3 A.L.: IRENE

The maintenance robots were smaller than Irene expected. They couldn’t do large repairs. Mostly what they did was top off lubricant levels and make small adjustments to alignments and balances. It was surprising how much longer machinery would last with just these small tweaks. The robots would do a better job than a human at it because they ran almost continuously, stopping only for recharging.

Bigger repairs would have to be done with a human crew and construction equipment or larger construction robots. The Speedwell’s manufactory was not currently capable of creating those construction robots. The manufactory would have to be upgraded first.

Irene was installing the software packages and doing final checks on the maintenance robot assembly. Tomorrow she would start delivering them to the completed windmills. There were seven completed windmills on the stone peak north of the Speedwell. Agatha was trying for ten. High winds slowed the installation.

They were still losing people to the ruins. That number increased when Agatha ran out of video to release. Looking back, Irene realized a lot of people delayed their departure just so they could glean the next installment for any hints of magic.

People were also relocating to their land grants. Something that looked very close to a village was rising on the edge of the eastern fields. The village took on a very subsistence farming persona, surprising Irene. She expected modern buildings with high technology appliances. Instead the settlers took the education modules to heart. They built buildings of wood and stone that were heated by open hearths. They hunted in the woods and tanned their own hides.

Agatha thought they would tire of that style of living soon and make upgrades in the near future. Irene was not so sure. The villagers were enjoying themselves. They still provided labor for the ship. They used the money they earned installing windmills to purchase the items they couldn’t make for themselves, like steel knives and axes.

It was nearing winter and there was no big influx into ship housing like there was last year. The ship's corridors were quiet. Irene could hear the approaching footsteps clearly. It was the three beat pattern of Agatha’s footsteps with the tap of her cane. Irene remembered a time when Dennis was still alive when Agatha seemed to be fading away. The stress of leadership of the engineering division revitalized her. Agatha worked longer hours than anyone. She still worked the long nights on the computer, but she was also there at the start and end of day shift. In the mornings she would make sure everyone was clear on their tasks for the day, while in the afternoon she would gather in person reports on how the day went.

Irene checked the time. There was still an hour left in the day shift. This was early even for Agatha. Irene pulled the current robot out of the test dock using its own power and moved it over to the shipping pallet. She did a final check to ensure it was charged enough for delivery tomorrow and shut it down.

“Hello,” Agatha said as she stepped in through the workshop door.

“Evening,” Irene responded. She moved over to the next robot, still in its packaging from manufacturing. Irene never understood why manufacturing bundled them up this way. The first thing she did was strip it all off. The packaging was returned to manufacturing for reuse. She pulled her knife from her tool belt and started cutting the straps.

“How are you?” Agatha asked. Agatha was worried about Irene. The young woman was operating in a strange combination of both risk aversion and recklessness. As far as Agatha could tell she didn’t have any friends. Although she would show up for meals in the single housing cafeteria she disappeared soon after. Agatha discovered that the other workers all thought Irene was closer friends with someone else and spent her evenings with them.

She suspected the girl was suffering the after effects of trauma. After Agatha came to terms with how badly she treated Irene, she vowed to do better. She did everything she could to remove Irene’s identity from the videos. Agatha didn’t want Irene to be tagged as an informer of some kind. A reputation like that might make it impossible for Irene to join a group inside. If the colony failed, retreating into the structure might be her only choice.

“I’m good,” Irene responded. “I should get all these robots set up by the end of the shift. Tomorrow I can start delivering them to their assigned windmills.” Agatha noticed Irene only talked about her work task. She didn’t offer Agatha anything of a personal nature.

“How is your schooling going?” Agatha asked. Irene’s test scores were reported to Agatha as her direct supervisor. The girl was scary smart. Her scores on the exams were higher than Agatha saw anyone do before. Far higher than Agatha’s own. Agatha could kind of understand how a parent might feel threatened by the child Irene once was. Especially when she seemed so normal when you met her. Agatha wondered if Irene’s habit of keeping things to herself started with hiding the depth of her intelligence from her father. Agatha still remembered some of the cutting things Irene’s father said about the girl when Irene first joined the department as a fresh apprentice.

“Alright,” Irene responded. “I am still behind from skipping the winter, but I am catching up.” Irene could only be considered behind by measuring her progress against the suggested schedule. No one finished in that time period. Agatha thought the planners put that in there as a stretch goal no one would reach. Still studying must be what Irene was doing in her evenings and Agatha was not going to take that solace away from her. Agatha made a note to herself to check if Irene completed the intern promotion test and send it to her if she hadn’t. If she had, Agatha would send her the associate test. She was certain the girl could pass them both, and with that out of the way she would get the full pay she deserved.

“There is no rush,” Agatha assured her. “I excused your missed time in the winter, so there will be no push back on that.” Agatha shifted on her feet as she looked around the workshop for a place to sit. “I have an off the books request for you,” Agatha said when she concluded that there wasn’t even a stool in here.

“Oh?” Irene said. She turned her attention to the older woman. Agatha’s off the book tasks were always interesting.

“Two of our construction carts have gone missing. I have to assume they are at the structure entrance. I need someone to go fetch them,” Agatha explained. She was shocked when Irene went white. Irene clenched her fists to hide the visible tremor that ran through her hands.

“I don’t think I can do that,” Irene responded in a small, tight voice. Irene knew her reaction wasn’t right, but she couldn’t control it. The thought of going anywhere near the structure filled her with dread.

“That’s alright,” Agatha responded. “I can find someone else.” She could feel the girl’s fear. Agatha felt awful. She was trying to treat Irene better, yet somehow she messed up again. “Command is hopeful that most of the people who knew the entrance location have already gone inside. There has been an uptick of people asking where it is on the common boards. The specific location was never made public.” Agatha explained. “You already know where it is so I am not breaking any of the new guidelines by sending you. I am sure there are others who already know. The fact that the vehicles are there proves that.”

Irene took a deep breath, trying to calm her thoughts. She thought about how she found out where the entrance was. She realized no one ever told her more than a vague ‘to the west’. She thought that might have been her brother or mother who told her that before they went out on the emergency medical call. She found the specific location by following the tracks of those who went before.

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“I can go,” Irene said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“No,” Agatha countered. “I was just explaining why I asked. I wasn’t trying to convince you. I will find someone else.”

“OK,” Irene responded quietly. There was relief in the woman’s voice and a trace of something else that Agatha couldn’t identify. Agatha tried to lighten the mood by changing the subject. She talked about her children and their land claims. Irene was distracted, fiddling with the robot that was half unpacked. Agatha decided she wasn’t really improving the situation. She made her excuses and headed off to the next task of the day.

After Agatha left, Irene turned back to prepping the robots. She found her thoughts drifting as she ran through the test sequence. She ended up having to run some of the tests twice. When she finished it was late. She skipped dinner and went straight back to her apartment.

She pulled her backpack out from under her bed. She unpacked its contents spreading them out the top blanket. There were some items she packed on the Speedwell and never used. Her map written on plastic from the Speedwell was looking very worn. The line of holes she punched through the edge of it didn’t help. She realized this plastic was the same wrap she spent the day removing from parts of the new robots.

The notebook she took notes in was now a pure white. She leafed through the pages, wondering if the writing would still be there. It was, which was slightly surprising. She dug out a stylus and tried writing on a blank page. Nothing happened. The stylus that looked like carved wood in the structure was now a flat gray. The door wedges and vent pins were the same. She couldn’t tell which of the pins were iron and which were made of bronze. She laid them out in a line. The rope she took from the Speedwell was still rope, but the one she purchased in Londontown was a pure white. It was now stiff, having lost most of its flexibility. Her gathering bag was in the same condition.

She rose to her feet and fetched the leather water flask she purchased in Londontown. She took it off the toolbelt she still wore each day and slipped into a kitchen drawer. A trace of water sloshed in the bottom of the stiff white container. She did a last check of the pockets of her backpack and found a handful of physical coins slipped into a side pocket. Their dark iron surfaces held finely carved markings. This one held a lightning bolt on one side and a badger on the other, formed out of tiny symbols for zero and four. It was interesting that the coins weren’t white. They really were the iron they appeared to be.

I should show these to Agatha, Irene thought to herself. She looked over the assortment on the bed and wondered at how these items kept her alive. She was missing her wizard's staff. She went and got it out of the broom closet where it was keeping company with her family's plastic handled broom. Its dark, carbon fiber surface was unchanged, crafted before the Speedwell’s launch, it was untouched by the magic of the structure.

She didn’t add the staff to the display on the bed, instead she held it in her hands. It’s presence calmed her. It wasn’t just the items that kept her alive. Her familiarity with stick fighting helped. Perhaps most importantly were the seeds of knowledge Agatha shared with her about magic, and her own ability to reason out more from that start.

She felt incredibly weak. There were people who had lived for years in the structure. Far worse things happened to them than what Irene experienced and they continued to soldier on. Sharl came readily to mind. Getting out of the structure and returning to the safety of her life before was proving to be her breaking point. She couldn’t let her memories and fear control her.

She picked everything back up from the bed and put it away. The staff she leaned by the apartment door. She would take that with her tomorrow when she went to get the carts.

The western most field was already looking overgrown. It wasn’t plowed or planted this year. The natural world was springing back fast. The trail along its northern edge was rougher than Irene remembered, but still passable. The official road running north-south along the eastern edge of the field was not in much better shape. Fresh tracks cut through the waist tall weeds, giving credence to where their construction carts ended up.

Irene took the turn and followed the tracks. She was fairly successful at not thinking about her destination until she reached the rocky outcrop at the top of the ridge. Her heartbeat picked up and she began to sweat. Her hands began to shake and she was forced to slow down in order to keep control of the vehicle.

The track was in worse shape on the downslope. The road bed was torn up in several places where the heavier construction carts dug in. Irene’s lighter, smaller maintenance cart experienced more trouble with the ruts than with the road itself.

About three quarters of the way down she felt something wash over her. She stopped the cart. She felt an artificial calm descend on her. Her heart rate slowed and her breathing evened out. In her fear she didn’t even notice that her breathing was rough. Now she took two deep breaths. She stepped out of the cart and walked a couple steps farther down the track.

The sweat on her skin dried. Her muscles felt strong. Her eyesight and hearing both sharpened. She retreated back up the track, past her cart. Her strength drained from her. Her senses dulled. She could feel the edge of her fear, although she was still calmer than before. It would take a bit of time to really get herself worked up again. She was amused by that thought and was able to push her fear away. Her next thoughts brought it back.

This was the edge of the structure's area of influence. The nanobots, although inactive for all these months, were obviously still residing in her blood or in some other tissue. As far as she knew they could be making a permanent home in her bones. She shivered at that thought. She barely survived this loss of energy caused by crossing this boundary on her first exit from the structure. The cold winter day and her lack of food for the last few days in the structure threatened her survival.

She walked forward past her vehicle and felt her stamina return. Was this how people in the structure could keep going on? Irene wondered. She wasn’t certain if the nanobots were really taking her fear away, or only just the physical traces of it. She knew the idea that they were controlling her emotions should scare her. How far was it from emotion to thought? Her heart continued its steady beat in her chest, but she could feel it, a whisper at the back of her thoughts, fear. It was a healthy fear, flat and non echoing. She was relieved.

Curious, she tried the open map gesture she stumbled upon on the last few days in the structure. The map opened in her vision. It was centered on an empty space. Zooming out and dropping down she quickly found the entrance in the valley ahead. She thought it was interesting that this edge area appeared as a blank section on the map. She wondered what that meant. She dismissed the map and got back into her cart. She was here to do a job. She needed to keep on task and not let the structure seduce her.

After a morning of towing carts back, Irene spent the afternoon making maps. She copied out the old map of the structure onto the discarded robot packaging. She used a paint pen from engineering stores that was intended to produce a mark on any type of material; steel, glass, plastic. She updated it with the path from Londonton to Chicago and the location of the Chicago suburbs. She used the data off the wall map they found in the Chicago downtown for the suburbs.

When she completed a stack of them she went down to the cart garage. It was the middle of the day shift. The garage was empty of people, everyone who needed a cart for their work was already out in it. They wouldn’t be back until the end of the shift. Irene posted the maps onto the bulletin board along with a note. The note read: Do not leave carts at the entrance to the structure. They decay rapidly. If you do not have a driver to return the cart contact A. Mation in engineering and one will be provided. A.Mation was the account they were using to automate the maintenance robots. Since Irene was in the process of setting the maintenance robots up she had full access to the account. It was easy for her to reroute all incoming calls to herself. She hoped this would reduce the amount of wear and tear on the carts. The offering of the map was to assure people that the contact was not going to stop them, just return the cart.

Irene found four carts at the entrance to the structure. Two were construction trucks and two were exploration vehicles. One of the exploration carts looked like it was there for a while. It was in poor condition. She used one of the construction vehicles to drag it back. When she logged it back into the garage in order to mark it for repair she discovered it was one of the original carts sent to the ruins. Irene remembered Darien talking about how an off the books vehicle could be useful. This one was back on the books. She made sure to log the remaining vehicles in as well.

She did not set foot into the structure, not even the open courtyard behind the broken wall. She was proud of that fact. She had a feeling the structure wasn’t through with her yet, but she’d managed to escape its clutches for yet another day.

Irene set to work on the next task in her queue, fulfilling her duty as an engineering apprentice on the generational colony ship Speedwell.