Saturday, December 11, 2004

Nuclear Church Accounting Systems Terrorism

Disclaimer: The events you are about to read are not real. Resemblances to living persons, except where otherwise noted, are fictitious. Under Federal Regulation AMB-324d of the Code of Justice, the author cannot be held liable for any actions or mental health issues as a result of reading this post.


Perhaps it was the pizza, possibly the peanuts, maybe the mocha - but for whatever reasons I had a dream. My mind seems to operate like a food processor at night - taking whatever tangled thoughts were resident during the day and building a tableau of tantalizing scenarios, where reason collides with fantasy - welcome to the Dave Zone.

So our
church is in a building program. It's a great thing, we believe in the vision, and are giving sacrificially not out of compulsion but out of a great desire to partner in bringing the good news to the hearts of many. That is reality, now the dream.

"Wow, I say to Dave H. (our project manager), this is some control room". Banks of multi colored displays with switches and meters, network monitoring devices, cables laid straight and true in their racks, a mini-server farm - we're talking geek paradise. "Yeah", chimes in Steve F. (our operations manager), "this baby rocks". I looked down at the floor and saw the most curious thing - what looked to be like a gutter from a bowling alley traced a path around the room, banking at the corners, and exiting through what looked like a doggie door cut in the wall providing an egress to the outside. Curious now, I opened the facility door and peered out into the waning twilight. Sure enough, the gutter went through the doggie door and then banked into a literal hole in the ground.

Utterly baffled, I turned to Dave and said "what is this? I have no idea what it could be". Dave replied that due to the increased electrical requirements for the bigger building and sound board it became apparent that it would be cheaper in the long run to build a nuclear powered generator than it would be to pay the city of West Linn for electricity. It turns out that OSHA regulations specify that any public area where a significant amount of people gather must have commensurate safety features. I was closer to the truth than I realized, it was indeed a standard bowling alley gutter. It turns out that our nuclear core, in case of an imminent meltdown; will pop out of the reactor in it's bowling ball form, be deposited in the gutter where it will rapidly egress the building through the doggie door and into a 50 foot hole in the ground where it's unleashed energy can dissipate safely.

A little bit later, I happened to notice an unfamiliar face in the Control Room. This young lady was sifting through our files that were being used to update our
church accounting software database. I challenged her and said, who are you and what are you doing here? She said let me show you my ID - and somehow managed to produce a switchblade knife from a $20.00 bill she pulled from her purse. At just that time Steve came into the room and subdued her. And then I woke up.