Chapter 13: Just a Sunday drive in the country

The next morning, a Sunday, looked to be a good day for a local scouting trip. The weather was a bit warmer at around seven degrees (45F) with just a weak breeze. The skies were partly cloudy when I made it up to the surface after a quick breakfast and untethered Flipper. She appeared to be just fine after waiting anchored to the ground the past few days.

I had intended to bring just my basic gear, but Agent recommended I bring more. Therefore, I also packed a few crates of supplies in case something went wrong with the aircraft and I needed to walk back here. The items resembled those needed for a camping trip and even included a small shelter for the night. We were leaving both mules at base camp but were taking both aerial drones.

At around 09:00 Agent spooled up Flipper’s lift fans and up we went. As we rose, I had asked the status of the two onboard ESU’s.

“John, the port side energy storage unit remains fully charged while the starboard unit was down to fifty-five percent.”

Huh. We had used about half the energy in an ESU over the past week hauling heavy cargo and testing the limits of Flipper. She then demonstrated how I could access the power levels myself, either on the front console screen or by using my goggles, which I was wearing for their magnification functions.

When I asked why one ESU was still full, she explained that Flipper could draw power from both equally or just draw heavier from one. Flying on just one now would leave the maximum number of fully energized ESU’s and would make preparing for the big journey easier. Agent also explained that she could transfer power from one ESU to another if needed, but that there would be some losses in the process.

Our first scouting trip this morning would be over and around the former location of Sioux Falls. I wanted to investigate the large crater near the city’s center which I had spied on the last flight. I also wanted to see what was making that huge lake to the north of the city where the Big Sioux River valley used to be. First, we headed off in a southerly direction a dozen kilometers gaining altitude as we flew. We went much higher this flight then on the previous flights and leveled off at around two thousand meters.

The view was great, and I could see many kilometers in all directions. The noise dropped quite a bit as Agent cut off the forward lift fans completely and rotated their ducts to be in line with the wings. The larger rear lift fan also quieted as its power level was reduced. Flipper was now in ‘cruise mode’ where energy usage would be minimal.

We were now more like a traditional airplane and less like a drone. This meant Flipper banked more when turning and the flight felt more like those I had taken ‘back when’. About two dozen kilometers southwest of Sioux Falls we banked around to the east and headed back north, towards the former city.

Five minutes later I had a good view of the city and the crater. I spotted plenty of rubble, eroded remains of concrete bridge abutments and beams, I even saw the remains of metallic objects here and there. I wondered if they were stainless-steel tanks. They were still corroded and tarnished though. As we neared the crater, I saw something ahead that took my breath away. It was an enormous waterfall!

Five hundred years ago, the Big Sioux River had approached the city from the north, turned and skirted around its western and southern portions, before looping back to the north, making a huge “S” shape as it did. It also dropped over thirty meters as in meandered around and back.

The river’s rapid drop in elevation formed a moderately sized series of cataracts which had been the city’s namesake and reason for its founding back in the mid-nineteenth century. After these waterfalls, the river looped back around to the east and back to the the south where it continued on in that direction until it merged with the larger Missouri river, near Sioux City, Iowa, about 135 kilometers away.

Now, the huge crater had changed that. The impact had caused a huge uplift ring around the northern edge of the city center, north of where the old river’s falls had been. The bedrock in the area was hard quartzite, and the uplifted ridge had created a huge circular dam blocking the old river channel.

This explained the huge new lake in the old river valley north of the city. The new impoundment was almost three kilometers wide at the north edge of the former city and extended north to the horizon. After the crater had formed this new dam, and when the lakes water level became high enough, they overtopped the quartzite crater rim.

The New Falls of the Sioux River were almost a hundred meters high and the volume of water pouring over them reminded me of the Yellowstone River falls in Wyoming which I had seen as a kid. They fell down the quartzite face into a new channel cut through the crater floor before leaving out the south end where the rim was lower. Agent banked flipper in a huge lazy circular path and let me take in the view.

“This would have been quite the tourist draw back in the day.” I commented.

“Yes, I have detected incredible changes in the geology across the entire planet John, even from orbital base distances, this being a fair example.” Agent replied.

Yep, I could imagine this being a beautiful national park, if only there were trees and animals. We discussed landing amongst the remains below. Did I really want to go poking around in the bones of ages past? Not really.

“Agent, let’s skip landing here. Can you fly us lower though, maybe closer to that waterfall?”

Flipper banked around to the east and after a few kilometers made a descending turn back towards the west, but this time, flying down below the crater rim. I used the camera function in the goggles to record more than a few pictures of the better views. We then rose out of the western end of the crater and I had Agent fly us north and towards the new lake.

Over the lake, we slowed with Flipper reengaging the front lift fans, and flew over the water at a height of a hundred meters or less. As we continued north over the wide lake, I remembered how this area had once looked. It had been a tree lined meandering river in a wide, flat, flood plain valley of fertile farmland, full of corn, soybeans, and hayfields.

As we passed over the lake’s eastern edge where the waters were calm, I commented on how green the water looked. Agent recommended that we land and take samples. I muttered something about getting my boots muddy.

“We will use the drone to obtain samples near the water’s edge, John.”

Duh. Yep, that could work I guess. She sure had plenty of proof that I had suffered brain damage. We landed on a dry looking patch near the lakeshore. I could already see a fair amount of sparse plant life and what looked like aquatic plants in the nearby water itself.

I took the drone to the front hatch and tossed it into the air where it took off and headed to the water’s edge. As it flitted around that area taking samples, I inspected the ground near where we had landed. It was rich soil! I knelt to look closer and saw marks in the wet soil that could have been tracks from ‘bugs’. I went and got the folding shovel and turned over the soil. I could see a few wormlike creatures. I noted this to Agent.

“John, the lake was created shortly after you entered bio-suspension five centuries ago when the impact on the city formed the crater rim. This meant the lake formed shortly after and remained frozen during the ‘nuclear winter’ decades and this protected the fertile soil below the river valley. After the area warmed, much of the biomaterial would have remained and spurred the faster regrowth of plant and animal life noted in the area.”

“I estimate that a good number of plants, animals and birds remain living in the equatorial regions of your world, and eventually some of these life forms will migrate back this way as the climate continues to warm and equalize. As the lake’s aquatic life and plants increase, I anticipate that migratory birds will eventually return to the lake in years to come. They will bring other life forms along, in the form of seeds in their digestive tract, parasites in their plumage, or even aquatic animal eggs adhering to their feet, and thus, will repopulate the area with a diverse range of species.” Agent explained.

Huh. Maybe the planet will heal. Maybe this rather empty sterile place will be green again. Soon, the drone returned, landing by the hatch of the aircraft, and I carried it inside and stowed it in the cargo hold along with the samples it took. We went airborne again and continued flying north along the lake to near its end about thirty-five kilometers north of the city.

As we passed over the water, I could not help but think of the many small towns that had existed along the river below. Since they had been flooded early on, I imagined that they were fairly well preserved under the water and mud.

Eventually we reached the headwaters of the lake where it became a river again trailing off to the horizon to the north. We turned and flew to the west for a dozen kilometers before turning again to the south to head towards the old landing pods and the area of the base camp. We had flown south around twenty-five kilometers when I spotted something ahead. It was a pair of berms or hills running due east and west.

“That must be the remains of Interstate 90. Can you take us lower?” I asked Agent.

Flipper descended and slowed, taking us parallel to the berms at around a fifty meters elevation. I could make out clearly the old concrete roadbed in places. Most of it was now reduced to gravel and stone, pulverized by time and the rusting of the steel reinforcing rods which had swelled as they decayed. But here and there were larger slabs of somewhat intact, but weathered concrete.

As we flew along, I noted both the steel and concrete bridge overpasses had failed with the steel spans collapsing from rust and the concrete spans bursting into gravel. Where there had been culverts or bridged creek crossings, the double berms were washed away, and a new gully channel or ravine had formed. After following the old road’s course for a few miles, Flipper rose and returned to our original southerly course.

I sat thinking about the highway remains and remembered that two interstates had crossed near Sioux Falls.

“Agent, did we pass over the remains of Interstate 29 just west of that lake?”

“Yes John, I detected the remains of that roadway both west of the lakes western shore and earlier today, when we flew far to the south of the former city. Portions of the roadbed to the north had been flooded under the lake.”

Huh, I did not notice. It must have been the sun angle not causing shadows because that roadbed had run north and south.

We approached the area of the first derelict pod and Agent slowed us and returned Flipper to full hover mode. Now, low and slow, we crisscrossed the area looking for the pod. This pod was the more recent pod to have landed at around twenty-five years ago. We found it in gully, half buried in sediment. We hovered next to the pod and studied it.