A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Trade-Offs for the Overhaul of the Barricade
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It was just as well. Nothing would happen to the wall tonight. The large storms were still days away.
Ritter eyed the thin, gray volume he’d set next to his vacuum flask. Deck had left him a text on meditation before he’d left and promised he’d return to go over it with him. It was embarrassing to be the only engineer at camp who still received homework. Maybe he’d just keep living with everyone else’s minds invading his instead.
Someone tall yet stocky emerged from the dark. The engineers around the fire all stopped talking and rushed to a stand. A few of them pointed at Ritter. Not-Father waved the engineers away and they all abandoned their posts without question. Destroyed then restored, not-Father commanded the loyalty that Father had. After his sacrifice, maybe that loyalty was now devotion. He was still every bit the engineer Father had been. Ritter had seen to that.
Ritter rushed to stand as not-Father approached. Pages of intricate plans spilled from his lap. Not-Father gestured at him to sit back down and Ritter complied. He could have only avoided not-Father for so long. Not-Father loomed over Ritter. His eyebrows arched at the spray of paper settling on the ground. He crouched down and gathered the papers into a neat stack.
“Even if I hadn’t been told you were my son, I would have guessed.” Not-Father placed the stack on Ritter’s lap. “I’m not convinced that I wanted to be rescued.”
“I’m not convinced that you have been, sir.” Ritter focused on sorting the papers on his lap.
Not-Father nodded slowly. He had Father’s appraising gaze, the one that squeezed the air out of Ritter’s lungs.
“Fair enough.” He sat next to Ritter, his back resting against the wall. “My proposed redesign of the barricade. You’re the only reason why I remember working on it, much less understand it. Thank you. Your father asked you for an analysis weeks ago. I expected you’d be done by now.”
Ritter looked up. “Excuse me, sir?” He couldn’t hide the puzzlement on his face. Father had wanted the analysis, but why would anyone else? “I’m fresh out of the academy, sir.”
For a moment, not-Father seemed at a loss for words. He patted Ritter’s shoulder.
“Modest, as always. I haven’t forgotten everything.” Not-Father took the now sorted pile of paper from Ritter. “Your instructors have sent me detailed reports about your progress for years. So, what does the best theorist in a generation think of my proposal?”
Ritter’s eyebrows raised. He resisted making a deprecating remark, although that would have bought him some time. Everything he had ever known about chaotic phenomena seemed to have fallen out of his mind. He swallowed hard, wishing he, rather than not-Father, were leafing through Father’s plans.
“Well, sir, it’s ambitious. A wall built of bricks of small, densely packed, cross-linked redundant machines. It should be easier to maintain and more robust against the ever more violent and unpredictable storms of Turbulence as we push farther into the frontier.”
Not-Father frowned. “All engineering is a matter of trade-offs, Ritter.”
“I don’t know how many engineers, besides you, will be able to create the machinery you’ve designed. The feature size is too small and the tolerances too strict. I’ve come up with some alternatives, but …” Ritter shrugged. “If it’s just the two of us alone on the barricade, I think I might be able to—”
“No, you’re too easily distracted. Your best work is behind the barricade, not on it.” Not-Father stood. “Very good, Ritter. I’ll go over your annotations and we’ll discuss them in the morning.”
Not-Father nodded his goodbye then walked away. His boots, creased and dun-colored, their treads worn smooth, left blurred prints on the ground. He’d broken them down from new in just weeks from manning the retaining wall, not to mention surveying and repairing the barricade as a whole.
Ritter curled as though not-Father had punched him in the gut. He missed the man who’d decided Ritter could do anything and was always exasperated when it seemed Ritter couldn’t.
Engineers gathered again around the fire to finish their shift. Ritter didn’t need to see them to know that. The slim volume Deck had given him felt oddly heavy in his hands. He worked through its first exercises as shelves swirling around the barricade echoed through his mind.
Copyright © 2014 by John Chu
Art copyright © 2014 by Julie Dillon
eISBN: 978-1-4668-7648-4
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