Legacy

Arizona desert area, west end Grand Canyon lands not too far from Navaho Reservation.  It’s May, 2012 as John Bighorn stops into visit his grandfather, Chief Walking Bear.  John is a graduate geologist who makes his living as a professional rock hound.  John constantly scouts the desert for pieces of petrified wood, geodes, turquoise, and assorted  mineral specimens.  John is good at his craft and there is a good market for what he finds.

John has a sister, also a graduate geologist, working somewhere in the area for the government as a earthquake prediction specialist.  John thought as long as he was visiting he’d try and find out where his sister was so he could say hello.

While visiting with his grandfather Walking  Bear, John learned his grandfather who believed in the old ways and things had become concerned over what he called rumbles in the night and flashes of light  over in the area of the big buttes, about twenty miles to the Northwest.  Grandfather was worried and scared that it was maybe the legendary Thunderbird starting to wake up, and it sounded angry.

John assured his grandfather there was probably a rational reason for that and that he would go investigate.  So the next day John headed in the general direction that his grandfather had said the light and noise was coming from.

As John got within a couple of miles from one of the big buttes, he noticed a dust trail kicking up from another vehicle in the area.  Not normally being a place much traffic, if any, would be found in, John headed that way for a look see.  As he got closer he could see what appeared to be a small building that had been built right up against, maybe even into, the butte.

Actually this expanse was loosely part of the Grand Canyon National Park ground, but rarely visited.  As he got close he could read the sign out front.  It read, ”Canyon Point #2, Federal Earthquake Detection Facility”  Wow! Said John to himself, I wonder if by some long chance my sister, Susan Little Fawn is employed here.

John went inside and hadn’t taken three steps when he and his sister spotted each other simultaneously.  Both were quite surprised.  But that was quickly followed by warm hellos and hugs.  Susan said how did you know where I was John?  John said he didn’t; just dumb luck he stumbled into her.  Susan showed John around, and as she did, her supervisor asked who the gentleman was?  She said my brother, he’s a geologist also.  He came to say hello.  That satisfied Susan’s supervisor.

Susan showed John a lot of pictures on the walls and earthquake fault maps, and even an earthquake detection machine.  John was impressed.  Then a door to the rear slid open and two men in hazmat suits came carrying a box out with the body of a dog in it.  Peculiar thought John as the dog was almost totally done to skeleton with very little meat left, yet its eye rolled as if there was a spark of life.

Susan quickly turned John to look the other way and said; you didn’t see that.  If anyone says did you see that? deny it. John said, said Okay, I get the drift; we will talk tonight at grandfathers house.

That night at grandfather Walking Bears house Susan explained that the facility was really not an Earthquake detection center at all, but that was a smoke screen to cover a military covert operation.  Deep within the butte and then down about a hundred feet was an fissionable materials lab, with centrifuges.  The material being made fissionable was gold; and not for power plants as that would be cost prohibitive; but for weapons grade.  An ounce of radiation impregnated gold would make a bomb a thousand times more powerful than an Hydrogen Bomb, it could destroy half a continent.

A side effect of those efforts is a  substance that if it comes in contact with living flesh, it will mutate the microbes in the body so that they literally devour all flesh while keeping it alive until the last bit is gone.  Thus that dog and another like him were used like Canary’s in a coal mine to detect gas.  They died an unbelievable death.

The only human to die the same way was Doctor Jonas Henson, the creator of the technology to create fissionable gold. He succumbed to his own foolishness.  The only way the project could be continued was from his notes, as no one else had enough savvy to do it without the notes.

John said to Susan, that’s horrible; that project has to be stopped.  Susan agreed, but said how, we are but two people with no authority.

John said I assume the authority to put an end to an abomination that must surely dismay He Who Is, and with your help, I think it can be done.

John said to Susan, just where do they all go at night?  Susan said to the same place I would have if it were not for visiting here at grandfathers.  That’s about thirty miles over more or less open ground to the highway and then another five to Harrisville, a tourist trap of about fifteen hundred souls.  But the accommodations are first class.

So John asked Susan if she had a key to the place, she said she did.  So they planned the next night to go back into the facility, gather up the technological notes and put them on the elevator going down, along with about a hundred sticks of dynamite and a fuse long enough to get them good and clear before the place went up.

They executed that plan flawlessly and were a mile away from the butte when the explosion occurred.  It was so loud it woke up grandfather Walking Bear, who was found sitting in a corner looking very frightened when they got back.  Grandfather said what was that? Is the Thunderbird coming to get us?  No said John, that was the noise made when Susan and I put the Thunderbird to sleep permanently.

Walking Bear smiled and said, that is good, now I can get some peaceful sleep.

To say the least those involved in the project went their ways to resume their lives in a more acceptable fashion.  No mention of the project or explosion was ever mentioned in any news.  That didn’t hurt anyone’s feeling one little bit.  It seems the Golden opportunity to end a Golden opportunity had succeeded.