After Mind Read Free Page B

this place means ‘falling water.’ And those, my gal, are penstocks, water inlet pipes from the lagoon. But it’s not the pipes that are orange.” He pivoted and restarted their walk to the main assembly building. “They’re covered in lichen. A living, breathing, composite organism of fungus and algae. A body and its feeder. It’s pure symbiosis. Can’t live one without the other. They’re what you see as the orange, not the pipes.”
    Cessini picked up his pace and followed Aiden across the lot. He twisted up backward as he walked to see the tops of the metal high-voltage towers and their live power lines. They were huge from underneath. Straight ahead lay the imposing four stories of the rusted, corrugated main assembly hall. Two smaller bay buildings attached to the hall on its left and right. The power station sat beside a bed of frothed water. The spill-off roared.
    The boil kicked up an arched spectrum of light, a rainbow-refraction of water drops in the air. A rainbow was to everyone else a beauty of nature, but to Cessini it was a warning, a cage in the sky held in front of his walk, like a dead canary in a coal mine. He flinched at the sight of its glistening arch, but continued ahead. The nightmare of water had returned.
    “Let me know if you have something in particular you want to see,” Aiden said as he turned and noticed Cessini lagging behind.
    Cessini knew himself to be smart—maybe not as smart as some, but definitely braver than most. Who else, he thought, could walk as tall through life while afraid of the rain from above and the pain of their own tears from within? If there was anything he’d learned from his dad, it was that all things could be fixed, and by God if he could still crawl, he would find a fix for the run of his fear, and his days of nightmares with water.
    He straightened his shoulders and soldiered on. Meg elbowed him back to center. The door of the hall was fifty yards afield. Cessini bucked up as Daniel tousled his hair.
    “I think he’ll want to see the turbines first,” Daniel said. “He’s my number-one engineer.”
    “Got me a boy just like that,” Aiden said. “Thinks he can run this place better than me.”
    Meg walked beside them, but with her head scrunched down, preoccupied. She was unfurling the winged tabs on the side of her hand-me-down, digital tablet.
    “How do you protect the power’s transmission?” Cessini asked.
    “Warrior ants. Little digital packets, actually,” Aiden said. “The ants scuttle around the network, always on, eyeing for threats. Like real ants, they put out a scent that others from the colony can follow. So on the monitors, when you see a cluster of them little digital buggers somewhere, something’s wrong in the grid. But no matter if it’s only one ant by itself or more running in to attack, they’ll always sting the threat until it is dead. Power transmission secure. Roger that?”
    “Cool,” Cessini said, then elbowed Meg at his right.
    She scowled and turned her eyes back into her game. The main roaring spillway of water to his left was contained in its distance.
    The pinpoint of a dreaded sound drew his attention straight ahead to the front of the building. A worker had attached a garden hose to a wall-mounted faucet. The knob squeaked as he turned it. The water sputtered and then gushed from the loose end of the hose. The worker opened the cap to a fifty-five-gallon drum resting on the bed of his mini-truck. He swung the loose end of the hose and the water splashed, overflowing the lip of the drum before he stuffed the nozzle through the open cap. His water care was an absolute wreck.
    A smaller puddle on the asphalt lot also grew ahead to the left. An air conditioner mounted in the wall above the western bay door dripped with predictable timing. In a few summer months, the clogged overhead fan would spill out a couple of gallons of water a day. The spill could be prevented, he thought, if only these locals could