Tanner took a break from his mineral survey to drink some water and get out of the sun. He was in the Beartooth Mountains and recent discoveries of rare earth metals had provided him with some summer employment to help him pay for his coursework in mining engineering and mineralogy at Yellowstone University. He was a 23-year-old graduate student and between his gigs as a teaching assistant and driving a snow plow in the winters he kept himself almost fiscally solvent. But this survey work was more what he wanted to be doing with his time. Typhon Industries employed most of the population around the town of Boghadair and technically Tanner was already an employee with an equity account but he’d have to wait until his schooling was completed to get his hands on any of the credits accruing in that account. So, this survey work meant the difference between hamburgers and pizza a couple of times a week or just cheap noodles night and day.
He was standing on a rocky slope that descended onto a flat highland covered with wildflowers. There was a small lake and woman was at the water’s edge washing her face. But what caught his attention was past the woman in the distance was a large grizzly bear and it was running directly toward the woman. He approximated her distance from the bear as half a mile and his distance from her as a little more than a mile. He screamed a profanity, dropped his water bottle and started running toward the woman as fast as his legs would carry him, screaming to her as his breathing would allow while running. The bear was moving at about twenty-five miles an hour and Tanner might be doing ten but his repeated screams of, “Bear!” finally caught her attention and she looked around to see the bear and began to run directly away from it. Unfortunately, this was not toward Tanner but at almost a right angle from him.
Tanner gave a cry of frustration at this unfortunate circumstance and tried to figure out how he could run to end up between the woman and the bear. In his confusion he just ran after the woman. When the bear was only a hundred yards from the woman it suddenly spasmed in mid-stride and tumbled to the ground. Tanner was only slightly closer to the woman than the bear but luckily the bear’s receiver had finally registered the signal from his bear protection transponder. The bear saw him running off at an angle and according to the algorithm in his controller ran off as fast as he could. He wasn’t running directly away from the woman but pretty soon the diverging tracks would put Tanner between the bear and his former prey.
Pretty soon Tanner caught up to the still running woman and told her she was now safe. It took her a few minutes to catch her breath and get over the terror she had experienced but when she seemed calmer, he starting yelling at her, “Lady what the hell are you doing in grizzly country without bear protection? If I hadn’t seen that bear charging it would’ve gotten you!”
The young woman was shocked to hear him so angry, “I have bear protection. It’s in my car.” He was confused, Where’s your car? She pointed east and said, “At the road. I wanted to climb up the slope to see the lake.” He was stunned, “That’s two miles away. The transponder only has a range of a mile. You would have been killed.”
She began to cry and Tanner started to notice that she was probably about his age and he felt guilty for yelling at her. And he also noticed that she was very pretty and this seemed to make him feel even worse about yelling at her. He said, “Look I’m sorry I yelled I guess I was just scared for you and I got too excited. I’m sorry, okay?”
She pulled out a handkerchief and dried her eyes and nodded her head, “Okay, it’s alright. I guess you did save my life. Thank you very much.” There was an awkward silence while both of them tried to figure how this meeting would end. Finally, Tanner said, “Look I need to walk you to your car so you’ll be safe. And from now on please carry the transponder wherever you go outside of town. Are you staying in Boghadair?”
She nodded again, “Yes, I’m working on a mineral survey project and have to start work tomorrow. I was just enjoying a little sightseeing before starting work. Tanner’s brain clicked through all of this and he said, “Are you Pat Tollens?” She said, “Yes, how did you know?” He replied, “I’m Tanner Carrero. You’re my summer intern.”