SciFi Kaos: Get the Info Dump out of Your System

Tip of the Day: This Saturday is the Fifth Annual Rochester Teen Book Fest! Check out the lineup and drool with envy (and be there if you can)!

First Draft

The red light on the Navitech 2000 control panel, which monitored the core temperature in the nuclear reactor, blinked menacingly. Melina fought her panic. The switch from fission to fusion power had taken twenty years. Fusion type nuclear reactions definitely put out more power, but nobody had figured out how to control these random temperature fluctuations. The First World countries had spend decades controlling the temperature in fusion type reactors with cooling rods. But the fission reactions had a nasty tendency to bounce the rods out of place.

"Oh no," Melina said. She was on duty this rota to go into the core and adjust the position of the rods. Despite the fifteen pound radiation suit she was required to wear, she'd still get a blastback of radiation that could put her in the hospital for weeks.

"Is that the temperature light?" asked the head of maintenance, Rovy Silverman. Rovy was influential in the Nuclear Workers Union formed in 2022.

Melina ran to her heavy radiation suit. She would need Rovy's help to get into it, especially to don the helmet. And she couldn't do much in the clumsy gloves, manufactured in a special facility in Antarctica. "Hand me the 12 inch spanner."

"Will you use the spanner to reconnect the end of the rod to the main array?" Rory asked.

"No," Melina said, "I think I can put it to better use slamming it into this stupid keyboard!"

Second Draft

The temperature gauge blinked red. "Oh no," Melina thought as she picked up the spanner.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages