Vaxdemic Book 3 Chapter 9
Chapter 9
When I was younger I often imagined being rich and having a house with my own private lake. Not that I liked swimming, boating, being outside, or really anything, one would do at a lake, but I think it’s a common dream among the naïve. My time at Smith’s Summit Dam has been anything but relaxing. I wanted to get to work right away on fixing the generator but unfortunately that wasn’t an option.
Garv hasn’t spent his time building much infrastructure for his claimed home. The generator and his ramshackle greenhouse are the only things he’s put any real effort into. Everything else was playing with his computers. During our negotiations he demanded that if we were going to take the generator down to repair it, we must set up another source of power first. My first week was spent setting up the windmills I brought. Unfortunately, they proved insufficient to power the lights in the dam as well as Garv’s computers, so we had to bring in parts for more. When those proved insufficient, Matt sent his men to retrieve some of his personal solar panels. On the plus side I now know how to work with solar panels.
It took some coaxing to get Garv to show us how to shut off the water and drain the generator so we could take it apart. I think he still has some issues trusting us, but Matt’s made it clear we aren’t leaving. The generator is in pretty rough shape. One of the reasons it’s been turning slowly is a lack of lubrication. Garv told us as much before we started. He has been trying to lubricate it himself, but he ran out of grease very early, and I really don’t want to mention the various things he tried since. The bearings are also in rough shape. Matt sent one to his son so he could make replacements.
There’s also a problem with rust. If I had to guess I’d say it was built in the fifties or earlier. The inside is mostly steel, copper, and ceramic, and almost all the steel is rusted. My first thought was the generator may not be savable. After spending a day inspecting it Matt said most of the rust was only on the surface and we could remove it, but it won’t be easy. Luckily the generator is very basic, there are no chips or circuit boards. At least there are no circuits in the generator itself.
At some point in the past there was an upgrade to the controlling hardware. There is a very primitive computerized system that Garv disconnected before working on the generator the first time. He never bothered to hook it back up and jury-rigged a control system that I’m not sure how to describe. If you’ve ever seen a picture of someone using a dozen different adapters to hook up and old gaming console, going from antenna to coax, to rgb, to component, to dvi, to hdmi, etc, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I have no idea how it works, and Garv can’t explain it so we’re just going to take it off and try to figure out the old hardware. That part doesn’t intimidate me like the rest. I’ve done a lot of retrofits in my time. Granted most were remote, and I didn’t hook up the hardware, but I’m on firmer footing there than with the generator.
We do have one problem I wish we could ignore but we’ll have to face sooner or later. The dam isn’t hooked up to the grid. We’ve found where we think it hooked up at one time, four massive studs on the side of the dam with the farthest fall. There easy to see once you look because of the massive rust brown streaks that run down the concrete from their constant exposure to rain. Someone will have to climb out there and either clean or replace the studs. I’m not sure how we would replace steel studs that are six inches in diameter, but I’m not sure about a lot of things right now.
Speaking of things I’m not sure about, let’s talk about Garv Farkas. First of all he’s not a good host. On our second day here we negotiated with him for control of the dam and generator so that we could fix it. His terms were that he got to keep living there, that he always got power for free, and that we had to keep feeding him as long as we were there. We agreed, but our conditions were, that we got the first block house so we didn’t have to camp outside, that he help us with whatever knowledge he’d gained about the generator, and that he accept a presence here to protect and maintain the dam after we leave. What I’m giving you is the simplified version of the agreement because a few things have been added.
The first thing was added by Matt, and it was rather involuntary. After three days of working in a dimly lit room in close proximity of our demi-hobo host, Matt and two of his men captured Garv and threw him into a bathtub, where they proceeded to scrub him mercilessly. It may sound odd and a little gross to mention this, but this is where we found out he was white. They also cut off his matted beard and hair. Matt then added the rule that Garv would have to bath at least twice a week, or a bath like this would happen again. Garv agreed, but has started making his own baths which he takes in his greenhouse.
This led to the second change. Garv requested clothes. He is from a city about three hundred miles north of here. When the world started going crazy around him and people started to die in mass, he started planning what he would do. He came up with several plans, but as more people died, they got crazier. A week before the power shut off he decided if he wanted to continue his gamer lifestyle he would need power. He figured the working dams would be guarded, but when he ran across Smith’s Summit and how it had been decommissioned decades ago, he thought it may be the perfect spot. He stole the biggest SUV he could get his hands on, attached a trailer, and loaded it up with all the food and computer stuff he could take from the newly abandoned stores. He thought far enough ahead to get a bed and some tools, but not far enough to bring more than four outfits. After he arrived at the dam he managed to forage for stuff for about a week before he ran out of gas and had to walk back to his new home.
The food he brought started running low after six months. That’s when he attempted to grow food from seeds he picked out of some cans. Most failed, but he did manage to grow some green beans and tomatoes. When the weather started to cool, he started work on his greenhouse. He says it took him two months to build because he had to walk to all the nearby houses and take their glass doors and windows. Seeing the structure, he’s built I have a hard time believing it was just a few houses, or two months.
There are a lot of bad things I could say about the man, but I was right with my initial assessment. I think he can be useful. Garv is a genius when it comes to anything computerized. His drones are a testament to his building and programing skills. They are voice controlled, and use three different types of cameras to track people. I’m a little more skilled in the particulars of electricity thanks to my own experiments but Garv has an overwhelming edge in experience with electronics. He has trouble with more mechanical things like the generator and the control system, but anything with an operating system, he can take apart and change in anyway his freakish imagination wills.
There are things I find troubling about him, mainly that he reminds me of myself, or who I was before. Garv had almost no friends and worked a job purely to support his hobby of playing with computers. He won’t say what his job was, but I’m pretty sure it was menial. When he wasn’t taking things apart that most people wouldn’t think came apart, he was playing games, and trolling people on the internet. Part of me thinks if we had met in the world before we would have been friends. Another part says we wouldn’t talk to each other because of who we were.
Maybe I feel bad for him, considering how different our outcomes were. Maybe that’s why I offered to help him with his greenhouse. He eyed me suspiciously when I asked, but after a few moments of thought, he shrugged and said as long as I didn’t ruin it and we kept feeding him I could do what I wanted. I’ve since started tending the plants. They’re doing much better and producing much more food. I’ve made a request in one of the letters I wrote for Claire, to send certain seeds and tools along with my questions of how she and Brock are doing. It will take two weeks before I hear anything. I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to keep in touch once winter comes.
Matt had the same thought and has busied himself with a shed he sent for, to store food and supplies for winter. He’s told me to make a list of things I think we’ll need for the generator. We receive shipments of stuff once a week and things are starting to get crowded. The other members of our expedition haven’t been idle. They spend most of their time cutting down the trees outside the fenced area around the damn. They’ve been using the wood to fortify the fence near the road. They’ve erected a guard tower and put a log wall in front of a quarter of the old fence. I’m starting to feel like I live in an old fort.
November 4, 2023