A Day in the Life of an Atomic Weapons Research Establishment Read online



  A Day In the Life Of

  An

  Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

  David Reynolds

  Copyright © David Reynolds 2011

  ISBN 978-1-4659-3910-4

  Disclaimer: All Characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Part 1

  The Arrival

  What you are about to read would be classified Top Secret were it not for the fact I've changed the names, places, events, technology and characters to protect the innocent and guilty alike.

  By 8:30am that crisp autumn Monday morning there was a steady stream of foot and vehicle traffic arriving through the main gate of the Tadcaster Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, AWRE (Tadcaster), also known as simply “the site” by the locals and “the establishment” by those who worked there.

  Six guards armed with machine pistols, leather gloves and dark sunglasses made sure everyone was in no doubt they were arriving at somewhere serious and secret.

  Each arrival wore an ID badge clearly visible at all times lest they be summarily shot under the “Better Safe Than Sorry” policy introduced shortly after 9/11.

  Despite the risk of summary execution our hero Bill Shilbert, a fresh out of school 18 year-old employee at the establishment, still insisted on pasting pictures from the FBI's most wanted website over his own mug shot on his ID card. Others had warned him that it could end in tears but Bill just scoffed and reminded them that the rule only stated staff must have their ID badge clearly visible at all times, there was nothing about the picture on it.

  Right now Bill was discovering that the brakes on his push bike had worn down; a situation not helped by the fact he was badly hung over; since his 18th Birthday his weekend began on Friday afternoon in the site's recreation society bar and ended late Sunday evening in the Leaking Boat pub situated just outside the east gate of the site, as if the site's six pubs were not enough for the 11,000+ workers; exactly how many people worked there was so secret no one knew.

  Bill careered down the slope towards the main gate unable to stop. He weaved around pedestrians more by luck than good manoeuvring and wailed as he shot through the gates before the guards could register what had happened let alone draw their weapons.

  The arriving workers carried on as if nothing had happened and the two guards Bill narrowly missed as he swept between them decided that this was probably the best course of action too; it was a Monday morning and no-one wanted to spend the first two days of a week filling out forms. They shrugged to each other and returned to what they'd been trained to do, sternly watching the steady stream of workers arrive.

  AWRE(Tadcaster) built on a wartime US airbase was massive as only US airbases could be. Being built on an airbase also meant the main road system looked just like an airport from the air.

  20 miles of fencing topped with razor wire surrounded the site. This proved so effective at keeping foxes out that the rabbit population within the site had exploded. The problem became so bad the site had its own ferret division tasked with keeping them under control but failing miserably; there's only so much one man and his ferret can do.

  Although constructed in the 1950's the buildings around the main gate were the best on the site. They shielded the casual eye of a person passing the main gate from the buildings behind. The buildings around the main gate housed the administrative arm, the staff canteen and one of the sites' six pubs.

  The buildings behind those at the front gate ranged from post war prefabricated huts and hastily constructed office buildings built for the US base towards the end of the war, these served as offices for most of the scientists and managerial staff, to near windowless concrete blocks which is where most of the scientists worked. A row of 6 large bomb resistant aircraft hangers lined the west side of the site; they use to house flying fortresses aircraft but since the end of World War 2 they had become the repository for things best forgotten for reasons of national security; conspiracy theorists would have a field day if they knew it existed.

  To the east side of the site was a large building with a dome on top. Several pipes fed in and out of it that leaked steam continually. It looked like a post industrial apocalyptic mosque but was in fact the sites' open-topped nuclear reactor; basically a lot of Uranium at the bottom of 100ft of water in to which scientists would dangle things to see what would happen. Apparently it turned bacon purple and made coffee taste like bananas.

  As Bill cycled towards the small brick building he worked in David was leaning back with his feet on his desk and his chair with just the two back legs on the floor.

  “You'll fall off that and crack your head one day” said Julie, David's office companion.

  “Haven't so far.” came David's typically cocky response.

  Julie was 2 grades senior to David but David had secured the desk next to the window because he was in the office first. This left Julie to take the desk by the door giving everyone the impression she was David's secretary, much to his private amusement and her annoyance.

  Julie had enquired with admin about switching places but they'd explained that due to budget cuts you had to have a better reason for moving than not liking where you sat. They added that she couldn't move herself because of the unions.

  Once Julie had cracked when someone left a message with her for David for the n'th time that week.

  “I'm not your bloody secretary!” she'd screamed at David bringing the building’s other residents out of their offices to see what was happening.

  “It's not my fault people keep leaving messages for me with you.” he'd replied, affecting a look of shock and hurt at the same time.

  “I don't think of you that way you know.” he'd added sympathetically. He'd wisely refrained from putting a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  Frustrated at how foolish she'd looked by complaining about something as apparently trivial as passing on a message Julie never brought the subject up again.

  The fact David often told people to leave him a message with her was never mentioned by David. Nor was the fact he sometimes arranged to be away from the office when he knew people would be coming and Julie was there. It wasn't a sexist thing it was a grade thing. David was always “sticking it to the man”.

  While David read his copy of New Scientist, Julie busied herself watering the tomato plants on the windowsill behind David.

  The tomatoes had appeared one day as saplings in pots and when Julie had asked David where they'd come from he denied knowing except that he'd heard something about a new “green” initiative and he thought it might be that. He'd added that they'd probably be dead soon since that was the effect he always had on plants. From that day on Julie took care of the tomatoes. She'd being doing a good job too as many trusses of large ripening tomatoes weighed down the plants.

  The secret was that the tomato plants were something David had been working on in his laboratory for the past two years.

  David had inherited a controlled area laboratory. A place where one must don protective clothing before entering and one could only enter if one were a certified radiological worker, which David was. It contained some of the most radioactive and toxic substances on Earth and was David's playground where he spent many uninterrupted and unsupervised days working on pet projects.

  Although only one up on the scale from a test tube cleaner the fact he was the only one who used the laboratory meant he was also the one who decided what he needed.

  After a couple of years of creative effort and ordering various expensive bit
s of equipment more suited to biology than radio chemistry David had succeeded in splicing the genes that gave the cannabis plant all its desired properties on the illegal drugs market, in to a variety of beef tomato plant.

  Judging by the colour of the fruits on the tomato plants his mission to revolutionise the cheese and tomato toasty was close to fruition, literally and metaphorically.

  “Morning all!” sang Pauline as she breezed past David and Julie's office to the office she shared with Tom, a 30 something lanky red-haired Scot who liked magic and was always quoting Star Trek. David had started the rumour that Tom was smitten with Pauline but he was too shy to do anything about it.

  “Morning” replied Julie.

  “Yo” said David.

  Bill Shilbert worked in the Source Movements group based at the back of the building where Julie, Tom, Pauline and David had their offices.

  “Sources” is the generic name given to highly radioactive materials because they're sources of radiation. Sources were invariably accompanied by a lot of lead to shield people from the radiation so were very heavy. The Source Movements group was responsible for moving these sources between buildings safely, they had several industrial strength electric flat top carts parked inside the building. They also had a lot of lead bricks that could be fashioned in to lead walls around sources to prevent the radiation getting out. All of this will become useful later in the story.

  Bill's boss was Harry. Harry was nearing retirement; he smoked like a chimney and had more radiation exposure than every other person on the site together. It was his aim to die of a radiation related cause, basically any form of cancer, so his family could collect the £1m quietly awarded in such circumstances.

  “Watcha.” Bill said to Harry as he entered the office. Harry woke from his morning nap and stared at Bill for a second as if uncertain where he was.

  “Good morning young man, have you cleaned the test tubes from last week.” he eventually said.

  “Nah, I've got to fill the hot water urn for Betty yet. I'll get straight on it after that.”

  Betty was the buildings' tea lady whose job was to serve the staff breakfast tea by trolley to their offices at 9.00am and then the morning tea break tea in the tea room at 10:15am as well as lunch tea (11:30 -13:30), afternoon tea (14:00) and teatime tea at 16:00 so the staff could have one before they left at 16:30. She also washed and dried the cups and cutlery and would have filled the hot water urn too but for her bad back.

  After filling the hot water urn it occurred to Bill that he hadn't really been properly hung over coming in to work, he'd still been drunk from the night before. Now he was becoming very hung over. Nothing some painkillers and a quick nap in the gents couldn't cure he figured so off he went. With practice Bill had worked out how to sleep while sat on the toilet with his head being cooled by the cistern feed pipe.

  By 9:30am Julie had settled herself down to read the Guardian; Pauline and Tom were discussing how unseasonably warm it had been of late; Harry sat in the source loading bay smoking his pipe; David was in his laboratory and Bill was snoring gently in cubical one of the gents in time with the dripping water from a leaking valve in the cistern. It was shaping up as another regular day at AWRE(Tadcaster). Then came the explosion.