Chapter 15
Bettina and Thomas merged into a single minded unit after having found common ground in the middle of their shouting match. After comparing notes Bettina got the entire east of the mill as well as the western corners, while Thomas got the middle. This lead to the relocation of Byron who was less than thrilled about the situation until Bettina bribed him with dreams of vegetable gardens that would be located in a perpetual summer. Byron noticing the trap commented that he had known about the green house since before her and her friends had arrived, he had even made plans of what to plant where. It was that instant that Bettina's trap closed, when she asked him to show him his plans and if he had thought about irrigation.
"What is your opinion in little canals?" she asked.
"I love little canals." Byron said while he imagined how his gardens would be supplied by tiny streams flowing through the garden.
"Show me where you'd like to grow your vegetables and I can then help you with your canals." Bettina said gently pushing Byron away and giving Thomas a thumbs up behind his back.
Thomas for his part focused his drilling to the space between the mill and Byron's trailer much to the latter's deep annoyance. This led to Byron fleeing inside and helping with the construction more, leading to a collaboration with Dan who had the idea of using tiles of a different colour to mark where the original wall had been in all the rooms that required tiling. Byron did come up with some interesting ideas about the colouring and gradients and one day later they started to lay tile lines along the walls to guide people through the building.
"How would you ever get lost in here." asked Edmund who was not really complaining about the plan but rather wondering what the meaning behind it was.
"You wouldn't." Byron admitted.
"So why...?" Edmund was sure that he was missing something important.
"Because," Dan said, "it's pretty."
"There you go." said Byron.
Edmund unfolded his arms following the carefully lead lines along the walls with his eyes, they did look like veins of precious stone shooting through the rock grey of the wall. "That is a very good point." he said.
Outside Thomas kept drilling holes into the ground. A miserable fact of life that they all had forgotten for a merciful moment. The horrible sound of someone giving an unwilling rock a root canal was enhanced by someone pounding on the door. Edmund, and Byron flinched, Dan blinked in mild surprise.
"Neighbour?" Dan said.
Edmund sighed. "They say there is no bad publicity but I had hopped the people would come over here to ask what we were building instead of complaining about the drilling... Get the food ready Byron." This had become something that Jenny and Edmund thought of as guerilla marketing. Whenever someone came to complain about the noise they would get a free sample of the great food and tea and coffee they would be able to get once the café would open its doors to the public. It was more a guerilla apology.
Byron jogged over to his gestating kitchen, Edmund went to the entrance while Dan shrugged continuing to look for the perfect place for the scarlet tile he was holding in his hand.
"Good afternoon," Edmund said in a voice that was a mellow blend of genial and apologetic, "I'm very sorry about the noise, there are some very important studies being made but I'm being reassured that the drilling will be done by the weeks end." Edmund was being reassured by his sincere wish that the infernal noise would finally stop. Thomas was much more non-committal about that.
"I'm not here because of the noise." said the young woman in front of Edmund. "I'm Sonya. You are Edmund." This confused Edmund, which the woman in front of him duly noted and added, "I'm your network expert." She tried a smile.
Edmund looked at her for a few seconds longer, "You look different than on the picture."
Sonya looked back at him blinked and when she noticed that this appearance thing was a problem she said, "New stage in life, new look. Hair open like the new opportunities, the colour the reds of a new dawn, face still the same though."
Edmund looked at her more closely still failing to see the person he had seen on the screen of his phone before, when she had come recommended by one of his many acquaintances.
Sonya was growing impatient. "You are Edmund, that is the watermill, this is the vision of the one called Jenny and you need someone to take care of the computery thingies. So either I am the one you are looking for or I am someone who killed her, are her and took over her life. Either way I'm the one you're looking for."
"Why would I welcome a predatory shape shifter?" Edmund asked to distracted by the hypothetical scenario to not take it seriously.
"Because you need wireless LAN." Sonya said.
"Fair enough." said Edmund opening the door for the new arrival, "Should the internet not work I still have enough time to drive a stake through your heart."
"That's vampires." Sonya said.
Edmund shrugged, "It tends to work surprisingly well on all manner of creatures."
The tour was by rights the purview of Jenny's however this time it was mostly Edmund who did it as Jenny was nowhere to be found. They started in the main room, obviously, then went through the still wide open kitchen and into the milling room, there they found Linda who had built herself a secret workshop which she had improvised out of blue building tarps, within she was assembling what she called: "the real generator". Lind was not really in a talking mood, she had one short friendly moment when she heard that Sonya would be working on the Internet situation but after that, her social resources spent she retreated back into her blue sanctum.
Beyond the milling room they found Stu and Adrian working in silence putting the finishing touches on the walls of the store rooms in the east end of the mill. Adrian was politely monosyllabic as usual but today Stu was the same being deeply in the flow of his plasterwork pulling him out of it was both difficult and ill advised.
The next stop was the basement as that was the place Jenny usually went to if she wanted to get some peace of mind or when she was forced to get order back into chaos that seeped into the project from all sides. No such luck, instead they met Byron squatting in a corner very carefully bending back an almost solid sheet of plaster, paint and wallpaper from the original rock wall. He was mumbling to himself. "Are these runes?" He dug his phone out of his pocket. "Need more light. Maybe..." he said shoving the phone into the gap between the wall and the cover it had grown over the ages, "... maybe I can take a picture?"
Edmund looked at Sonya shook his head and lead her back upstairs. "That was Byron, I'll introduce you later."
They finally found Jenny in the top floor. Edmund heard her voice when they went upstairs. She was in the room above the milling room standing hands on her hips looking up to the the skylight above. Barbara was sitting on a folding chair looking watching Jenny with rapt fascination.
"I really think that that's something that should be there." Jenny said.
"Why would you want to put it there at all?" Barbara asked with utmost care making sure that Jenny would not feel questioned but encouraged to share more of her thoughts.
"Because it feels right. This is a safe space." Jenny said her eyes still fixed on the skylight. "But this isn't a hideout, this is a shelter... no that's not quite it. It is a fortress?" she now shifted her gaze to Barbara, "Still not quite it. Whatever." she shook her head. "This is a rock in a storm and it needs to be a beacon, so that those who are looking for a safe heaven know how to reach it."
"I thought this was going to be a café." Sonya said turning to Edmund.
All tension drained out of the room, Jenny turned towards them. "Oh hi," Jenny said a smile working itself through the tension that had grabbed hold of her face. "You must be... er... Sonya, right?"
"She sees, she understands." Sonya said to Edmund. She turned back to Jenny extending her hand. "A pleasure to meet you."
"Hi, I'm Jenny and I'm very glad that you made it here." Jenny said shaking Sonya's hand with vigour. "And not a moment to soon I might add."
"Really?" said Edmund who checked the room for signs that he might have shifted into a parallel dimension.
"Yep." said Jenny. "We are about to put the finishing touches to the inner walls which means that now is the time to get all those network cables laid."!
"It would actually be better to install..." Sonya paused thinking about how to best describe what she was envisioning, "channels? In the walls. So we can replace the cables if the need arises. Makes it easier to upgrade too."
"That's a good point!" Jenny agreed. "Damn, we should have done that with all the cables and pipes. Like a modular way to build things... We should have called you in sooner."
"Really...?" Edmund again who was suddenly feeling really tired.
"Yes imagine how much cooler we could have made this place and with those tiley things that Dan and Byron are putting on the walls we would have a perfect way of masking them."
"That does sound like a great idea..." Edmund said his voice now flat and without emotion. "Maybe we should travel back in time and tell you to listen to me directly instead of putting it off until the last possible moment..."
"That sounds like a perfect idea." Jenny said leading Sonya out of the room to give here the tour. When she noticed that Sonya already knew the place they went looking for Adrian to talk about what they could do to realise Sonya's idea.
That evening was dominated by a storm. The weather outside was mild for the time of year almost pleasant and the constant rain had and fog had retreated to open the view of the stars. The stars in turn looked at what the fog and rain had done and twinkled in a polite but unimpressed manner.
Inside though it was all thunder and lightning. The heated front of enthusiasm for the 'wall channels' spear headed by Jenny and Adrian who to everyone’s surprise including his own was actually arguing in favour of destroying the work of the last two days was crashing into the cold disdain held by Stu and Claire who both thought that they had advanced too far just to go back on a significant part of the work to add something that added only little value at great cost.
On the sidelines was Barbara enjoying the spectacle together with Sonya who was had left the discussion before it had escalated with a "It was just an idea..." and was now following the scenes with wide eyed fascination.
"Are they always like this?" Sonya asked Barbara.
"Oh no. Mostly this here is hippy central. You're lucky to be here tonight."
"Lucky? I feel like the luck I brought was mostly bad."
"Don't worry to much about it. This here is a crime of passion. Look at them, the fire in their eyes. There are strong convictions at play here." Barbara said.
"Isn't that how the worst crimes happen?" Sonya asked still staring at the rising screaming war that was escalating in front of here.
"Because it is the better solution, for fucks sake!" Adrian shouted one hand snapping forward to add emphasis to his declaration.
Stu, deep red and trembling with more range than he could channel through his mild temperament seethed "Our solution is already good. It is fine. More than fine. We are working here on a strict budget, which by the way is running out rather quickly. And I don't know about you but I am not interested in working on a project that does not pay." He turned towards Jenny, the trembling ceasing for a second, "No matter how much I may like said project. No offence." he turned back to Adrian the trembling resuming. "So as you can see, it would be fucking disaster to ripping open all the walls we have already done."
Thomas who imagined himself removed from conflict but was actually on Jenny's side said, "We will need to do a lot more pipework anyway. And you can simply uncover what you have already done and build the channel around it. Easy."
"Easy?" Claire said her voice cold and vicious, attempting to strip the flesh of her target, "You are going to fuck with the structure of the building again. Again.", she added with a side of acid to give it emphasis. "You're project is truning from an already slightly crazy idea into a Kindergarten project. You need to make a plan and then stick. Too. It." her eyes glinted.
"Crazy plan?" it was Jenny's turn and she was like slow burning magma. "The crazy plan is paying your salary. Apart from that this is the first time that I heard you say that this plan was anything other than a brilliant idea. Is there anything else you might want to disclose?"
"I never said crazy was bad," Claire said, "and I'm working for a very modest fee here. Because I believed in you. Almost past tense. But this shit needs to move forward. It can't be stopped at every twist and turn and change tack when ever you have a new fancy idea."
"Fancy idea?" Thomas again but this time with a slight twitch in his face.
"Yeah I'm talking about you and your geological voodoo and the green house what's that all about anyway?" Claire said.
"We bring our own money and it is about sustainability. We all profit from it." Bettina said. She was sulking behind a bottle of beer and doing her very best to remain neutral in all of this.
"Oh yeah. An what happens when your money runs out?" Claire asked.
"Then," said Susanne who had been clenching her teeth the whole time and was about to crack them, "we are all fucked. We will leave with an unfinished project. We will have to take responsibility for the failure, our scientific work will be mediocre shit at best and our reputation will be ruined."
This stopped Claire in her tracks.
Stu asked, "So on whose side are you on?"
"I don't know," Susanne said eliciting a choir of sighs, "yet. I'd have to go through the numbers and then decide. Adrian and Jenny are right, that it is better to do the best we can now, because it will be that way for ever. Nonetheless what you and Stu are saying also makes sense. The best idea is worthless if you can't make it real..." silence followed these words. The main storm front had passed but the tension remained.
"How about this," said Barbara standing up. "We all heard each others arguments. We sleep over them and tomorrow we come back together, go through the nitty gritty and then draw some lines in the sand?"
There where a few nods and some shrugged shoulders but no one was opposed to that idea at least.
Barbara said back down observing everyone in the room.
"Any one want dessert?" asked Byron.
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