Page 32 of Exiles on Earth
I hang my head. Dom’s correct to make a factual report, but there’s ways of saying things that could protect Arture’s life. I’ve had to carefully tread that line more than once for them.
El-len touches Nic-coal’s shoulder. “Probably shock. I’m not surprised.”
“Hmm.” Nic-coal’s lips twist, as if she’s unconvinced, but she steps back from the pilot.
“Okay. Did you want to say something about… repairs?” El-len looks pointedly at the shattered beams.
“Replacement.” I curse my tongue. I’m not trying to lie, I would never lie to a female. Especially her.
Gara’s fingers fly across the screen of his bigger, more capable diagnostic and display tool, analyzing the information I collected earlier and building a model far faster than I can. In moments, he nods to me. It’s ready.
Now is my time to make a good impression at last. “I’ve assessed the remaining structure. There’s many components we can reuse, and I’m confident we can recreate and reprint the materials we need to replace using the tools on our shuttle. Wewill assemble them ourselves using plasteek, a material our world developed and we can make from local biota to make a hardy, multiuse substrate, including affixing and weatherproofing.
“We will use this model.” I glance at Gara. With a tap, Gara sends the projection to hover in the air between us.
The females gasp, El-len’s eyes widening at the hologram.
“It won’t hurt you,” I reassure her.
“It’s so cool!” Arra-bellah sweeps her fingers through it, disturbing the light matrix in a swirl before it snaps back to Gara’s image. “It tingles!”
El-len stands transfixed by the likeness. “My barn,” she breathes, her exhalation sending sweeps of sensation up my scales. It chimes for the rewarding gasps the sim-vids would give me if I performed well in training.
She strokes the edge of the image, a smile tugging her pale lips. “It’s a perfect copy! But how?”
“Reconstruction techniques,” I say, drawing closer to her. In this misty morning, her earthy scent stands out clear to me, fresh as the local air. “See how the stone here is sheared? Our, hm, machine brains calculate the probabilities of how and what shape it was, and also its original placement.”
“Machine brains?” El-len turns wide eyes up to me, robbing me of any coherent thought.
“Computers,” Law-rah suggests, and I nod as my lingual nanites confirm the translation of the word.
Arra-bellah purses her lips. “The barn’s not quite right, though.”
El-len flushes again, this shade darker as I frown down at the image.
Gara shakes his head: the readouts are correct.
“How are they incorrect?” I ask delicately.
Arra-bellah pulls wood-substrate from her back pocket, unfolding it to a size dwarfing her small frame. She taps a fingernail to sketches drawn in sweeping strokes of carbon residue,a building of significant size in proportion to the main house next to it. The sketch is a little fanciful but it looks functional, with what I assume are local measurements marked out across all faces.
She passes it to Gara, who quickly frowns at it. “This drawing differs significantly from our model.”
“Yep,” Arra-bellah says, drawing out the ‘p’ sound.
“But it was like this before,” Gara presses, pointing at the holo image.
I put a warning hand on his shoulder. Pain must be wearing Gara thin to dare arguing with them. “We’ve reconstructed the barn from data available to us,” I point out.
“And you said you’d replace it,” Arra-bellah counters. “Replace. Repairing it back to a broken state isn’t any good to us, we want it fixed. You’re the ones who crashed into it.”
I had said I’d replace it. Responsibility rests on my shoulders, and every failure cuts deeper. Bowing my head, I ask quickly, “Gara, what changes are needed to bring the model closer to the internal structure of this image?”
He mutters as he works, manipulating the model as I would work plants, quickly and efficiently. “Extend the beams, put in fired sand… Completely new structure to the south, also made with fired sand… Wooden elements carefully carved by hand…” The image shifts into a building, this one a complete rectangle instead of the patchy one. Holo representations of fired sand set in panes sparkle in the light, the doors open in welcome.
This time, El-len’s gasp is reverent, filling my chest with a tingling sensation. “Oh, that’s beautiful.”
“Do you want this—” I pat the one still stable wall, “—restored to this model?” I point at Gara’s projection.
