Swim With The Ladies

Here is what happened last time on The Legends Of The Time Traveller

I am standing and talking to myself in a mirror when Sarah Clarke, my sister, starts talking to me in the lab. She is a self-proclaimed scavenger and likes to explore the caves and find stuff that we can use. She brings me an old single speaker radio that she found in the tunnels. Dr. John is coming to check up on me, and that is where Sarah makes her exit.

I start explaining to Dr. John the process of what I drew on the board;

"You see, Dr. John, if we take the water from our natural spring, we add some of the salt that we find in the mine. We can run an electrical current through it. The result is that oxygen will be produced on the one side and hydrogen on the other. That way, we will have clean oxygen that we can produce and use."

I see Dr. John looking at it and ask;

"Okay. But what do we do with the hydrogen, Michael?"

"We pump it out of the mine, somehow."

"Because, as far as I know, hydrogen is really explosive in large quantities. You do know that in the old world, that they used to make hydrogen bombs?"

"Yes, Dr. John."

"Michael, this is a good idea. But, leave this type of work for the more experienced people. They are working around the clock to fix the oxygen problem. You need to focus on the project that the scientists gave you to work on, nothing else. And that is the air filtration and purification system. Because, if we can remove the pollution from the air, then that will open up the space for the oxygen idea to be looked at."

"But, Dr. John. I can work on both at the same time. If I can get the air filtration system to work, then the oxygen needs to be produced and distributed to everyone as quickly as possible."

"Michael, do you really think that you really have all the answers?"

"No, Dr. John."

He turns to look at me and tells me;

"Then you need to do what they are expecting from you. And this project is an important one that the scientists gave to you. That means that they believe in you, and so do I. Please do not disappoint us. It is the same with my job at Particle Physics. I can not leave the particles and study the effects of hydrogen in mines. Stick to what you are good with, okay?"

I nod and watch as he leaves the lab. I can not understand why they do not want me working on this. We could have clean oxygen pumped into the mine. What is the big problem here? I hear in the corridor a familiar clanking of chains getting louder, and it is my friend Terry Allen. He always tries to find new ways of being and acting cool. Almost like the chains that he is wearing for a belt, he likes being different, I guess. As he pops his head around the corner, I see his brown hair looks like he put his finger in a light socket today. He smiles at me and asks;

"Is Dr. No-Good gone?"

"Yes, Terry. He has left."

"Man, he sounded angry. What is his problem today?"

"I don't know. Maybe because I am working on something else rather than what the scientist asked me to work on for them. I thought that the scientists would like that I am trying to figure out solutions to the problems. All they want to do is give a person the projects to keep them busy. And what the hell is happening with your hair today?"

He strikes a silly pose and asks me;

"Don't you like it?"

I grin at him and say;

"What is there to like?"

"Man, I saw in this one picture. In the old days, the guys put some stuff in their hair. They made their hair look funny. So, I tried my own experiment. Now the girls can not resist me."

"Experiment? With what did you experiment?"

"I took some of the black grease we have on the sliding doors, and I put some in my hair to make it look different."

I laugh at him and say;

"Wow, okay. So, you now smell like an old, steel greasy wheel that can cause your hair to fall out. I can see all the girls standing in queue to get a piece of you."

"You can laugh at me as much as you want, but they like it if a guy does something different."

I shake my head in disbelief and say;

"Why don't you try to take a shower once in your life and stop talking so much? You only need to sit and listen to them? And by listening to them, it will make them feel that you want them, because they are interesting. You will find that by listening to the girls to what they are saying, they will want to be around you more often."

He laughs at me and asks;

"Where did you learn that? In your book of secrets to a woman's heart by the great Dr. Michael Clarke?"

I walk to the whiteboard with the design sketches I made and tell him;

"Look, Terry. As much as I would love to have this conversation with you, I can't. I have to keep working and see if I can't find a solution to the problem down here."

He starts walking out of the lab and says;

"Okay. I will go. But, tonight. We are going to take that swim with the ladies, okay? Tell me you are in?"

I shake my head and say;

"I will try to make it. I need to do my work, please."

"Fine. Later then."

I stare at the whiteboard for a while, hoping that might catch my eye. Suddenly, I feel the ground starting to shake. I turn around and grab hold of a few things on the table that can break and get under the table. The scientist says that it's mini earthquakes we are having, and they are becoming more frequent. It is the mine tunnels that start to cave in around us. That is yet another reason why The Day Of The Chosen needs to come sooner rather than later. One of these days, the structures we build will not hold that much weight, and the entire mine might collapse, and we all will die.

I feel the tremor has stopped. I get out from under the table and put everything in its place again. I walk back to the whiteboard to figure the problem out. We have calcium carbonate, but how do I design a system with so few resources? And even with the resources that we have, some are too big to cut into pieces anyway. We need something better to cut big pieces of metal and pipes. That is when I walk over to the radio that Sarah brought me. Maybe there is something in it that I can use.

I grab the few tools that I have and start opening the radio up. I take the whole thing apart, piece by piece. I inspect the parts where the batteries get inserted into put into and where the wires connect leads. Maybe I can get some power on it and see what happens to it. I unscrew the flashlight and take out the battery. I attach the negative wire and take the positive towards the battery. The moment it makes contact, a strange loud hissing sound comes from the radio with all the lights blinking.

I get such a fright that I stop what I am doing and start packing everything away. It feels like my heart might jump out of my chest. What is that thing? And what is that ear-deafening noise? No one said that it makes such weird sounds. Or is that what the old world called music? I really need to talk to someone that might know more about this thing and how it works before I even try to do that again. Hey, I know just who to talk to, and Mother Jenna. She will help me with the information that I need. We call her Mother Jenna because she is like our mother down here. She is also the oldest person still living down here in the mine. I get up from my lab and walk to her room. I knock and wait to hear her call;

"Come in."

I open the door and walk into her room. Her smile grows as she sees me. She says;

"Hello, Michael, my dear. Come sit and tell me how you have been."

I sit down on a seat next to her and say;

"Mother Jenna. I am sorry that I haven't gotten a chance to come and see how you are doing."

"Are they keeping you busy in the lab?"

"Yes, ma'am. I have slept a few nights there already."

"But that is no good. You are still young, and you still need to enjoy your life. You can not make your job your life already without tasting the precious love between two people."

"I will try and spend more time away from the lab when I can. The reason why I am here, I want to find out a little more about a radio?"

Her eyes grow as she says;

"A radio you say. I have not seen one in years."

"How did it work?"

"Well, there were many ways. With electricity and then with batteries. With batteries, you could walk around with it."

"Wow, that is interesting. And the sound that it made, was it a constant shhhhh sound or who did it sound?"

"Why do you ask, Michael?"

I lean in and tell her;

"Sarah has found an old one speaker radio and brought it to me. So, I tried to get it working, but only a loud shhhhh sound came from it."

"Michael, bring it here, and I will show you what you need to know about it."

I nod and walk out. Standing at the door, I tell Mother Jenna;

"I have to assemble it quickly, but I will come back now."

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