The Cyclists Build a “Nuke”

Once upon a time, our two cyclists needed some money. So they decided to build a nuclear power plant in their back yard and sell the electricity to El Paso Electric. After all, the cyclists figured, the electric company had built its own Palo Verde nuclear power plant, so what an inspiration it would be for them to get a nuclear “shot in the arm” courtesy of Involved Citizen Involvement!

(At this point in the narrative, you might well be wondering how a couple of cyclists could possibly expect to build a nuclear power plant? The answer is simple: In addition to having seen “The China Syndrome,” the first cyclist’s mind was so brilliant that it could figure out anything in this whole wide universe, as long as it set its mind to it (an example of “meta-mind”—when even minds have minds), and the second cyclist, being a more outgoing type, was plugged into many diverse and far-ranging networks which could be tapped for knowledge and expertise.)

So the second cyclist tapped and plugged while the first cyclist thought and schemed, and soon they had the plans for their very own “nuke” scribbled in the margins of a copy of “Grassroots Press.”

Not ones to let such plans grow dust, the cyclists quickly got down to the nitty-gritty of construction, and, with the aid of the adoberos and nuclear engineers in their network, they caused a little adobe nuke to arise from the mesquite and snakeweed of the southern New Mexico desert.

When their new nuke was ready for fission, the cyclists invited their friends over for an “on line” ceremony. A crowd gathered around the electric meter as the cyclists slowly withdrew the control rods and started feeding electricity into the El Paso Electric lines. A cheer came from the crowd when the meter first began to turn. Then came an awed hush as the meter spun into a blur, and a collective gasp as smoke and sparks began to pour from the wires. When the meter began to melt, the circuit breaker in the main transformer blew, causing the system to shut down. The cyclists had blown their interface! So the next day they had an Interface Technician from El Paso Electric come out and install a special heavy-duty meter for them. Then they were in business.

And quite a business it was! Their nuke worked beyond their wildest dreams—the first month, they received a check for $1.2 million from El Paso Electric! Wow, $14,400,000 a year; now they could start buying up the Southwest and turning it into a wildlife preserve, with themselves as caretakers and wildlife!

Unfortunately, however, within a couple of years their power plant started to clog with nuclear wastes which oozed out the front door onto the ground outside, where they glowed an eerie blue-green color at night.

“We’d better clean our nuke,” they agreed, so they borrowed a pickup truck from a friend. “We’ve got to take some stuff to the dump,” they told her. They backed the pickup to the door of their nuke, grabbed a couple of shovels, and started shoveling until they had a heaping truckload of nuclear wastes. Then they trucked the wastes over to the “Waste Isolation Pilot Plant” and dumped them into the “citizen use” pit.

They bought their friend a new pickup, of course, and left the old one parked in the Buckle Bar Hills north of Radium Springs, where, for the next quarter-million years, you’ll be able to see it glowing at night whenever the moon is new.

Well, to make a long story short, the nuke only lasted for a couple more years. It started to clog with wastes more frequently, and soon the power plant was so contaminated that even the powerful “medicine” or “good karma” of the cyclists couldn’t protect them from the deadly radiation. So they decommissioned their nuke and put a brass plaque on it which said, “In Memory Of Our Nuclear Experiment.”

But at least they had managed to save more than $37 million in cold cash from their nuke, and with it they bought dozens of parcels of land scattered all over the Southwest. Then they moved onto their new solar voltaic “energy farm,” but that’s a whole other story.


Next Installment: The Cyclists Go Aquatic