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"What are we in for today?" She asks as we head down the steps.

"Much of the same, I think. Stan needs a few months before we can talk seriously about bringing the North Anna reactor online…"

"If it works… it’ll make Fredericksburg the Las Vegas of the Mid Atlantic… there’s some irony there."

I look back at the quaint, modern colonial setting of our domicile, inelegantly called the Framar House.

"Miles is gonna be on about the sustainability of the farming community, which means Shelly’s gonna wind him up with portions and rationing…"

"If she brings up veganism one more time, I’m gonna throw her over the wall…"

"Coming from a vegetarian, that’s saying a lot…"

"So I’m sure Wendell’s gonna turn that into another compensation battle, as if a crop-lien system is beneficial to anyone in a society without money…"

"And so on, and so on, and so on…"

When we finally make it outside, we manage to run out of conversation, at least until she looks at the stack of paper under my arm.

"What’s that?"

"…papers…"

"Whew, I thought it was some kind of manuscript, you know, with words on it… you had me frightened. Are you actually going to tell me what it is now?"

"Well… gotta finish something I started."

"You mean…"

"Yep. After today, I’m not gonna bring it up ever again."

"So that’s… well, you know I’m with you…"

"I wouldn’t worry myself with something like that."

As she smiles at me, I benignly wrap my arm around her and hug her against me for a moment. We walk briskly along the path between the towering redbrick buildings, surrounded on all sides by lush, overgrown grass. As I let go and resume limping along, I can’t help but stare at the rusted husks of cars lined up outside one of the buildings. Amusingly enough, the plastic circled ‘T’ on the back of one car has stood up to decades of weathering, at least enough for me to be able to tell that the car was, in its better days, a 2000 Toyota Solara, one of the last cars ever made. With all the gasoline rotted away, even one locked in an airtight shipping container would be useless today.

A few hundred feet hence, I lock my eyes on the crumbled husk of the building once known as George Washington Hall; we can never be sure what happened, but a quick venture through the piles of scorched brick, beams, and skeletons would have one believe that someone either set the building ablaze or blew it up. Like many of the hundreds of buildings around Fredericksburg, this hasty tomb has been converted into a home for undemanding wildlife, and thus should be strictly avoided.

Just past the GW mess lays an expansive, empty field where the grass has grown long enough to fold over into bushels, making it just as dangerous as the mess that used to be GW hall, but excellent for hunting. When the wind blows in and forces a rippling cascade across the thick, green carpet of grass, I have a moment to take notice of the silence that immediately precedes and follows it. On a quiet day in the middle of the week, you can sit outside with your eyes closed and hear the sound of the clouds crawling through the crisp, sharp, unspoiled layers of blue.

Beyond this, our destination; towering hedges which have only been maintained along the sides, forming massive green walls. These walls enclose an empty circular fountain around which everyone is gathering for this week’s civil debate. As a matter of courtesy, they wait until the last of the adults arrive before they begin discussion. As I approach, I can see Stan Adamczyk, a man of 34 who was given instruction on the operation of the nearby nuclear reactor by his father, the nuclear engineer who was last in charge of it.

When the crisis was at its apex, the power plant was kept running under the jurisdiction of local national guardsmen until electric power was no longer deemed necessary. The elder Adamczyk retained instructions on how to reopen the plant in the event that repopulation could occur. He was turned a few days after his 72^nd birthday almost 16 years ago. Like his father, Stan is bald with a reddish garland of hair still remaining above his ears and pudgy without being overweight in a manner that is solely indicative of genetics.

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