Eludi-4
Scott woke to hear a rattling on his door. ‘Wake up! Stop dreaming you’re on holiday!’ shouted Josh. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
He’d overslept. Sunlight streamed through onto his bed, making it uncomfortably hot. As he got out of bed he glimpsed at the view through the window; even in his tired state the landscape, framed in snow-capped tree-lined mountains, seemed enticing and lushly brimming with its unsullied potential.
‘Give me a few minutes.’ Scott said.
Their assignment was to survey the flatland zone and develop a model for a proto city. Neither of them imagined their project would materialise into an actual structure within the decade. It was simply a way of getting first dibs on a new world by their sponsors, a metaphorical planting of a corporate flag, faintly tinged with Canadian patriotism.
The proposed site was only a couple of kilometres away so seemed less trouble to go on foot, carrying the relatively light equipment. Since the scanner was still mysteriously malfunctioning, Josh announced authoritatively that they had reached the site, a mostly barren clay infused soil plain. He planted his capture frame on its monopod and then watched it unroll into its transparent rectangle.
Dr Lichman found a place nearby, but out of their view. A flexi-plastic chair unfolded on which he sat, holding a tablet. Scott guessed it contained the novel he’d been immersed in throughout the last few days. The pilot had decided he’d be more useful remaining at base, and return to the shuttle so he could run diagnostics on the faulty navigation system.
Scott and Josh already had some preliminary designs transferred from a roll-frame which in turn had been an AR model.
‘Right, let’s get some arguments going,’ said Josh, his voice slightly muffled through the filter mask, whilst studying his city-scape overlay, which contrasted with Scott’s in many significant ways.
‘How about this: your designs may well be functional, compliant with thermal and geophysic stress potentials. But they’re a bit boring.’
‘If by boring you mean not having the risk of collapsing after the first force ten storm, then boring suits me fine.’
‘Two entirely different architects working on the same project: it was never a recipe for harmony.’
‘You said it, my friend.’
‘I suppose we should play along with their plan, to find a way of cross integrating the designs,’ said Scott.
‘How much are they paying you?’
‘Same as you, no doubt. But I’m too much of a gentleman to pry.’
‘Then let’s say hypothetically, I go exactly with their plan, and you do the same. Well why not just do a fusion transfer hybrid?’
Scott looked at him in despair. ‘As if they couldn’t tell it’d been automated.’
‘So then they do want us to argue about who compromises the most.’
‘Seems so.’
After about an hour and forty minutes of manually modifying elements of towers, spires and balconies, Scott looked round towards Josh, about a metre away, to view his state of progress. Josh sat still. Completely motionless. ‘Hey Josh,’ he called. ‘How’s that hidden solar panel façade going? Blended it in any better?’
No response. He seemed to be so engrossed.
Scott went over to him, patted him on the shoulder. No response. ‘Josh?’
Scott then felt light-headed; he ripped the filter mask from his face. He was falling backwards, but in slow motion as if gravity was less than Earth’s moon. The impact of ground still hurt his back. His vision was blurry. But she was there, her olive skin, dark hair swishing as she shook her head: Deanna, the woman he loved, the woman who he’d last seen in their home log-cabin. Her face was angered, or upset – he couldn’t tell for sure. ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she said in an unusually stern voice. ‘You will ruin it all. Go back.’
His world then blanked.
The next thing he knew, Dr Lichman was standing over him with a medcorder, its bleeping indicating something worrying. An oxygen mask had been placed over his mouth. ‘Seems like your filter mask was not filtering properly; you were getting CO2 poisoning.’
Josh emerged from the background. ‘I can almost believe our sponsors would like us not to make it through this project,’ he remarked. ‘Just reap the benefits of our work, and not have to pay us.’
Lichman looked at the man with rebuke, then back to Scott. ‘I’ve got a spare filter mask. This one works fine,’ he assured.
‘But I think I’ve done enough work for today,’ Scott said.
Both the other two agreed.
***