“There, you can see them grazing now.” Sophia explained with a finger hovering above the screen of a ruggedized tablet. “There’s probably a hundred or more.”
“This is real?” A native tribesman who sat beside the chief of the Soaring Tribe asked in reasonable disbelief.
“It is, I saw it flying myself.” The chief nodded, thinking back on the demonstration he’d received a couple days prior of the small drone. “Running with this hawk’s view suits me well. I can already feel the hunt boiling my blood.”
“We are working on training them to detect animal movement and track grazing patterns. It should predict which direction your hunters should go, before the prey even know they are going there.” Sophia continued, trying her best to remember the important parts from the buzz of random ideas that had been proposed by the excited development team.
“It has eyes nearing a seers,” A villager mused with a long smoking tube hanging from his mouth.
“I’m not sure about that.” Sophia laughed honestly with a shrug. “What’s important is this isn’t just something we are giving you, as your needs for it change and your homeland changes around it, we’re committed to maintain the advantage it gives you for as long as our partnership continues.”
“My eyes have been opened lady Sophia.” The chief gratefully said with a slight bow of his head. “I was quite doubtful, I do not believe good can come from outsiders, but you have changed that view partially. I hope you will feast with us tonight once again before returning. Our gratitude is still insufficient.”
“Ah, well,” Sophia began to stammer hesitantly.
In the tribal village far to the east across the bleary wasteland that now was dotted by tire tracks, the Chieftess of the Eighth ring was planning a similar feast while a small team of researchers who’d flown in with Henry Pyre the day prior were exchanging samples and different chemically treated forms of the thick tar gathered from the pit.
In only a short day of testing they’d already found more than ten new blends that exhibited hugely different properties.
Most of these were by using chemicals and elements brought from the chemists’ personal collections, but some was new materials that’d been identified so far from the various plants and minerals in the close vicinity of the Arna and Reynolds Complex.
The largest advancement in the material research was the simple addition of copper powder and nitric acid, the resulting paste after being heated formed a highly conductive while simultaneously ductile composite. Even on earth there was nothing like it, so the researchers were scrambling to figure out how the tar was so different from the earth variety.
The tribesmen couldn’t care less about this, but the few additives that increased the flexibility, or the fillers that reduced the overall weight without losing strength were hugely beneficial. A chest piece could be made that felt like wearing nothing at all. The idea of it was like a dream for the artisans.
Unsurprisingly the third and final village wasn’t left out either, the feast being prepared there would by far be the largest, partially because of their own large population, but mostly due to the hundred volunteers from Arna and Reynolds who’d agreed to relocate to the wastelands and help with the rehabilitation of the land.
Seeing as a small settlement would be required to maintain the oil-wells anyway, it felt logical to increase the size a small amount so that more facilities could be built without it feeling as wasteful.
The Flower tribe’s chief was wise enough to understand the benefit that curing the scab of land could have, but he also feared the repercussions. In his mind, the only reason the outsiders hadn’t sent larger armies in the past was because the land was seen as cursed or useless. If suddenly grasses and flowers began to bloom, would the wars not become ceaseless?
“I can’t tell ya.” Gary honestly confided while sharing a drink in the chief’s small home. “By now you must realize we aren’t the same outsiders you know. So, I can’t speak for them. But I can speak for us, this location is vital to our existence. Your people, who have protected this land, are now vital to our existence. And, like you, we’re very stubborn in our ways, and we don’t appreciate threats to our existence. So, you should feel at ease chief.”
“And the land will really come back?” The elder asked, pointing back to the tablet which displayed the conclusion of a PowerPoint presentation.
To this, again Gary could only shrug a bit glibly. “The woman who wrote that report spent seven years studying desertification just so people would call her ‘Doctor’. So, I’d say if anyone could tell you what shrubs or trees to plant, it’s her.”
The woman he spoke of, Dr. Alexa Orlovsky, headed up a splinter team of the Agricultural department that focused on the ecological uses of genetic manipulation in plants. By splicing genes of deeply rooting plants with fast spreading grasses large tracts of land could be stabilized with little need for human intervention.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Of course, that’s merely one of the first steps, the presentation had detailed a comprehensive plan spanning more than a decade, going as far as when trees would need thinning and at what distance and frequencies.
If it were to be believed, the distant forest on the horizon might soon reach their doorstep. The thought of it was grand, and for many unbelievable. But the three chiefs had chosen to take the risk in the hopes for a brighter future.
By forcing advantages over each other to the tribes, they would have no choice but become dependent on one another and form a strong relationship based on the benefits doing so affords them. The plan was no secret, from the very beginning Gary had made it clear that the most important outcome that could come from the negotiations was a lasting peace between the three tribes. Only by having that would Arna & Reynolds feel confident with the security of the well-site.
Although no great friends to one another, the three chiefs agreed that peace between their tribes was long overdue, and they were willing to try this new division of tribal roles.
“Sir, there’s a fire in camp.” A staticky voice called from the small radio strapped to Gary’s stained button-up shirt.
“Aghh...” Gary grumbled, dropping his head and wrapping his hand around the radio. “I’ll be right there.”
The Flower chieftain burst with laughter at the rolling eyes of Gary and pushed himself up to mirror the CEO. “Let us see what’s happening.”
“Right,” Gary chuckled, following the chief from under the low doorway of the rounded home.
The A&R Camp, being built, was only a short drive from each of the tribe’s settlements, it rested around a quarter mile from the Tar-pit and centered around a large pre-fab structure that had been carried in by a team of helicopters.
Mounted to the top of the two-story headquarters a tall tower carried the array of communications equipment necessary for accommodating the small population and various electronics and computers they required. And located on the very top of the communications tower, which now smoldered with faint blue smoke was the 4G Radio transmitter.
Fire had been, perhaps an overstatement, but it was hard to truly understate the importance of what had been destroyed in the moment of negligence.
When Gary and the Flower Chief had arrived, they were met with group of nervous looking technicians who’d been tasked with the UAV network for the Soaring Tribe.
Apparently, the Soaring Tribe had expressed disappointment when a set of Drones following a pack of Antlered Cows was forced to turn back due to signal loss. The technicians determined that by pre-amplifying the signals manually with the help of a ton of copper wire and a big-ass magnet, they’d be able to increase range without needing to make any adjustments to the transmitter itself.
“But, yeah.” The technician continued while scratching his neck nervously, “Instead all the resistance gates peaked out, dumped a ton of amps into the silicone which proceeded to release it’s magic blue pixie dust.”
“I’m telling ya, this is why making the jump to Cisco is a curse.” Another technician weakly muttered with a shake of his head.
“Can it be fixed?” Gary asked, leaning his head up to see the small box and various antenna sticking out from it.
A few of the technicians grunted a series of answers but they leaned on the negative side. “If the question is, can the parts be made and replaced. Then the answer is yes. But the special tooling and equipment that would be required wouldn’t be worth the expense. We’re much better off just replacing it with a spare.”
“We shouldn’t operate as if we will always have a spare.” Gary sighed as more resources vanish into literal smoke before his eyes.
“Hey, check this out.” A heavy-set woman seated behind a laptop in the shade called out after double taking more than a few times at an oddity in the logs.
Gary and the Chief, arriving to the monitor last, crowded in to catch a glimpse of what had caused such an excitement.
Gary was proficient in computers, he could understand when his technicians or developers talked about complex issues, but when it came to staring at code and interpreting errors or logs, he was utterly lost. So the lines of hexadecimal data, and SnR readouts that peppered the screen looked meaningless at his first glance.
But one section in particular, three short lines of text detailing the network structure caused even him to gasp in realization.
‘Network Status – Wired, 2 Hosts.’
This made sense. Data between the Arna & Reynolds Complex and their camp was traveling via the fiberoptic run placed alongside the pipeline.
‘Local Status – Wireless, 203 Hosts.’
Again, this tracked. All the staff carried cellphones, and with the addition of the various security cameras plus the UAV’s, the number was expected, if not a little lower than Gary might have predicted.
No, what baffled everyone was the last line of the log data that was salvaged from the experiment.
‘Ranged Status – Unconnected, 1 Host.’
It was only visibly in the brief moment the transceiver’s control-board overvolted itself, but in that fraction of a second, it’d somehow detected a lone signal.
An unconnected peer. In other words; another radio tower.
If the blip was to be believed, then they weren’t alone.
“That’s a ghost,” a more level-head explained with a toss of his unkempt hair. “I’ll admit I understand the excitement. But that’s a log pulled from fried silicon, and why would a short-circuit even cause any change in what signals we’re receiving.”
“Maybe some kind of constructive interference?”
“It’s worth looking into. We should bring in directional antenna’s, prioritize scouting flights tuned for radio signals.”
“There’s also the sea.” Another of the technicians added, recalling one of the stories they’d been hearing from the tribes-people. As of yet, none of their scouting flights had found a single body of water larger than a great lake. It’d been baffling many of the teams mapping the region, but according to the tribe’s ancient stories, far to the northwest salty water covered the horizon.
“Fine. We’ll recenter our mapping grid here and have additional flights sent west.” Gary relented without much resistance. He craved true seafood; he’d gotten sick of the dirty flavor he associated with freshwater fish.