Bridlewood: the Cost of Lies

Bridlewood Spectra Power Station, Robotics Command Trailer

Alphabittle glanced over to me. "Argyle, when you said that we should break out the museum pieces, I had no idea this was what you meant."

Sitting before us on the display, which had been set up to show the roof, were a pair of new robots that I had recently found. Well, I say new, but in actuality they were pretty old. Originally developed for a proposed lunar program, these machines had been shielded against the cold vacuum of space and the anticipated solar radiation that they would produce. Now, here they were, carrying out a similar task on our world, only this time they were in an environment unlike any other experienced on the planet. Indeed, it hadn't existed until a few days ago.

I looked closely at the controls. "How are they holding?" I asked.

Thunder Charge looked back to me. "The systems seem to be holding fine on them," he replied. "Pressure is good, batteries and motors are holding, power systems are in good shape. We are ready to go."

Alphabittle smiled. "Hard to believe that these got to the moon," he said, a chuckle coming from his mouth as he weighed up the situation.

"Well," I replied, "not these exact ones, but you know what I mean." I laughed gently as well, sensing those in the room were quite excited to see these machines in action. "You may begin when ready."

"Yes sir," Thunder Charge nodded, and pushed the lever forward. The two bulldozers began to move forward, their heavy wheels beginning to role against the ground below them. The landscape shifted underneath them, but held.

Their twin dozer blades moved forward and into the lumps of graphite still on the roof, made contact... and held. The former rovers were still moving, pushing their heavy cargo towards the edge of the roof where that explosion had happened all those days ago.

And with a crunch, all of the stuff fell into the pit, plummeting down back into the maw of Taraturus from whence it came, and where it should remain for a long as possible.

"First load of graphite moved succesfully!" called one soldier, as the rovers began to back up towards their starting point.

"Excellent work, so far," said General Rider. "Keep reversing and collect the next load of graphite."

This process was repeated by these machines repeatedly. I was stunned at how reliable at all was. Whereas the newer kit had struggled to operate in this hostile land, the units here were having no trouble at all with shifting the dangerous rubble and putting it away. Within minutes, those dependable machines had completely cleaned out the roof, completing a task that so many others had failed to pull off all those days ago.

"Mission accomplished," Thunder Charge said. "The graphite has been collected up and put back into the core. We should now be able to start with the next stage of the cleanup operation on the ground."

As we watched the military get to work, Alphabittle stepped over to me. "It's been a long road," he said. "But at last we can move on from this place. There are plans to start building a containment structure soon, and with that in mind there is one task that remains to be done."

"And that is?" I asked.

"To punish those who caused this disaster," Alphabittle said coldly, looking around him. "The trial will be soon. I question whether I should be there, of course."

"Why?" I enquired. I was legitimately curious as to why he thought this was the case.

"I'm only a functionary," Alphabittle said, a tone of regret in his voice. "Just a cog in the machine. I am merely a component that helps to keep the system running, one of many who supports the running of the country. I'm not important. I only did what needed to be done."

I shook my head. "No, Alphabittle. I still remember what you said to me when we landed. 'Even in the face of certain death you're prepared to hold your own and stand up for what you believe in, even risk yourself to help others. You're not one of those who slavishly obeys the official line, but thinks for yourself.' The same is true of you. Of all the ponies they could have sent to clean up this mess, they sent the one good one out of an entire orchestra of fools."

Alphabittle nodded. "Thank you, Argyle," he said. "Now we must ensure that justice is done."

Unicon Kingdom Courts of Justice, Courtroom 3

A few days later, the trial was about to begin. Myself and Alphabittle were serving as witnesses for the prosecution, and I glanced across to the dock to see both Crimson Moon and Sky Chaser up there, clad in orange suits and hoofcuffed to the rails in front. Surely they weren't that dangerous.

At the moment, the prosecutor was speaking. "These two ponies are the ones entirely to blame for this disaster. Were it not for them, there would have been no evacuation, no loss of property, and the destruction of millions of bits of official state property."

Sky Chaser, who looked pale and quite sickly, spoke. "Leave Crimson Moon out of this," he said. "This accident is my fault alone."

"You will speak only when spoken to," the judge said suddenly.

"But he just spoke to me," Sky Chaser replied, confused.

The prosecutor shook his head. "I call as my first witness to the stand. Professor Argyle Starshine of the University of Vanhoover, a specialist in spectra based energy production and power generation."

I made my way up to the stand with some equipment. A projector was already there for my personal use alongside extensive papers and tapes, to use as evidence for the case. "Thank you, Flawless Whispers," I said. "I am here to explain the cause of the disaster. Whilst the actions of Sky Chaser were indeed reckless, they were not the sole cause of the disaster."

There were gasps in the courtroom. "May I ask what they were?" the judge asked.

"The state, mainly," I said, producing more gasps. "As I say, Sky Chaser's actions did not help the situation at all, the disaster would not have happened on the scale it did where it not for a series of severe design flaws that the reactor contained, all of which exacerbated the problems encountered during that test."

There were no further comments, so I took this as a sign that I could continue onwards with my explanation.

"The core problem with the reactor design," I said, indicating to a diagram, "was the fact it was extremely prone to producing positive void coefficients. This is where a reactor's reactivity increases as the void within it increases, mainly through loss of coolant if that is the neutron absorber. This made the design very unstable."

"Why was it built that way?" the judge asked.

"The same reason any company builds something a certain way. It's cheaper. CGMR Reactors, if properly managed, can generate electricity extremely cheaply, but only if managed properly."

I moved the slide onwards to a new display. "The second problem the design faced was the lack of a top containment structure. Unlike most other reactor models, which feature containment components on all sides, the CGMR only has side and bottom containment as the reactor is built into the floor. This means there is nothing to resist pressure if the resulting force requires it to move upwards, and expanding substances will always take the path of least resistance as per conventional physics, in this case going upwards."

Alphabittle then spoke up from the other side of the room. "You would be wise to listen to Argyle."

"It is not your turn to speak, Mr Blossomforth," said Flawless Whispers. "Please wait your turn." He then looked to me. "Please, Professor Starshine, continue."

"Thank you," I said. "On the night of the accident, the staff were attempting a test to see if the spinning turbines could cover the energy required to keep the coolant moving before backup generators kicked in. However, owing to xenon poisoning the reactor stalled completely."

"In an effort to get it restarted, they pulled almost all the rods out of the core, more than 200 of them. The reaction began to speed up, steam building up in the core from boiling water. As power readings rose, the SCRAM sequence was initiated to reinsert the control rods. These control rods are mostly made of boron which serves as a neutron absorber, but the tips were made of graphite which only sped up the reaction. Keep in mind more than 200 rods were entered at once, causing the reaction to accelerate out of control."

I paused to let them process this. "The reactor's final energy reading was 30,000 megawatts, but that was high as the meter went. It may have been producing as much as 300 terrawatts before the reactor roof failed and was ejected through the roof."

"That," I concluded, "is how a CGMR Reactor explodes. Lies. And we are still in danger. There are still many of these reactors in use with these very same flaws. Any moment now there could be another accident, and measures must be taken to ensure it cannot repeat itself."

Once the trial was over, and justice had seemingly been done, all that remained was to return to the site of the clean up operation and oversee that. As I made my way down the corridor, I was suddenly pulled out of it and into a nearby room. Inside it was Phyllis and another pair of security ponies.

"Ah, Argyle, we meet again," she said. "Do you have any idea how much damage you have caused?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I flatly replied. "Those problems needed to be known about, or we'll always be in danger."

"Wrong," Phyllis said. "A new political party has taken power, and they have decided that it is best that any trace of this incident is erased from history; isolationism, you could call it. By keeping us away from the unicorns and pegasi, we can never be harmed by the consequences of her actions."

"Radioactive fallout doesn't give a shit about national borders," I said bluntly. "What you are proposing is insane."

"Do not interrupt," Phyllis said coldly. "This is what is going to happen. You have caused us a good deal of embarrassment in exposing this situation, and association with CanterLogic in this disaster has harmed our reputation. CanterLogic machinery can never fail, that is the official line, and it will always remain the official line forever. As for you, however, you are being unpersoned."

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. I did all that work in preventing catastrophe, and this is there response? A cover up?

Phyllis droned onwards. "The authorities have decided to strip you of your degree. You will live out the rest of your days in Maretime Bay, and any achievements and research you made will be deleted and or reassigned to other individuals. It will be as if you never existed, and will be nothing but the idiotic crackpot you are."

"What do the other races think?"

"They're isolating too. After all, if they stay apart, if something goes wrong outside of their turf its not their problem, is it?"

I shook my head. "How can we come together and solve the mistakes of the past when we won't acknowledge the ones we are making now? How can we reunify under these circumstances?" The way they were speaking was utterly mind boggling.

"Don't concern yourself with something that'll never happen," Phyllis said coldly.

I sighed in defeat. "Don't concern yourself with something that'll never happen. Tells you everything that's wrong with the world."

As I was sent away to my doom, the irony of it all came clear. All of this for nothing. And the state had prevailed over the truth.