Wizardness

Sam looked out the window. The mountain was on fire. The entire face of the mountain was ablaze. He was over 30 miles away but he could still see the smoke. He could smell the smoke. The worst part was that the trees would burn relatively quickly, the bigger problem was the coal fire burning under the mountain.
A coal fire started in the mine 30 miles from the mountain about 50 years ago. It wasn’t a mine in the town Sam was in, but the next one over. It killed the mine, sent the whole area into a recession. Most of the towns in the area never recovered. Sam had been watching this fire for years.
Sam was a mine drone technician, well, he was more than that, but that’s easiest to say. The state government had required Morrison Mining Inc, MMI, to setup a team to track all their coal fires. They had a few. This one was the largest. The vein of coal had forked. Not once or twice, but dozens of times. They had planned on doing some mountain top mining, just cutting down the entire mountaintop to get to this coal, but they had waited too long.
Sam picked up his mug. His coffee was hot, he liked the dark roast. The darker the better. That bitterness and smokiness really woke him up. He couldn’t handle the caffeine of the lighter roasted stuff. This woke him up better than that though. It tasted like a punch to the face. He loved it. Felt invigorated by the sharpness of it.
As he sipped he noticed his windows vibrate. He saw a water helicopter flying overhead, heading towards the fire. Sam shook his head. The fire didn’t start because of anything on the surface. The ground was so hot, it caught the trees above it on fire. There’d been a long drought and that dried out the trees, but the coal fire was raging below.
Sam took another sip and grabbed his laptop. He fired it up. It was an older machine, so it took a while to boot. It gave him time to watch the water spill from the back of the helicopter, flash into steam as the helicopter wheeled away. Others followed it.
Sam quickly logged into his Linux machine. He pulled up his drone control program. He managed the swarm. They were a semi-autonomous smart drone system. The swarm was made of microdrones. These created a mesh network to share information across the drone network and to maximize distance covered along multiple forks at once.
Sam pulled on his goggles. He had used the drones to build a 3D map of the coal veins as they were burning. Well, after they had burnt. He had a leading edge of drones that were essentially fireproof. Other drones followed behind to extend the network and to map in more detail the results of the fire.
He was pretty proud of himself. He’d modified the code and the drones themselves to build this network. MMI had turned his drones into a consultancy and made even more money off of these disasters.
Sam fumbled for his coffee. He liked holding it while he was in VR, it helped ground him in reality. It kept him from feeling stuck in these tiny crawl ways. He had a suit that gave him for of an idea of the temperature in there, but figured that the warmth of his coffee would make him feel both there and far from it.
He checked the leading edge of the drones. The heatproof ones. They converted a lot of that heat into power, power and RF. That RF was how they built the mesh networks. One of his team members had figured out how to harvest RF from the air, not a ton, but enough to keep the drones powered and moving. It was a useful system.
Sam sat up. He had noticed something. He did a quick survey. He threw off his goggles and quickly wrote up a positioning script. The script looked at the relative rates of specific vein fires and the directions they were heading. He was concerned a number of them were all leading to the same place.
While the server was crunching the data, there was no way his ancient laptop could manage all that data, he pulled back on his VR goggles and switched his view to one of the drones already in that location.
He didn’t understand what he was seeing. The camera’s view was normally constrained and tightly focused ahead of the drone. The fire wasn’t a single pinpoint. It was a wall. It was raging above and below the drone.
He switched to a trailing drone with a larger camera. Specifically designed to map large pockets of burned out coal. The space was huge. No wonder the mountain was on fire. There was a huge pile of coal burning there.
He got a message from the server indicating the mapping was complete. Sam had the server run it again. The results made no sense. The second run had the same results. He checked his code. He rewrote part of it using different equations. Similar results, to the point that there was no appreciable difference.
Sam keyed his messaging app, he Direct Messaged Ivan: Hey, could you check out these results. I’ve never seen anything like it. Here’s the branch.
Ivan responded almost immediately: Sure dude! hope you’re having a good morning. I’m getting ready to call it a night soon. Hopefully this is quick.
Sam: It’s going to be a long day for me, I think. Copters already dumping water on :fire:
Ivan: :grimacing: code looks good. trying to map out where the veins are going. Running
Sam: Ok. let me know when you get the results.
Ivan: what the actual fuck. dude. You need to report this. Get people off that mountain.
Sam: Fuck. Same results then. Thanks man. Good night.
Sam DM’d his boss, Dr. Morrrison: Dr. M You got a minute to talk? Urgent. need to TALK
The system turned into a call. Dr. M appeared in front of Sam.
“What’s up Sam?” Dr. M asked tersely.
“Let me share this projection with you.” Sam pulled up the video rendering of the projection.
“Who else has seen this?” Dr. M asked.
“Ivan, from the Russia office.” Sam replied.
Dr. M nodded, “Call FEMA. Good luck.”
Sam ended the call. He quickly pulled up the regional head of FEMA on his phone. He pulled off his VR goggles as he called.
“Hi Sam, what can I do for you?” came a tense voice.
“Get everyone off the mountain Tressie. It’s going to collapse.” Sam replied.
“What do you mean it’s going to collapse?” Tressie angerly replied.
“Tressie, we have about 45 minutes until a massive pocket of coal is burnt through. It will cause a void and the bulk of the mountain will collapse. We should evacuate at least a 30-50 mile radius. I have no idea what sort of earthquakes will be unleashed.” Sam shouted.
Tressie coughed, “Don’t yell. Send me the data.”
Sam had been updating the video in the background. The predicted collapse time line had shrunk to 20 minutes. Sam sent it to her.
Sam stared out the window at the mountain. Willing the fire to stop. Instead, the smoke increased in intensity. “Did you get it?”
Tressie abruptly hung up on him.
Sam shook his head and decided to take care of himself. So he grabbed some food, water, and packed a bag. As he packed the evacuation announcement was sent to his cell phone. He could hear the tornado warning start to wail. Sam grabbed his computer, a charger and tossed the bag over his shoulder. He poured coffee into a thermos and sprinted to his car.
He was turning on to a major thorough way, with the mountain in his rear view mirror, when he saw the top of the mountain disappear.
Seconds later, a shockwave tore through the small town.
Sam’s car left the ground, it was thrown forward. He landed roughly, his head bouncing against the ceiling. His car screamed in protest. Lights flashed across the dash. His heads-up-display told him to slow down to avoid leaving the ground over bumps.
A second shock was was coming. Sam could see it in his rear view mirror. There was a massive fast moving cloud. He floored it before he could see any more details.
His phone range. It flashed up as Tressie – FMEA. He pushed the answer button, “Tressie, I hope you’re on the road!”
“You lying bastard! You said we had 45 minutes.” She cried. Their connection cut. His HUD saying call lost. It’d been years since he’d seen that.
Sam called to the car, “Call Dr. M.”
The car responded, “There is no cellular networks in the available, would you like to make your call using the satellite service?”
“YES!” Sam cried.
The car’s speakers started to ring. “Sam, what’s happening?” Dr. M. briskly asked.
“It collapsed already. I sent Tressie the information.” Sam saw a shadow out of the rear view mirror, “Oh, fuck. I might lose you here. I hope that isn’t pyroclastic.”
Sam’s car got hot. He ducked down he heard things bash into the rear window. He heard tinking off the roof. it sounded as if he was in a hail storm.
Sam had hoped being 30 miles away would have been far enough. It didn’t seem like that was the case. He kept driving, even though he couldn’t see the road.
Dr. M. Called to Sam, “Tell me what’s happening!”
Sam’s car slammed into something moments later.
Sam woke up some time later. He’s front windshield was shattered. Tree branches were mere inches from his face. There was something jutting through the passenger’s seat. He glanced into the back seat. Then looked up, it looked like part of a house had landed in the back seat.
He slowly pulled himself out of his car. He wasn’t sure how he was alive. He should have been dead. He grabbed his bag from the passenger floor. Somehow it seemed to have survived.
Everything was covered in a mix of dust and rocks. Sam pulled his shirt over his nose, hoping to protect himself from the worst of the particles in the air.
He noticed a number of fires, down the street it looked like three houses were on fire. Two cars, electric from the look of the fire, were melting a hole in the ground.
Sam opened his bag. His food looked like it was ok. He’d have at least a meal or two as he tried to walk out of town.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. He switched to satellite mode. He dialed Dr. M.
“My boy! You’re alive. Oh, thank god.” came an almost immediate response. Despite everything, Sam still grimaced at being called “boy”. “I’d been on the line when you crashed. I thought it was over for you.”
“Yea. I’m not really sure how I’m alive. This is my car.” He took a picture and sent it to Dr. M. “I’m going to head to some place that might have power and water and communication stuff.”
“Our satellites are showing a 60 mile radius of destruction. Conserve your battery. I’m sending you coordinates. We’ll send a helicopter and pick you up.”
“Thank you sir. See you soon.” Sam ended the call. He looked around at the devastation. He shook his head and started to sob as he walked.