The Last Phoenician

by Razzle Dazzle

August 1

Saturday, August 1

Dear Journal,

I’m pretty sure this is the latest I’ve stayed up since the Event. I’m not going to wait until the morning to write this, though, because tomorrow’s going to be even busier. And what happened today is really important.

We’re about to do something crazy.

By around noon he had come out of our room. I was relaxing on the couch when he came out and waved me over. The desk was cluttered with countless papers, even though it was spotless yesterday. I sat down on the bed as he started to speak.

“So, we have everything here that we need. The power’s running, there are more ponies here than ever, and we’re going to start a farm soon. The only thing we need is water. Bottled water won’t last long with all the new arrivals. What we need is to get the plumbing to work again, and I think I found out how.”

I raised an eyebrow, and he continued. “There are four dams along the Salt River. They generate power for most of the city north of here. The river is then funnelled into canals and sent across the valley. The dams have all shut off because of safety procedures, and the filters for the canal have shut off too. Now, if we can get those working again the whole city will have water. But we don’t need the whole city to have water, just this neighborhood. So we only reopen these filters along here.” He pointed to marks on a map. “And then it’s just a matter of sealing off the parts of the city we want to have water.”

I frowned. It seemed pretty risky to work on things we hardly know anything about. “How much work will this take?”

“I’m not sure. We can automate all this so it doesn’t need to be staffed constantly. It might take some time, though. Definitely a couple months. But this is the only way to get running water.”

Well, I was still skeptical, considering he wasn’t an engineer, so we drove down to the offices for the company that owned the dams and the canals. Luckily for us, it only took a little while to find their archives. I was pretty surprised to find that the actual drawings for the plumbing mains were fairly close to the map Jessica had found. Looking over the shutoff stations and the canal maps, I realized this could work. So we drove back home and went straight into our room to revise the plan. Later in the afternoon I had to leave to stock the other house with water. Then, I made dinner. Jessica came out for a little while, made some small talk, and then went back to work. I could tell that he really thought this could work. As far as plans go, this was the best one we had yet.

As soon as the sun set, I could tell Jessica was getting tired. He had stayed up all of last night to plan and it was starting to take its toll. So I made him go to sleep while I kept planning. Eventually, though, I finished. And I have to say that I’m pretty happy with it. I checked and double-checked and there really isn’t any better option. Any portable tanks or trucks would have to be filled up twenty miles north of here at the river, and there isn’t enough bottled water nearby to be dependent on without having to scavenge. This isn’t the easiest option, but it’s the one that will last the longest. So I think we should do it.

-Scott

Comments

[Amaponynoob]

I don't think I've ever gotten to the end of a page on this site before, in untold years of using it, that didn't have any comments at the bottom it it . More so when the story is on the cusp of some big "will it work" moment.
It's so weird that I felt the need to type this out just so the universe would stay in balance .