The wedding took place, as planned, in September—on Labor Day. The feast included a basket of Henry's Winesaps, uncooked.
But already, the day before, the bride had come to another decision. She knew what to do with the extra space on the sign she had left unpainted. Carefully, very carefully, she drew a few more letters.
She thought they fit nicely, next to the bullet-ridden door where Saint Veronica proudly bore her battle scars.
"School Number 1."
Power to the People
Loren K. Jones
It was a typical Sunday at the Grantville Power Station. Claude Yardley, the senior operator on "C" Crew, was leaning back in his chair as always, watching the power plant's main board. Everything was as it should be, right down to that annoying little flutter in #2 Boiler's pressure. It had been there for years, and no one had ever found the cause. By now it was just one of those little idiosyncrasies of the plant that everyone ignored.
"Hey Nissa, how about bringing me a refill? Please?" he called to the back of the figure at the coffee urn.
"Does I looks like yo nigga?" Nissa Pritchard sassed back without turning around. She was slightly older than Claude, and had risen through the ranks to become the senior instrument tech in the plant through pure cussedness. The fact that she was a black woman had hindered her over the years, and it was something that she never let the men around her forget.
"No, from this angle you look like my Aunt Diane. Don't throw that!" he quickly added as Nissa turned and raised the can of creamer that she was holding.
"I've met your Aunt Diane, Claude," she growled at him, eyes burning. Diane Yardley was a large woman, especially from the rear. "Are you calling me a fat-ass?"
Claude raised his hands defensively. "Never! Wouldn't dream of it."
"Better not. union rules say that I can have your ass busted for harassing me about my weight. Besides, I lost five pounds this month." Nissa was bringing a thermos carafe with her as she returned to her desk. Claude held his cup off to the side, well clear of his panel and his lap. Nissa's sense of humor tended toward the physical. She poured the cup full enough that he had to carefully sip before he could move it much.
"Thank you very much, Madame Nissa."
"I ain't no madame, either. You better jus' watch yo' mouth, White Boy. Those size twelves of yours won't both fit." Nissa smiled to show that she was joking, though there had been times in the past that she hadn't. It had been the union 's rules, not the EEOC or state snoops, that had seen to her rightful rise through the ranks.
"You're mean. No fun at all. Not like the old days." Claude pretended to pout, which only made Nissa laugh.
"The old days out by #1 Stack? We're both too old for that crap any more. Damn the luck." Nissa grinned and winked at Claude. Their brief affair had ended almost as soon as it started fifteen years before. They had both been married, but the temptations of nightshift and the solitude of the area had been more than they wanted to resist. Now, years later, they could laugh about it. In private.
Claude sighed. "Time to take readings. You know, I wish that they would get rid of this stupid paperwork. The computer logs everything instantly."
"If they got rid of the paperwork, they could justify getting rid of us." Nissa sighed. "I installed these monitoring systems. Thought that they would be a great help. Fah! Help to the company in justifying minimum raises. Crap."
"Crap indeed, Nissa. Crap—" Thunder slammed through the control room, and white light showed around the rim of the door, interrupting Claude's complaint.
"Holy shit! Loss of load! Loss of load!" Claude shouted, grabbing for his controls. The old-fashioned gauges on the wall mirrored the computer's reading. They had been cruising along at fifty-eight percent power, then suddenly nothing. Automatic systems reacted before Claude could, cutting the flow of steam to the main turbine in the blink of an eye. Even so, the turbine was already turning at far above its rated RPM.
"Initiate steam braking! Slow the turbine down!" Nissa shouted as she ran her fingers over her board. "All of the main breakers are tripped. I'm getting ground-faults on all transmission lines. Phase-to-phase in the south. Shit, what was that?"
"I don't know, Nis. Everything else seems okay, it's just the outgoing lines that are down. Call in help, Nis. Call Bill. I think he's in his office. I'm calling Northeast Grid Control. See if they know what happened." Claude was picking up his phone as he spoke, then tapping the hook. "My line's dead. How's yours?"