March 29, 2008 6:00 AM Pocatello, Idaho

42°49′31″N, 112°26′50″W

Derek Scott let out an exhausted sigh as the highway rolled beneath his truck. Up ahead was the reservation and the town of Pocatello standing at the foothills of the white mountains. The last two hours had been intense and his head still hurt from poring over the measurements.

It was definitely God’s country out here. The elevation somehow made you feel closer to the sky itself. Maybe that’s what brought out all the religious types - Mormons, Shoshone shamans, Baha’i, Baptists… anyone who was looking for that clarion call signifying the impending arrival of the All-Fucking-Mighty. All of them eventually becoming part of the surrounding high desert, and eventually receding away.

Derek just couldn’t figure the damn thing out. The plant’s schematics lay on the seat next to him, covered with red markings highlighting key parts of the treatment plant. At 4 am this morning, every single meter, gauge and instrument in the facility had stopped working. No readings, no measurements, nothing. Just a steady stream of zeros for a total of forty-nine minutes. And then, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, everything went back to normal - pressure, viscosity, everything. Something didn’t smell right to Derek. Especially since at 4 am this morning he was also roused out of his sleep by the sudden cessation of the refrigerator’s hum in his apartment. All of his appliances had stopped working for that span of forty-nine minutes, something that struck him as mighty peculiar. No shit, asshole.

Looks like Mike Hagerman, the operations manager, was going to have to be woken up. Hagerman was going to be pissed, but it couldn’t be helped. No need to risk a potential county-wide catastrophe on Derek’s watch where every living thing was going to exposed to highly undesirable levels of toxicity, in case the instruments were malfunctioning.

Softly swearing, Derek dialed Hagerman’s number. This day already started out looking like a five-star bitch on the rag and he had a feeling it was going to get a lot worse.