---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “In Plain View” Down in the Dirt, v195 (the 5/22 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Final Frontier the Down in the Dirt May-August 2022 issues collection book		get the 420 page May-August 2022 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Running Out of Time the 2022 poetry, flash fiction, prose, & art collection anthology		get the one-of-a-kind poetry, flash fiction, prose, artwork & photography collection anthology as a 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Aegina

Advit Gaur

    I woke up groggy as usual. The alarm is the worst useful thing to have ever been invented. But I couldn’t ponder the meaning of life in my foggy mind for long because that same forsaken object reminded me that I had to make it to the lab in 30 minutes.
    I brushed my teeth and got dressed in under 15 minutes. My microwave breakfast was ready by then. I washed it down with a glass of juice and I was on my way. In the car, I noticed a ton of missed calls from the lab. Thank God for silent mode. I never would have been able to sleep for as long as I did.
    As I arrived, I was greeted by a breathless lab assistant. As soon as he was in front of me, he started panting out half-words. I told him to calm down and offered him my bottle which I had been drinking from peacefully so far. His face went pale.
    “Did you fill this today?” he asked. I would never drink water more than a day or two old so my answer was naturally affirmative. “Yes. What of it?” I answered. His facial features then twisted in an indescribable emotion. It was like he wanted to show shock and hurry at the same time which was a little hilarious but also scary.
    He then told me in one complete sentence: “The water is toxic.”
    “What do you mean?” I answered, shocked.
    “There’s chlorine in the water supply,” he said.
    “Huh? There’s always chlorine in the water supply, you idiot.” I said, quite amused that a man of science would say something this uninformed.
    “There’s too much,” He rebutted. And that’s when the ominous realization struck me.
    “How much?” I asked, and thus began a long and detailed meeting of all the lab workers.
    Chlorine in the American water supply wasn’t anything new. A concentration of 0.2 to 1 mg/litre of the chemical is present in the water supply for disinfection. However, the current concentration of chlorine was well above that and the water was severely unsafe. Well above the 1 mg/litre threshold and more than 2 times the safe amount. At least the issue was limited to our city.
    I was surprisingly calm, all things considered. I suppose it was a state of shock and the actual emotions would come once I had digested everything. Anyway, our job that day was to prepare ascorbic acid. The more, the better. The government had to drain the water of the entire system in sections. So, the water that was already being drained had to then be processed as fast as possible and pumped back in. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. But that was the gist of it. For one part of chlorine, 2.5 parts of this acid were necessary, and practically the entirety of the supply had to be treated. The scale was immeasurable. There was no way all of the labs in New York combined could, even with the amount in stock, possibly produce enough to neutralize it in time to avoid major disturbance in the functioning of the city. It was a hopeless cause. Of course, the issue wasn’t so major that we wouldn’t survive. It was a harmful concentration, not generally lethal. But the hope of neutralizing it within the given timeframe was crazy. Even a small-time scientist like me could tell. The scale was too big, and the possibility of complications was apparent. But it was not my job to worry about that. My colleagues and I were to simply make as much of this acid as we could. We had a long, few days ahead of us.
    However, an even more urgent problem had presented itself in front of us: chlorine poisoning. Most of us drank water in the past 24 hours. I myself followed a strict water-drinking schedule, as stupid as that sounds. I even had one of those bottles that come with a timer. I was already feeling symptoms. It starts as stomachaches. There’s also vomiting, diarrhoea, and dry, itchy skin. On the grimmer side of things. The reactions that chlorine can have with other impurities in the water can cause anything from asthma to heart disease to even cancer. Although the likelihood of that happening was low, it was still a possibility.
    All those showing symptoms were instructed to drink milk unless we were vomiting and then sent to the E.R. Only a lab assistant and some interns were left in the lab, and out of them, only the former had performed the process before. It was quite the predicament.
    So, we had to improvise. We got into a video call with the team in the lab and instructed them on what to do step-by-step. Our lab already lacked funding so we were missing half the equipment while the other half was made in the lab with some improvisation. It wasn’t the best of conditions.
    Once I was done instructing the interns, I took a break to take my meds and a long-needed nap. The television was playing a show depicting Greek mythology. Today’s story was of a city called Aegina. It was pretty clichéd. Another romantic conquest of the king of gods— Zeus—angers his wife, Hera, and she punishes the wrong person, or in this case, the city. Aegina’s rivers were poisoned by a mythical snake and a plague engulfed the city. “How fitting!” I thought. Once I was bored of that, I switched to the Discovery channel. An episode of ‘How it’s made’ was running and they were talking about the production of charcoal.
    Suddenly, I remembered something. A moment from my 5^th-grade chemistry class. Chlorine sticks to charcoal. It was so obvious. The easiest and quickest solution. I had to tell somebody before we spent all our time overproducing something we didn’t need. I got on the phone and called the highest-ranked person I knew in the scientific society. The professor of a nearby college who held a doctorate in biochemistry. He was amazed by the idea and dumbfounded by the fact that nobody, including him, had thought of something so simple. My call with a college professor led to a conference call with a hundred of the highest-ranked individuals of the scientific community and a lot of government officials. After they heard what I had to say, the discussion became so loud that my in-patient neighbours started to complain. Very soon, every industry that dealt with carbon was making filters the size of truck tires to rid the water of chlorine.
    Everything went too fast. An issue that could have taken more than a month to completely resolve, turned almost negligible in under a week. And it seemed that I was the cause. I could barely process what was happening.
    Soon, the whole event had passed. Once everything had settled, I was given recognition and received a lot of gifts from a lot of different people. My lab got the funding it direly needed and I was able to make a contribution that would last. Aegina had been avoided.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...