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The Indian Point

“A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.”
- Sioux Tribe Proverb

“It's impossible to awaken a man who is pretending to be asleep.”
- Navajo Tribe Proverb

8am Shift Handover
Indian Point is the US's largest nuclear power facility. Sitting on the bank of the Hudson River, it is situated in Buchanan, upstate New York, approximately 35 miles north of New York City.
   Indian Point regulations stipulate that Indian Point 2 Reactor Core Control Room (IP2R-CCR) must in no circumstance be left unattended. But, like a scene at the Burns Power Plant on The Simpsons, this is a common occurrence. A case of life imitating art.
   We are about to find out about the 8 individuals breaking this rule.

At any given time you will find IP2R-CCR staffed by three highly skilled controllers and a team leader. Each member of staff will have undergone months of rigorous training before they will be handed the responsibility of undertaking such a highly critical role. A melt down of IP2R would decimate the environment and lives of over 20 million people along the entire the north-eastern seaboard, taking in New York City, upstate New York, Boston, etc. To this end IP2R-CCR is manned 24 hours a day in three shifts of eight hours; 8am to 4pm, 4pm to 12am, 12am to 8am. In total there are 48 workers. IP1R has been decommission 15 years. The enriched uranium-235 fuel rod still present in IP1R have a half-life of 700 million years and it therefore still monitored by a skeleton staff for stability.

At 8.04am Bill Howard, Wendy Chung, Russell Wright, Clive Goldsmith, Chuck Jefferies, Wyatt Swanson, Dough Hughes and Andy Colt can all be found in the car park a good four minutes after this military precision handover should have taken place.
   These people have worked, bowled, drank, hung out, had BBQs, laughed and despaired with one another. They are well acquainted.
   In the car park we see them chatting, joking, laughing with one another for a good ten minutes. The Indian Point will come to pass at 8.14am but until that happens lets just content ourselves with spending some time with the background stories of our 8 individuals.

Chuck 'The Genius' Jefferies
Weighing in at 245lbs Chuck was a man of monolithic proportions. Sure, to look at him you would think - happy, portly regular-guy. But once he got into the shirt with his name embroidered on the chest he was a God. A long time ago he'd been a legend with a national reputation. Coast-to-coast, baby. The Albert Einstein of the Alley. The Genius!
   The mythology of the man spoke of a 14-frame 265 at eleven. Numerous appearances in the formative years of television in the late 50s. Sponsorship. Endorsements. Adverts.
   He had won every state and national Bowling championship by his mid twenties.
   In his eyes it was then time to take it to the next level. There was nothing left to win except the hearts, minds, wrists and forearms of a new crop of talent. As a mentor he achieved equal success. But the financial ramifications playing to teach or just for fun meant that he had to take a regular job - the 'Indian Point' job - to make ends meet.
   “You'll never guess who I'm working with!” his colleagues would tell their friends. It was an honour which bestowed its very own unique type of respect. An awe of something that had come to pass in one man's life. His humility would breed respect. A respect which would be a solid foundation for all his friendships. Genius. Sttttt-rrrrr-ike!!

Russell 'High-Flyer' Wright
There was a switch and the switch turned off. It was a split second flick, click and then it was gone. When Russell thought about the switch, and saw it as an off, he liked to see this off as Cassie but he knew that this wasn't true. It just made it easier to deal with. Because if he saw the switch as Cassie it seemed more like an on than an off. Although he knew it to be an off; a fact no matter-of-perspective would flip.
   God, how he loved Cassie. So, the money, well, it didn't matter any more. Sure the money had been nice. Allowed him to do what the hell he wanted. But the stress didn't. It was paralysing.
   With the off came love. A certainty that suited him well.
   He'd always seen the off switch coming. On the horizon as certain as love. He'd seen those other high-fliers on Wall Street crash and burn. Or simple crash. Or worst off all just burn. His landing had been softer. Feather soft. Cassie.
   Sure sometimes it bugged him, remembering the restaurants, the Central Park apartment, the clothes and the cars. What cars. A '67 Corvette and an English Jaguar E-type. Payments could no longer be kept up.
   He could never truly isolate what had actually happened. But Cassie told him that it wasn't healthy to dwell on it. “My attitude is, when you can't do something any more, then do something else instead,” she had told him.
   Thankfully from her soft lips this took away the sting. It made sense. Pacified.

This morning as he is talking with his friends he's happy. Cassie is at home, waiting. Excited. Exciting.
   The switch feels real. Important.
   Click. Off. Click. On. Click. Click.

Andy 'Normal Guy' Colt
Andy was so normal that he lost his name. There was something about this fact that didn't sit right. Normal people have names. Normal names. Not names like 'Normal Guy'. That's not a normal name.

New colleagues would never discover his real name till months later.
   “Is Andy there?” His wife would ask.
   “Andy? There's no Andy here.”
   But then through a process of elimination, Normal Guy would become Andy. Normal Guy's real name was Andy. No way!

Normal Guy embodied everything normal and American. Childhood sweetheart. Ball team as a kid. Wife. Kids. Leafy suburb. A drink with his friends on a Friday night. BBQs. Trimming the lawn on a Sunday morning. The Indian Point job was as normal as apple pie or The Simpsons.

The Normal Guy name had stuck so firmly that colleagues would make it a game between one another to try and catch him out. No one ever got one over on the normalness of Normal Guy. No were no available angles. So acceptance flowed.
   Andy wasn't stupid, he knew they were pulling his leg. He did find it funny. But he thought it would be nicer if they would call him Andy once in a while. Just out of respect.
   No normal person likes to lose their name. His mother had given him that name.

Doug 'Junkie' Hughes
Doug ripped off his friends. But as the cliché goes - the only person he really sold short was himself. Always playing the 'Nam card. Shot twice in his left forearm. Seen buddies die. He'd picked up a habit in the Jungle that he would subsequently never shake.
   But Doug was smart, a survivor. He never forgot his debts but he would always make sure to forget the figure. He called it the 'Sympathy Interest' scam.
   “I'm sure it was $50.” Knowing fine well it was $80. Maybe $90. It wasn't his fault he was a Vet. Consciously subconsciously rubbed his left arm for affect. Never failed. Sure they'd know he was a junkie but a patriotic junkie. A junkie who had seen off the scourge of communism. It was moral decision that most people were not interested in investing energy into and so 9 out of 10 he'd be ahead.

Then every six months he would disappear. Move on. New town. Sometimes a new state. Slates cleaned. Dealers. Bar tabs. Friends. Associates. Work colleagues. A new start. Rebirth. Born-again junkie. All debts becoming null and void. All sins purged.
   Drifting along, people didn’t seem to exist and he was barely there himself.
   The seasons of addiction and the requisite money the only variable in his migratory habits.

But ...
   Doug had been at Indian Point for 3 years. The longest he'd been in any one place in for over 35 years.
   It felt strange. The Indian Point a sticking point.
   Maybe he was getting too old, too tired. Letting people get to him. Accepting him. As time went on it seemed harder and harder to pull his shit on the people around him. It wasn't that he liked these people, it was that they liked him. He felt grounded.
   There was nothing to do but take a little control. So he got a job.

Everyone has redeeming features. Things that get missed, seem irrelevant in the face of an all-encompassing, negative trait, like addiction. In Doug's instance it was animals. He had three dogs. Sal, Bess and Bobby. But he wasn’t just interested in dogs. All animals interested Doug.
   Later he'd take a zoo keepers job in the Bronx and put a bullet through his head. But that's a different story. So this morning we'll let him continue his conversation about Parrots. I never knew they were so expensive, did you?

Wendy 'Ten Thousand Deaths' Chung
Wendy Chung had a neat yet highly-strung, third-generation oriental-temperament.
   Wendy had lived her life ten thousand times over in complete agony. Her current incarnation was peaceful and simple but the torture, disgrace, pain, suffering from these ten thousand other lives reverberated and spilled over into the body she currently occupied.
   The first inclination of these multitudes of painful lives occurred at age six. She had fallen badly from a swing. She was transported to another place. Coming around she screamed the single word, “Death!”
   Now she paid money to court these ideas - regression therapy, hypnosis, readings. Anything that reaffirmed the pain she had grown used to.
   Work colleagues had heard the stories ten thousand times before. Her face hinted at something bad. But people learnt to not enquired as any sympathetic words were the touch paper to open the fires of her otherworldly zeal. Each story would end in her death. A bad ending to a story, even worse when the end related the person recounting the story.

To say that her temperament affected her chi would be wrong. There were many choice alignments in Wendy's life. Her previous lives where more of a hobbie, whilst her child Lola was much more. Life. Untarnished life.

This morning she will take Lola to the Bronx Zoo. One of Lola favourite activities. Lola loves animals. Walking round she will be abstractly thinking about past lives of the animals when a stranger will stop her and tell her some shocking news.

Wyatt 'High Noon' Swanson
Wyatt's real name was Matt. Not very wild west you'd agree. So he changed it by law. Mr and Mrs. Swanson's cute, little baby-boy Matthew had been gunned down in cold blood. Out from the shadows sauntered the killer, Wyatt Swanson. One mean son of a bitch.
   Official documents all carried this six-shooter of a new moniker. When people would ask if that was really his real name, he'd produce his driving licence. They put it down to by-name-by-nature. Because this guy could talk the hind-legs off a pack-mule with his stories of American heritage, plots to Spaghetti Westerns and the details of him seminal Colt collection. He was obsessed with how The West was won.

But the truth was somewhat darker. It was pure justification on his part. This is a wild country he would repeat to himself. A wild country. Wild.
   After he'd shot the first man in a senseless, barroom argument in Parade, South Dakota he swore to God that if he escaped going to jail he's never do it again. Begged with his Maker to not to be sent to prison.

He broke his promise in Marksville, Louisiana. This time it was over money. The black kid couldn't have been more than 19 years old. Then again in Reno, Nevada. Money again.

Who was right and who was wrong, decided by a piece of metal .38 inches in diameter. How it jumped at Wyatt's beck and call.
   Every time he was racked with guilt for around a month.
   But there was something strange about Indian Point. It was the domes. They seemed futuristic and fragile. If you fired off a shot maybe you'd kill the man but there'd be a mushroom cloud to accompany it. The whole state of New York seemed fragile, uptight, and maybe this was an advantage for a man with the Wild West in his blood.
   America? The darned, buck-wild country. Hell. But the Indian's had won, the cowboys had been defeated. This was Indian Point to Matthew but how he loved to talk of the imaginary battles. It was so heroic.

Bill 'No Balls' Howard
A controversial point, but three nights previous Bill had caught his wife in bed with his brother Don. He had returned unexpectedly, as these things generally happen.
   Bill was meant to be bowling with Chuck but had forgotten his balls.
   When he told his friends the story in this way they laughed but the irony was lost on Bill.

This morning he is set to return to an empty house. She'd taken Anthony and Jane when he'd kicked her out. She was now at her mother's.

Don, his brother, was a New York City fireman. Later Sir Paul McCartney would sing for his soul - the stupid, dead bastard.
   In a few weeks time Bill will read this in the newspaper and the irony wouldn't be lost; All You Need Is Love!

Clive 'Picasso' Goldsmith
Clive could have been anything that he wanted to be.
Strike that. Rewind. Start again.

Clive could have been anything that his parents wanted him to be. A Doctor. A Lawyer. An Architect. Or any other respectable professional.
   “Even a god-damned stock-broker,” his mother had pleaded, “anything, just anything, any proper job.”
   Clive wanted to be a painter. A painter he became.

Clive was quite, calm and pensive. And although he seemed unapproachable, when work colleagues asked what he'd been up to over the weekend, or where he was going on Holiday he would always answer kindly. Visiting galleries in Manhattan, trips to Venice for art fairs, Berlin, London. Always galleries. His hobby. And so he became Picasso. 'What you been up to, Picasso?' No one was aware that he actually painted himself. His paintings were bold, animalistic and yet somehow joyous.

After the disownment by his family a twenty-year-old Clive had made his own way in the world and had enjoyed a modicum of success with his art in the early seventies. A few shows. Money. Respect.
   As the seventies flew-by tastes evolved, as did his style but the two paths matured obliquely. Eventually he fell too far out of fashion.

Today as he is stood in the car park, he's thinking about a piece he was working on, ready to go on shift.
   This morning, in less than a couple of hours time his younger brother will jump out of the 49th story window from the South Tower of the World Trade Centre.
   In four days time his family will get in touch after 30-odd years.
   Although he does not know it yet, this painting he is thinking about will not get finished, nor will any other.

Individuals Of A Crowd
So he we are back in the car park, 8 individuals stood round conversing, exchanging information, opinions, ideas, making arrangements; lives interacting. At exactly 8.14am, September the 11th, 2001a Boeing 767 complete with 213 passengers flies directly over our nuclear power facility.

What follows is a transcript of is said:
Clive Goldsmith, “Look at that plane against the clear blue sky. What an image, striking.”
   Andy Colt, “But there isn't a flight-path over the plant. No plans ever fly over. That ain't right.”
   Wendy Chung, “I have bad feeling about this.”
   Russell Wright, “You have a bad feeling about everything. It looks like it's heading towards Manhattan, New York City, must be JFK. Manhattan crazy place.”
   Bill Howard, “Whatever, man. I don't care just as long as it doesn't crash on me and the plant.”
   Chuck Jefferies, “Yeah, pretty strange huh? I hope it's not hi-jacked.”
   Wyatt Swanson, “Don't hi-jacked planes get shot down and they say it's an accident any way?”
   Chuck Jefferies, “I don't think so. I hope not. I mean why would they do that?”
   Dough Hughes, “Yeah, The Genius is right. Why kill all though innocent people when they can send in the SWAT team the moment it touches down. Damned strange though I agree.”

And so on flight AA11 flies, not to the left, nor to the right, but directly over 8 very different lives brought together by a common employer and then onward down the Hudson and out of site of the car park.
   Some 35 miles further along the journey the plane would bury itself into the 95th floor of the Northern Tower of the World Trade Centre.
   But that's not the point.

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