathan.
“At 200 degrees things start going really bad, but I’d like to shut it down before it gets to 190,” said John.
“So that gives us…what…twelve hours?” asked Jim.
John shook his head. “Not necessarily. The heat could build upon itself and the rate go up to two degrees an hour or four or twenty. We need to shut it down now.”
“What is causing this?” asked Harold.
“We don’t know!” screamed John in clear frustration. “It could be coming from anywhere. We’ve been overloading the dam for months and not conducting regular maintenance because we don’t have the people or the parts. The only way to find the problem is to shut everything down and do checks section by section and circuit by circuit to find the problem.”
“How long will that take?” asked Nathan.
“Frankly, I don’t know,” said John taking a few ragged breathes. “There’s miles of wires and circuits and systems in here. We can start with likely areas, but we’ve already checked most of those. We’re going to have to systematically go from one end of the grid to the other. It could take weeks.”
They were all silent as the enormity of what they were talking about began to sink in. The JP had enjoyed at least
semi-regular power since N-Day. It had made them different and given them comfort. It had kept everyone calm and civilization in place.
At least this didn’t happen in the winter, thought Nathan, the worst of the cold is past. He mentally visualized the second and third order effects of turning off the power. It was evident it had to be done, as they couldn’t risk losing electricity forever.
“We’re going to need at least a few hours notice to shut this down," he finally said. "Doing it all of the sudden will cause a panic. I need time to tell President Philips and General Anderson, maybe they can get a special radio broadcast out before we do this.”
“That might make things worse here,” said John. “When people hear that broadcast, they are going to all rush to do everything they can electrical at the same time. Fifty thousand loads of laundry going at once, kitchen appliances at full blast, charging countless electrical devices and batteries. It would probably overload the system right there.”
“Why not coordinate the radio broadcast and the shut down?” asked Jim. “We could have a set time, say…” here Jim looked at his watch. “It’s 12:36 now. Why not say the broadcast goes on at 3:00 and we shut down at 3:01. Shouldn’t need much time to send a set statement. We can start putting out the word now in a radio message that there will be a special broadcast at 3:00.”
Nathan nodded. It was a good plan. If he was going to give President Philips such bad news, he wanted to be able to give him a good practical plan to go along with it. His mind started going through the conversation he would have with Philips when he noticed Harold’s stricken look. “What is it?” he asked Harold.
Harold pulled Nathan out of earshot from the others and whispered in his ear, “Remember the conversation you said you had with General Anderson and Reggie Philips several weeks ago about Sampson?”
“Oh crap,” said Nathan, comprehending.
“Sampson wants the dam, and he’s looking for a pretext to take it,” said Harold. “He’s paid in return for electricity for a whole year, and we suddenly cut him off? Things could go very bad, very fast.”
“I’ll talk to Anderson,” said Nathan. “Meanwhile put all the units on alert, but don’t tell them why yet.”
Harold nodded and headed off with Jim. Nathan meanwhile moved into an office where he called General Anderson first and told him the situation. Anderson decided he would call Sampson personally and try to explain the situation and even offer to give the compensation back. It would be a good test of Sampson’s intentions. If he refused to accept the payment’s return, he was likely looking to take control of the dam, and as a result all of the JP. Anderson also told Nathan to go ahead and call President Philips and tell Philips that Anderson approved of Nathan’s plan.
Nathan had expected a lot of questions and some ranting, but Anderson was cool and supportive. Perhaps he is okay after all, he thought.
Nathan next called Reggie Philips and told him what was going on. It took Reggie a little longer for everything to sink in, but when it did, he agreed to Nathan’s plan. He ended the call and just sat enjoying a few moments of quiet peace in the empty office.
Things are going to get very tricky very fast, he thought, especially if Sampson moves. We should put out more patrols to see what he is doing.
It was when he remembered that one of his sons was already out there, and possibly in the path of whatever menace Sampson intended.