Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (reading list txt) 📗

and excited about this new world, there was a small but insistent fear about being out here that I couldn’t escape.

I vacillated between embracing the changes going on around me and feeling depressed that I couldn’t go back. As much as I wanted to believe that as a surface born human the change should be a natural one, the shift was difficult to accept. In many ways I was going through through the same period of discovery as everyone else. Perhaps I was romanticizing shelter life out of a fear of the unknown. More likely I had spent too many hours in the sun and needed a drink of water. Speaking of hours in the sun, I needed to work on finding out who could synthesize us some sunblock. My skin fared just fine with the sunny weather but my more pale skinned peers were suffering bouts of sunburn that made me cringe. For the moment we stuck to working under fabric whenever possible and urging those working outside to wear as much clothing as they could stand.

The shift in lifestyle wasn’t just affecting me, either. I could see confusion, intimidation, and even fear in the eyes of others. But there was always hope. After spending the later half of my life alone, I was surprised to lose my faith in people. Maybe it was an out of sight, out of mind thing. Whenever I questioned whether or not I had done the right thing. In many ways, I doubted that I was any better than Gabriel. Whereas he had taken over the lives of hundreds, I had done the same thing. Did I have the right to rip them out of the simulation, the lives that so many had spent decades building? People had married in that world. They had started careers, given birth to children, even said goodbye to their loved ones. Only to be ripped back to an existence so many of them had barely known.

When the sickness had burned through the shelter, I was responsible for yet another power grab; the decisions I made as leader of the shelter had killed people. However well-intentioned, I was responsible for those deaths. I was responsible, not only for the loss of their lives, but also for robbing hundreds of others of theirs. My decisions had robbed them of their freedoms and their agency. My belief that humanity was meant to live on the surface again had forced them to give up their way of living without so much of even a thought to whether or not they should.

Alexander’s suspicion of my motivations now was perfectly and absolutely reasonable. If I had been looking at this situation from the outside I would be the first person to warn everyone not to trust me. The best balm to heal that wound was going to be time. I would continue to play my cards right and forsake any semblance of privacy until the community felt like I was another of their own.

Fiona’s plan to fabricate farming equipment by hand was coming along nicely. Together we had dug out two symmetrical molds from the dirt—one for each half of the plow. The information we pulled up on our tablets showed images of the simple machines being mounted on wheels, but that was a little too complicated for the manufacturing process we had at hand. We settled on a rudimentary hand plow. Two handles would jut from a single wedged blade, ready for a strong-armed volunteer to pull the tool through the dirt. Because we were living on a plain, the earth and grass was tightly packed. Without a razor sharp way to cut furrows, the person pulling the plow was in for some aching arms.

Residents were all too eager to surrender any scraps of metal they had lying around. Fiona also asked each person returning into the shelter for a non-critical task to bring at least one large piece of metal scrap with them on their return. As for a crucible to melt the metal in, we had a couple of ideas. In order to withstand the extreme heat of melting metal the container had to be tightly packed with thick walls. Use a material that was too porous or one that trapped air and the precious metal within would be spilled to the ground and made almost irretrievable. Too thick or heavy and it would make casting the plow difficult at best. If the human lifting the crucible couldn’t control the flow of metal properly they ran the risk of severe burns.

Fiona settled on using the clay mud from the stream. Along with a few other people she went to retrieve as much of it as possible without collapsing the bank. While they were away, Eliza and Marcus helped to dig four ring-shaped holes in the ground much like the crab traps we had set. The clay was deposited atop a tarp secured in the ground and construction began. Each potter worked on a different design idea, varying the thickness from about an inch to almost four inches thick. I hung back and watched as they pushed the clay into shape. It was impressive. Balancing using enough force to shape the vessel without collapsing the earthen structure inside was challenging. The remainder of the clay was formed into a large block for future use.

The crucibles finished, we then set out to design a way to pick them up and pour. Assuming that they could stand the heat, there was no way a human could. Heat and fire resistant gloves might offer minimal protection from burns but the heat of the mixture was going to be intense. Holding it at arms length wasn’t going to be an option. We were going to have to fabricate tongs. Somehow I doubted that suggesting using any of the 3D printers’ essential time was going to go over well, so we would smith them. Fiona asked for a couple of chairs to be ripped out of