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Nuclear Power School and prototype training brought with them a new kind of pressure, and with it, a few worrisome episodes. Once, while at nuclear power school in Orlando, he’d slept an entire weekend. Went to bed on Friday night, and didn’t wake up until Sunday afternoon. He awoke to a bed that he’d soaked through with urine. He had to drag his mattress and sheets to the apartment complex’s dumpster without his roommate seeing, and slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of his room for the rest of the term.

The second episode was worse. It happened at the S1-C prototype in Connecticut, an operating nuclear reactor that was the capstone of their engineering training. The plant was built to operate exactly like a submarine plant, and even turned a shaft. Since there was no ocean, however, to absorb the energy, the screw turned a generator which dissipated the plant’s energy into electrical resistors, which turned it into heat, which dissipated over the Connecticut countryside. When the plant was running, the resistors were hot — it was their job to be hot. They were surrounded by a high fence designed mainly to keep out the raccoons who were attracted to the warmth, but who would sometimes get trapped between resistors and cook, making a god awful mess.

One frigid February night, Mark wandered outside the plant trying to clear his head after a marathon studying session. The next morning he was to be observed as Engineering Officer of the Watch conducting casualty drills. If he performed well, his nuclear power training would be successfully completed. If he failed, his nuclear aspirations would be ended. He hadn’t left the site in twenty-four hours, and planned on studying through the night, right up until the moment he took the watch in maneuvering. He was stressed, exhausted, and fairly certain that some of the mumbling he heard inside the large, common study area was audible only to him.

He paused at the high fence that surrounded the resistor bank. He could see where the insulated cables came out of the fake hull, channeling electricity into the resistors. I=V/R, Ohm’s Law, flashed into his head, the cornerstone of electrical theory. Like all the other ensigns at the site, he could rapidly and accurately calculate in his head what current would flow through the resistors at a given power level, how many shaft horsepower that translated to, and how much heat would be generated by the resistors as it absorbed that power. Because it was so cold, he could actually feel the heat coming off of the resistors; it felt good on his face as his back turned cold in the chilly night; it even smelled pleasantly warm, like a campfire, something Mark had never noticed before during midnight walks around the installation.

That’s when Mark noticed that a long, thin oak branch had fallen from the surrounding trees and landed atop the resistors; what he smelled was the unmistakable aroma of wood being heated to its burning point. There were no trees directly over the resistor bank, but the branch was covered in dried, curly leaves. It must have snapped off in the cold and glided over from the surrounding woods like a paper airplane, landing exactly where it would do the most harm. Mark couldn’t do anything himself because of the fence; the branch was unreachable. He immediately turned, intending to run to the nearest phone and alert the Engineering Officer of the Watch.

But…he stopped.

He watched the branch in a kind of trance, thinking that it was not unlike an experiment Naval Reactors might conjure up, to see what the consequences of a branch falling on the resistor bank might be. He pictured a chart in a Reactor Plant Manual charting the temperature of a wooden branch versus time on a logarithmic graph, a bold horizontal line indicating the auto-ignition temperature of dried leaves. For a few minutes, he thought maybe nothing would happen. But then white smoke began to curl away from some of the leaves, and he smiled as the nostalgic, pungent aroma wafted over him. Then a few of them burst into flame, then, almost simultaneously, all of them were on fire.

The branch burned quickly, and settled into the resistor bank as it fell apart and turned to ash; the crevices between resistors and wires showed vividly in the orange flames. Soon Mark began to smell the sour, acrid smell of an electrical fire, and a few pops came from the resistors as wiring melted and shorted out. Resin inside the resistors melted and dribbled down the side, like gore from a wounded animal. A minute more, and he heard the KA CHUNK of large circuit breakers tripping, one right by his feet, that made him jump, and one just inside the hull. A bleating alarm sounded inside the hull, and he heard a muted, concerned announcement of the casualty from inside. He wandered away from the resistor bank, and took the long way back to the classroom where he’d been studying.