Chapter 1-3
Chapter 1: That Ever Lovin’ Vent
23rd Day, 1st Month of Summer, Vega Year 1072
Mari leaned forward scooped up a glass bead attached the miniscule decoration to the mesh vest with an efficient stab of her needle. She huffed out a happy sigh and then did it again and again. When she came to the end of the row she set the vest down in her lap and took a sip of tea.
Mari loved hand work. She took justifiable pride in her skill and she deeply enjoyed designing and creating gifts that were perfect for the occasion. But more than anything, she loved the feeling of the world fading away as the intricacies of shape and pattern and color over-took her senses.
She held up the fancy vest to check her progress and was shocked to see that it was past dark. The edges of the open plan room had disappeared with the oncoming night and the only light came from the bright oil lamp that had hung over the big table since the day she moved in more than twenty years ago.
Mari gauged her work and was thrilled to see that she was almost finished with the vest and even happier that the stiflingly hot afternoon had gone by with little notice.
Jacks, distracted by the sparkle, looked up from his ledger and blinked at Mari from across the big table as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. She smiled happily at him and then nodded at the candle sitting near his elbow.
Jacks grinned at his friend’s not-so-subtle hint and with a flourish he picked up his striker and lit the little candle with an efficient flick of the striker. Mari frowned as she watched him place it on the floor in front of the vent instead of using it to light the other lamps as she had expected.
Jacks noticed the frown and said with a shrug, “Sorry lady, you’ve got no ‘lectrics till the night winds start blowing because no matter how hard I try I cannot get your ancient batteries to hold a charge.”
He frowned at the shelf full of obsolete battery boxes and made a noise, something between a huff and a groan and said, “I am pretty sure these were made about a hundred years ago. These are so ancient I am pretty sure they were made using lead!”
Mari asked with interest, “Lead? Did you say lead?”
Jacks shrugged and said, “I’ve got batteries on the top of the priority list in our latest missive to Sector City, but don’t hold your breath. You know as well as I do that “Malock’s needs” are not a priority. I wonder if we submitted a reclassification request and switched the refuge from a “research facility” to a “farm city” if that would make a difference?”
Mari grimaced and said sourly, “I don’t think paperwork is the solution and unfortunately, I do think we are going to have to make our own solution. At this point, waiting on The Guild is bordering on the ridiculous.”
Jacks asked, “Are you talking black market again? We’ve escaped that quagmire so far and I’d really like to keep it that way.”
In their past lives as fixers for The Guild, they had both had a lot of very bad experiences with black markets.
Mari grimaced and then nodded in agreement and said, “You could veto me I suppose, but really, what choice do we have? We have asked and asked and now we can’t even get the courtesy of a reply. I say if after all these years, we are “not priority” by now and The Guild really cannot or will not help us survive our calamitous world and help us keep this facility functioning and these people fed, then you and I need to figure out how to do it on our own. It won’t be the first time will it?”
Jacks squinted up at the wires that looped across the ceiling and grimaced. The unsightly mess was the result of The Guild’s most recent “solution” to their request for a working grid. The supplies had arrived twenty years ago in the form of four heavy carts full of mismatched electronic bits and pieces that Jacks had managed to turn into a few unreliable wind turbines.
He had set up the most reliable of them to power the cooling towers and he and Mari were left with a small turbine and a few antiquated power panels each for their personal grow rooms. They kept out the best power panel and battery boxes for the lab space and Mari knew that if that system failed the Guild would be happy to provide a system for power. Unfortunately for their private needs, they’d been left hanging for far too long.
The last turbine, a small unreliable mess that had to be constantly fussed with, was currently in use to keep the central garden and patio lights on but it only worked when the wind blew and it was long past time to replace the entire antiquated mess.
Mari frowned and turned her head to listen because she thought she heard one of the turbines squeaking to life. Jacks also listened and then shook his head sadly.
As he made a notation in his ledger, he said, “If you are serious, and against my better judgment, what else are we talking about and what exactly do you have for trade and what exactly are you planning?”
Mari teased, “Well, unlike you spoiled engineers with your Cyclopedias, I don’t have a Lore tablet telling me how to “Black-Market” so I guess I’mma have to wing it.”
She took a sip of tea and said, “I certainly don’t want word getting out that we are supporting black market goods or they’ll start coming here directly and unlike Brai, we don’t have the chits to support full-time gate wardens. I’ll talk to Brai when I get to Dalta City. He’s got a lot more information about the black market mischief that plays out in the dark corners of his caverns than he will ever admit. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll write to some trusted friends down in Sector City and see if they can find us what we need there.”
Mari frowned at the shelf full of defunct batteries and said more loudly than she intended, “What we need is power, reliable power. And I will take whatever version we can get. Functioning wind turbines, power panels, or BEC panels and some new batteries that actually hold a charge for starters. If not then how about replacement parts for the generator, we’ve got plenty of fuel with this new varietal of seed oil. And how about a few of those new high-efficiency light panels? Brai said they’re like having the sun on inside. The lab and the grow rooms sure could use something brighter than what we’ve got now.”
She blinked at Jacks and asked, “Do you think we could actually afford to get a BEC set-up? Just a single panel would be enough to power our entire grid.”
Jacks shook his head and said, “There is no way we could afford one, even a small one and how do you envision finding something that rare and expensive all the way out here?”
Mari frowned and said, “I am fairly sure Brai has a good connection for some off-market Condensate Bio-Material and we have something they need.” She nodded at the defunct shelf full of batteries and grinned at Jacks’ confusion.
“Having outdated equipment, in this case, is going to come in very handy. Those batteries are full of metal. That’s iron and lead and copper and more. I bet you they are worth more as scrap than they are as power storage.”
Jacks blinked at the shelf in surprise and then his eyes lit up at the thought of having reliable power for the entire facility. He smiled happily as he ticked through all of the ideas that had been stuck in his head for the last twenty-plus years. And then he frowned and sighed.
Mari was a bit surprised at his reaction. She had thought the idea of finally getting some working equipment would have put him in a better mood. She scooped up another bead and attached it to the vest and then asked, “What?”
Jacks was glaring at the useless light panels that should be lighting up the room and said, “Power for lights and whatnot and to push and pull the air around will help - a lot, but there’s no solving any of this if we can’t get into the core and free that vent.”
The building’s mechanical heart, or “The Core” in local parlance, was the beating heart of the research and remediation facility. Unfortunately, the mechanics were isolated inside a thick rockcrete shell to protect the people from a catastrophic failure of the heat exchange system. Years ago a rock fall had blocked the only entrance into the mechanical cavern and no one had yet figured out a way to get back inside.
The rock fall had presaged an internal collapse of at least one of the structural slabs inside the core which when it fell the slab apparently wiped out almost all of the mechanical systems including the apartment block water pump and the entire electrical grid.
Fortunately, the cavern ovens and the facility heating systems were still functioning and in the summers the passive cooling system pulled the heat up and out with an assist from the cool air coming in from the caverns deep underground. When the air was stagnant, like today, Jacks or one of his helpers would switch on the generator to help push the cool air through the water curtain and out of the caverns and up into the hot apartments above.
Jacks shook his head in frustration as he paged open the house ledger to the engineering section to review the list of broken equipment and an ancient drawing of the core fell out onto the floor. Jacks unfolded the ancient drawing and squinted at the tiny lettering in the dim light.
The longer he looked at it, the deeper his frown got until Mari said, “I thought you’d be happy.”
Jacks picked up his teacup and took a sip of the cold dregs and hissed in frustration, “Happy? Happy! Not even those black market BEC panels will fix the core and if we can’t get in to remove that fallen slab and free the vent, that ever-lovin’ VENT, you know as well as I do that the entire system will eventually fail regardless of the quality of our hodge-poggled electrics!”
Jacks squinted at the thermal curtains that shielded the room from the heat of the day and said in a frustrated grumble, “We can’t change the weather and we can’t leave. Where would we go? But if another slab falls, or if we lose the generator, or if there’s another collapse in the caverns, or…”
Mari interrupted him and said, “Or the earth could crack open, or we could get struck by lightning or!” and then she grinned and shook her head at him.
Jacks shuddered in distaste and said, “Or we could lose the outside gardens to the blight and only have shrooms to eat.”
Mari did the same and then looked down towards the basements and said solemnly, “Thank the Mother Father for Osman’s fish.”
Jacks nodded somberly in agreement. His face reflected the shared remembrance of their first years of struggle as they tried to feed, clothe and keep alive two hundred-plus people with nothing to eat except cactus paddles, hennep seeds, mushrooms and Osman’s fish.
Jacks admired Mari’s newest teapot as he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. This pot was in the style of a black and white sturgeon and had some lovely details worked into the shape of the main body of the pot. He squinted at the shelf above the kitchen counter, filled to bursting with beautiful things, multiple teapots included and said with a smirk, “Speaking of Osman, that’s a nice pot, how many is this now?”
Mari ignored him and continued to add beads to the vest.
Jacks took a sip of the bitter tea and set his cup down. He looked at Mari in a considered fashion and tried not to sound so frustrated, but it was impossible. “Why did they build this place so far up into the mountains again? I thought at least we’d get a break from the heat, but noooo! I have lived in some hard places in my life, but I have never lived someplace where it felt so, I don’t know, hazardous. It’s so beautiful, you wouldn’t think it, but I swear this place is a hazard to our health!”
She shot him a look so he started muttering, just loud enough for Mari to hear, “Now with those winter thunderstorms and that ice mud that blocks the pass plus the five months of unrelenting heat so we can’t leave then either. It’s ridiculous! And how many grass fires since we moved here and now with all these new ice storms, it looks like the upper reach of the valley is flooding again which means we’ll have to get out to the other side of the lake and update our remediation to keep that mess out of the water! Unbelievable, first never enough water and now we can’t get a break from it.”
He glared at the pile of ledgers that surrounded him and said with feeling, “If it wasn’t for the breaks to Dalta City caverns, I swear I’d go sit outside and stare at the sun!”
Mari’s face froze for a second, but she didn’t respond. She took a deep breath and thought that Jacks’ relentless nature was usually a good thing. Except when he got into a bad head space, and she knew from past experience that it was all but impossible to get him out of it unless she could somehow interrupt his flow and get him to redirect his energy toward something more constructive.
Mari picked up the vest and then set it down and rubbed her temples instead. Her head ached abominably and suddenly she felt very stuck. Stuck in the stagnant room, stuck in this remote mountain valley, stuck with Jacks and his relentless nature. She just wanted to get some work done but as she squinted at her friend, she felt that just like the heat of summer, she’d also never get a break from Jacks complaining.
Mari huffed out her frustration and asked, “What’s today, the twenty-third? That means we have another month and a half of red gauge days which also means I’m only halfway done hearing you complain about it!”
She squinted her eyes at him and asked, “You’ve been trying to repair that “ever lovin’ vent” for more than twenty years. Why are you so upset about it now?”
Jacks said honestly, “Because-we-are-running-out-of-time!”
Mari was so surprised by the unexpected truth that she flinched and the little bead in her hand flew across the room and landed on the floor just next to the candle.
She swore, “Motherfather, will this day never end?”
She squinted at the little bead and then tried to decide whether it was worth the effort to get up and retrieve it when the little candle flickered, ever so slightly.
Chapter 2: Basic Engineering
Mari blinked in surprise and then pointed at the candle and said excitedly, “It flickered. Did you see that?”
They both turned to look and waited for the flame to flicker again.
Mari said excitedly, “Quick, light your pipe.”
Jacks immediately obliged. He pinched off a small bit of fresh dried herb and packed his pipe, picked up the striker and expertly lit it. He took a huge puff and blew it in the direction of the vents, and they watched sadly as the room filled up with swirls of blue and grey.
As the smoke settled into stagnant layers Mari squinted unhappily at the motionless air and swore softly, “Dog farts!”
She leaned over and focused all of her attention on the little candle and muttered, “I-know-I-saw-it-flicker.”
Jacks said, “I think we need to re-engineer those fan blades.”
Mari teased, “We? Do you have a ratten in your pocket? I wish that it were true, but you know as well as I do, that it’s not your design, it’s the summer.”
Jacks was still frowning so Mari decided to try a different tact.
She asked innocently, “I still don’t understand how you got it to work with the vent blocked in the first place.”
Jacks looked up and opened his mouth to answer and then grinned and shook his head in mock exasperation at his friend.
Mari loved his smile and realized that it was still the first thing you noticed about him. He had an animated face with deep creases on either side of his wide mouth and when he smiled his eyes almost disappeared.
Mari always thought it was a shame that he hated to wear a hat because his once smooth ebony skin was deeply wrinkled, and he looked older than his forty-eight years.
She watched as his grin of amusement pushed his eyes into sharp slits and she was glad to see that even with all his complaining and justifiable frustrations he was still a kid at heart and his smile was still as charming as ever.
Mari could never quite figure out how he did it and she thought the effect was one of the reasons he was always so popular with the ladies. Somehow, he could focus the twinkle in his eyes and when he turned his charm in your direction, he was irresistible.
He twinkled back at her and then raised his eyebrows and waggled them so that his entire face was in motion. She could clearly see that no matter how much he complained, Jacks core, his humor and his silliness were still very much intact. Mari shook her head at him in mock anger, but she couldn’t help but smile.
Jacks squinched up his face and looked directly at his friend and watched her busy hands and the flash of her needle. He always thought it was funny when she pretended not to understand basic engineering and he had figured out years ago that she only did it when she wanted to distract him from a bad mood.
He rubbed his hand across his shaved head in exasperation and said, “You know why, or at least we think we know why. One of the rockcrete slabs way down in the mechanical core broke free and blocked the main vent and on the way down it smashed the fan motors and all of the electrics in there. We can’t get in there to fix it and if anything, else collapses in the core, then that’s it for this refuge as you well know. That heat chimney and cooling towers only work effectively when the wind blows because we’ve never once had enough power to push that volume of air around with fans alone.”
Mari frowned a bit and Jacks said with a grimace, “I know our priority is to keep the caverns in the green and if the basement gauge goes yellow, I promise you I will immediately switch on the generator as per usual but I have to tell you that after all these years of this nonsense, I am exhausted by it.”
Chapter 3: ‘Lectrics
“Yes, I know,” Mari said in a peeved tone.
Mari felt more and more like she and Jacks were being slowly ground down to dust by the astonishing amount of effort it took to keep everyone fed and healthy in this desolate place.
Malock wasn’t the only refuge that suffered from lack of support, but it was the unequal expectations that irritated Mari the most. They had been given this monumental task and expected to perform expertly, apparently without any additional resources or even the most basic assistance. Mari thought that The Guild was asking a lot to expect them to do it without a proper energy source and she was tired, really, really tired of asking for help and resources that never arrived. They did pretty well, all things considered, but everything would be a lot easier with reliable power.
Jacks shrugged and tried to see her face to gauge just how annoyed she really was, but Mari kept her head down and tried to stay focused on her project.
Jacks sighed and cursed the endless political maneuverings of The Mater’s Guild and their seeming inability to get any actual work done because the leadership, in his view, wasted so much time arguing about the weather and philosophizing about “The Plan.”
He said a gratitude that he and Mari were working and out here in the “real” world helping the people and not stuck down at Sector City teaching at The Guild College, a job they both detested.
Mari knew he was watching her, and she said with a grimace, “You know, you go on and on about how these buildings are a “Marvel of Engineering” but the reality is, you are right, we ARE prisoners of the weather. Five hundred years ago it WAS an astonishing feat of engineering and it still is. But now with most of the functionality broken or worn to rust, I just don’t know anymore. It feels like they are doing it on purpose, but the why of it I can’t imagine. I mean look at this place! Someone scavenged all the metal years ago, and the replacement “glass” for our greenhouses and windows are those cloudy bio-plast panels, I can’t get a functioning light panel to save my life and I cannot tell you how much I despise sitting here, under those squeaky ceiling fans, in the dark, trying to get some work done!”
Jacks raised his eyebrows in surprise. Mari didn’t complain very often, and he was enjoying it very much indeed.
He nodded in agreement looked around the dimly lit room and mused, “Can you imagine what it used to be like, it must have been a wonder.”
He tried to see past the years and years of wear and tear and when he closed his eyes he said, “Gardens and greenhouses, food everywhere and everything functioned perfectly. The apartments and caverns were filled with light and there was always plenty of trade. And they had all types of animals, not just those scrawny bantams and Osman’s fish. Can you imagine? Clear glass and running water?”
They currently had a bucket and weight system to bring the water up from the cisterns in the basement and hauling water was such a “normal” part of their day that Mari didn’t even register the extra effort that it took to bring it up. Jacks, who was usually the one hauling the water, squinted at the empty holes that centered above the kitchen sink and sighed. The metal pipes and faucets had been stripped for scrap long ago and over the years he had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to imagine the reason people would do that to their own homes.
He said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Those ancient builders were too arrogant, I think. Imagine designing an electrical grid and a water pumping system that no one can get into to fix. It’s ridiculous!”
It irked him beyond sense that he had a head-crammed FULL of engineering solutions that were impossible to implement.
Mari agreed wholeheartedly. They both thought it was beyond idiocy that there was a mechanical system somewhere below that could generate electricity and pump water but when it broke no one had been able to get down into the core to fix it.
She sighed softly and closed her eyes and waited for the cool of the night to finally give them some relief.
Mari said, “I don’t imagine they ever thought the structural elements would last so long. The rockcrete outlasted their ambitions, even if the glass didn’t. But I think that you are right, we are running out of time.”
It suddenly struck Mari that the Guild’s benign neglect WAS purposeful. Her eyes popped open in surprise, and she whispered, “It IS on purpose!”
Jacks shook his head at her and asked, “What is?”
“Those sneaky Maters, those tricky, tricky females!” Mari shook her head in wonder and looked blankly at Jacks as her mind put the puzzle together.
She said quietly, “Have you ever noticed that we never have enough to make life easy, but we do have enough to endure?” She raised her eyebrows at Jacks and waited for him to reach the same conclusion.
He blinked in surprise and said, “So I’m being ground into powder because Antares Chulchin, our “Grandest” Grand Mater wants our younglings to be self-sufficient and resourceful?”
Mari nodded grimly and closed her eyes in exasperation. She should have known the lack of equipment was to some purpose.
She humped quietly and said, “Not just that. It keeps us, everyone stuck here, stuck. Stuck working, stuck inside, stuck out here at this ridiculously remote facility.”
She looked at Jacks wide-eyed in astonishment at her realization and whispered, “Purposefully stuck. Until the time is right. Sun and moon above, that woman is a GENIUS!”
As he realized what Mari was saying, Jacks mouth dropped open and he yelped in disbelief, “Genius all right. Evil genius.”
Click to Continue: https://northstarvega.com/chapter-4-6
Jacks unfolded the ancient drawing and squinted at the tiny lettering in the dim light