PART III
"THE RECKONING"
19
Friday is consumed by my concentration on the now fully compiled data gathered in scans of the massive columns, the core supports for the Main Office's expansive structure. It was an ungainly design for the sake of style, requiring enormous lattices of trusses with hidden steel supports to strengthen the locations where girders and I-beams come together.
If it weren't for fashion, the Capitol could rebuild the whole Main Office at a pittance of a price. That fad of imposing architecture had made monstrosities of these buildings. Thus, the Main Office was a confounding nightmare of skeletal complexity. For this very reason, it could be much easier to bring down, if hidden design flaws can be found.
The compiled data renders on the screen as I adjust values, testing the supports. During the winter, snow builds up on the roof. It melts, refreezes and then is snowed over again. Based on weather history in District 11, I can estimate how much weight will be added during the winter, per square foot of roof space. Several tons overall, distributed evenly over the roof. Pressure increases on the pillars go into the simulation and the supports hold. No surprise. If they buckled in the simulation, it would beg the question as to why the building remains standing at all. The cracks don't even expand.
By fiddling with unrealistic values, I can find out the stress limits. If the weight was approximately ten times greater than normal, the cracks would expand rapidly and the pillars would fail, collapsing the entire Main Office, all starting from two pillars on the northwest side of the atrium. That would require repeated cycles of blizzards at night and sunny, warmish days throughout of winter.
The two pillars on the northwest are worse than the raw indications suggested, and still nothing can further compromise them. The illogical design encouraged robust building, both the benefit of the building and the bane of my dark plot.
After working for seven hours straight, I decide to take a break for dinner. Meyla went back over to the Amaranth's. She won't return until later on tonight. There are a handful of leftover rolls, wrapped up in the cupboard. I take two out and look for butter. None in the house. What about jam? Gone as of a few days ago.
Was that just a few days ago? It seems like another lifetime. Like another me knifing the apricot spread onto bread slices for the children. I wonder how they are doing. The older two may understand that Rue is gone, a victim of this madness. The others won't realize it quite yet. Breck may never remember his oldest sister. If he remembers anything though, it ought to be her gentle voice.
I give up and resort to chewing the roll plain. Not exactly enticing, since they're a few days old and tough when fresh. I choke down a few bites before I realize that I'm not really hungry. I'm not very anything except aggravated. I drop the roll, sighing.
Scipio has always insisted that the time for rebellion is coming. It's like a mirage that fades as you draw near. You think you see water on the roadway. However, the closer you draw, the more it shimmers away. Like the mountains to the east. You can walk from one side of District 11 to the other, a span nearing thirty miles or so, and still those mountains appear the same distance off, never any closer.
"Why can't you trust him?" I ask myself out loud. "Just wait until he tells you it's time. He's no fool." I haven't even formed the final word with my lips before my thoughts reply. He's never once shown that he can act. Always the planner, always the watcher, always the thinker. Never yet a man of action.
When I work on a building, it can take years to fully asses every bit of the structure and sometimes I make small repairs during. Eventually, everything is taken care of over the course of a several years. There's no method to engineering which doesn't require the real world. At some point, real stuff has to matter or else all your concepts are only worth the flitting moments you spend thinking about them.
At some point, the Peacekeepers must be defeated in District 11 and when the other districts follow suit, they must unite and battle against the Capitol's heinous response. The Dark Days ended when District 13 was wiped off the map for the rebellion it encouraged. Whatever good they provided to the Capitol was expendable. Between 10 and 11, we are the source of food for all of Panem. They'd have to be more careful with us. And there can be no co-existence with the depraved people of the Capitol. Our Submission and their overthrow are the only options available.
That's just a concept though. It bears no weight in reality or even a hint of a resemblance to it. We are captives who cannot eat the food we produce! We are paid for our efforts and then resold food in such small quantities that it hardly seems sensible for us to produce much.
Everything about Panem makes me ill, most of all Jura Penrose and Volente Covas. Much as I dislike admitting it to myself, even Scipio's working his was onto my list of people who are part of the problem. He's supposed to be leading the underground, striking up an army against the government!
The Gamemakers have changed the rules permitting two tributes to win. People all over Panem are wearing the mockingjay pins to honor Katniss Everdeen. At a time rare as this, either Scipio is woefully ill-suited to the job of organizing a rebellion or he has the worst sense in timing.
He's a smart man, very smart. If he can be faulted, it's not in his comprehension or intelligence. He just needs the timing kicked off for him and I have little choice but to act soon, if I am to accomplish anything at all. Maybe if I just generate a plan, something elaborate, involving more than just the Main Office.
Wheels turn in my head. Subconsciously, my finger taps against my upper lip. That probably wouldn't work. Scipio is bound to have a plan for the uprising. Perhaps then, I ought to work up a report on the potential insurrection that could arise with the Main Office's destruction. The sight of the Main Office a crumbled mass of steel, stone, and men would spur other residents to join the fight.
I paw at the bread and take another bite, knowing all too well that my stomach is hungry. The stomach merely has a hard time getting messages past my bitter, broken heart. Grabbing paper and a mechanical pencil, I scribble down a few notes about the calculations my computer displays. How much directed explosive would it take to punch through the damaged columns? My short experience with explosives was purely academic; part of a thermodynamics class, twenty years ago, and most of what I learned is fuzzy. I flip through a few reference books.
The stone pillars are under stress already from the steel they suspend in the air. They're designed to withstand vertical pressure with amazing resilience. Lateral force, though, is another matter altogether. Actually, it would take a great deal of pressure to sufficiently encourage the fractures. To guarantee failure of a single column would require a surprisingly moderate detonation. But there are twelve pillars and the necessary quantity adds up quickly.
I scribble a few sketched ideas and simulate the concepts in my computer. Hypothetically, the pressures involved could be generated with carefully drilled holes and some well-placed shaped charges. I'm not demolitions expert, but structural stress I know backward and forward. A grimace creases my face. The requisite energy would require far too many explosives in too many holes. There's no way to set it up without being noticed. And to attempt a demolition without enough power, I may as well be using cut cord, rather than weapons grade charges.
My eyes flash open with the wry realization. I yank out a dusty, old book that contains specifications and proper handling/usage instructions for some of the more dangerous tools at my disposal. According to the statistics, yes, it could work, just maybe. Cut cord is a flexible tube with a small amount of plastic explosive filling the center. It's used to break down scrap steel into manageable pieces for shipping to District 2 where steel is milled, cast, and forged. Ordering cut cord takes a special requisition form from the Capitol and they only let me have it in very small quantities, too small for this purpose.
I think back to when Mason and I last used it. Mason was around then, so it was probably over a year ago. We had wrapped a few coils of the yellow plastic around a steel girder in the Justice Building and then covered the coils in a special foam wrap that absorbs and compresses the detonation. It split the metal right in two and we replaced the girder with some hired help and special equipment from the Capitol. That must have been... almost two years ago.
"Wait a minute," I muse. I've been focusing on the pillars for so long I neglected to consider the way the superstructure is fastened to the hub. Girders and beams extend off in every direction from the core. Cut cord is designed to rip through that industrial strength metal. It's so much easier than I thought!
According to the book "Class 2 cut cord should be considered unreliable after six months and unsafe in storage. Be sure to dispose of it properly. See page 212 for directions on disposal." That means the cord I have in my storage compartment at the train yard is probably useless, maybe extremely hazardous to handle.
Unreliable or not, the leftover cord will have to do. I can't requisition new cut cord. There's enough heat on me that the request would be denied. Frankly, thinking about what I said at Rue's funeral, I'm actually a little impressed that Scipio's agents in the Peacekeepers have managed to hold Captain Covas off so far. With years to run a slow incursion, the underground is amazingly effective, more evidence that the time has come.
Furious scribblings pour from my fingers; line after line, postulating locations, revising. At intervals, the pencil lead breaks and I have to click more out. A plan begins to formulate, almost by itself. Not a plan for Scipio. He'll get the idea when the time comes. Scipio's patient. He can wait until then.
My mind is exhausted by the time Meyla returns home. I greet her and ask how the family is taking the loss.
"Not well. Where have you been all day?"
"Hon, with all the reasons I've given the Peacekeepers to come after me, I figured I better keep a lower profile." I stack the papers and close down the computer.
She nods. "Well, your sister could really use you right now... She needs to know that life can go on."
I stack the papers and books together in a pile and push the bench back. I mutter, "Can it?"
"Kippen," Meyla starts. "It won't bring Mason back."
I pick up the stack and carry it into the living room to shelve. "Mey, I'm really trying to move on. I am."
"No, you tried to forget for a few hours, not move on." My hand stays on the books. I stare into space. Meyla walks up behind me and hugs me from behind. "All we can do is remember him. There's nothing else. He's gone."
The scent of my wife's hair drifts to me once more, enticing me to submit to the miserable life of a now childless parent. These bridges are burned now, aren't they? I can't go to the underground, and the Peacekeepers are taking aim at me. Change is already set in motion. It's only a matter of time, place, and method. Scipio's wise words drift through my mind. "There's more going on than the tragedy of our own lives. It's bigger than that." That's why he'd throw me to the wind. There are so many other people in District 11 that will suffer if nothing is done. Who are suffering because for too long, nothing has been done!
I twist out of her embrace and step aside. "What of the others? What about Rue? Meyla, I've been so... angry for so long and I thought it was just because of the cover-up." My voice is so calm and controlled, it surprises us both. "Do you remember Mason's hands?"
She nods. His scars tore her up too. You could see it in her face, now and then.
"What about all the people who spend their entire lives in the fields and then starve to death because they're too old and feeble to work anymore?"
She steps toward me again, I move away. "Kip, that's not your fault."
"It's my fault, Meyla! It's my fault if I have a chance to do something about it and do nothing."
"What can we do? We can't change the system! You're angry because we can't."
"No... We can't, but I can give others the chance to grasp for a different life and you know that has to be worth trying." I stare at my wife, resolute.
Meyla's eyes widen with horror. "What are they having you do, Kippen?"
"Not them, just me... I may be able to start the end of this horror. Not for Mason or Rue. But it will protect so many others! And because it's the right thing to do."
My wife visibly melts with sorrow. As her eyes well up, it takes everything in me to stand firm. She lets her voice tremble. "You're insane, Kippen! Would you listen to yourself?"
No, I'm not, my mind insists in response. Every fragment of my reason is sound, even if driven by an emotional afterburner. The future is uncertain. But uncertain opportunity is better than certain imprisonment. I won't be free much longer, no matter what I do. I have already crossed that point. May as well strike as hard as I can in the meantime.
Is there anything I can say to my wife to make her understand? I remain silent, as calm as possible; my control thins with her anguish. She's the only one who could weaken my resolve. She's also someone who ought to understand the hopelessness of trying to raise a family in this society.
No. It's time the Capitol face a real rebellion and I will bring the blade to their neck.