“Torpedo, away!” calls Phil as he waves his hands at one of the collectors, his bots pushing it off the small ramp at the back of the cat. I guess they do look a little like torpedoes, though instead of the propeller in the back it’s an enclosed jet system so they’ll have a minimal impact on the environment and won’t accidentally shred any wildlife.

Erik is up next, sliding my latest build over without any gestures and pushing it out. Whatever control system he’s got going is not quite as efficient as Phil’s gesture scheme, and it takes him a little longer to get his collector off the boat. They could probably both do the job faster with just muscle power, but this is good practice for them and they seem to prefer it.

Stan and I are producing the collectors about as fast as they can deploy them. I probably get five out for every one of Stan’s, but I think that’s about right for where Stan should be at this point. He’s actually not too far behind where I was when we went to Africa in terms of the cloud size he’s handling. He’s by far the best with his cloud of the three boys in the Geologist class.

I look over at the Geologist girls’ boat. Looks like Evan’s got them organized into a rotation system rather than an assembly line, but they’re efficiently dropping collectors almost as fast as we are. It’s important that the Geologists feel like they’re an essential part of this project. That was one thing Father did really well on the Africa trip that we all agreed we wanted to replicate here. I can’t see Louise’s boat from here, and I don’t want to pull bots away from manufacturing collectors to take a good look, but I’m sure she and Andrea are getting a lot done. Marc will unload the stacks of collectors that Evan and I built on our cat once he’s feeling better, then come join us over here. He still can’t fly, but he can handle building walkways between the cats when he needs them. That’s basic library stuff that even the Geologists can do, so it should be fine. Worst case, the guides will be listening for the man overboard alarm and we can go fish him out of the water.

One of the speedboats is off getting our dinner. I heard something about banh mi sandwiches like those really good ones I got from the street vendor back in Ho Chi Minh City. I’m excited for that.

“Keep it up guys, good work,” I say. “Just about a million more to do.”

Stan laughs, the other two just kind of grunt. They’re focused on their jobs, which is just what they should be doing, but I don’t want this to be miserable for them.

“Erik,” I say, turning to him, “it might be worth your time to look at a different control scheme. You’re just using direct commands for each action now, right?”

“Yeah,” he answers, his eyes intently focused on the collector he’s moving. I see his left hand twitching almost imperceptibly.

“That’s not a bad technique, but I think you could get more done if you use a gesture based system like Phil is running.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he concedes. “I just thought it would be pretentious to wave my hands like a wizard every time I want to move something.”

I laugh as Phil starts to open his mouth to protest.

“What do you think we are?” I say before Phil can get mad at him. “Modern day techno-wizards sounds about right. There’s nothing pretentious about doing what works well. Look at Andrea, she does almost everything with a gesture control scheme and she pulls off some really amazing work.”

“OK. But I don’t have any code for it.” He looks almost ashamed. “I’ve been avoiding writing a system like that.”

“Not a problem,” I say. “Here, come switch with Stan and do construction. It shouldn’t demand too much of your attention since it’s almost all automated. We can get something set up for you while we build. Is that OK with you, Stan?”

“Sure,” he says, finishing up his current build and stepping across the deck. He uses a similar gesture to what Phil’s been using to move the collector, which tells me that they probably collaborated on the system they’re using. Good, that kind of cooperation is what they should be doing, better than the secretive compartmentalization that some of my class did. We need to get Erik playing in the same playground.

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Fortunately, Erik is a quick study, and Phil and Stan are good about sharing their code once we get going. Before long, Erik is waving his hands and shoving torpedos down the ramp just as quickly as the others. They’re good kids and good company. I should have taken the time to get to know them better before this.

The heat isn’t bad, now that I’m used to it, but the humidity is brutal. We’re all covered in sweat. I pass out some cold drinks from the fridge as we work and talk. Collectors drop in the river as the boys improve the gesture interface they’re all now using quite a bit. The materials stash finally runs out, which slows the whole production down since now we have to gather as we build.

Mek pulls up in the speedboat and we get a dinner break. The sandwiches she hands out are even better than the ones from the street vendor. Or maybe I’m just hungrier, hard to tell. Either way, the pickled vegetables make a crisp contrast to the savory pork slices and the crusty bread tastes like it was just baked. Delicious.

We get back to work after dinner, moving faster now. Phil is able to handle all the drops, so Stan, Erik, and I just focus on construction. I pull another crate of control boards over.

“With all the practice we’ve been doing,” I tell them, “you might be able to handle a bigger cloud soon. Whenever you feel like you’re ready, go ahead and grow. We have permission to access whatever minerals we need along the shorelines on our route.”

“Got it,” Erik says and the others nod. He pauses construction for a moment and my overlay shows his cloud replicating along the nearby shore. In a couple of minutes he’s back to building, faster this time, almost up to Stan’s speed.

To Andrea, Louise, Evan: How much longer do we want to push today? I don’t want to burn them out on their first real day of work.

From Louise: Another hour maybe?

From Evan: Yeah, an hour sounds good.

The heat of the day lingers even with the sun down. It’s not like at home in the Nevada desert where even in the summer it starts cooling down as soon as the sun disappears. I’m sure I’ll get used to the humidity soon, but it still feels like I’m breathing water.

Another build, another, another, another. Each one is followed by a splash as Phil pushes them into the water.

“OK, guys,” I finally tell them. “Quitting time. Good work today.”

I set up a walkway with railings between here and the next cat, then another linking it to Chad’s, and so on up the chain to the guide’s boat. I make the walkways flexible enough that I think we can leave them up all night without any issues.

“Party at Chad’s place,” I declare.

I choose Chad’s because it’s the only cat that doesn’t have the deck cluttered with building materials or crates. We pile over the bridge and pick up Evan and the Geologist girls on our way to Chad’s boat. Louise and company seem to have had the same idea I did, and they brought the guides along from the other direction. Marc shows up last, looking much better than he did earlier.

Chad, Keeya, and Lucie all look happy to have us all aboard, even if the deck and main cabin are a little crowded now. At first it’s a little quiet, with most of us exhausted from the day’s heat and work, but Marc starts telling the girlfriends some old, embarrassing stories about Chad and soon everyone is laughing and chatting. The guides are all pretty cool. I already liked Akara, and the rest seem just as good. Mek and Simok, the two Laotians, are a little quieter, but once they get going they’re good company.

Keeya pulls out some treats from the boat’s pantry, pastries that look a little like hamburger buns with sesame seeds dotted around the outside. They’re hollow inside and sweet, really good. She offers beers all around, but Louise intercepts her off with the excuse that most of the group is under the local legal age and we want to avoid any legal trouble, so she passes around sodas instead. Chad still takes a beer from the fridge though, so I guess I don’t need to tell Louise about it. I make a reminder task to talk to Louise about alcohol and the implant.

It’s getting late and I still want to get a message to Lin before I go to bed. I beg off and make my way towards my boat, starting a trend that my bots feel everyone behind me starting to follow. I guess I’m not the only one who feels like it was a long day today. I hit my room, strip down to my shorts, and crash on top of the bed. I grab my tablet and start banging out a quick email to Lin. About halfway through, Evan gets back and starts to get settled in. I don’t know if it’s jet lag or just the long day of hard effort, but I’m barely keeping my eyes open.

I did good work today, Mom. I’m saving the world. You can be proud of me.