May 4th, 1984 —Croydon,Greater London, Engnd

  Croydon B power pnt had a rich history. Starting its life in 1896, it continued to keep households warm and illuminated until it drew its st breath in April, 1984.

  Or so it thought.

  6:00 AM, 6 degrees Celsius. The sun had been climbing the sky for a half hour, painting the complex with a rosy hue when Station Shift Supervisor Gordon Muir walked into Control Room 1.

  “Bit nippy, this mornin’,” he stated simply in his Scottish brogue. He gnced around the mostly empty room. “Are we the first to arrive?”

  “The bloke from CEGB offered to put the kettle on,” Wendy Draper expined. She was senior Control Room Engineer now. Many of the day shift staff that would be arriving had received promotions for this special test, their predecessors having flown to other power pnts or retired. Gordon was secretly relieved. She had an instinctual understanding that Rupert never did.

  “What sort of test is this again?” Nigel Bains asked as he walked in beside Malcolm Tovey.

  “We’re testing how much overtime pay we can get from CEGB,” Malcolm replied. Nigel wasted no time in getting to work. He was doing double duty, acting as grid control liaison and keeping the log book. Malcolm sat down at his console and flipped the maintenance log to the st page. In the month since they’d shut down, for good everyone had been told, and believed, a total of four entries had been made, all of which had to do with ventiting their empty coal bunkers. Wendy’s operational log was brand new except for the date and the list of personnel who would be manning control room 1, the nerve center for the entire test. The other three control rooms would have simir logs, but they had the pleasure of hosting the big wigs from CEBG.

  “Did the Safety Inspector arrive with the other one?” Gordon asked as he opened the thick binder and began to review the procedure to perform a bck start of the four pnts that would take part in whatever this test was. The CEGB reps had been light on the details, except that they were authorizing overtime pay at twice the standard union rate.

  “Where are the eggheads?” Wendy asked as she jotted down temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction.

  “That was probably them that arrived just when we did,” Nigel said. “I think I recognize one of them from our rugby league.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Her name, and I don’t remember. The one with the broad shoulders. She’s got a friend with her that looks like a model.”

  “Dennis is going to give them the tour,” Gordon said as a man returned with a mug of tea.

  “Everyone, I believe you know Don MacAllister, CEBG Regional Manager. He’s authorizing today’s test, and your overtime pay.”

  “Water’s hot, if anyone wants a cuppa. And I’m not authorizing the test. That was above my pay grade. I’m here to observe, and make on site decision if necessary. I brought a safety inspector with me. Anyone seen her?”

  Malcolm looked out the window towards the parking lot. “Is that her, talking to one of the eggheads?”

  Don stopped next to him and looked through the dirty gss. It was definitely Natalie. Even from this distance Don could see why she was te.

  “Is that the model you mentioned?” Don asked as he nodded at the dark haired attractive man.

  Nigel took a look of his own. “Him? No. I meant the woman in the high heels.”

  What kind of eggheads are these? Gordon wondered.

  Dennis stopped the group in the boiler room for Pnt 1 and introduced the middle-aged man who had just stood up from his desk. “Everyone, this is Brian, Generator Monitoring Specialist.”

  “Pleasure,” Brian said, his eyes flicking back more than once to Delphine.

  “Brian will be monitoring boiler output and conditions during the test.”

  “Won’t be much for me to monitor. Our bunkers are all empty—not even dust. Not sure how you pn to generate steam.”

  Ed smiled. “That’s the test, isn’t it? You’ve worked here long?”

  “Twenty-three years.”

  “Well,” Ed said, still smiling, “maybe we’ll show you something new.”

  Brian and Aric spent a few minutes together while the specialist walked him through each component of the boiler system—and how it normally took eight to ten hours to bring everything up to a point where the turbine bdes could start to turn.

  “Feedwater pumps. Boiler drums. Headers. Tubing. All of it needs to warm up slow and even. Rush it and you get thermal stress—fractures.”

  “Slow warm-up. Got it.”

  “Once it’s hot enough, we fire the boiler and start making steam. Pressure builds gradual-like, same as the drum. Slow but steady.”

  Aric nodded, his eyes moving over the heavy metal structures, absorbing them. He was already tracing the pathways in his mind—mapping energy flow, estimating timing. He’d have to sequence it all just right. Feel his way like a man navigating a dark room.

  “Once we’ve got pressure, we open the steam valves, and Bob’s your father’s brother. From then on, it’s Tariq’s show.”

  “Great. Thanks for the tour. Very helpful.”

  “No worries, mate. So... that new fuel of yours showing up any time soon?”

  Everyone smiled.

  The fuel was standing right next to him. He just didn’t know it yet.

  “Any time now,” Ed said, cryptically.

  They moved on, following the maze of pipes and valves that would convert water into steam and carry it toward their next stop: the turbine gallery, where they found a man about their age standing near the central units.

  “This is Tariq. He’s our turbine engineer. First time running the whole show—his mentor retired when the pnt shut down.”

  Tariq had olive skin and short dark hair, and it was clear that being in charge of a mysterious test filled him with equal parts pride and anxiety.

  “We’ve got four turbines,” he said. “All of them use steam to turn rotor bdes connected to drive shafts. The bdes spin the shafts, and the shafts generate electricity through magnetic induction.”

  “How much power per turbine?” Aric asked.

  “Fifty megawatts”

  “So... 200 megawatts total when everything’s running at full power?” Carol asked.

  Her American accent earned a wide smile from the young engineer.

  “Normally, yeah. Still not sure how you pn to do this with no coal. Special fuel, is it?”

  “That’s the pn,” Ed said.

  “Anything you can tell me about the test, I’d appreciate it,” Tariq said, his smile still hanging on, though his voice had started to tighten at the edges.

  “From inside this building, it won’t look any different from a normal operating cycle,” Ed said. “You’ll get normal steam pressure to run your turbines.”

  Tariq didn’t look convinced—but when Delphine stepped forward, his doubts seemed to vanish.

  “You’ll do fine,” she said, touching his arm lightly. “You look like you could do anything you wanted.”

  His mouth was still hanging open as they stepped into the growing light of day.

  “CEGB HQ, this is Croydon B Central Control, we are starting our checklist for test 1. Confirm startup authorization, please,” Nigel said into a telephone receiver. It was the direct line to headquarters, and it was his job to keep them informed. He looked at Gordon and gave him a thumbs up. Gordon looked at Don MacAllister who simply nodded and said proceed.

  Gordon pressed a button to activate the intercom and his voice filled all levels of the building. “All technicians and engineers confirm system inspection completed.”

  Green lights began to fill the master control panel. Wendy began to fill in her log.

  “Mechanical systems are green. Electrical systems are green. Safety systems are green.”

  When Gordon reached the next item in the checklist he stopped. “Confirm fuel capacity at ninety percent or greater.”

  Ed and Edith stood together in the control room for Pnt 1.

  From her vantage point, Edith could see the engineer—Wendy, she remembered—jotting names into her visitors log:

  CR1: Dr. Edward Martell, Dr. Edith Hoyles

  CR2: Dr. Carol Lombardi, Dr. Carlos Montcada de Girona

  CR3: Dr. Alex Myles, Dr. Hank Wilson

  CR4: Dr. Delphine Moreau

  P1 Boiler Room: Mr. Harry Morgenstern

  Edith smiled at the st entry.

  She’d felt the urge to correct them the first time someone said it. She’d even started to—her mouth already forming the word—when she felt a gentle tug on her sleeve. Ed Martell gave her a subtle shake of his head, nothing more.

  I guess one fake name is as good as another, she thought.

  Aric was in boiler room 1 with Brian when he replied, and everyone heard the tone of his voice, the implied I told you so in his words.

  “Fuel capacity boiler room 1 is zero percent. Bunkers are empty.”

  His was the only voice. For the first part of the test they would only be using one pnt.

  “How are we going to generate steam without coal?” Wendy asked, her pen hovering over the sheet of paper in front of her.

  “This is a test of an alternate fuel source,” Don MacAllister said. His safety inspector had finally arrived. The look on her face at Aric’s absence was noticed by all.

  “Well, what do I write down? Yes, or No? If it’s No, this will be the shortest test on record.”

  Ed spoke into the intercom. “Ar...Ari, are you ready?”

  Aric’s voice came back loud and clear. “I’m ready.”

  Ed nodded at Gordon. “Confirmed. Fuel capacity at one-hundred percent.”

  It had been a discussion that took a bit of time.

  Ed was adamant. “We can’t use his real name. Not for this. The rest of us, we’re nobodies. But him, we need to hide.”

  Edith jumped into the fray. “Well, the st name is easy. His name means Morningstar. Lots of variations for that. Morgenstern. Anyone have a problem with that?”

  Alex took up the challenge. “That’s fine. It’s the first name that’s killing me. I always start with Ar before I catch myself.”

  “OK,” Ed said, his suggestion not gaining any traction, “John is right out. Give me names that start with Ar.”

  “Arlo,” Hank said.

  “Ari,” Delphine offered.

  “Harry?” Carol asked.

  “No, not Harry—Ari.”

  “I can’t tell the difference,” Carlos said as he shrugged.

  “Aragorn,” Alex suggested.

  “Look who thinks he’s JRR Tolkien,” Hank said.

  “He said names that start with Ar. That fit the criteria. It’s better than Arlo at least.”

  “Arlo was my favorite Uncle’s name, asshole. I meant it as a compliment.”

  Edith couldn’t remember ever seeing Hank’s feelings hurt like they were now.

  “That was really sweet of you to suggest that,” she said gently to him as she touched his arm.

  Alex’s face was a mask of remorse. “Sorry, chum. Really. I didn’t mean it. It was that Tolkien crack got me wound up.”

  Everyone took a collective breath. Hank was the first to exhale.

  “It’s fine. No worries.”

  “Well,” Ed said, “if no one objects, I’ll choose Harry.”

  "Ari," Delphine said with emotion. ”Ari, not Harry."

  Carlos shook his head. “I still can’t tell the difference.”

  So it was Ari Morgenstern standing in the boiler room of pnt 1 with Brian.

  “Harry, you guys all unionized? You getting double pay for this test like we are?”

  “Pay,” Aric, or Ari, or Harry, said. “That’s where you do something, and people give you money afterward, right? You know, that sounds nice. I’d like to try that some time.”

  Brian had just started to ugh when the intercom came live and the bck start checklist began. When they got to the fuel capacity, he thought they’d hit an insurmountable road block. Until...

  “Ar...Ari, are you ready?”

  Aric smiled at Brian. “I’m ready.”

  Brian heard Ed’s voice. “Confirmed. Fuel capacity at one-hundred percent.”

  The next two checklist items also belonged to Brian—and each posed its own problem.

  Don continued reading: “Prime feedwater pumps.”

  It was the only step Brian felt sure of—the only one that didn’t require coal. Or any fuel, for that matter. As far as he could see, nothing had been delivered.

  “Feedwater pumps primed,” he said into the intercom, gncing at the man beside him—this so-called fuel expert with the American accent and the inscrutable calm.

  “Preheat feedwater.”

  That was the second problem. Normally, they used steam bled from the turbine—taken at different pressure stages and routed into the feedwater heaters. But the turbines weren’t spinning, and without coal, they wouldn’t be.

  There were auxiliary heaters, sure, but not for something like this. Not for a bck start. They weren’t nearly powerful enough to do the job.

  And yet—

  The feedwater temperature gauge was climbing.

  “I don’t understand...” he started to say. His next words would have been, Is this your new fuel?

  But when he turned around to say them, the man behind him was glowing.

  “Wha—?”

  Gordon’s voice crackled over the intercom, snapping the moment.

  “Brian. Feedwater status, whenever you have time in your busy schedule.”

  He swallowed against the lump in his throat, eyes still flicking between the gauge and the glowing man.

  “Feedwater temperature in the green,” he said.

  The log showed ten minutes had passed.

  “Warm up boiler drum.”

  This was the part that took a lot of time and attention. If the warm up went too quickly it could stress the metal components and cause fractures. It had to be done just right.

  And they still had no fuel.

  But something was happening. The boiler was heating up. All the components. All at the same time. Fast.

  Heat flowed from hot to cold. You start the furnace, the boiler drum heats up first, everything downstream take time to catch up. But everything downstream was rising at the same time as the drum. And the man who Brian had only just met, who he knew nothing about, was glowing faintly as streams of energy flowed from him to all the boiler components.

  To Aric, it sounded like a symphony—the metal responding at the atomic level, each component singing in tune. It was like conducting an orchestra with a thousand delicate instruments: adding or subtracting energy in precise, invisible strokes, bancing phase changes, tracking ttice expansions, and fine-tuning vibrational modes until every part of the system resonated in harmony.

  It was an incredibly fast startup—but by every measure Brian could see with his eyes and hear with his ears, it was clean. Smooth. Well within material tolerances and the safety envelope mandated by CEGB. He’d been at this for over twenty years. He knew the sounds a boiler made when it was straining, or about to crack.

  This one was purring like a kitten.

  It sounded like music.

  He could hear music.

  He’d swear to it. That wasn’t possible. Not in here. Not when the system was at full power, full pressure. You could barely hear yourself think in a boiler room like this.

  But there it was.

  Beethoven. The Ode to Joy. Drifting through the steam and steel.

  “Ummm…”

  Brian needed a moment. He stared as the temperature gauges all leveled out—well within the safe zone, right in the sweet spot.

  How the hell did he do that?

  He keyed the intercom. His voice was calm. Almost reverent.

  “All temperature gauges in the green.”

  Brian knew the next step should have been Initiate coal feed and ignition sequence.

  “Initiate fuel feed and ignition sequence,” Gordon said. Wendy made a note in her log that said simply fuel?

  The several streams of energy flowing from Aric coalesced into one and the boiler came to life.

  “Ignition sequence completed,” Brian said.

  It was the st thing that Brian was responsible for. He breathed a sigh of relief as the sweat continued to roll down his back.

  “Whatever fuel you’re using, it’s remarkable,” Gordon said to Ed. “I just hope we haven’t run up too quickly. You took twenty minutes to complete a ten hour process.”

  “Ar...Ari knows what he’s doing. Trust me.”

  “What’s Harry’s st name? Is this something experimental from America?” the safety officer, whose name Ed had forgotten, asked. She’d tched on to Aric immediately in the parking lot, and Ed thought he’d have to pry her off of him.

  “It’s definitely experimental. We’re studying it, with his help. It’s proprietary, and he’s not really supposed to be sharing it with us.”

  “Hush hush. I get it,” Gordon said. “Still, it’d be a shame to keep something like this all to themselves. For the good of all mankind, and all that.”

  “I quite agree,” Ed said with a smile.

  Steam pressure was building, and they were moving on to the next sequence of steps.

  “Tariq, everything set?” Gordon asked.

  “We’re set. You can proceed.”

  “Good. Check lubrication systems for turbines and generators.”

  “Oil temp and flow rate green. Bearing temps green.”

  They were running only one boiler, and only one turbine. The second test, when they ran it, would run all four.

  “Open steam admission valves.”

  This was when the real test would begin. Generating actual power with Aric as the fuel source. Ed had no idea what the man in the boiler room with Aric was seeing, or thinking, but he was positive that his promise to show the man something new had been kept.

  “CEGB HQ, this is Croydon B Central Control. We are spinning up Turbine 1.” Nigel reported. He nodded silently at Gordon.

  The pressure built up in stages. Gordon monitored the process until it reached a threshold level.

  “Roll turbine up to synchronous speed.”

  Tariq responded immediately. “Rolling up to 3000 RPM.”

  They allowed fifteen minutes. Ed began to wonder if Aric was getting tired.

  “Confirm vibrational sensors, shaft alignment and temperature all green.” Gordon said. Everywhere in the room it was business as usual. Eyes to boards, hands writing quickly on checklist, making notes. Edith had yet to speak a word. The man from CEGB had finished his tea and stood silently as well. None of them had any idea what was happening. A single man was powering a power pnt by tapping into an energy source that no one understood. If it had been anyone other than Aric she’d have been terrified. But she knew him, like she knew no other person on Earth. Knew him and trusted him.

  “Match generator frequency.”

  Now it was Wendy’s turn to speak.

  “Matching frequency to 50 Hz.”

  “CEGB HQ, this is Croydon B Central Control. We are matching frequency, standing by to attach to the grid.” Nigel looked at the CEGB rep and the man finally consulted his safety inspector. They had a brief discussion before he nodded to Gordon. It had taken them approximately three hours to reach this point.

  “Close generator breaker.”

  Wendy pced her hand on a rge triple pronged breaker and pushed it down until it locked in pce. Immediately a series of lights became illuminated, and an indicator on the wall above the master control panel read the power that Croydon B Power Pnt 1, a facility that had sat idle for a month, that still had empty fuel bunkers, was contributing to the national power grid.

  50.1 MW.

  “Well done everyone,” Gordon said with a smile.

  The time was 10:22 AM.

  They ran at 50 megawatts for almost forty-five minutes. More than enough time for the cooling towers, that had sat idle since April, to draw attention.

  Millicent Rudge lived on the edge of New Addington, in a modest postwar semi with a back garden that just barely offered a view of Croydon B’s looming cooling towers. She was up early that Friday—too early, she thought—as her youngest, Alfie, tugged on her robe.

  “Mummy, one of them towers is angry again.”

  That was how her husband, Alfie senior, expined it to young Alf whenever the plumes grew rge during the cold months.

  “Them towers is angry, Alf. Look at ’em fume. They’s so mad they eat little boys up if they get too close.”

  He would immediately ruin the effect of his words by tickling young Alf to the point that his mother thought he might pee himself.

  But it had been a month or more since any of those towers had showed any sign of life.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Milli said as she got her own look.

  I need to call Pame, she thought as she walked to the telephone.