Kairafon, Tǩóymos, Feb 10, 2011.
"So, how did your excursion go Taylor?" Emily asked as I exited the storehouse. She looked to be frying something somewhat resembling a fish, if fish were six-legged land animals with jaws that could crush a coconut if it weren't only eight inches long.
Dropping down next to her, I replied "Surreal. Ran into Armsmaster, who proceeded to
buy me what I needed instead of making even a token effort to bring me in like the Wards do. He then inquired as to if I was taking proper care to ensure I was tinkering enough and eating right, then gave me
Dragon's email address so we can sort out internet trouble and talk shop. The only way it makes any sense is if this is some sort of recruitment play, but I'm honestly not sure where the hook is in the bait. There has to be one, but
where?"
An arm wrapped around my shoulder and pulled me close against her as she continued to cook her catch. "It's possible there isn't. As much as the government sucks for normal people, they treat even the Empire with a light hand out of fear. Flipping you would look good on his file, yes, but the PRT's job is to keep people like us from deciding that tearing down the government and taking over is the better option. If that means being nice to you and buying stuff to keep you happy, so be it.
That is the catch you were looking for. And Armsmaster might even just be trying to help you with the tools he has available. Or he could be doing so as cynically as the government he works for. We'll see in time."
"Anyways," I said, deciding to change the subject. "I see your own efforts were successful. What is that thing you're cooking?"
She shrugged, "Some sort of coelacanth relative if my web browsing is at all accurate. Different enough that the issues the Wikipedia article says exist for eating them don't seem to be present in these ones. So might not be coelacanth at all, just something that has a similar look. Probably doesn't matter though, food is food and we can call it what we want."
"Well, it smells good at least. Maybe it's not what it looks like, but that doesn't really matter beyond whatever novelty there might be," I replied, smiling slightly. "Any other successes?"
"Caught a ground-dwelling bird about the size of a chicken, but it escaped when I tried to extract it from the snare it was in. So that needs to get sorted out if we want to have those as an option. Other than that, nothing yet. Though knowing more about the local wildlife would probably make finding the right traps easier…"
***
Kairafon, Tǩóymos, Feb 11, 2011.
Digging footing trenches for concrete walls was rather different from ones for setting crude wooden walls. Instead of a scant couple of inches for bracing, I had to cut all the way down to the bedrock to have a good enough space for a proper foundation. Admittedly, it was only around eight inches, but that was still rather a bit more digging needed. Getting the footings done right would be a bit of a pain, but without a frostline to worry about, I wouldn't need to get fancy. In fact with the local conditions being what they were, I probably could even just go with a simple slab for a foundation, but it would actually be more work than fiddling with footings. This way, I could build the new storehouse around the old and then dismantle the latter once the former was completed, rather than having to either pick a new site within Kairafon and doing a lot of moving of supplies or dismantle the old storehouse
first and then not have any shelter for people or supplies until the work was done. It meant having to make a floor afterwards though, instead of being able to just use the base slab, but I could deal with that.
Despite the impression I had probably left with Armsmaster, I wasn't planning on casting the entirety of the walls, but rather just the lower portions, as I didn't have what I needed to pour the stuff higher up. The upper section would be made of concrete bricks more like what the Romans often did, and would likely have a slightly different composition. Nothing huge, but poured concrete required more specific fine aggregate than the brick form. River sand, rather than any grit I happened to have on hand. Happily, I had a variety of sands to choose from, including well-worn riverine stuff.
Once the footing trench was done, I walked over to where Emily was agitating the thick slurry we'd blended up earlier and scooped a mass of it out with a bucket we'd acquired in a previous raid. That bucketfull was then dumped into the trench, followed by another, and another, until it was filled with slowly setting concrete. With that done, I quickly set about assembling the forty-eight foot long mold that would form the bulk of the main wall. Everything else would have to be bricked in with smaller hand-formed blocks later on. For stability and strength reasons, the plywood sheets were set such that the bottoms were further apart than the tops. This would change as material was added to fill the space, pushing out the upper part and resulting in a straighter wall than I might otherwise get with the limited bracing I could apply for stiffness.
Filling the mold took many batches of concrete being mixed, and quite a bit more time than I'd been hoping for. Which meant I'd not be trying this method again any time soon, as it was not offering much benefit over block construction at this point, what with the fact I wasn't doing any reinforcement and didn't have the tools to easily pour concrete. That, and blocks could be produced in bulk ahead of time instead of struggling with one of us stirring concrete while the other poured it. At that point, all that would need doing would be adding water to a cement premix, which would be far more manageable.
"You know," Emily said, plopping down next to me where I was sprawled on a rock "this probably would've been a lot easier if we had gotten a bunch of cement bags and a mixer, instead of scrounging up the raw ingredients and combining by hand."
Letting out a low groan, I replied "I'll agree with you on it being easier, but making our own is the
better choice. More control over the properties, no fly ash, and the less thorough blending makes for a degree of self-repairing capacity in the material. Getting a mixer though is definitely something that would be good to do before we start on any other buildings."
"Yeah, no shit we need the mixer Tay," the other girl retorted as she laid down herself. "The biggest one we can find, preferably. A clay-lined pit and a stick is a
terrible method and we had to make up more
far too often for my liking."
***
Kairafon, Tǩóymos, Feb 12, 2011.
Of all the things I'd expect to find outside the storehouse in the morning, a four-legged avian that vaguely resembled a cross between a dog and a large cat was not one of them. Nor was said strange animal looking up from where it was curled up against the still encased concrete wall and giving a warbling trill before lowering its head back into the feathery ball of clearly predatory animal on that hypothetical list. This looked to be the local equivalent to a wolf or wild cat, so why was it here, acting almost as if it were a domestic animal? Was it a sign from Kyne that I was doing well? An animal that decided we weren't a danger to it and had a nice place to take shelter? Or was I just dreaming?
"Taylor," Emily said, poking her head out from behind me "is that a cat-bird that's acting like a dog?"
Well, that answered the last question. Still nothing on just why this critter had decided to show up here. On second thought though, I could
probably rule out it being a sign, as throwing animal companions at people didn't really fit what I knew about the wild goddess. That just left figuring out what made this clearly predatory animal decide the strange bipedal things with the weird smells and noises were safe to be around. Because it was not normal behavior for wild animals, and the circumstances I'd heard proposed for how humans started domesticating wolves into dogs weren't really at play here, same with the theories about cats.
"Looks like it," I replied, still staring at the animal. "I genuinely have no idea why it's here though, or why it's not being aggressive. Really the only thing clear to me is that it doesn't consider us a threat at the moment. Approaching it could very easily change that though, so it'd be best to keep our distance and let it make the first move again."
Emily nodded and then disappeared back inside to grab the cooking gear so we could have breakfast. We'd have to keep an eye on the cat-bird thing, but so long as it didn't get in the way or steal food from us, we could probably more or less ignore it for now. If it started causing problems, we'd deal with it then, as it could otherwise end up being helpful and domestication would always have to start somewhere. And there was a good reason dogs were the earliest animal we domesticated, not some form of livestock.
Putting that aside for the moment, I began inspecting the concrete as best I could without approaching the cat-bird too closely. Which wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do, but I managed well enough to get a good idea of the condition of the wall. The curing was going well, aided greatly by the heat and humidity, but still not far enough along to remove the mold. This evening or tomorrow morning would be better for that, as the wall would be solid enough by then. Once that was done, it'd be time to start making blocks to fill in the ends and bring the wall up to full height.
This would mean more expeditions to gather the raw materials, as we'd used up almost everything we had collected previously. Fortunately, our prior work would make this time easier, and the change to a dryer formulation would simplify things. Less sea water needing to be collected and hauled back up river, no concerns about the sand type, the ability to have both of us working to make the stuff and then form it, and the fact that we could take a bit more time with it. While I still didn't have a good idea of exactly what the weather was going to be, it was at least becoming clear we weren't actually in the wet season
quite yet.
Once we had the materials to finish the walls and the mixer we were planning on stealing, figuring out the roof would be next, as that would be less straightforward. Making and firing tiles would be pretty simple, but the framework that those would be mounted on was going to be more annoying with what we had available. While tools to shape wood had been acquired over the past month, this was something that might be better served by Bet-sourced treated lumber with greater moisture resistance than the raw timber we could produce locally. I
probably should've seen about getting beams for that purpose with Armsmaster, but that's hindsight for you. It wasn't like I couldn't correct that oversight my normal way.
Shaking my head, I turned back and walked to our cooking area where Emily was frying what smelled like pancakes. Something we'd had maybe once since she grabbed the mix box on her first run. It'd be a nice reward of sorts for all the hard work yesterday, and treats were essential for keeping up motivation in survival situations like this. Just like the tea from both the remaining bags that I was gifted, and the stuff Emily had started brewing from blissfruit blossoms.
My friend looked up from the frying pan with a slight smile. "Done with the wall for the moment then? Figured I'd have us something nicer than usual after yesterday, even if it is a bit more work. Would be nice if we had bacon or link sausage, but hopefully that will happen eventually. Probably with scratch-made pancakes instead of the instant mix stuff. Might even do guava jam or something so we can have a truly amazing celebratory breakfast to mark us having reached the point we can do that."
"I think baked French toast might be better for that," I said, sitting down next to her, "but otherwise sounds great to me. Might even end up being part of a harvest festival of some sort. First grain harvest after we're self-sufficient maybe. There's an entire new culture to build on top of Kairafon, and the two of us have a boatload of influence over what that would be right now. And probably will for quite a while, until we have a meaningful population at least. Maybe longer, depending on how much people follow our lead there."
I paused and blinked. That would mean… It couldn't. But I was pretty sure it did. "This is
probably a big responsibility that we should treat with gravity and respect rather than abuse it for fun and our own benefit. On the other hand, it's an opportunity to build a society in our preferred image…"
Emily snorted and replied "Don't let it go to your head Taylor, and don't design it solely for shits and giggles, and it should be fine. Practical but fun I think should be a good base."
"Nuts, that means no dancing in the rain tradition," I snarked back with a grin. "How will I ever enjoy myself?"
That got me a laugh and a smacked shoulder, before the two of us just sat in companionable silence. Or what I hoped was companionable silence. Either way, it was just the sound of cooking, the hissing burner, and the wildlife. Several minutes passed before either of us spoke again, and her chosen topic caught me off guard.
"So, what do you think will happen to the old world once we're at a point where we can safely cut ourselves off from Bet?"
That… wasn't something I'd given any thought, but that was probably because it didn't seem to matter. "No idea, but probably not much. Even if we were to siphon off the entire population of Brockton Bay, it wouldn't make any real difference there. Even with the Endbringers, there's five billion people on Bet, and almost three-hundred million in the US. We can't possibly have a noticeable impact on anything there, especially with how we definitely aren't going to be bringing in the entire city for obvious reasons."
Laying back and taking a deep breath, I added "Now, what happens
here is easier to answer. We grow and expand, developing new technologies and ideas, new culture, and a better world. It might sound naive, but I genuinely think that if we play our cards right we can make something beyond what anyone back on Bet could ever dream of. I'm the daughter of a union man and a former activist, I was taught about what the world could be like if we had a system that was meant to meet everyone's needs instead of enriching those who already have more than enough… We could accomplish that here, and without all the pitfalls and failings of those who tried to build such a system in the past. We aren't having to fight a civil war or an insurrection to make an opening, nor do we have opportunists waiting in the wings to take over once we've spent ourselves doing so. If we have enough set up, and bring in more people carefully, we could have something durable established by the time we start having to worry about it."
Taking a moment to flip the pancake she was working on, Emily said "You know, I didn't exactly take you for a communist, given your dislike of authority and government."
"I'm not," I replied with a snort and a soft shove. "Anarchist perhaps, but I've never really thought about this sort of thing in terms of ideology. I just think that there is no reason for some people to have an abundance while others are struggling. Happy, healthy, and well-fed people are going to do better than sick, hungry, and miserable ones, and that benefits everyone."
"So basically if your ideal world lines up with an ideology, you don't know or particularly care. You just want what you want," she stated.
"Yep, my goal is really just a proper answer to Sir Terry Pratchett's Boot Theory of economics. The fact that being poor costs more than being rich is both ridiculous and pointless. If resources are that scarce, we shouldn't be wasting them on cheap garbage that doesn't last and instead try to distribute them as evenly as possible in order to provide as best we can. Anything else is just willful cruelty. And that offends me," I said before standing again.
Walking over to the edge of the headland, I stared out over the river towards the sound. "We have so much here, so much potential… It'd be a shame to waste it on petty bullshit as humanity has been doing. This won't be some sort of flawless utopia, but that's not really the point. A new start, with a new direction and a new set of ways it can go wrong. But a chance to make something better and greater nonetheless."
Emily snorted, before tossing the now finished pancake onto a plate. "Alright Tay, you sold me on this a month ago already. Enough with the monologuing and have breakfast you firebrand, we can talk about how to organize the colony once we have an actual foothold here and not just a half-built warehouse. Priorities, girl."
I couldn't help but giggle at that, and accepted the offered plate with a smile. "Yeah, we've got a lot of work to do, and it starts with eating."
***
I slumped to the ground with a groan next to the raft almost immediately after the two of us finished unloading it. The pace we were setting on resource gathering was probably not a healthy one, going by how sore I was, but I wasn't sure if we had much choice in it. At least one permanent structure was needed before the rainy season hit, and we didn't have a good idea when that would come. Still, once the storehouse was finished, we could slow down safely, take our time, and relax a bit. Probably take advantage of Dragon's contact information at that point too, and see about ordering those seeds that we'd be needing to have a sustainable supply of crops.
After several minutes of lying like a log, I gingerly pulled myself to my feet and started back up the path towards the higher terraces. It was time to check the concrete again, and I suspected that I'd be peeling off the plywood too. The wall was curing fast, and it was likely at the point where it could stand on its own. Hopefully I'd be able to reuse the panels, as there were other things I could use them for afterwards. I could do without, or utilize smaller pieces, but them coming down intact would be preferable.
The cat-bird critter was nowhere to be seen when I reached the storehouse, so I got right to work. As I'd expected, the concrete had indeed cured enough to be reasonably solid, and thus the plywood removal began. Annoyingly, the first piece broke as I peeled it off the wall, but the rest came off more cleanly. This left me with five reasonably whole sheets and a pile of fragments, some of which looked like they could be salvaged for various uses. Like making a brick mold, or rather a template for multiple such molds. Looking over the recovered materials, I blinked, then smacked my forehead into one palm.
"Why didn't I get a crowbar for this?" I groaned. "That would've made it so much easier!"
