Dark Road by David C. Waldron Read Free Book Online Page B

a face. “I think they want to rename that town but they haven’t come up with anything else yet.”
    “I can understand that,” Eric said, trying to think of a way to change the subject. Sheri was sensitive about the town and the fact that it was now under the protection of the Guard unit ever since her kidnapping and detention there. She and Chuck had finally realized they were meant to be a couple when he’d been the one to go in and rescue her; it’s just too bad it had taken such a tragic event to make them see it.
    “It’s ok, Eric,” she said. “Quit looking for a window to jump out of—we’re on the ground floor and I’m a grown woman. I’m not totally over it, but it’s over. The people responsible, with very few exceptions, are either dead or not in the town anymore. I try not to go into the town and when,” she took a deep breath, “and when he comes onto the base I just stay away from him.” “Him” being the sole remaining person from the Meet and Greet that had led to Sheri’s abduction. “He didn’t lift a finger to help me, but he didn’t kidnap me either. Pete did, and he’s dead.”
    “Ok,” Eric said. “Point being that the whole mini-grid thing, which I do know about, is for us …the town is just going to benefit from it.”
    …
    “Everyone benefits,” Chuck said. “We can run half the number of generators we are currently running as dedicated units in parallel, and we can use the others as spares or to grow the system. Everything is diesel so they can run on a mix of the soy and petro-diesel we have now.”
    “What are we going to need that we don’t have now to make the system work?” Blake Lewis, one of the volunteers for the project, asked.
    “Well,” Chuck said, “there’re a lot of things we’re going to need. We still have to make some decisions, too. We have to decide whether or not we’re going to stick with AC power or switch to DC. Everyone thinks we relied on AC for everything, but probably well over half of what you used on a daily basis actually ran on DC.”
    Most of the group that was with Chuck made a questioning face so he explained. “Well, first of all, anything that used a battery ran on DC power—end of story.  Next, is just about any type of computer equipment. The power supply in a computer converts AC to DC internally. After that comes the wall wart—that huge square plug for your cordless phone charger or cable modem. Those converted AC to DC too.”
    “About the only things in the house that really had to run on AC were the big appliances that used a lot of current.” Chuck said. “The refrigerator, dryer, air conditioner, that sort of thing—and we aren’t running those anymore for the most part.”
    “What about power lines?” One of the other volunteers asked.
    “If we can’t get the generators working together or transformers built then we don’t need to worry about power lines.” Chuck said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
    …
    “It’s a balancing act,” Sergeant Ramirez said. “Yes, we can cultivate more land.   All of the farmers we have talked to are willing to work with us on that.   The problem comes down to either manpower or fuel.”
    “How so?” asked Sergeant Jordan Harris. “I thought we were growing our own biodiesel.”
    Sergeant Ramirez shook his head. “Again, the balancing act,” he said. “For every acre we cultivate, we use so much fuel—fuel that we’ve already accounted for. If we’re going to cultivate more land then we need to grow more soybeans—on land which itself needs to be cultivated and irrigated. The wells are run by a generator, which is powered by…”
    Ramirez prompted Harris for the answer.
    “Diesel,” Harris answered, “which we’ve already accounted for.”
    “Bingo,” Ramirez said. “Now, we’re planning on offsetting as much of that as we can with windmills and solar, but there’s only so much that we can do. The first two windmills won’t be