The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (story read aloud .txt) 📗

“It’s inevitable. The water path is why we have valleys here.” He quoted his Environmental Systems class from sophomore year. When he’d been sitting in class taking copious notes, he’d never imagined the information might impact his survival.

Dr. Murasawa stood silent at the front of the room . Then she turned to Radnor and shrugged, her demeanor changing instantly from teacher-mode to more conversational. She must be going off script. For a moment, she looked out over the crowd and Cage thought she might have caught his eye. Then she started into a story. “But point number two is something I overheard. A week ago, I was having dinner at Los Jalapenos.”

The crowd laughed. It was one of two wonderfully authentic Mexican restaurants, and the solar site sat directly between them. Everyone had eaten there. Cage could imagine the scene as she continued.

“I overheard the local news station meteorologist at the table behind me.” They’d all seen the over-tanned and over-coifed Jason Wilcox on the news. “He said he was concerned about the upcoming rainy season and whoever was with him—his wife, I don't know—said ‘but we have one every year.’ He said he was concerned about flash flooding this year and listed several key times during the fall season that he thought these things might occur. He told her that she should mark his predictions down…”

Dr. Murasawa looked around the room. “I don’t know if she marked it down, but you can bet I did.”

This time the tent erupted in small laughter, and Cage realized he wasn’t the only one who felt he knew Dr. Chithra Murasawa. They all did.

“It was no big deal, I thought, but it did make me go home and pull the data and re-crunch the numbers. As Radnor said, we crunched everything before we chose this location to build, but that was two years ago.”

This time, the entire tent fell silent, and Cage felt something ominous bloom in his chest. If there was anything he didn’t like talking about, it was floods.

“This last year’s data does change things, and not in a good way.”

12

“Not high enough,” Joule called out to her team members, her tape measure in hand.

She raised the end well overhead until it bumped the bottom side of the top lip of the pylon they’d just installed. It had been exactly eight days since Radnor and Murasawa had made the big announcement that everything was changing yet again.

Joule had told Cage the night before, “We were hired for a year, but I’m beginning to think we'll be here longer.”

The year had been estimated as enough time to install the array, get it working, and for the Helio Systems team to monitor it before handing it over to a more permanent crew. Now, it seemed they might never make it to the part where they monitored a working solar array.

She simply didn’t know if all the setbacks were normal or not. She looked up at the top of the pylon and shook her head at Mitch, as the wind whipped her hair around and the back of her neck prickled.

Turning, she scanned the open space behind her. The trees seemed to creep closer at the edge of the field as the sky slowly grew darker. It should have been bright and sunny, but Joule knew the storm was rolling in—not just because she could see the light fading, but because she felt it in her bones.

Though she couldn’t pinpoint anything specifically suspicious, the wind offered the sensation of fingers walking along her spine, as well as the feeling of being watched. Joule narrowed her eyes and swept her gaze through the forest with a glare, as if to say, I see you.

Honestly, she suspected it was Jerry out there, searching for something to turn the protesters against them again. Though Sarah had had many kind things to say about “old Jerry,” “new Jerry” wasn't proving to be the kind of person Joule would want to hang with.

Luckily, the protesters had left after Dr. Murasawa had, in one fell swoop, both threatened them with arrest and informed them that Jerry was holding out on them. They hadn’t returned.

Tomorrow was Saturday, and though technically they were all supposed to have the day off, the town hall was scheduled for two p.m. Everyone was invited to come and ask their questions. Most of the tiny town and some people from the surrounding, bigger townships were expected to show as well.

Though neither Joule nor Cage—nor anyone that she knew closely, really—was scheduled to be on the panel that would answer questions, the project workers were all intending to go. She wanted to hear the answers for herself.

“But how much height does the solar array add?” Mitch was asking, bringing her thoughts firmly back to the matter at hand. She lowered her tape measure and noted the height.

“And what about the hydraulics?” Dev asked.

Radnor had cycled them back around to being in the same group this week. It was an odd arrangement, but what did Joule know? For a moment, she wondered if that's why she and her brother had been hired—because they would go along easily with anything asked of them, not knowing any better.

“If we have hydraulics at the top,” Dev said, “we actually have to go higher. We don't want to risk water getting into the system.”

“Dirty water,” Joule added without thinking. They all looked at her. Shit.

She shouldn't have opened her mouth. This was not her favorite topic, but five pairs of eyes were on her. “Floodwater. It's dirty. Look around.”

She waved her hand toward the ground. “All the leaves will be in the water. Twigs and more—”

“Which will be far worse in the fall,” Mitch interrupted, and she nodded along, glad to turn the conversation over to him. She didn’t want anyone asking how she knew so much about devastating floods.

“How exactly does the water get here?” She was trying to push the topic of