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Life after Eva: Day 28
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If you have been waiting for some relationship develoment, you will have to wait just a bit longer. I needed to get some things out or the way first, and set the stage a little more. I don’t really expect outstanding reviews for this chapter since it is the character development and action chapters that seem to really set people off. Anyhow, I do hope that you enjoy this one. DAY 28
In his dreams, Shinji was usually alone. So he thought he was in this one too. But after a while, he became aware of another presence with him. He could not see her, but she was there. Her presence was bright and wild. He felt the slightest touch at his side. She did not speak, but then he did not need her to. She was with him. They explored this and that. Roamed all over seeing what life had to offer, and when they were done, they touched briefly and he swam up from the darkness to the waking world.
Sometime in the early morning Asuka awoke, and slid languidly away from Shinji, padding softly to the door, and after a brief pause and a thoughtful look back at him, she was gone, back to her bedroom to continue the night alone. Outside the first rays of sunshine were starting to illuminate the sky. At first, it was too subtle for any human eye to pick up, but if you could perhaps see in the near IR spectrum it would be much brighter than the surrounding sky. As the sun made it endless journey through the sky, finally it broke over the horizon, and flooded the house with its might. The wooden framing of the walls, and light tones throughout cast the entire house in a light golden tint. With the breaking of day, also came the resumption of the din of insect noises that accompanied the out of doors. Asuka tried valiantly to go back to sleep, but the light was insistent. So finally she got up and stayed up. She was alright. Not suffering from any lack of sleep. She wandered into the kitchen and started looking through the cabinets. Her eyes latched onto a pouch of coffee. She had never had coffee, and had smelled many different types. If they tasted at all like they smelled it would be delicious. She walked outside and turned on the generator. Fortunately it was on the other side of the house than where Shinji was so he did not hear it. Back inside, she loaded the grounds into the coffee maker, and started fixing a breakfast as best she could. There was some instant dough mix, so she decided that they could have biscuits. It had been quite some time since she had had biscuits. And honey. Yumm. Honey was good on biscuits. All the mix required was water so she mixed it up, kneaded it, rolled it out, and began cutting small flat round bits of it out and arranging them on a cookie sheet. After a short stay in the oven, they were done, and she pulled them out to cool. There was some honey in a small honey pot complete with a honey spoon. Setting this and the biscuits on the table, she went to wake Shinji up, and found him already awake and readying himself for the day. To be exact she found him naked, and dressing in clean clothes for the day. She had the discretion of only opening the door wide enough to peek, and not saying anything. Unfortunately she was too curious just to let it go, and ended up watching him for a couple of minutes. She moved back down the hall toward the kitchen, and yelled to him. "Shinji! I have breakfast ready. Rise and shine sleepy-butt!" "Yeah, yeah. I am coming, Asuka." He appeared from his door, and looked at her. The light shone through her hair. The red had never appeared so bright, so wild, so perfect for her as it had right then. "What?" She asked looking around. "What is it?" He just smiled a little and shook his head. The smells wafting down the short hallway almost carried him to the kitchen without him taking a step. French Vanilla coffee was poured in cups, which were ready next to plates piled with a few biscuits each of which were still steaming. His mouth watered, and he practically beamed at Asuka. For someone who claimed to be a terrible cook, she made a damn fine breakfast of biscuits. Asuka noticed his look, and knew pretty well what it was. "I hope you like honey on them, that is about all there is." "Honey is fine, Asuka. Thank you very much. This looks wonderful." They both sat and dug in to their plates of biscuits. Asuka was the first to taste the coffee, and it was all she could do to keep from spitting it back out. "Oh my God. I must have made it wrong or the grounds were bad. Ughh." Shinji took a quick sip. "Nope, that is about how it all tastes to me. Everyone I have talked to says ‘It’s an acquired taste.’ Whatever that means." "Well they can have it. That sucks." Asuka made another sour face, and Shinji agreed. The biscuits went fast, and soon all that was left was crumbs. They put the dishes in the sink, and got ready to leave. They packed a couple of lunches of cheese and crackers because there was no telling whether they would be able to get to some lunch during the day. They hurried because it would be best if they got out of the house early. It would take all day to visit the places they would need to go. The ride into town was a fairly short one. They had negotiated the twisty roads outside of town often enough now that it was much faster than their first few times. First order of business was to visit the library. It was a rather large one that even had audiovisual rooms and had allowed people to get on the Internet. Fortunately this one had held on to the card catalogue rather than bend to the popular perception that digital was better. After about 20 minutes they both sat down with several books each and started reading. The light coming in through the large front windows was enough to easily read by. Shinji flipped through his first and was started on his second when Asuka drew his attention to her book. "It says that UPS systems have bee used for years for short term power outages, mostly to keep delicate computer systems running. Some of the larger ones can power for quite some time." There was a picture on the facing page of a large scale one. It was basically a large brown box about 10 feet long and 3 or 4 feet wide that stood about 6 feet off the ground. "That is pretty big. I don’t know how we would get that up there." "Well assuming we wanted to put something like that at the house, I am sure we could commandeer a flat bed, and a crane or something." Shinji looked doubtful. He did not know anything about cranes or large electrical devices. Of course about a month ago, he did not know anything about motorcycles either. They looked through the books and a few more ideas came up but nothing really good other than solar panels. Biodeisel, too much chemistry. Power cells, too hard to obtain hydrogen. Banks of batteries, too much work to convert power back and forth, and it was dangerous to do that. After an hour and a half of looking they kept Asuka’s book, and went to the prefecture land bureau. Inside where maps of the area and details about rights of way for the power lines and associated equipment for the power industry. There was a nuclear power plant in the nearby town of Takahashi. They decided that they had better go there first to see about schematic drawings of the power turbines and the switching yards that they would have to redirect power to the house through. Takahashi was only about 20 miles away, and it took no time to get there. Since there was no telling what shape the facility was in due to a lack of maintenance they drove up cautiously checking out the containment domes to see that they were indeed intact. Seeing that they were, they entered the administration area, and started looking for their paperwork. The file room was past two guard stations, and in a somewhat secluded part of the building. There were no windows in the room that led outside so the door was kept open to provide light. Wiring diagrams abounded. Mostly of the large-scale power converters, transformers, safety subsystems internal to the plant. Finally the found diagrams of the grid showing substations, switching yards, and plans for each. Pulling these rolls out of their drawers, the laid them out in the hallway to try and make sense of them. It was a dizzying array of wires and intersections, and switches and such. But there were simpler diagrams showing instructions for shutting down parts of the power grid from the supply side. While they figured out which switchyards they would have to visit, they munched on their meager lunch, and within a couple of hours they had their course of action figured out. There were 4 substations on the way to the house that would have to be checked out. Most likely they would have to just keep redirecting the power to only one sector at each until it flowed into the area they were in. From there they would likely have to find a way to hit the breakers on the transformers at each house in the area, thereby giving them access to every drop of power. These substations were in a relatively straight line from the windmill farm to their area. If they drove along the power line’s right of way, it would be much faster than going down the highway trying to find out how to get to them. So with the cheese and crackers gone, they rolled the set of schematics up, and went outside to borrow one of the power company’s trucks with a set of keys off of the key rack at one of the desks. The motorcycles were put in the lobby just in case. The small but powerful cab-over-engine trucks were packed with tools and spare parts of different kinds. There were several manuals in the console mostly phone numbers and authorization codes. One however was a checklist for different types of tasks. It ran step by step for resetting tripped breakers, performing preventative maintenance checks and most other routine functions of the field guys. While Shinji made the drive out to the windmill farm, Asuka looked through the checklists. There was even one for switching power over to other circuits. On the system used by this power company the incoming line was run through a splitter that would then feed it to 5 or 6 other transformers to push the electricity out to the next box. All they had to do was shunt power from all of the circuits not concerning them at that splitter and they were good. The best thing though was the simplicity of the instructions. In an effort to make painfully clear to the worker how not to be electrocuted, each step was explained in very minute detail. Shinji remembered Kensuke telling him about how most armies of the world had started printing instructions on their equipment that was on a 3rd grade reading level. Some even had pictures on them to help out. Anyone could operate it. Asuka had read through the entire checklist a couple of times by the time they were pulling up to one of the wind turbines. The first switching station was situated across the road from it. It was quite windy out. Nearly 40 miles an hour. Asuka found that she could lean into the wind without falling over, and they spent a few minutes having fun trying to see how far they could lean without falling over. The turbine was very large. Neither had been so close to one before. The blades where whizzing by making a sort of humming whirring sound, which was good. That meant that it was producing power. Wind turbines were not like windmills where you could allow the windmill to turn without pumping water. When turbines were shut down, the turbine locked down on the rotator shaft and the blades would not spin. They unlocked the gate to the switchyard and managed to locate the main splitter with little difficulty. However the hard part was getting the access cover off. The nuts on the bolts holding it down were old and nearly rounded, but with much effort, they finally got all four off, and lifted the access cover to expose the most amazing set of wires and conduits either had seen. Well maybe not. A lot of the equipment associated with Eva was even worse than this, only it was much larger. "OK it says insert the key into lock B and rotate to ‘Change’." Asuka read aloud as Shinji performed the actions. "OK. That was easy enough." "Now set…" Asuka studied the plans for this substation for a moment. "1, 3, 4, and 5 to ‘Standby’." "Alright." This was easier than he had thought it would be. "Now while holding the red wire, on to the Main bus, cut the green and white wires simultaneously." Shinji’s face fell. "What?! Let me see that." He grabbed for the manual. Asuka grinned deviously and held on to the manual. "OK, OK. Push the yellow button, then when the red button pops up, push it." Around them the steady hum of power diminished dramatically. Also, several unlabeled lights winked out as well. "It says turn key to ‘engaged’ and close cover." Shinji looked at her incredulously. "That’s it? I would have thought that there would be more to it than that. You know, really high-powered technical stuff." He rotated the key, and closed the cover. "Apparently it used to be, but with advances in technology comes at least a certain level of automation for everything." There was that "I am a genius" tone again. "Well if that is all we have to look forward to, we won’t have any problems at all. Except with these covers." He stated with a grunt. After tightening the last bolt down they closed the gate, and got back in the truck. So it went. The drove down the cleared right of way to get to the rest of the stations. It was pretty easy driving. The next two were almost if not exactly the same. It was nearing 4:30 as they pulled up to the final substation, and they noticed the clouds starting to move in. It looked like it might rain that night. The gate was closed but unlocked and they went right in. Shinji performed the change over while Asuka read the plans. He was just closing the cover and screwing it down when Asuka turned to leave, and was confronted with several large and menacing dogs. As she backed away they advanced, a few of them baring their teeth. Shinji paled and was unable to do anything as the lead canine tensed and lunged at Asuka, who still stood closer to them. He saw her raise her arm to try and deflect the flying dog, but it latched onto that arm, and bit down hard. Two of the others had moved just a split second after the first. One jumped at Shinji, the other attacked Asuka’s leg. As the dog sprang at Shinji, he felt the adrenaline pump into his system. Unfortunately the dog made it to him before he could react well. It clamped onto his upper arm, and knocked him to the ground, shaking its head back and forth vigorously. Shinji felt the flesh tear a little in his arm, but it did not really hurt that much. Some dull pain did make it through the cloud of the adrenaline hormones. It almost felt like he was taking his time, but in reality it all happened in a split second. He raised the wrench he held, and beat the animal across the bridge of its nose, which it displayed very prominently to him. They dog veritably flew off of his arm, the upper part of its muzzle broke and bleeding. He rose to his knees, and pulled back to hit the first dog over the head. The sickening crunch was terrible. The animal collapsed instantly dead due to acute brain trauma. With the back swing of the wrench he caught another dog in the side, breaking a rib, and possibly puncturing a lung. Seeing that two were critically injured and one dead, the remaining dogs scattered, nearly lodging themselves in the gate trying to get out three at a time. It was all over in a few seconds. Asuka lay bleeding, balled up around her arm, and wrapping her good leg around the wounded one. Shinji’s own injured arm was nearly useless now that the liquid power was wearing off. He dropped the wrench, and huddled over Asuka, turning her over to inspect. The fire in his left upper arm was just starting to register. She had several deep punctures to her arm, some superficial bites to her leg, and a large bump at the back of her head where she had fallen when tripped up by the second attacker. It was very difficult to get her to the car. He could imagine how much pain she was in. As he was putting her in the passengers seat, she hung her head, and leaned in several directions, barely managing to stay upright. Shinji did have the presence of mind to retrieve the wiring diagrams and schematics from the ground. As he drove, he pulled Asuka down to lie in the seat. She swam in and out of consciousness, sometimes groaning, sometimes silent. It was a very fast 15-minute drive home. Shinji nearly lost control of the truck as he skidded around corners. After they had moved into the house, at one point they had stocked up on medical supplies. It was inevitable that something would happen and they would need stuff. A medical book had given an outline for the ideal medical supply stock to have around the house. They had also supplemented it with things that they would likely need that they could not afford to take the time to go into town for. Hypodermics, some of the more high-powered drugs, antibiotics, and some vaccines. That included human rabies immunoglobulin and human diploid cell vaccine as well. Several years prior advances had been made in the development of many of these vaccines that allowed them to be stored at room temperature almost indefinitely. So they were still useable even after the power went out. Shinji ground to a sudden halt in the driveway, and flung open the door of the truck. Pulling Asuka out, he carried/dragged her unconscious form inside, finding new strength in being home again. Since the beginning of this new life they had been living, Shinji had become a fairly knowledgeable medic. He pulled Asuka’s shirt and pants off, and did not even register the fact that he now had her like this. Inspecting the wound closer showed him that there were really only three punctures on the arm. Two on top and one on the other side. The leg however was not so superficial as he had originally thought. The dog had lost a tooth in the wound when Shinji had hit it in the side, and it was still sticking out. Working quickly he gathered the supplies and went to work first ensuring that the bleeding had indeed stopped, then cleaning the wound. Soap and water washed the blood away and helped to stop the possibility of rabies and other infections. He wrapped the arm tightly to keep the wound as immobile as possible. The leg was much the same way, but it would take a bit longer to heal. Afterwards, he gave her the immunoglobulin shot to her arm, and laid her in her bed in the bedroom with her head tilted to the side. Then it was time to work on himself. It was fairly quick work, not much to it, but he was starting to regret killing the one and wounding the other dogs. But there was nothing that could have been done. He had heard of the viciousness of wild dogs, and was certain that they would have killed he and Asuka both if he had not done something. With his upper arm and shoulder fixed, he gave himself the shot, and started packing away the supplies. He was in a lot of pain so he took a couple of painkillers, but they hardly helped. He picked up the ruined clothes, deciding to throw them away. They were bloody and torn open. While he was outside putting them in the garbage, he made a visit to the breaker box, and flipped the main circuit breakers to the house that were cutting off their outside power access, and the lights came on inside. He smiled weakly. It had worked. Now they would have to kill the power to the other houses around the area just to keep them from creating problems and wasting electricity. He returned inside the Asuka’s room to keep an eye on her, but soon fell asleep. He was tired from the activity and excitement.
Quite sometime later, Asuka awoke in her sleeping bag. The pattering of rain against the window was soothing, and it brought her comfortably back to reality, even if it was a painful reality. At first she had a hard time even figuring out where she was. Then with the pain came the memory. Shinji and she had been attacked by a pack of wild dogs. She turned her head groggily and saw him slumped against the wall, shirtless with a large bandage over his upper left arm. Then she realized she was nearly naked. She thought about getting up to put something on, but the sleeping bag was warm, and it felt soooo good. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt….
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