Adriana felt overwhelmed with the whirlwind of activity around starting construction on the Proteus habitat and the rush to build three mid-rise housing projects. The housing projects were relatively easy compared to Proteus. They didn’t need to be airtight, so no airlocks or elaborate evacuation schemes. Environmental systems were simple HVAC and tying into city water, electricity, and gas.
She received help on logistics from Melinda, and Matt’s team had programmed robots to build the frame and run a lot of the wiring and plumbing. The design used oversized crawlspaces for easy maintenance access. Regular steel made up the structural frame, and the robots could carry heavy beams and weld a lot easier than a human crew without worrying about worker safety. There had been mixed local press about the robots.
In Jacksonville, the local journalist had been excited about the efficiency of the robots assembling the building, and they had been eager for an interview with a Genysis representative. They reported favorably that this technology could lower building costs and might give new life to the construction industry. Low skill jobs would be replaced with highly paid robot technicians and design engineers, and this could lead to more innovative architectural designs.
In Baltimore and Philadelphia, the press was unfavorable. The questioned why robots were given a job when so many people were out of work. When they learned that these buildings were part of a government contract, they started encouraging people to petition these projects with their congressmen and to make sure future contracts only hired people instead of robots. This had been picked up as a minor talking point on some national news networks.
Adriana didn’t have much time to worry about the politics. She was scrambling to finalize the process for installing the interior walls, fixtures, and finishes of their engineered living spaces. A real benefit of these housing projects was that they could test and streamline the process they would later use for over 10,000 units planned in the habitat. If something caused an issue in the housing projects, they could tear it out and reinstall much more easily than fixing a problem underwater. The project deadlines and materials had been padded enough that a few failed installations across the three sites would not cause them to run over on time or require an additional shipment.
They had set up a test unit on the property shared by Trinidad Franco’s group and the new Transportation company. They had already broken it down and re-installed everything three times and fixed the most glaring issues. At this point, a crew of four people could install the unit in a couple of days. They were busy making training videos including installation instructions that would be bundled with the Consumer goods products. Adriana thought she recognized one of the actors demonstrating the installation from a TV show she used to watch. How bad must the economy be if a vaguely familiar actor was filming an instruction manual for installing sinks and wall paneling?
They made a couple changes to the process based on what some actors were struggling with. Her crews had avoided the issues, probably due to having more experience working on similar materials during base construction, but it was understandable that someone used to working with drywall and wooden studs might not grasp the importance of matching the numbered panels to the same number printed on the frame or notice what Adriana thought were clear markings about which way was up. To Adriana, the process was easy, but having people with different skill levels test the process gave them some ideas for how to avoid some common mistakes.
After two days, they sent the finalized instruction videos to the work crews who were ready to go on the Jacksonville property. The other projects were still in construction. Philadelphia had a small group of protestors outside the site, but they had not caused serious problems. At Melinda’s suggestion, the job foreman asked the Philadelphia protestors if any had construction experience or wanted to join the work crews they were forming. About half of them scattered, having no interest in any real work, but the rest were merged into a work crew and trained for the installation.
The housing projects consisted of a mid-rise tower (or two towers for the Baltimore project) with 10 units per floor around a central courtyard, providing an average of 2200 square feet of living space per unit. They had 10ft ceilings and oversized crawl spaces between each floor and between walls separating the units. These provided easy access to plumbing, electrical and HVAC systems and also some insulation from noise. The interior walls were magnesium enamel, which gave the place a gleaming white appearance. It was easy to clean and could repair minor scratches, which saved the work crews a lot of time not having to repair when they accidentally caused damage during construction. Walls that did not border the crawl spaces had panels that could be removed in one piece to access conduits for electrical or plumbing. All the finishes were designed by Trinidad Franco’s group and had a distinctive modern look. The toilets were self-cleaning, and Adriana briefly wondered why that design wasn’t more popular in the U.S. The shower and tub were inside a single wet room, and it also had a self-cleaning mode. The Consumer goods company had a stove/oven combination with induction burners; gas burners used too much oxygen in a confined space, so they avoided them for the undersea design. They had not yet finished a design for dishwashers, or laundry machines. These were a big headache to procure in the tight timeline they had planned. As a result, there was a laundry room with connections, but machines were not included. Procuring dishwashers on their tight timeline was one of Melinda’s biggest headaches.
Flooring was another area they had not yet solved for Proteus, so they had to work around it for the housing projects. They had white granite tiles and slabs they produced in bulk from the deeper levels in their mine, so they used these in kitchens and bathrooms. They planned to engineer a compressed algae product for other floor surfaces, but this wasn’t perfected yet. For now, they would have to buy laminate locally for the housing projects. Even though it was considered a cheap material, this was a significant expense compared to the materials they produced internally.
Finding and scheduling work crews had been easy, and once trained, they were finishing units quickly. Scheduling Inspections had been a bottleneck, but they had easily passed the early inspections; the robots assembled the initial stages with inhuman precision.
The first section of the Proteus Hab was also almost ready for cabin finishes. This section would contain housing for 5000 people plus environmental systems, recreational, retail and business spaces. Adriana had toured the facility several times and couldn’t believe how impressive it was to walk through the huge spaces that had previously been drawings on her computer.
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Adriana received a call from Melinda.
“Hello dear,” Melinda’s typical greeting came through the phone.
“Hi boss, we were just finishing up the training videos. Any news on more housing projects?” Adriana asked. She knew Melinda had put in bids for about a dozen additional projects but had not yet been notified whether their bids were accepted.
“I think we will be selected on some of them, but have you been watching the news at all?” Melinda asked.
“Are we on it again? Robots stealing jobs?” Adriana asked.
“No, it’s not that. I just get a feeling that things are about to get a lot worse for people. As you know, when the economy started to collapse, there were many politicians who very hostile to Wall Street. They let a lot of big investment firms and banks fail.”
“I think I heard about that. Aren’t deposits insured?” Adriana had been focused on her work and hadn’t spent much time worrying about some rich bankers.
“True, but a lot of businesses have large accounts and use lines of credit that were not covered. The initial panic that wiped out so many jobs was followed by even more companies unable to do business without access to financial services. As the unemployment rate kept rising, millions were getting their homes seized by banks who then went out of business.”
“I remember hearing something about the government not allowing people to be evicted.” Adriana said. It had seemed like a good idea to her; they didn’t need to kick out millions of people when no one else could afford to buy their house.
“Well, a few states like Florida didn’t participate, but most states did something like that.” Melinda continued, “Anyway, it got to the point this Spring that about a third of houses were not paying their mortgages. The homes were bought up cheap by speculators when the banks failed. The people living in these homes had a roof over their heads and were getting by on government assistance for food and medical care. Typically, they had electricity and internet shut off.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Adriana replied. She really had no idea things were so bad back home. She had a guilty realization that she hadn’t talked to her parents in a few weeks and wondered if they were OK.
“Not good at all. When the temperatures started rising, there were actually a lot of deaths happening as people couldn’t run their air conditioning and others were eating spoiled food. Some power plants failed as part of the financial collapse, and others have had trouble getting fuel. The collapse in demand hid the problem somewhat, but I’ve heard there are a lot of blackouts and voltage issues. Renewables were less affected by fuel and financial issues, but they don’t produce consistently or have enough transmission to handle the disruption.” Melinda said.
“This is a big mess. Can we help with fusion generation?” Adriana asked.
“I’ve put in some bids for that, but they consider it nuclear power, so it wasn’t included as an option in the current stimulus bill. We’ve tried to get approval directly from the ISOs to build on our own without government funding. They were interested, but there are a lot of regulations and approvals that need to happen. It will be at least another year before we can build anywhere except in Texas. In that state, the grid is managed internally, so they can ignore a lot of the Federal regulations and approve projects more quickly.” Melinda continued.
“Right, I feel like I keep getting you sidetracked. What were you saying about how this affects our projects?” Adriana asked.
“A few issues. First, after a brief break due to the severe recession, prices for building materials have increased sharply. The supply for almost everything needed by the government contractors is very low since many of the producing companies have gone out of business or fired most of their workers. Dishwashers and flooring prices are double what we negotiated, and I’m worried some of the companies will not honor their deals.” Melinda said.
“That’s bad, but worst case, we just pay more and make a bit less money. Next project, we should have those issues solved on our end.” Adriana said, not particularly worried.
“Right, it might cost your company a million or so, but that’s not much more than Barry spent on that wonderful party.” Melinda admitted.
“Other issues?” Adriana prompted.
“I’m concerned about a lot of things. After this next round of bids, they will likely pass laws to prevent us from building the way we would like to. They will probably add something about no robotic labor, or no construction materials sourced in Mexico.” Melinda said.
“That’s too bad, but I’m fine with us focusing on our local projects. The infusion of cash will be nice, but I’m hoping we can make money on Proteus. Do you think there will still be demand if there is so much cheap real estate in the U.S.?”
“It’s not just the U.S. Similar problems in lots of other countries too. The recession has become global, although some countries have not been hit as hard yet. Anyway, the demand might still be strong. The situation is escalating in a way that some people will want to get away from the collapse.” Melinda said.
“Collapse?” Adriana asked. That sounded worse than just a bad recession.
“Yes, they are already calling it that. Those people living in homes without power made it obvious who was no longer paying the bills. People in nicer homes, but not paying their bills, have been getting attacked or robbed. Gangs to form up and take over what used to be nicer neighborhoods. The police sometimes help, but they are overwhelmed and technically the people living in the homes are no longer the owners. There is not really a clear argument which group has a greater right to live in a house owned by someone else.” Melinda explained, her tone serious.
“That sounds terrible.” Adriana thought about how scared people must be. She was now getting really worried about her family.
“This accelerated in the past month, and there have been a lot of houses burnt down. I’ve heard about groups of displaced people forming up for safety and wandering around in rural areas. This has disrupted food supplies and other deliveries, as these groups have often taken up banditry.” Melinda said.
“Whoa, this is way worse than I thought! Can you help track down our families and help them get set up here?” Adriana asked.
“Yes, I’ll look into it. We keep expanding our security forces. Some guys might enjoy going on missions instead of sitting around training and begging me for body modifications.” Melinda agreed.
After hanging up, Adriana found a US news channel. It seemed to have round the clock coverage of some celebrity who was getting married and coverage of another school shooting. There was a mention of politicians talking about greedy power companies who valued profits over providing electricity. They were proposing a bill to guarantee free electricity for everyone.
Adriana dug around and found some local reports with stories confirming what Melinda had been talking about, but it seemed like the major networks were busy trying to distract people. She wasn’t even convinced this was a bad thing. If more people knew how serious the problem was, they would panic and make it worse. Maybe with a little more time, some people could make better plans to survive and help everyone else. She liked the idea that they what they were building could be a refuge for the people who would put the pieces back together.