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A Leg Up - Prologue

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A LEG UP

A transformational tale

RC/Rekalnus 11/12

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PROLOGUE:

     Would anyone ever know how the search for oil reserves with discovery of new fields could yield an incredible event in biology? Weirder things have happened where one technology starts or advances another. Even weirder still are when technology and myth come crashing together. Over the years, the well bores went deeper and deeper into the earth, with wider and wider diameters. Technology continued to make the process capable of these extremes, but nature had some advances in store for us as well as a few surprises.

    On a flat spot in the coastal hills of lower Washington State, the massive rig churned and banged, sending the four foot wide syringe into the Earths' mantle. This drill was tipped with high powered ultrasonic cutters around the edge of that hollow tube's snout. Slowly rotating and cutting through all materials, the waste or "spoil" being quickly pumped to the surface under steam pressure.

    As the muddy mess was vented into a catch basin, there were some site visitors today to look at that very thing.

    Two of the workmen on the rig crew stop for a coffee under an awning tent to sit at a picnic table. "Gus, what's the deal with these University guys on site all of a sudden?"

    "Don't let them worry you , John...just keep that tube turning, they are here to see what stuff comes up from the boring hole to land in the slop basin." This draws a curious look from John, so Gus further explains the interest of the professors "This is the deepest and widest boring the planet has seen, ever- plus we are nearing what our geologists say is the K-T boundary line. The rock up until now is just average glacial till' all the ice age stuff with the softer layers under that. Today we should start seeing the soil the last Dinosaurs walked, plus maybe even a bone or two. We should be about three weeks from the oil layers, by then the nerds will be back in the classroom while we'll be paying off big-time."

   "Why are these guys playing with a Geiger counter by the slop there? I don't like it Gus..."
  
    "Relax, J... they just look for a trace of Iridium isotope, the leftovers of the asteroid impact that brought the big lizards down, leaving the planet for us!" Then he added- "The only raptor bite you need to worry about is from the foreman if we don't add another 300 feet of new depth on our shift!"

    Suddenly the visitors start waving at the crew to stop so the drill operator slows and brakes the rig to a halt.
There is a commotion as several grad students in waders move into the muddy mix with shovels and baskets made of netting. They ask the operator to open the sample chutes to do a steam sweep.

    The sides of the cutter deep below open letting hot steam move under pressure outside of the pipe which then vacuums the surrounding 30 feet of material to the surface, into the waiting hands of the scientists. Joe and Gus are there as one student carefully moves a large lump of clay over to the chute edge, boosting it to a table the students are using to clean fossils. A few seconds of the live steam hose reveal the most menacing looking skull that any of them has ever seen. "Gus, that thing has horns all over it! Those teeth.....What the ---- WAS that?"

As the day wears on, more stops, sweeps and discoveries. These were anticipated with some time allotted for it, despite the eagerness of the crew to make for the pockets of Northwest Shelf Crude. The work area is getting crowded and smellier, as refrigerated trucks arrive for the paleontological prizes arriving at a great pace.

   "John, some of those bones still have meat on em' no wonder it smells like a waste dump over here" said Gus.

   Soon the cutter has moved downwards also less fossils are seen. All trucks and the students leave as the site returns to normal by sunset. Under the tent the workers are conferring with the arriving night shift as the professor comes over to sit and talk with them.

   "I would like to thank all of you for putting up with our research today, we have cleared the extinction event levels, now moving into the Cretaceous and Jurassic layers. We should only see maybe a fossil a day from now until oil pocket time!" said the professor with a big smile from under his dark sunglasses, which were no longer needed in the growing darkness. "We'll come once a week to sort through the spoil dump for those smaller finds."

    "Well anytime, Doc... we owe your guys and girls in the geology lab for the location of this big oil tap, so a little 'paleo' doesn't hurt, at all." They shake hands as the day crew heads to their cars, leaving the night crew to their shift.

   The professor says to himself "No, this shouldn't hurt at all" then taking a look to see if he was alone, began limping with the aid of a cane to his car while taking off the glasses revealing his slitted pupil eyes.
First part of the story is here. Barring big interrupts and this can be added to by a chapter per day. Its all written, so now just proofreading each part.
© 2012 - 2024 Rekalnus
Comments14
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Chub54's avatar
'gasp' interesting start for a story