"General Winters sir?" Asked a young Private, saluting his superior officer
"At ease Private. Now what do you want?" replied the General motioning for the army man to put his hand down
After relaxing he continued, "Project 'Leviathan' has been packed away for safe keeping sir."
"Good, good, now would you care to remind me as to what project Leviathan is?" questioned Winters. Since he had only been in his position for a few days, nearly everything that he was being updated on made no sense at all.
"The personnel in charge only told me that I should tell you that it has been finished. They also said something about 'it would come in handy when we came out of stasis', sir."
The general lifted an eyebrow, "So you have seen nothing of this project or even heard of it til now?"
"Yes sir."
Winters rolled his eyes and sipped his coffee. Today just got weirder and weirder...
________________________________
2000 years has gone by since that last conversation. General Winters was soon shot for the murder of our last General, Mr. Esera. Since then the war had ended and the new Country of Terra had been founded by the Humans but they still had hardships to work through. such things as transportation and resources we the biggest of them all. These things had once been readily available when the humans ruled, but now was a total different story. Suffice to say was that we humans had gotten so used to the easy life that we had no idea what to do with ourselves. Little did anyone know that our once great creation that we had tossed aside would come back to help us in our time of need.
________________________________
A young Civilian with a brown stetson hat by the name of Richard Mattson walked across the dirty concrete floor of Lazarus, Terra's Capitol City if you could call it that. He was on inventory duty for the day, the worst job in the city. It saddened him to see the meager supply of food and fuel was at an all time low. Sure the ponies could help us with food but the fuel was something different. Not one person in this entire tiny country had the means, or the knowledge, to create a decent fuel source that could be burned in the various Military vehicles scattered about. Sure what M35A2s they had left could burn anything from used engine oil to vegetable oil, but we didn't have many of them left.
Richard fancied himself a decent mechanic, but not even he knew how to overcome the situation. He scratched his head as he looked at the food supplies and wrote down his findings. It was at about the same level as it was a few days before. Sighing, the young man sauntered over to a small stack of 55 gallon fuel barrels... he counted only 8 left in the entire world. His somber look turned into a very distinct frown. He pulled his hat low, tucked his clipboard under his arm and retreated from the gloomy warehouse.
Richard walked to the office of the only man that could help us, General McGoff. Stopping at a closed door the man knocked loudly.
"COME IN!" Yelled out a gruff voice from behind the door
Collecting his thoughts Richard grasped the brass knob and pushed open the oak door. There at a desk sat a military man in his best dress clothes. He was writing out forms and papers that helped keep the 2 month old country running. Being American meant that we would have almost the same government as we once had. That being said, the people had unanimously voted for Dr. Aaron Patterson to be the president but he turned it down since he had other things to deal with at the time. The vote was retaken and General Tyler McGoff was voted into office. Even though he was now the president everyone still called him General McGoff.
"General sir." said Richard as he fumbled with the forms in his hand
McGoff stared at the young man, "Rich, how many times do I have to tell you that you are one of my closest friends, you can cut the formality!"
A small smile broke across Richard's face, "Oh I am just messing with ya Ty. I thought I should deliver today's inventory forms directly to you."
"Well you know what I am gonna say about it, just take them to my secretary, she knows how to deal with them."
The once happy Civilian's face hardened as he slammed the papers on the presidents desk, "But this form is of TODAY'S inventory!"
"So? Whats the difference between today's and yesterday's?" questioned Tyler
"We only have 8 BARRELS OF FUEL LEFT!"
Tyler McGoffs face went stark white at those words. Sure he had known it would come sooner or later but he had hoped it would have been a lot later.
"We have no fuel left, what are we gonna do!?!?!" Shouted Richard
"I.. I have no idea." the president stammered as he lowered his elbows to the desk top and set his face in his open palms.
Richard rolled his eyes, "Well checking the old military records would be a start."
Getting up from his desk Tyler spoke, "I suppose your right, I'll see ya later Rich, got stuff to do."
"OK then, remember, only 8 barrels." said Rich as he walked out the door.
Tyler rubbed his face with his hands and groaned, "I am not meant for this job."
He walked to the dusty doorway of the once always locked military room and opened it up. Flipping the light switch he took the next few hours to run through every project to date, even some of the recent ones such that he himself had proposed to the current government. He was at wits end when he opened the last filing cabinet. Inside was an EXTREMELY dusty folder labeled 'Project LEVIATHAN'. He rolled his eyes, the old government was always coming up with new code names for there oh so secret doings.
Tyler opened the folder and the first things his eyes met was a picture of an old red steam engine. "Richard is the train freak, he would know what it was." thought Tyler
He stood from his sitting position and walked back into his office and hit the intercom button, "Miss James, could you please call Richard Mattson for me and have him meet me here in 15 minutes?"
*****************
15 minutes had passed and Rich walked into the office.
"Now what?" asked the stetson wearing human
"I believe I have found something that needs your expertise..." Tyler said, throwing the LEVIATHAN folder on to the deck in front of them, "There is things in here that you and only you will under stand."
"But the only things I know about are long gone from this earth."
McGoff just raised an eye brow and motioned towards the unopened folder.
"Oh fine Ill look, but if it scares me for life I am haunting you if your still alive when I am dead."
Richard snapped up the folder and flipped it open. His eyes went wide when he looked at the picture. He picked out the picture and said, "Huh, never thought I would see a picture of this old girl in here."
Glancing at the form it was stapled to he read out numbers and titles that only he could recognize, such as weight, tractive effort, boiler pressure and what not. Setting the paper down on the desk he once again looked into the folder, another surprise was a second picture of a steam locomotive identical to the first one, but this one was purple! "Now these 2 cant be a coincidence." he thought
Scooping up all the forms and papers left in the folder he spread them across the desk top. 2 more pictures of steam locomotives and 3 of other steam related contraptions. One was a steam shovel, another a crane and last but not least a steam tractor.
"Tyler, do you know why these are in here?" Richard asked
"You have got me. Keep looking though, there might be something in there to tell us what this project was."
Rich happened apon the description:
Project 'LEVIATHAN
Purpose: rebuild
Contents: 1. 4-4-0 No.63 aka Leviathan
2. 4-4-0 No.60 aka Jupiter
3. 4-4-0 No.22 aka Inyo
4. 4-4-0 No.119
5. 10 40 foot wooden flatcars
6. 10 40 foot wood framed boxcars
7. 5 50 foot wood framed coaches
8. Case 80 hp steam traction engine
9. Bucyrus-Erie Steam shovel
10. Bucyrus-Erie steam crane
11. 12 miles worth of rails, ties, tie plates and spikes
12. 10 bottom plow
Description: Started in 2009 with the 'Leviathan', this project is charged with the purpose of dragging our sorry asses out of the Apocalypse. Being that there would be no fuel available we decided wood fired steam engines would be the best choice of direction. Be happy with what you have...
Rich showed the paper to Tyler and and he replied, "So they think that these old chunks of steel are going to be able to deal with our current situation?"
Being the railroad fanatic that he was, Richard knew the reasons why they chose steam power in general. It was easy to maintain, worked hard and was incredibly efficient when ran correctly. It wasn't fool proof but close to it. The 4-4-0 type was used in the late 1800s out west to deal with the rugged track and climate conditions that they ran through. They were so numerous that they soon had the name 'American type' and deserved there name since they basically built this country for the most part. there superior tracking capabilities where known to no other type.
Richard look at his friend and said, "They made a great choice by these engines and cars. Each is easy to maintain and would out power anything we could possibly get from the ponies. These engines were specifically built for this type of stuff, hell the Inyo DID it!!! The other 3 are replicas though."
"One question," asked the astonished president, "how do you know all this stuff?"
Rich smirked, "The internet is a wonderful resource. Anyhow, do you have any idea were this stuff could be?"
"How am I supposed to know?" replied Tyler
"You ARE the president, you should know this stuff." Richard said with an air of hilarity in his voice
Tyler just rolled his eyes and sat down in his surprisingly comfy 2000 year old office chair. Mulling over the location of a cache of stuff so large. It had to be over 30 feet tall to accommodate this equipment not to mention its width. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a map of the military complex and scanned over it. He felt like an idiot when he found a HUGE room labeled 'PROJECT LEVIATHAN'. He pointed to said room.
Following the finger Richard slapped himself in the face, "Now how did we miss that?"
"Well, lets quit dawdling and go find out if all this stuff is still there." said McGoff and with that, the 2 men strode out of the office, leaving the map on the desk...