Trucks In a Row
It takes me five solid days of work to get my new office into anything resembling order. The first two days are spent sorting paper - extracting receipts, invoices, reports, and other important records from the almost unbelievable amount of trash. In fact, it takes a good three or four hours for me to fully understand that so much of it is trash, and just how utterly mundane all of it is. I've made a substantial pile of colourful, glossy, fully-printed magazines, scraps of brightly coloured card stock announcing 20% off cattle feed, and a truly astonishing number of offers for a thing called a "business credit card" before I realize that not one of them is important. Then, I look more closely at the tumbled piles of plain white pages, and find expense reports, supply orders, growth projection grids. . . all important things for a working farm, certainly, but. . . this is what is considered worthy of putting on paper here? Advertisements, pictures of flashy cars and barely-dressed women, and. . . cattle sale receipts?
I had been expecting such a pile of paper to consist mostly of things like genealogy tables, or cellular scans, biosphere maps, mineralogical surveys, and possibly photographs of unique or noteworthy things the farm has produced over the years. Things to show - things to keep. Things that deserved the paper they were printed on. Things to be proud of.
Not. . . last quarter's water bill.
I know full well that paper can be used this frivolously - I grew up in Central, after all. I've even seen artists cover entire walls with nothing but paper, much to the delight of all their Central Township friends. Of course, Skycity 15 does produce more than the usual amount of the stuff, given how much insoluble stem, root, and other waste fiber we get out of our farming stations, but nearly 80% of our paper products are varieties of sanitation tissue, and most of the rest goes to packaging, industrial construction, or special-use laboratory applications. Occasionally though, a fiber processing station will do a "fancy" run, making coloured and embossed sheets of display-worthy paper, or the trimmed, smooth sheets of pure white art paper. . . but even the most cavalier of Central Township artists aren't so wasteful as to have their regular bank statements printed on any of it.
Schooling certificates, wedding licenses, awards, official commendations, handwritten poetry, paintings, drawings, memorializing photographs - these are the sorts of things paper is used for, not. . . commercials for sheep manure. If you'd shown me this office two weeks ago, and told me it contained every bit of display and art paper that existed in this hemisphere, I would have believed you. Even one week ago, when Lamb explained paper books to me, it was in the context of having preserved a precious part of Human knowledge and creativity. But here, apparently, paper is also used for tax statements, form letters, full-colour catalogues, and something I later learn is called junk mail.
After two days, the single filing cabinet I manage to excavate out of one corner is filled and organized, as are the two large lower drawers of the desk. There are eleven large plastic bags full of the trash, stacked against the wall, ready to be thrown out, or, as I deeply hope, recycled.
And to think - just a few days ago, I got upset when I saw men cutting down trees.
This truly is a different world I've landed in. No matter how often I think I'm getting used to it, something new slaps me across the face with how much of an alien I am here.
I spend the third and fourth days in the office organizing the bookshelves and desk. There are an alarming number of tools, hardware, and equipment scattered around that in no way belong in an office space. Test tubes, Ph paper, pots of grease remover cream, spanners, pressure gauges, buckets of tiny metal rivets, unopened packages of power cells, spent power cells, stirring bars, boxes full of beakers and flasks, scalpels, specimen bags, broken parts of who-knows-what machines, piles and piles of copper wiring, and an almost innumerable collection of bottles containing various types of engine coolant, in various states of usefulness.
I shift the lot of it into boxes, stacking them to the side for me to sort through at my leisure. Barring the additional five bags full of trash, of course.
There is naturally a lot less junk on the bookshelves, and I discover that the majority of the books are reference manuals, for which I am deeply grateful. All the vehicles and machines this farm needs to run will most likely be complete mysteries to me, so, actual information is good - very very good.
When I'm done, all that is left on the surface of the desk is a lamp, a small tray filled with all the maps of the local area I could find and a few blueprints of the farm and homestead, and a large, blocky device I think might be a comm radio, though I have no idea if it is even functional, or how to use it if it is.
There's no info-screen. No printer, no scanner, not even a Grafcal Regulator - an absolute essential on every farming station I've ever seen. Not even a Tablyt and stylus for notes. Only graphite pencils, and pads of yellow paper, faintly lined with blue. I'm not surprised, I expected this to be the case, but, I'm still frustrated. Managing a farm of this size will take a lot of organizing, a lot of planning. A lot of recording and projecting and buying and selling. I can't do that without an info-screen. Well. . . I suppose I can - it will just take a lot more time and effort. And this was already shaping up to be the most difficult job I've ever had.
On the fifth day, I finally find the cameras. I knew from the first it would be too much to ask Dougal to tell me where or how many there were, so I resigned myself to just finding them whenever I happened to come across them. They turn up while I'm dusting. There are three. One painted to look like it was part of the windowsill, one behind a small clear plastic window in the door of the circuit breaker box, and one fitted into the top corner of a bookcase. All three are inactive, and stone cold when I find them. Even on passive mode, they would be a little warm if they'd ever been powered up - which means, I hope, that they have never been active at all. Or at least not recently. . .
I grab a small multi-tool, open them up, and with a few quick snips with wire cutters, permanently disable them. I consider them spoils of war, and feel no inclination to return them to Dougal. I take all three back to my room that night, and put them in the same hiding place I've put the filigree cube, and the now two microphone wires I've found in my room. The second wire was stuck in the hem of the window curtain. I found it three days ago. It's harder to tell if a mic-wire is fully disabled or not, but I've made assurance doubly sure now. . .
I lift the small plastic cup full of greenhouse flowers I've set in the mouth of my steel bottle, and drop the cameras into the clean, dry space left beneath them. Unless you look very closely at the bottle, it's impossible to tell it is holding anything but flowers.
That night, I briefly wonder if it would be safe to stop undressing beneath my nightgown. I decide against it just yet, for two related reasons - first, that I may not have found all the cameras yet, and secondly, who knows if Dougal may try to worm his way out of our deal somehow? Say, by having Angus or Rupert bug my rooms yet again, but without his supervision, and then just report to him. He isn't technically watching me that way, so. . .
Despite the fact that it's possible, I also think it's somewhat improbable. That kind of trick isn't honourable warfare. And Dougal's parting words of "Ye'er all right" were said in the round, comfortable tone that I think is his natural mode of speaking, not in any of his affectations.
It's strange just how much I want to trust Dougal. . .
Or is it? The man is my best chance at peace and safety while I'm here, after all. He's my best shot at finding some small injustices to solve in hopes of improving the future, too.
It isn't much, but those last few seconds with him do indicate sincerity on his part. Also witness that he's left me strictly alone for close to a week now. Granted, that hasn't been too difficult, seeing as I've been taking my meals in the kitchen with the farm hands and house staff, and spending all the rest of my time either in the manager's barn, or here in my room. I've not been anywhere near him or his minions lately.
But until I see either him or the minions again, it's impossible for me to know what they know. So, best to be safe for now.
The next morning, I finally turn my attention to the keys.
Besides the one large key Dougal used to open this office, and the two smaller keys on the same ring with it that I used to open two back rooms my first day here - the small toilet station, and an even smaller break room - I have not had occasion to use any keys on the bunch. And there are at least a score. I quickly count them. Twenty-one, separated onto three smaller rings, not counting the one I've already been using.
Well. Time to explore my new domain.
Besides the outdoor entrance, and the two smaller side rooms, there are two doors leading out of this office. The first leads into a long, glassed-in porch - a greenhouse-looking place I've noticed each morning, but haven't been curious about until now. There are a few narrow workbenches lining the inner wall, and a lot of mostly-empty sprouting trays ranged along the outer glass. A greenhouse indeed. That must mean. . .
The second door leads up a few steps, into the Manager's Barn proper, and it is a great deal more than even I expected.
From what I've learned of Davie Beaton until now, I thought he was the usual type of Farm Manager I've encountered - a bio-chemist, a geneticist, a better than average mechanic, a planner, a listener, a man with both drive and imagination.
I hadn't been expecting an alchemist.
The huge inside of the barn is laid out like a daydream had by a mad scientist from a classic movie. One enormous wall is covered with lab equipment, flasks, beakers, glass tubes - bottles of chemicals, boxes and bags of powders and compounds - all organized on huge shelves, with sliding ladders to reach the uppermost rows. The center of the room is given over to a large quadrangle of soapstone countertops, with water spigots and heating pads dotted in a line down the center of each. There is a space in the middle of each side so the center can be reached, and all manner of chairs and stools have been crowded into the middle of the square. There are several locked drawers and cupboards under the counters, that I soon discover contain the more dangerous of this lab's chemicals. Metallic sodium. Phosphorus stored in oil. A dozen more things I don't currently have time to contemplate. . . I turn about, trying to take in the whole room. The wall I came through is entirely covered in bookshelves stacked with books - on plant genetics, soil chemistry, biome management, etc. etc. etc. - and there are ladders to reach the upper shelves on this wall too. I swoop down on a long shelf filled with nothing but plain tan bound booklets, each labeled with ranges of five years. I flip through one - field history manuals! My heart lifts. I've been looking for these. Now, even without a computer, making a crop plan is at least possible.
Beyond the lab counters are ancient versions of machines I nevertheless recognize - purifiers, synthesizers, mappers, scanners, testers, and kilns. There are vats for water, hydroponic testing stations, vacuum chambers, fumigating chambers, and row after row of seed trays on small, wheeled tables.
It's a comprehensive laboratory, even for my time. For two hundred years ago, it's downright magical.
A small door off to the front clearly leads to the greenhouse area, and there is a door in the supply wall that leads to a nicely appointed break room/kitchen that also contains a toilet station.
Beyond the greenhouse area, there is a very large roll-up door, that it takes me quite a while to figure out how to open. It isn't exactly locked - eventually I discover that the mechanism used to open it must be activated with a little coin-shaped key slotted into a box on the wall beside the door. Once I figure this out, the door opens with a loud, grating rumble, letting in the cold November air until I figure out how to close it. . .
Clearly a door meant for trucks and tractors to bring supplies and samples to the lab.
That finishes the first subset of keys. The second subset has only two keys on it.
The first one opens a door in the far wall, leading to a room that is the mirror image of the office. The minute I step through, I wonder if Dougal even knows about this place. . .
It is a computer lab.
Many of the machines in the main lab are computers by default, of course, but this room is something else entirely. The main lab is a room made for a modern-day wizard, a man who conjures new life out of mysterious aether. This room is very clearly for someone with a much more practical turn of mind - your basic, yet brilliant, engineer. Computer chips and containers of solder are scattered around the one long workbench that spans the entire room. And on the shelves. . . there are screens, and tubing, and sheeting, and bits and pieces of robot arms, gears and wheels, springs and plastic cases, buttons, lights, switches, power sources, and on and on and on the list could go. From the looks of things, whoever worked here wasn't just tinkering about with farming equipment, they were trying to invent new farming equipment.
Clearly, Davie Beaton was a much more complex person than I've been giving him credit for.
Not just a chemist - a conjuror. Not just a mechanic - an inventor. Not just a man of imagination - a person of brilliance.
Hard shoes to fill indeed.
It takes me a long while to find out what the second key on this ring is for. Eventually, I spot a large lockbox, almost hidden behind wreathes of wiring and scraps of plating, but it is the only thing in this room that requires a key to open. And inside. . .
Inside, there are half a dozen deconstructed info-screens, and at least ten or eleven mid-21st century comm radios.
I stand there, wondering, a million possibilities and small, cautious flare of hope in my mind.
If I can't convince Colum to give me an info-screen, I might be able to cobble together my own.
I lock everything back up and trudge over crisped, newly frozen grass back to the main house. It's close to supper time - I'll have to leave the third group of keys - which I know by now must be to the garage - until tomorrow.
Murtagh is here tonight. I breathe a sigh of relief for a familiar face among the myriad of people around me who are still mostly strangers. I see Mrs. Fitz and Annie almost daily, of course, but only for brief moments, or in passing. Mrs. Fitz has seated Murtagh near the head of the long table, quite near to her, and more than half a dozen seats away from me. But I find him a comforting presence nonetheless. He is far more jovial than I've ever seen him, and he substantially livens up what is usually the most sober and uninteresting meal here in the kitchens.
I find myself smiling, not out of amusement, or from some remembered joy, but out of present happiness. The realization surprises me, and brings home very strongly just how separated I still am here. Not just physically, but mentally. I haven't thought about Murtagh. . . or Jamie. . . in days. It is almost like I have been living an entirely different life with each individual I know here. Dougal. Colum. Angus and Rupert. Annie. Mrs. Fitz. Jamie. And now Murtagh. I am a completely different person in the presence of each one. My smile fades, and my heart sinks. The dissociation is burden enough, but adding in where I'm from - when I'm from. . .
I have no idea how to live just one life here. I don't know how to bridge the pieces of me, so I might spend my time as a solid being, and go home from this adventure whole, and unbroken.
Craigh na Dun has scattered me, like rain across a window. I am cold droplets of myself, crystalline-clear, and yet I can only reflect the sky in fractured, warped miniature. I am stuck, evaporating, not bearing enough weight within myself to move me forward or back, and not significant enough to attract any greater power that might push me into one whole sphere again.
Lamb's words come back to me, that he said on our way home from Culloden.
I don't mean anyone has to change anything grand, or do anything heroic, or life threatening. . .
But any reduction of evil has to be an improvement. . .
If there's a chance, just one chance.
If only I could see my way towards any chance at all.
Some small injustice to solve. . .
To improve the future, to make things better. . .
To save the world.
My blood runs cold. I pick at my slice of Mrs. Fitz's treacle tart, suddenly losing all interest in food.
When? When did I decide I was going to save the world? When did I think I should? When did I think I was capable of such a thing? I search my memory.
Lamb had been the first one to mention changing the past, and he had brought in specifics, revealing the method, making the idea not just possible, but real. . . and yet the notion itself had begun in my mind the moment I had seen the dark, clean ocean beyond the Safnet screen.
I have known all my life that our world is dying, but that was the first time I knew for sure it wasn't dead yet, not by a long shot. Doomed, maybe. Cursed, even. But there was still hope, however faint. That rich, impossible blue. . . it was alive. Just remembering it, I can still feel the awe. It had planted a seed of hope in my mind. And not just hope. Determination.
Our world deserves a chance. We deserve a chance.
Sometime between the future, the past, and the space between seconds, I have come to believe in that, more than I thought I could ever believe in anything.
Our inheritance and our legacy. Our burden and our blessing.
It takes infinite power to do the impossible. . .
And yet, here I am. . .
"Am I interrupting anythin', lassie?"
Murtagh's voice is light, and he sits down next to me without waiting for permission. He knows he's not interrupting. After all, I'm only sitting here, picking listlessly at a now much abused piece of pastry.
I look up, and am surprised at how empty the rest of the room is. I completely missed everyone else leaving, even missed most of the lights being turned off.
"No. Not a thing."
I think I see him smile a bit, but it's hard to tell from behind his beard. "Weel, ye might be the most hands-off and dooer-lookin' boss I've evar had, but I still say ye'er by far the prettiest."
The compliment flies right past me as I repeat the most shocking word Murtagh has ever said in my presence, "Boss? What do you mean, boss?"
He quirks an eyebrow in my direction, "Now, are ye oor are ye no' the new Farm Manager?"
"Yes. . . but. . ."
"An' I'm one of three Sub-Managers. The horses and their grazin' land are my bailiwick. Marc Ferrier is our cattleman - stockman, really, he minds the fowls and pigs too - and Lily Bara is head shepherd. Say ye'ev at least met them?" I nod. They both sit near me at table most mealtimes. "And whoe're is in charge of the arable land is head manager o' the four of us. We've been wonderin' when ye'll be calling yer first weekly meetin'."
I take this in for a minute.
"Oh."
"Did nae'un explain this tae ye?"
"No."
"Weel, Colum does have a lot in hand, but I'd a'thought Dougal would'a put ye in the know by this time."
I smile grimly. "Dougal and I. . . aren't friends, Murtagh."
"Hmf" he grunts a distinctly Scottish noise, "I had a vague suspicion. . ."
I shake my head, "It's taken me this long to clear out the office and survey the lab. I only found the field history manuals this morning. I haven't walked the plots yet. I haven't got a crop plan yet, let alone a rotation projection. I haven't done my usual course of soil chem testing and biome mapping yet. I haven't even opened up the farm vehicle's garage yet."
"D'ye mean tae say ye'ev been sorting through auld Beaton's paperwork this whole time? Alone?" his eyes are wide with something between awe and disgust.
"I'm afraid so." I shrug, "Before we have any kind of meeting, I'll need to dig out some sort of computer from somewhere, and at the very least a printer. And the best substitute for a growth graph projector/regulator I can find, if I can at all manage it."
Murtagh's eyebrows get higher and higher with each thing I list, "Did. . . did they no' give ye a computer? Or a printer? Or helpers?"
"No," I shake my head again, "Colum said I should have a runner or two until my foot was better, but I'm sure Dougal has been much too busy to remember a little thing like that."
Murtagh doesn't miss the sarcasm in my voice, and I don't miss the flash of complete rage that dashes though his eyes before he can suppress it. He looks expansively around the dim dining room.
"No crutch now, lassie?"
"No, I stopped needing it yesterday."
He nods, looking very grim indeed, "I see."
"It wasn't a bad sprain, just painful. The salve Jamie gave me helped a lot. I should be able to walk the plots in a day or so."
"So ye. . . ye still want tae doo this job then?" he asks, slightly dubious.
"Oh, yes! No question of that," I say, "It's a good deal more than I'm used to, but nothing venture, nothing have, after all."
"After all. . ." he says, abstractedly, running a finger across his chin, his gaze far away from me, "Quite. . ." Then he focuses on me again, and puts out his hand, "Weel, thankee for tellin' me, lassie," he says as I briefly grip his rough palm, "I'll tell Lil and Marc no' tae rush ye." He puts a finger to his forehead in a casual, yet somehow also astonishingly respectful salute, and leaves the room.
I smile, and sigh a little, and then go to bed.
The next morning, I wake up clinging to the edges of a dream. I'm not certain what was happening in it, but I do remember I was on Skycity 15, standing on the topmost observation deck of the Spire, looking out over the pale green ocean. The sun was high and warm, and I was me, whole, unburdened, without any need to hide my identity or my history.
As I groggily change clothes - still underneath my nightgown - my world splinters again, and I am fractured, floating islands of myself, a dozen different Claires, steady enough when focused, but unbearably precarious when I attempt to shift from one part of me to another.
I can feel a slide into depression coming. I desperately want to prevent it, but I don't know how.
I forego breakfast, and skip going to the office altogether, instead making directly for the long, low garage across from the barn. There are five keys left on the key ring that I have not used yet, and they all must belong here.
The first one unlocks a charging/refueling station. The second a washing/detailing chamber. The third a large maintenance area, with two concrete pits for accessing a vehicle's undercarriage. There are worktables full of tools, and shelves full of parts behind the pits. It looks a great deal like the garage I fixed the Rover in, only substantially smaller, of course.
The fourth key unlocks a small entrance next to a long row of large roll-up doors. It is very dark inside - apparently the lights here do not turn on automatically like they do in the neighboring rooms. I grope for a switch. With a small, unimpressive 'click', the lights turn on, and there they are. My fleet. Tractors, harvesters, maintenance vehicles, supply trucks, runabouts, even a tiny fuel tanker. A baker's dozen, all told. Mine to care for and maintain. Mine to send out to work, and to call back. If I cannot easily make friends with the Humans around me, at least I know I'll be well loved by these old soldiers. They've been to war before. They know the drill.
I walk to the nearest tractor, and pat the door handle in greeting. "Hello, old friend," I say, smiling, "I'd know you anywhere."
And maybe it is my overactive imagination, or my empty stomach making me slightly delirious, but I swear, he smiles back.
The fifth key unlocks a small lounge at the end of the garage. Part break room, part secondary office, there is also a toilet station here, and a large, wall-mounted info-screen of a type I have never seen before, and do not know how to operate.
For the final key on the ring, it is something of an anti-climax. For my floating, half-dissociated brain, it is blessedly ordinary. I can see myself spending a good deal of time here, more than in the main office.
There is much less mess here, thankfully. The records are in much less disarray - to the point that I think I'll just let them be, for the moment.
I sit down at the small desk, abstractedly looking over the collection of multi-tools heaped on it.
After the first two days of digging through papers on my own, the thought occurred to me that maybe this was Dougal's first throw in our new warfare - denying me the help I need. My conversation with Murtagh last night has only strengthened this conviction. He's certainly managed to isolate me, at least temporarily. Perhaps too, he was seeing if I would go whining to Colum at the least little inconvenience? He does rather desperately need to know my limits, and how far he can push things with me. . .
My mind tilts sideways, as I try to change from one world to another. Farm Manager Claire is not Warrior Claire, and at the moment, they cannot coexist inside my head. I banish Warrior Claire as quickly as I can, and focus with all my might on being Farm Manager Claire.
I can do this. I can be her. I am her, and no one else.
Bleak emptiness calls to me, promising relief from the noise, the uncertainty, the chaos of my clashing worlds, and offers me a cold, frozen torture that is at least the devil I know.
It would be so easy, so, so easy to slip into the abyss. . .
"Mrs. Beauchamp?" calls a voice I don't know, "Mrs. Beauchamp!"
There is a heavy knocking on the office door, "Are ye here, Mrs. Beauchamp?"
"Yes!" I call as loud as I dare, "Just a moment!"
I desperately gather myself together, and wrench open the door. A boy of nineteen, perhaps twenty, is standing there, tentatively grinning, "Ye'er Mrs. Beauchamp?" He sounds very hopeful.
I can't help smiling at this earnest, skinny lad, "Yes. Who's asking?"
He puts out an incredibly eager hand, and shakes mine until my wrist almost splits in two, "Willie Mackenzie, Mrs. Beauchamp!"
"You can call me Claire, Willie," I say, finally extricating myself.
"Alrigh'", he says, inexplicably blushing, "Me 'n Geordie brought ye a computer, and we're tae stay here wi' ye, an' doo what'e're ye need."
I blink. Of all the unexpected. . .
"Oh. . . Okay then," I almost stammer, "I'll. . . come back to the main office then."
Willie chatters volubly every step of the way across the yard. I don't hear a word of it.
Have I misjudged Dougal? What is this? Who are these people?
I clamp down on myself as I feel my brain start to tilt sideways again.
Back in the main office, a man about my own age, black-haired and clean-shaven, is sitting behind my desk, setting up a computer, a printer, and an overhead projector. When he sees us, he stands, and leans over to shake my hand. "How d'ye do?"
"Much better now you're here, thank you," I say, desperately trying to mean it.
"What can I do?" says Willie, eagerly.
I gesture at the pile of trash bags, "Well, for starters, you can shift those. And then you can start going through those boxes over there," I point at the jumbled mess of things I removed from in and around the desk, "And put everything that looks like it belongs in the lab, in the lab, and everything that looks like it belongs in the garage, in the garage. Alright?"
"Ye got it!" he crows, ridiculously happy to be given work.
I shake my head a little, and turn back to the older man, "May I ask your name?"
He nods, "Geordie Mackenzie, Mrs. Beauchamp."
"She says we c'n call her Claire!" shouts Willie from behind a bag of trash.
Geordie half-smiles, holding back a grin at his young companion's enthusiasm, "Is tha' so?" he looks at me.
"It is," I say, kindly, "Please call me Claire. If we're to be working together, I'd much prefer it."
"Jus' as ye like," he points to the computer he's tapping away at, "I've jus' got it hooked up tae th'international network. D'ye wan'tae see?"
I walk around and stand behind the desk chair, getting a good look at this new info-screen. Well. . . "new" is stretching it quite a bit. It's an old thing, four or five centimeters thick, and activated by cursor tracking, not by touch screen. It uses an OS I'm not at all familiar with.
"Hm," I say, vaguely, "It's going to take me a while to get used to. . ."
Geordie grins, "Aye, it's an auld clunker, but still good, ye ken?"
"Oh, I ken just fine." And I do. There's a lot to think about here. But not now. Later - when I can think.
"Will you do the searching for me, Geordie? At least until I figure it partway out?"
"Gladly, Claire," he says cheerfully, "What d'ye need?"
"Well, what I need right now is any kind of general crop regulator with an adjustable algorithm."
"Right."
He types and clicks, easily navigating the buttons and icons that are so unfamiliar to me.
"Heer ye are," he says at last, "Crop regulators. There's half a dozen types. Which one were ye thinkin'?"
I scan down the list, finding one that seems vaguely familiar, "Let's try that one."
"Right," he opens a new window, "Order it, shall I?"
Part of my brain catches up with the situation, and I remember who I am, and the things a Farm Manager does. . .
"Is there a rental tryout option?"
"Aye," he says, sounding surprised, "How aboot that? Ye can rent the thing, for three months at a time."
"Right, let's do that."
"How many sensors do ye reckon tae get wi' it?"
Sensors? All of the sensors. . . every tray is linked in to the sensor grid. . . But no, that's hydroponics. Soil farming is different, so, so different. . .
"Uhhmmm. I don't know. What does the site recommend?"
"Two per square meter."
"Right, well, then let's start with that, in one test field of a quarter hectare."
"Righty-oo," says Geordie.
The room falls silent, save for Geordie's tapping, and Willie's rapid walking back and forth.
I am more than a bit surprised by these two. Not just what they are, but who they aren't. I had been half-expecting Rupert or Angus to be one of my "helpers", if Dougal ever condescended to remember I needed help at all. Stop overthinking it, Beauchamp! Right now! I clamp down on myself again. I am Claire Beauchamp, Farm Manager. That's who I am. That's all I am.
"Right, then I'll leave you two to do. . . your things, and. . . I'm going to work in the garage today, so. . . that's where I'll be if you need me."
They give a cheery "Alright!" and "Okay!", and go back to the tasks I've given them.
Less than five minutes later, I'm shoulder-deep in one of the maintenance truck's combustion engines. Engines make sense. Engines have problems that can be fixed. Engines have parts that fit together.
I've never seen this exact type of combustion engine before. It's gloriously easy to focus on learning it, all its parts and how it functions. Wheels and gears, pistons and spark plugs, grease and tubes and filters. It's all blessedly tactile. Present. Real.
Not a yawning, gaping hole of a life, its bare remains currently scattered into crumbling, shifting piles of dirt. . .
No. Don't go there, Beauchamp. Washers and bolts. Seals and cylinders. Fuel injectors and coolant and catalytic converters. Focus.
I have the thing more than half disassembled before I've put myself even partially back together.
I've left a side door open for air circulation, even though it is far colder than I find comfortable. At least the temperature is keeping me awake. . .
A moving shadow falls across the rectangle of air and light.
"An' sae how are things goin' fer ye, lassie?" says a voice I remember.
I turn, and there are Rupert and Angus, smirking, sleazy, utterly unsophisticated, Rupert's seemingly innocent question somehow laced with such slimy implications that I sneer, and do not answer. They take a step or two inside before saying anything more, and when they do, I do not listen.
Because behind them, ducking to get through the low door, is Jamie. Tall, resplendent, gorgeous. Superior. So much better than me. . .
He looks at me and smiles, so easy, so innocent, so boyish, and. . . perfect.
All at once my worlds crash into each other, and I am a trembling, incoherent mess, but somehow, I am also one whole being again. . .