The Discovery - Complete
The Final Measurement
Scene 1 of 3
Scene 1 of 3
Dawn breaks gray over the 111-foot coal slag mountain. Sarah Davies climbs its unstable slope one final time, boots crunching on loose black slag.
Her surveyor's compass pendant swings as she plants the equipment. Three weeks of measurements culminate here.
She records water saturation readings in her notebook, each number confirming what she's feared. The underground springs have saturated the tip's foundation beyond any safe threshold. Her finger traces equations in the air.
Weeks until collapse. Maybe days if heavy rain comes.
Below, the village wakes. Smoke rises from chimneys in the valley. Children will walk to school beneath this weight in two hours.
Sarah photographs the widening cracks with her surveyor's camera. Click. Click. The deepening rain pools reflect the darkening sky like open wounds. Black water, still and waiting.
She counts her stakes marking the most unstable zones. Yesterday there were twelve. This morning, only seven remain. Someone's been removing them.
The metallic clink of her equipment echoes in the silence. Water drips from underground springs, steady as a pulse. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Sarah touches her compass pendant. The brass is warm from her body heat. The choice crystallizes in her mind with the clarity of the mathematical equations she trusts.
Stay silent and complicit. Or speak truth and lose everything her education was supposed to gain her.
She packs her equipment with methodical care, strapping each piece to her pack. Her notebook goes in last, pages filled with damning numbers. The data that will force her to choose.
The slag shifts beneath her boots as she descends. A small sound, almost nothing. But she hears it.
The mountain is moving.