We stepped out onto the pavement. The sun was at its peak overhead. “Welcome to Harri Dam, Madame President!” a man of about four and a half feet tall appeared with a thick black beard and a white hard hat on his balding head.  He stuck out his hand for a firm and confident handshake with Angel, Pneuma and I. He was dressed in black slacks and a striped short-sleeved blue pollo with the Dam’s logo on it. “Wyatt Castor, manager of the Dam at your service!” He bowed and offered the three-finger salute.  All but the secret service men behind us offered the salute back. 

“I heard you had many questions about the Dam?” 

“We do.” I started. “Might we talk inside to discuss more? The sun is intense today.” I was shielding my eyes. 

“Oh, of course, Madam President! Right this way.” He was incredibly cheery on the walk back. The entrance to the welcome center was nothing short of beautiful. As we walked in, I was impressed by the floor-to-ceiling glass walls on both sides of the foyer allowing the visitor to have a grand view of the tallest waterfall I had ever seen and the lake on one side, with the view of a very calm and tame river on the opposite side. I realized I had stopped walking to stare at the waterfall with awe. “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” I was startled that Wyatt had walked up to my right side without me noticing. “Oh yes…This is…the tallest waterfall I’ve ever seen!” 

“Haha. Actually, it’s not the tallest one, but you know the history.  Our ancient peoples worked with the first angel-folk to build a set of waterfalls to collect the melting snow from the snowcapped mountain that had already created a massive river to Sheron. These waterfalls are collectively known as “Harri Falls” (creative I know), and they are aligned in such a way that from any angle that you look at the mountain from this lake, it looks like the waterfall is falling directly from the snowcaps to Inverno Lake. In actuality, there are almost a couple dozen tiny waterfalls that cascade through Ruha to provide them with hydroelectricity and fresh water and then collect together once more at this massive 300-foot waterfall that you see here.” 

“Wooowwww!” I said in awe. If I concentrated enough, I could see the white stone buildings of Ruha etched into the mountainside. It was hard to peel away from the majesty of the mountain waterfall, yet I forced myself to turn and look at the calm river on the other side of me. 

“Autunno Canal.” Said Wyatt as Angel and Pneuma followed me. “The #1 water roadway for all goods between Alma and Ruha. “It’s a canal? It looks as wide as a river!” 

Wyatt chucked. “Yes, it’s wide, but it narrows as portions of the water get rerouted to our water treatment centers. The narrower parts lead to the water bridge that crosses all of Alma. But you should know this already, Madame President.” 

Right, I should have seen it and should know this already. I looked at the river more and noticed that the water tables on the side looked low. 

“We came to talk about the low water tables with the lake.” I continued my slow walk toward the welcome desk. I took note that the water on the lake side also looked low. 

“Yes, Madame!” Wyatt took off his white hard hat and wiped some sweat away from his brow. It was odd that although this was a power plant, the air conditioning was not turned on. I slowed my pace a bit to grab Angel’s arm. “The air is off here too?” I whispered. 

“By executive order.” He whispered back.  “You agreed with the Department of Energy that all energy should be used for essential purposes. And signed into order that air conditioning is really only something to be used for essential locations. Remember? We talked about it in your office.   Hospitals and the library. All other places have been ordered to temporarily turn off their air for now to conserve on energy.” 

“Ah… I remember now.” 

“Right this way, Madame President!” Wyatt led us down a plain hallway with offices on either side. Lights in this hallway were dimmed but plenty of natural light flowed in from the oversized windows facing the falls. We were escorted to a large conference room with a long, plain brown table and some padded fold-up chairs. 

I walked over to the windows and continued to observe the waterfall and lake. A few small fishing boats and a riverboat were docking on another river to the right of us. Yet another river on the left of the lake looked like another tributary for riverboats to travel. Wyatt broke the silence. “I love breaking away from my work day to just watch the water and the falls. Probably the best part of the job.” 

“I’d say so. I should come up here more often.” I mused. 

“I see tourists are still taking the riverboats up the Primavera River.” Angel pointed to the tourists stepping off of the boat and stopping at a nearby station for a rest break. 

“Yes! At least they still have this activity to do…for now.” Wyatt’s smile faltered. 

“How so? What do you mean by, for now?” I asked. 

“Madame President… you noticed it before. The water… it’s evaporating at a rate faster than we can imagine. On top of that, we have so many repairs to do to the dam. Cracks are appearing in the concrete embankment edges of the reservoir, the canal also need some reinforcement. More importantly, the concrete gravity arch-dam at the top of the falls is in desperate need of repair. As the water freezes in the winter and dries out in the summer, major cracks in the structure have started to form and some parts of the structure look like its about to break. We’d love to go ahead and handle that for the nation, it’s usually not that big of a deal. To repour concrete where needed? But with no budget for projects like these… I just don’t know how long it’s going to last.” Wyatt shook his head and the room grew silent. 

I looked up at the looming Mt. Harri above. “Tell me more about the evaporating snow caps.” 

“Gosh… Madame President. Our summers have been so hot, I’d say we’re losing 2-3, maybe four inches a year. And the bigger problem is that the waterfall, while it looks great, it’s not nearly as powerful as it should be.” He pointed to the 5 towers at the top of the waterfall. “We’ve got about 3/4 of the power we need to power part of Alma with those. Maybe half of the city.”  He then moved his finger down to the two towers at the Primavera River where the riverboat was docked. “Those towers got about half the power they need to power the southern portion of Alma.” He then pointed to the two towers on the opposite side of the lake. “The towers in front of the Estate River, have even less power transporting to northern Alma.” He thumbed behind himself. “And the Autunno Canal has the least amount of power.  The water is too calm and too low. The turbines in the tower in front of it have stopped spinning. We have to rely on backup power and pray for the random summer storms that pass through here for the turbines to spin again.” 

He sighed and shook his head. “It’s a real crisis, Madame President. Before we could easily provide power for all of Alma and even some of Sherah. Now…we’re barely providing half the power to Alma.” 

I looked at the low water tables.  How have I been so clueless to all of this? Before the knockout that is. What was I even doing in office? Sounds like not much but just making a big mess of empty promises to everyone. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. 

“Mr. Castor,” I said as I opened my eyes. I turned to face him directly. “Can you take me to one of the cracks so I can see how bad it is?” 

“I can…but as a President, is it something you should really be doing? It’s not exactly the safest venture.” 

“I want to see. I’ll bring one of my guys,” I pointed back to the secret servicemen standing outside of the office. “And Angel. Pneuma can you wait in the car for us?” 

She and Angel nodded. “Well… if you insist, Madame President. You’ll need a hard hat. I won’t take you up the waterfall. Let’s look at the cracks at the bottom of the Fall.” 

I agreed and followed Wyatt out of the office. Wyatt radioed to a few other engineers in the building to bring us three additional hard hats.  He pointed to my flats, “Where we’re going they might get a little dirty and it’s a bit slippery. Be careful. Alright.” 

“You got it,” I said as I pulled the white hard hat on my head. 

We walked out of the back end of the welcome center which I noticed now rested on the edge of the western side of Inverno Lake. The hydrotower housing the turbine for Autunno Canal was directly below the bridge that crossed the runoff to the canal. I looked up at the sky. Before we stepped into the Welcome Center, no clouds could be seen. Yet now, a single dark cloud hovered above. Nothing to worry about, I thought to myself. So long as it’s just one. Nothing to worry about at all. 

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Words: 1,622

Total Word Count: 37,732