A P R I L 2 6 1 9 6 8: S A S H A N I K O L A E V
12:43 I was walking around the edges of the plant in my lab uniform, breathing in the stars and flowers and the outline of the mountains against the sky. 12:49 I was leaning against the railing and listening to the sound of the river. Alexei said the river sounded different before the plant was built. It sounded cleaner. 12:51 I wondered if Alexei was right. He said he signed up for Russia, to make it better, but diluting the waste in the river was making it worse. 1:00 I was back inside, testing the waste. 1:14 Vasily told us to run a test on the electric system of the reactor. I told him it was against the technical specifications, because it’s my job to know them. 1:17 I ran the test. The plant was on low power. 1:19 I was humming as I listened to the sound of the reactor and looked at the three roses in the vase on my desk. 1:20 The power levels dropped. 1:21 I could hear people shouting about control rod design and positive void coefficient. 1:23 There was a bright light and I was flying through the air and I could feel the heat through my eyelids. 1:26 Everything was grey and numb and I couldn’t focus my eyes. 1:28 I wondered if I would ever see the stars or the flowers or the river again. 1:30 My mother told me when I was six that Nikolaev meant flower people, because our family loved the flowers. We spoke the language of flowers. She taught me that even numbers of flowers- 2, 6, 8 were only given to the dead. 1:31 Three flowers meant interest in a girl. Five flowers were tender feelings. Seven flowers were a marriage proposal. Nine flowers are deep respect and love. 1:32 Leaves are a symbol of hope. 1:33 Yellow tulips are a symbol of separation. Days Later I was laying on a hospital bed. The window sill was lined with vases of even numbered flowers. Months Later They brought me pictures of the nuclear site from space and they told me he was dead. Everything was gone, the flowers, the trees, everything. Years Later They told me to get some closure. I volunteered at the nuclear plant, to help clean up the damage. They said we were really making a difference, that containing it was saving millions of people, even though it would be uninhabitable for thousands of years. And I left a bouquet of leaves with nine tulips on Alexei’s grave.
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Once there was a bear named Otto.
And a girl named Alex. Alex was short for Alexandria. Otto lived in the forest with his mom, and Alex lived in a little house beside the forest with her dad. They met underneath a big tree with big branches. Otto was just a cub. They played in the forest for hours. They laid on the moss beside the bank of the creek and looked at the fish, and threw pebbles into the stream, and made things out of snow once it got colder. Alex told Otto stories and dreams and everything. They were best friends. But as Alex got older, she began to visit the forest less and less. After months and months, she visited the forest again, with a camera and a leather bag. She took pictures of the forest. She took pictures of the moss on the trees, and the needles on the pine tree, and the way the water splashed at the bottom of the little waterfall. She took pictures of Otto, and the way the light glinted on his coat and how his eyes sparkled and how tall he was when he roared and stood up on his back legs. And then they walked back to the place where they first met- the big tree with big branches. But it was gone. Otto showed her where the forest had been cleared, and all the animals that it took their homes from. He told her it was because of the men in the green trucks. Loggers. Alex entered a photography contest and won second place with her photo of Otto. She used the money to start a foundation called the Otto Bear foundation. She partnered with WCS, the wildlife conservation society, and they made bears. All of the money was donated to WCS, to protect the East Siberian Taiga. Years later, the Otto Bear foundation is still around, and so is the taiga. Alex devoted her life to photographing and saving the boreal forests of Siberia. |
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