The sarcophagus is a toxic time bomb, but I’ve got a titanium spoon and a wooden bowl, and I will eventually get through to help take care of things.
Tap, tap, scrape…tap, tap, scrape…tap, tap, scrape…
The sound has become the pulse of my existence, while the terpenes that I feed my cells seem to protect me.
I can see the posters now: Tovarisch, do your duty and dab for mother Russia. Then you too can help clean up disasters!
I stopped scraping and put down the long-handled spoon and bowl as I prepped the rig for another dose.
Lighter filled with butane: check.
Nail cleaned: check.
Applicator ready: check.
Dome ready: check.
Dose prepared: check.
Timer set: check.
I started the 40 second timer and began heating up the nail. As it started glowing red hot, an image from the past came to mind. My sister had been harvesting our garden in Pripyat with a braided-sorrel strand around her wrist, the reddish-green flowers whorled in spikes, complementing her auburn hair.
The timer went off. I replaced the dome over the nail and applied the the wax with the applicator and breathed in.
OG Chernobyl. Bred specifically for radiation protection. The hit expanded and just about took off the top of my head.
Heating up nail 10 seconds longer than I had been made it stronger, which they tell me means I could work that much longer.
I looked down at the dosimeter clipped to my pocket. Real-time exposure showed 23 Sv/hr. With the herbal protection, maybe survivable for another hour? Another hour and a half?
I picked up the spoon and bowl.
Tap, tap, scrape…tap, tap, scrape…tap, tap, scrape…
The massive New Safe Confinement had already been pistoned into place around the deteriorating sarcophagus weeks ago and was finally being sealed.
The backup, in case its giant robotic internal cranes are not able to disassemble the sarcophagus according to plan, well, that would be me and my comrades.
Why would we do this, you ask?
Why would we keep scraping and digging, bowlful by bowlful, dying one by one over a shorter period of time than we should’ve.
Everyone has their reason.
I have not yet fully found mine. But I have already lasted far longer than my sister or mother or my father or the others who had perished at the plant or in the nearby towns where they lived over 30 years before.
All I can say is something I heard from one of the crazy Americans: happy trails!
Tap, tap, scrape…tap, tap, scrape…tap, tap, scrape…