1000 years ago - Day of the Banishment of Nightmare Moon
“Professor, I need to ask you something.” An employee at Chernobyl held a battered clipboard in his hands. The clipboard was shaking violently in his hands so much that it seemed to be in fear of breaking. The clipboard itself was beaten and battered from countless years of use. He was standing in the doorway of the head professor’s office.
The office was bathed in sunlight from a couple of windows on either side of the room. One of the windows looked out over the city of Pripyat and the other, the group of reactors at the far end of the compound. There was a metal ashtray on the desk with a couple of cigar butts resting on there and a third one was sitting in the professor’s mouth. His head was currently bowed, looking at a mess of papers which had complicated equations for nuclear fission. The professor looked up from the mess of papers on his desk and nodded his head once.
Hurriedly walking in, the intern moved around the desk to stand beside the professor.
“Sorry about the intrusion, Professor Dilmore but I needed to speak with you urgently. It’s about Block Four of the reactor site. We were thinking about doing an experiment to try and increase power while remaining energy efficient at the same time.” Daniel Moss said quickly, constantly tapping at the clipboard with his pen.
“Let me see that clipboard.” Professor Dilmore demanded through a mouthful of cigar and held his hand out; the right sleeve falling down slightly. Wordlessly giving the clipboard to him, Daniel tried to keep a smile from forming on his face at the potential of the professor agreeing to the experiment.
Looking over the calculations, Dilmore frowned slightly at them as he found a couple of flaws. Picking up a pen, he quickly grabbed a spare piece of paper from amidst the pile and rewrote everything hurriedly, making sure that they were correct this time.
Daniel bit his bottom lip as he saw the Professor redo the calculations on a separate piece of paper. He wanted to protest and say that it wasn’t necessary but he thought through it and realised that Dilmore may have seen some flaws that Daniel and his team hadn’t seen in the equations.
Nodding to himself and handing the clipboard back with the new page of equations attached, Dilmore felt relief at the sound equations.
“Everything seems to check out now. I don’t see any reason why you can’t go ahead with it.” The professor said with a smile.
Daniel breathed in relief at the go ahead and allowed himself to smile but it almost immediately fell as he thought about what needed to happen in order to see if the experiment worked as promised.
“There’s a few things we need to do in order to make it happen, Professor Dilmore.” Daniel said hesitantly as he walked around the desk to sit down in the seat opposite. Dilmore leaned on his desk and steepled his fingers together, raising an eyebrow at the same time. Taking this as an opportunity to continue, he fidgeted in his seat slightly before doing so.
“One thing that needs to be done is to deliberately take down all security systems so that the experiment can go ahead. This is a problem though because there is no way to stop the experiment once the safety measures are down. We also need to power down the reactor to about twenty-five percent for the experiment to go smoothly. If it drops, we may be able to pick it back up.” Daniel informed the professor, knowing that they were the only concerns.
Dilmore snatched the clipboard out of Daniel’s hands, causing him to jump in surprise. The professor reread his calculations, given the new information. He leaned in so close to the clipboard that it seemed he was giving it a new hole just with his eyes. “Despite this information you’ve just given me, I still want this to go ahead.” Dilmore replied with a nod after his careful scrutinisation and handed back the clipboard. Taking it back, Daniel stood up and shook the professor’s hand.
“Thank you Professor. We won’t let you down.” Daniel said with a smile and turned around, leaving the room.
After Daniel left, Dilmore rubbed his temples, knowing he could have doomed his employees and potentially the entire plant. He had taken his cigar out earlier and put it on the ashtray where the ash had been smouldering. Picking it back up, he studied it and placed it back between his lips.
After leaving the office, Daniel broke into a run and whooped with joy at the go ahead from Professor Dilmore. Ignoring his fellow employees, Daniel Moss ran from Dilmore’s office all the way to Block Four. Ignoring shouts of protest as he barrelled past them, Daniel’s mind was only on one thing; to tell everyone else at Block Four of the situation concerning the experiment.
Bursting in through the door to the break room at Block Four, Daniel bent over as he wheezed from non-stop running. The break room looked like it had seen better days. There were ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, the tables were relatively clean with only a few grease spots here and there. There were a couple of leather couches on either side of the room with a window on the wall opposite the door overlooking the nearby reactor of Block Three. The employees lounging about during their break looked at him in surprise. When he finally stopped his wheezing, he took out some Ventolin and drew in a few puffs. Placing the medication back in his pocket, Daniel beamed at his fellow workers.
“Good news everyone! Professor Dilmore approves of the experiment!” Daniel said in excitement. The entire room burst into cheers. Daniel laughed to himself and walked further into the room, heading over to the watercooler. Filling up a plastic cup, he drank some of the water and sat down at a nearby table. The underside of it felt sticky with years worth of gum so he rarely ever touched the underside of the table. He looked down at the revised calculations and furrowed his brow.
“Hey, Daniel. Did the professor really approve of it?” Alex asked with a smirk. Alex was about six foot two and looked like a stick.
Daniel sighed and looked up from his perusing of Dilmore’s calculations. “Yes, Alex. The professor really did approve of it. We’ll perform it tonight while everyone else is sleeping. That way, no one can distract us while we work on the experiment.” Daniel told Alex pointedly and went back to the calculations.
Alex tapped his hand against the tabletop as he got up and walked over to Daniel’s side.
“If you’re so sure about this, then I’ll tell everyone else.” Alex whispered and patted Daniel on the back as he told everyone else in the break room about Daniel’s plan for that night.
Later that night …
Daniel walked into the main control room of Block Four. With Professor Dilmore’s calculations on his trusty clipboard, he walked over to the main bank of controls and plugged in the calculations. “This goes there, that goes here, turn this valve a few degrees to the right and … twist the valve a few more degrees … we’re good.” Daniel muttered to himself as he pored over the calculations while he performed the necessary work.
Throughout the day after talking to everyone in the break room, Daniel did nothing but study Dilmore’s calculations. Even if he had memorised them, he wanted the calculations by his side in case he forgot about them during the experiment.
Clapping his hands loudly, the sound echoed around the room, gathering everyone’s attention. “Listen up everyone! Tonight, we make history! If everything goes according to plan, the reactor will give out even more power than before while staying energy-efficient. If it goes wrong … well … I don’t want to even think about that.” He rubbed his eyes from lack of sleep in preparation for the graveyard shift and continued.
“Molly, get the core reactor down to twenty-five percent power. It needs to be at that level so that we can safely work with the reactor core.” Daniel spoke in a commanding voice as he pointed at her. She nodded and powered the reactor down to the specified number. “Alex, I want you to turn off the safety measures. The reactor won’t let us work with it if we have them on. Jacob, I want you to-” Daniel was interrupted by loud sirens. The entire control room was bathed in red as emergency power automatically switched on.
Oh please don’t let this be the reactor going below twenty-five percent! Daniel thought as he ran towards Molly’s station. Everyone was standing stock-still and it seemed like Daniel was the only one doing anything. Looking at the screens, to his horror he found that the core reactor had fallen below one percent, let alone twenty-five. “Molly! Slowly increase power! We can’t let this fall any further!” Daniel ordered her and he ran over to Alex’s station to see if the safety measurements were on or not. Taking a quick puff from his Ventolin, Daniel found that the were in fact off. Banging his fist against the control panel, he knew that he couldn’t stop the experiment once the safety measurements were off.
Molly screamed as she felt sparks fly off of her control panel from an unexpected power surge. To her horror, she saw that the emergency shutdown had failed and that it hadn’t stopped a chain reaction from occurring.
“EVERYONE! GET OUT NOW!” Molly shouted at the top of her lungs as she fled for the door. The other employees in the main control room rushed for the door as well but were all immediately incinerated as the reactor exploded.