“Thousand miles of pipe in four days.” A man mumbled through the cigarette hanging from his lips. “Who they take us for?”

Sat above, in the cab of an older tractor that’d been pulled from a scrap-yard, an ivy-league supply chain specialist shrugged his shoulders with a light smirk. “Good to have some time outside the office now that it’s warming up.”

“Speak for yourself, I’m in the middle of writing my memoir.” The man growled as he dropped the cigarette butt into the long trailing ditch formed by the implement dragging behind the tractor.

“Hold up!” A heavy-set man with grey overalls shouted up to the man operating the tractor.

Yanking a lever to throttle down the tractor with his limited memory of driving a similar machine on his parent’s farm, the tractor slid to a stop while the men working on the trailer towed behind it scrambled to couple a new section of pipe to the segment they had just finished.

Once the short process was done, the old spool was unloaded and the process was begun again, with the tractor creating a deep ditch, and the trailer behind it laying down the pipe and recovering it in soil.

Of course, they also ran alongside a reinforced electrical line and fiberoptics for networking and monitoring the well-site, why dig a ditch twice they figured.

“If anything, I’m still worried it might be a bit small.” The tractor driver muttered as he ran the numbers again in his head.

The man seated overlooking the dragging implement, flicked his lighter before shaking his head in denial. “480GPM at running pressure, with a good yield that means roughly half a million gallons of diesel a day.”

The tractor driver reached a similar number with his own calculations, but he couldn’t help shaking his head once more as he looked at the orange spool of pipe unrolling from the trailer. He knew he was looking too far ahead, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this pipe would rapidly become a bottleneck.

He wasn’t the only one on the crew thinking so, but at this point anything would be better than nothing. And as it stood, these spools of conduit were the fastest method of bringing the desperately needed fuel directly to their door.

There was a short-lived plan to haul fully loaded tankers between the wasteland and the Arna and Reynolds complex but the idea of helicopters burning massive amounts of fuel to haul oil felt a bit backwards.

After a few hours they unloaded the last of the stacked conduit spools. Clearly their mapping had worked, as inches away from where their pipe section ended, the next section that was laid by another team easily linked without more than a small amount of adjusting. Installing a small valve and testing it a few dozen times, they finally pushed the last of the dirt over the first long section of pipeline.

A few hundred miles ahead, a similar crew operated an array of machines as they moved and massaged the soil on either side of a sizable river.

A few hundred feet further downriver, a small rickety bridge saw curious travelers inspecting the large stone mounds linking roughly to both sides of the path.

“We should be level.” A structural engineer announced as he stepped over to where a small group of men and women were over-seeing the, curing, concrete pre-form they’d poured the day prior.

“Alright, we should be good to move.” The project lead concluded after pressing firmly into the concrete and rubbing the grit between his fingers to gauge its readiness.

“May as well run the pipe first.” The woman chasing his tail reminded him, pointing to the small cavity molded into the right side of the façade and preventing a day of wasted effort.

“Right.” The man nodded as if he hadn’t forgotten. “Harrison, Joel, if ya aren’t doing anything, cleanup the flashing leftover from the mold and secure the utilities to the right side here.”

“Gotcha!” A man shouted searching out the pile of fitted wires and piping they’d premeasured for spanning the deep river. Eventually spotting it, he and the other worker begin hauling them towards the molded concrete bridge.

“This is amazing.” A well-dressed local gaped as he inspected the enormous stone bridge, he hadn’t even dreamed of two days ago. No longer would he need to worry each spring about the melting ice cutting off access to his village.

“Good to go.” Harrison affirmed after tightening a final bolt securing the conduit.

“Lets get this thing in the air.” The project lead said with a quick glance at his watch.

Hooking into the four thick metal rings embedded in the concrete, the bridge was carefully inched off the ground with a crowd of staff watching every inch for any sign of damage or cracking. Once they were confident, the two tracks of the massive excavator slowly rolled towards the river guided by four ropes held by workers on either side.

A few perilous minutes, of careful spinning and maneuvering, later the excavator finally lowered its boom fully and allowed the concrete to settle onto the new foundations cast into the riverbed.

Two men followed up by running a handful of large bolts through the bridge-face deep into the foundations. Only after all six of the foot-long lag bolts were torqued sufficiently did the bridge pass the strict eyes of the workers.

Another few hundred miles away another team were bolting together the legs of a rapidly developed trestle system. It was little more than angle iron with pre-drilled holes. Each leg was measured specifically such that when they were all placed in their appropriate locations, the pipe could lay flat despite the hundred-foot-deep valley below.

By avoiding burying this section they would save a few miles of conduit in total. That might not seem like much considering the total length they would run, as well as speed at which they were able to lay the pipe. But small savings like this here and there added up quite a lot when spanning over a thousand miles.

A final hundred miles away, a group of men scrambled at the end of the pipeline to bolt a large stainless-steel contraption together with the careful guidance of the machine’s designer, a Finnish engineer who’d spent his younger years designing refineries for a British petroleum conglomerate.

“Ei, sinä vitun aasi!” The man shouted in his native tongue with a shake of his head as he ripped a laser pointer from his coat pocket and points it to an open section of tubing hanging from the top right side of the machine. “Right there, and thread it carefully!”

“You wanna do it?” The man seated precariously on the forks of a loader shouted, sneering at the gesture he’d received as response. Carefully fishing out the braided cable the designer was pointing out, he carefully fastens it to the newly attached section of the maze of pipes.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Valmis!” The man proudly announced, spinning the laser in his palm before setting it back into his pocket. “Kay, now we wait for crude, prime lines, and go.”

“And it will just pump out diesel?” Third asked, spooking the celebrating engineer with his sudden arrival.

“Not quiet. Seventy percent can be blended to run as diesel. Other thirty, is like propane and waxes, tar. Junk.”

“Maybe to us.” Third shrugs bitterly thinking of the report he’d heard from Sophia about the locals who lived around the tar pit. “Well in any case. Let’s hope it works.”

“It will work!” The engineers snapped, before gaping as he realized his mistake. “Ah, I’m sorr…”

“No, you’re right. Sorry,” Third said with a guilty expression. “I didn’t mean just this. There are a lot of pieces to his puzzle. If any of them get messed up, we are in serious trouble.”

The engineer, as well as Gary Falcotini the grounds foreman, gave Third a somewhat confused look as he voiced the fear.

Gary eventually answered after exchanging a short glance with the engineer he’d only met a few day prior despite sharing a workplace for over a decade. “You never really got a first-hand look at things operating day to day before all this did you?”

Third thought back to the blurry time before arriving here but could only stomach out a soft shake of his head.

“Then, you’ve never seen a real project from start to finish.” Gary explained pointing to the machinery and tools being sorted and maintained as the workmen clean up the area around the refinery. “You’re worried about some weak link out there screwing up and ruining the entire pipeline, but this place doesn’t hire weak links. It doesn’t even matter how massive the project is or how precisely it needs to be done. We do our job so that it doesn’t need to be done twice. That’s why we’re getting six figures.”

“Your grandfather sent a monkey to space before lathes were computer controlled.” The engineer chuckled with a poke of his elbow. “I think we can bury a big hose without it kinking.”

“Oh god I hadn’t even thought of that.” Third gasped before bursting with a small chuckle. “I guess so. I didn’t mean anything by it, it just feels too easy.”

“Let it be easy.” The engineer declared plainly with a heavy pat to Third’s back. “I’ll inspect now. Then pressure test. Boring.”

“Got it.” Third nodded, understanding the invitation to leave loud and clear. “Good luck, keep up the good work everyone.”

“You had lunch?” Gary Falcotini asked after jogging a few paces to catch up to Third.

“Have something in mind?” Third answered, unsure if he was inviting or merely curious. Apart from a handful of interactions, the two had barely spoken one on one, much less dined in the same room.

“Hop in.” Gary failed to explain, waving his head towards the beat-up Ford he daily-drove.

Third, with nothing better to do shrugged to himself and followed the man. A beat behind as he shut the door, Gary first pushes on the cigarette lighter and then wiggles the gear stick back and forth before finally turning the key.

Retrieving a cigar from his shirt pocket, he carefully sets the truck into gear and glances over his shoulder as he maneuvers the rear end between a cherry picker bucket and a stack of old semi-tires. Finally pulling away just in time for the lighter to spring back once the coil inside glowed with enough heat to trigger the mechanism.

Puffing carefully as he wrenches the window down and rests his arm against the sill, he finally turned back to glance at Third.

“My place is just up here.” He explained with a nod of his head towards a small alleyway between a pair of large warehouses.

Turning as the alley approached, he continued down the narrow-paved path until the building on the left abruptly ends, revealing a small grassy patch no bigger than a soccer field. Sitting dead center on a small mound of mulch and wilting tulips was a single-wide mobile home.

To call it out-of-place would be an understatement, but Third was aware of a few similar strange buildings around the complex, so finding a small home tucked between massive warehouses and aircraft hangars didn’t shock him too heavily.

“You live on site?” Third asked before chuckling to himself as he adjusts his wording. “I mean, you lived on site prior to…”

“Yeah. Pretty sweet setup, eh?” Gary laughed as he sets the truck into neutral and yanks the door open. “You’re Dad actually helped me make it happen.”

“Really?” Third asked in order to continue the flow the man was clearly trying to maintain. Catching up to him on the other side of the cab, he followed slowly up the flagstone path leading to the small square porch attached to the entrance of the mobile home.

“Yep, see I was actually working out of the Fresno Branch as a senior analyst until ‘bout fourteen years ago.”

This piece of information did shock Third, but he knew at least enough not to question this in the same way he’d done previously. But really, the steps from Senior Analyst for what Third could only assume was the Aeronautics team that he vaguely remembered visiting while on business trips to California with his father, into what could be described as a ‘grounds keeper’ was a very strange career move.

“My wife,” He explained to fill in for Third as he pulls the door open and motions for Third to enter first. “She ended up getting real sick. Complicated stuff, something about the enzymes in her blood or something.”

“Oh, I had no idea. I’m sorry.” Third offered with a guilty expression, he’d instantly assumed the worst from the tone leading in.

“About a month in, she fell into a coma unexpectedly, and her doctors weren’t really optimistic.” Removing his coat as he explained calmly, he hung it then rounded a corner to settle into a recliner set opposite a short couch. Pulling a side table closer and resting his cigar against it carefully, he stretches before continuing his story. “She was on life support, still had brain activity, but she just wouldn’t wake up.”

“I..” Third again began but muted himself when nothing useful arrived.

“Guys at work told me about a project the medical researchers here were working on. A ‘kinda’ brain-scan translation apparatus thing.” The foreman weakly explains with a shrug to demonstrate his limited knowledge on the topic. “Ended up turning in my resignation that day and applying for every open position Virginia had running. You’re Dad chewed me out for it during the interview, but he shuffled some things and set me up here. This way, I’d be close-by if anything happens, and she can be cared for by some of the best doctor’s money could buy.”

“Did it work?” Third asked, clearly a bit more interested in the brain-scan device than Gary had been.

“Communicating with brain scans?” Gary asked with a raised brow, “Nah they scrapped that project a couple years in. But the research hospital here is still the best place she could be. So even without it, it was worth losing half my paycheck and turning wrenches for a living.”

Turning his head as a soft thud rang out from wall beside Third, the Foreman shouted in a loud voice as-if calling another person from a distant room. “Hun, you remember hearing any communications while you were out?”

Third took a moment to fully grasp the question that seemed to come at random. But as another noise caught his attention, he turned at the perfect time to catch sight of a thin woman wearing a wool sweater and drying her milky white hands with a green towel. “Oh, the spiderweb thing?”

“Yeah.” The man chuckled with a wide smile that was unseen until now. “Right, Sharon, I’ll introduce you, this is Luis Reynolds III, he’s…”

“I remember!” Sharon glowed as her own coquettish smile bloomed with recognition. “The picture in the F18 with your dad.”

“F19G,” Gary corrected for her; recalling the project he’d partnered on well. “You might not remember, you’d’ve been real young. You and your dad came down for the big unveiling. Not a minute after the sheet dropped you were bawling your eyes out, when you finally calmed down apparently you just said you wanted to sit inside the cockpit.”

“Hold on, I just saw the album!” Sharon excitedly exclaimed as she turns on the spot and runs off to a storage room.

“I don’t understand.” Third asked glancing between the empty location and where Gary sat smiling.

“No one does.” Gary shrugged plainly, “It happened sometime just after we were transported here. By the time I got the call and rushed down to her hospital room, she was already on her feet and talking. The doctors said the chances of such a spontaneous recovery were less than one in a billion. In other words, impossible.”

“…” Third was speechless in response, waking up from twelve years in a coma was incredible enough, but regaining mobility instantaneously just sounded plain dubious.

“Found it.” Sharon returns clutching an open photo album in her hands carefully. Passing it off to Third she points into the upper corner, but he was having trouble focusing on the image.

Any thought of lunch had vanished from his mind as the oddity began to take over his focus.

“Hun, will you tell him about the dream?” Gary politely asked after Sharon had pestered Third with photos and clippings for a handful of minutes.

“Dream?” Third asked, assuming the surprises had ended.

Sharon bit her lip and dropped her eyes before uncomfortably nodding.