In search of Fountains, chapter 12. (Patreon)

Here we are, another day, another update. How i wish I could actually update a chapter a day.

Anyway, here we are, please enjoy. Things are happening!

Staring off into space was getting boring again. Was it more boring than the work we'd been asked to do? Probably. I eyed the small pile of what most would consider to be sticks again.

They were rods, wooden rods machined by something to near perfection, stained and sealed and somehow free of rot after at least a few hundred years. My group was to be broken down further and used as splints for broken limbs. Just in case anyone needed a splint for broken limbs.

With our artificial intelligence effectively on strike, we couldn't use most of our more advanced medical science. Not that it mattered to me, since I'd never even seen some of that stuff in my life. Splints were right at the level of stuff I knew. That and gauze pads.

Things like the rumored wellness beds or imaging machines, I knew the ship had them in several sick bays, but I'd only seen one once - when I was scanned to make sure I was healthy.

I felt that this was more honest, is the only way I could put it. Even so, how many people would need splints? I had over twenty here.

Whatever, I'd make more until told to stop. I wonder what these rods were used for originally... surely they wouldn't just load the precious things up for no reason, even if there was always a use for a good rod.

I knew that somewhere my Dad was making a joke about that which I didn't understand from wherever he was. Just another thing we lost. Not that the loss was a great one, but it was still a loss.

There, rounded edges, still strong with no splintering, someone could walk on this with no issue, if they needed to. On to the next one, making careful cuts with my multi-tool. One of the best inventions ever made, really. If you couldn't figure out a way to make something with a multi-tool, then you didn't need whatever it was.

And of course, anything worth doing was worth doing right, even if it was busy work that didn't need to be done. At least I wasn't being asked to sew old uniforms just yet; that was for some of the rest of us.

It seemed that even with our spares, many of the uniforms we'd packed needed to be altered to fit most of us. What we'd do when we finally got the A.I. to reverse this situation we were feuding over was above my pay grade, but I could only assume that removing a bust line in our clothing was easier than adding one. Seeing all the old uniforms getting cut up did make me appreciate whoever had loaned me theirs, because at least it fit. Well, mostly fit. I wasn't going to fret over a small pinch here or there.

The underclothes however, those were another matter. Somehow those were perfect, and felt brand new. Where had those come from? Who knew. Once again, it was above my pay grade.

I just worked here.

My job looked to be doable, however; I'd watched one of the scout teams come back with a piece of vine large enough to make a plank or two from. It was straight enough to use for a log cabin, at least from what I could tell. If no toxins were found in the stuff, and it wasn't deemed intelligent and therefore off limits, we'd all be able to stow our tents in just a few months.

Was there anything like a termite on this planet? Surely there had to be, right? The ecosystem would call for it, or else we'd be seeing dead and rotten vines all over the place. Wouldn't we?

There had to be something to prey on the vines, or they would be all over the place. Well, more all over the place. Or maybe not, and I was thinking about it too much. Nothing to really do but think when doing work like this. I'd log the thought, and maybe research it later.

Still nothing charging the fence. No one had seen anything at all, animal-wise. Just vines and rock and possibly dirt, all of which was being tested. Not that the results would be shared with us.

Our scientists would get the relevant tests of course, and would be invited to think their way through any problems - but us carpenters? The stonemasons? Farmers and Ranchers might get the information if it impacted their professions, but the rest of us would have to ask and hope our more learned friends would bother to tell us.

Another splint done. I'd have to learn how to sew the uniforms tomorrow, and that would make all kinds of people unhappy; my sewing skills existed, but they were crude at best.

I finished another splint, and set it aside. I had a hundred by now, or maybe a few more. Surely that was enough?

My tablet beckoned. I could not view it of course, but I could listen? There were several self-help books and videos from every subject with sound enabled. If I turned it down low enough, I could learn a thing or two and still keep my eyes directed where they should be.

I should use it all while it lasts. Sewing might be a thing to learn first? no, we hadn't found a source of cloth yet. We had the sources we'd brought with us, but none of those were planted or being raised yet. So that was strictly limited use - learning stone masonry or survival techniques I didn't know would be a far better use of my time.

There were few survival techniques I didn't know, really. My Dad had taught me well. Stone stuff seemed the order of the day, something past knapping, which I knew. I wasn't going to chip stone like my ancestors used to do thousands of years ago, but I could learn the best way to cut stone with modern tools.

A second later the video started playing, at a volume just over the sound the wind made whistling through the vine tangle in front of us.

I was closer to Aleksei this time, and he could probably hear me aiming for his job. He saw the light from my tablet, but didn't say anything, just matched my gaze off into the distance.

On my other side, Roe was busy doing something she was hiding from us. Something probably similar to what I was doing, only she seemed more invested in it than I was. Should I be covering for her, watching her area too? Or should I be turning her in?

No, best not to turn her in; I had to live with her after all, and my eyes worked as well as ever. Had my eyes changed as a result of the A.I.'s changes? What else had? It was weird; I'd been chosen for my genetics, one of very few to make that cut. So why had the machine intelligence altered that? Why had it even been allowed to?

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who wanted to know. I'm sure the higher ups had asked, and just not told the rest of us the answer. Having fewer males among us only seemed to hurt our survival chances, to my way of thinking. Even the toughest woman I knew back on Earth had struggled. Her fate hadn't been a good one.

No, there was no need to worry about that; it was a different world now, and only the best and brightest of us were here. At least, that was what I was told before we left. I still had a little trouble believing I was somehow any more deserving or more intelligent than anyone else we'd left behind, despite what my Dad had said.

Here if someone had a problem with someone else, they wouldn't do what those bandits had done to Vivian.

No sense dwelling on that; this wasn't Earth. There was law and order here, and stability. Everyone was expected to listen to authority and do their part, and that was all there was to it.

Hm, steel or alloy tools were going to be necessary for some of this, and while some of my stuff could be used in a pinch to cut stone, none of it was made for it. I had a brand new set of all the standard tools for my profession, but nothing for anything not related.

How many replacements did the ship carry, if any? If someone was less than careful, that could mean the end of their career; after all, tools were heavy. Even hand tools.

Idle thoughts that meant nothing now, my head seemed filled with them. A quick glance up revealed the sky, or some of it. The stars were brilliant, even if I didn't recognize a single one. Was that a planet? I hadn't been tracking it, but it seemed awfully close for another star.

There were other planets in the system, weren't there?

Why wonder about that? I could check that much at least. My tablet would have the answers - yes, there. Three planets identified already, just using telescopes. One of them was the one I noticed, and our astrophysics people were watching the skies, just in case.

They should be watching the sun first. Not that we can leave if something like that goes wrong; we were just playing the odds. There were limits to our tech, even back before everything started going wrong for us.

Nothing going on to our front. Almost halfway through the night and all was well.

Of course, as if I'd summoned trouble, the near deafening beeping whistle alarm from further up the line chose that moment to go off.

I was halfway to Roe before I remembered: in the case of an alarm, we weren't supposed to move. We were supposed to keep our eyes peeled and let the security forces tasked with reacting to go. Assuming it wasn't a full scale attack of some kind or something. I hoped not. Whatever it was, it was somewhere down the line, maybe even the opposite end of it.

Still, an alarm was an alarm, and weapons were weapons. I had mine in hand as I kept my eye on my job.

"What do you think it is?!?" Roe yelled to me. Or to Aleksei. Or to anyone who would answer her, probably. She looked anxious.

I didn't have the words to comfort her. "No idea, but I'm guessing it's bad!"

There was no need to be quiet now, after all. The alarms had woken us all, for sure.

I hoped whatever it was stayed well away from us. I hoped I was wrong.

"I'll go see what it is," Aleksei said firmly, already moving past me. He was on the extreme of our line, which meant I know was. the loss of eyes ten meters away from me probably wasn't an issue, but if he was caught it wasn't going to go well for him.

It was his call though; I wasn't his boss. He was mine instead, at least on paper, and he drove the point home. "Stay here. You see anything, anything at all, don't hesitate, hit our alarm yourself."

That was yelled loud enough it could apply to any of us. That was fine, I'd just assume it was me, and keep the... something. The ability to say that I wasn't actually in charge, if everything went too terribly.

The tablet was shut off, of course. Now I had to use everything, and that meant listening. Roe went back to her own stretch while I resolved to cover two. After all, there had to be a reason that one of us had been placed ten meters farther down; maybe some future plans? There wasn't anything directly behind us just yet.

The alarm suddenly cut off, leaving us with a loud, even cloying silence.

It was a long hard watch, staring into the dark, twitching at the quiet sounds made by my would-be friends and comrades.

I'd counted several minutes before I spotted Aleksei coming back to us. I kept my eyes where they should be; there, was that movement? Something other than the wind moving the vines?

"So what was it?" Roe asked. I could just barely hear her from here.

Aleksei sounded annoyed, or maybe even beyond that. "Some kind of creature. Some number of them came out of the vines and crashed the line. No one was hurt, but they caused some chaos. I left before I saw too much, so we'll have to get the whole story later."

Roe went from scared to interested. I had to admit I was too. "A creature? What kind of creature? Did you see it?"

"Not well. It was some kind of ball, like a bush without roots. It rolled, and seemed to have branches."

"How fascinating," Roe replied, no longer paying any attention to our fearless leader. Instead she was now staring at the line of vines as if her gaze alone could bring the creatures to her.

I was a bit curious myself, but not so curious I wanted them here; what if they were hostile? What if they could light themselves on fire or something? Better to let security deal with them... or to pass out something a little more lethal than a taser. I was pretty sure tasers wouldn't work on anything that was pretty much wood.

Still, the arrival of some other sort of organism, something mobile, pointed to a much more rich or nuanced system... ecology? something like that. We would just have to wait and see.

My thoughts swirled in circles until our "morning", which was a time we just picked out, more than anything else. We needed to rework our times - at some point, when we weren't in immediate danger of dying.

By the time we were relieved, my tablet had chimed. I waved to my direct relief as I brought up the latest update; the first thing that greeted my tired eyes was a picture.

A picture of what looked for all the world like a tumbleweed, such as you'd find in the remains of Texas or Mexico. It seemed to be made of vines... but it wasn't. The giveaway was the small tentacles that extended from the 'branches' along the outer edge.

They were clearly boneless, but with the creature clearly dead, any moving done was by the scientists or doctors in the video showing us how they moved.

I saw no eyes or ears, but there had to be something it used. Did it have a sex? What did it eat? I didn't see a mouth either. Where was all the workings of the creature hidden?

"That's it?" Roe asked. "Ugly thing."

I hadn't really controlled the jump, but no one called me on it. "It probably thinks we are the ugly ones." That felt like a line from a movie, but it also felt right. Poor thing, had it suffered before dying?

It didn't look like it had the ability to be hostile, or to hurt a person if it did. Perhaps I'd change my mind when I got a better idea of what defenses it had. Every animal had defenses of some kind, even rabbits.

"Well it doesn't look like much, that's for sure. Certainly not enough to cause a general alarm all across our line." I doubt many of those in the tents got much sleep after the alarm; if it had been me, I'd have been tense and waiting on updates.

"Well, as before, we don't all need to report in. If you all want to get a bite to eat or some coffee or something, I'll do it then join you later."

I didn't want to get a bite to eat, I wanted to report in - but I was clearly being dismissed. We all were. Roe and I shared a look; we wanted the same thing. The others looked bored, like they just couldn't be bothered. Well, bored and in a few cases, hungry.

I was already getting the feeling that I was not master of my own destiny. Like those who had some authority granted them, even Aleksei, wanted to keep us ignorant of what was going on.

I wasn't sure that was logical, but it felt right. I couldn't be the only one feeling it, either.

Still, I'd play along for now. I needed, we needed, the command structure right now. But if this sort of thing kept happening, I'd walk. Even being reworked as I was, I'd walk - and I was sure that when I did, I wouldn't be alone.