003 Futile

Character: James

James walked toward the building, not really happy. This wasn't really what he saw himself doing with his life, but it was the family business. His father use to say that fighting fate and his legacy was as futile as fighting gravity. That was why he was here, because he couldn't fight the legacy that his father was leaving him.

James moved to the side as a truck carrying metal supplies for a new project rolled past. He didn't even know what anything on the truck was. He knew that when you put them all together they made a building, but that was about it. He had never studied buildings, never been interested in them. He'd found science, particularly physics, much more interesting, but his father had always told him he couldn't make a living with physics.

James moved up to the main building and opened the door. He headed back through the offices to the one he knew was his fathers. The door was shut so he knocked, waiting for a reply. It was about a minute later when his father finally said he could come in. James opened the door and stepped to the side as another man moved out of the office. He then moved inside and shut the door behind him.

"Well, you excited for your first day?" His father asked. James only shrugged. He wasn't really sure how to reply to that. "Well, we'll get you the basic safety gear and then we'll head out to our first sight. I'm going to teach you the trade step by step." His father grinned and moved around the desk and out of the office.

James followed his father to the work supplies where he got a hard had, gloves, safety glasses, and a high visibility vest. James just held them as they made their way to one of the company trucks and got in. He set them on his lap and just stared out the window as they moved through the town. James watched as towers and houses rushed past them. Where they stopped was not what he expected.

The building they had arrived at there were already people working at and it wasn't being freshly built. The building was made of an old stone substance that James didn't recognize right off the bat. He didn't even know there were any buildings still made of stone in the city. There were bits chipped away and it looked like no one had used it in a long time.

"This, James, is a demolition site. This is the first stage of building a new building. If there's already a building on the land you're going to be building on, then you have to remove it before you can build anything." James' father put on his safety gear so James did the same. He felt a bit silly in the outfit, but everyone else was wearing them so he didn't feel like he stood out.

They walked toward the building, James' father greeting some of the people as they moved inside. James watched the people working. They were checking walls and looking over plans as they attached something to particular places. He looked over the structure and then identified the devices. They must be charges that would go off and take out the walls supporting the building.

"James, I'd like you to meet Phil. He's the man that runs my demolition crew." James' father was standing beside a man who was in his late 30s with light brown hair. "He's been with the company for almost a decade."

"Well I love my work with the company and I enjoy putting my skills to use. So James, I hear you're planning on taking up the torch after your father. He going to have you start working after school?" Phil asked.

James nodded. It wasn't something he was particularly happy about. His father wanted him to start working for the company as soon as he could. That meant that now his weeknights and weekends were going to be spent working. He wasn't even getting paid all that much for it. He wouldn't have minded if it didn't mean he'd now have to be paying for a lot of his things like food and possibly rent if his father felt like it.

"Well, you seem like a quiet young man." Phil held out a sheet and James looked at it. "This is the plans of where we need to put all of the explosives in order to have this building implode. Imploding it is safer for the buildings around it than a normal demolition where any debris falling around it wouldn't matter much. You use implosions a lot in a city when removing old buildings."

James looked it over and then looked around. He pointed at a particular wall. "You need one on that wall or that second wouldn't fall properly. It might cause it instead to tip and force debris out of your zone." James pointed out the wall on the map. "It's not labeled here."

Phil frowned and then put the map away, retrieving a second one. He cursed to himself. "That's the last time I let Teddy do the mock ups for the rest of the team. It's on my original but he missed it on the second version." Phil put away the drawing and turned to James. "It's not a problem. It will actually give me a chance to show you how we put one of these in place. It's a useful skill."

James spent a while learning from Phil how he set the charge in place, secured it to the wall, and ran the lines back to join with the rest of the explosives. It was a while later that they all stood outside of the blast zone and Phil was showing him the detonator. "It's rather simply really, just a button that you press and the whole thing goes down." He handed it over to James. "As this is your first one and you did help us from having a mishap, why don't you do the honors?"

James took the detonator and hit the green button. He could see the flashes inside as the explosives went off. They started in the upper level and moved down as the building collapsed in on itself. James looked away as a cloud of dust spread forth from the building. It took a bit for it to settle down but when it did there was nothing but a pile of stone left in the place of the building.

James' father put a hand on his shoulder. "That is the first stage of construction, James. Removing the old to put in the new. Tomorrow I'll bring you back down here and you can see how they remove the debris."

James followed his father back to the truck and sat down in the passenger's seat. He removed his gear and looked toward the rubble. "I think I found a part of construction I like," he muttered.