Filled by goblins, of course. The broken equipment was dismantled, the hulls were scrapped, the steep metal stairs were set into the wall, and the ugly bulge of the dispenser, fitted with a tray, was set up in the middle of the hall. Then the system started giving out the first jobs to ‘insert blocks in the receptacles’.
This approach spoke volumes. But my attention was drawn to the blind guy at the moment. I noticed that he definitely wasn’t asleep. He was resting, at most, but that was really just a side effect of his activity. He was occasionally moving, flexing his fingers, counting something, and I realized he was refreshing his mental coordinates. He was going over a map of the tunnels in his mind, counting turns. His palm moved forward, and he counted on the fingers of the other hand. One, two, three… On the fourth ‘turn’, he turned his palm to the left and kept counting. One, two, three, four, another turn, and more counting. Then he clenched his hand, marking his destination point. After a brief pause, he started over to keep it fresh in his memory. He couldn’t make a single mistake, because that would ruin his coordinate system — and he wouldn’t notice it at first, making more and more wrong turns as he went.
I stretched and flexed my arm several times. It was working fine again. My muscles were recovering. I examined my knees and nodded approvingly. I poked Yorka, who had managed to doze off during the twenty minutes we had been sitting there.
“Just a few more minutes,” she mumbled sleepily, shifting her shoulder against the wall.
I wasn’t surprised — it was the middle of the night, after all. I decided to sit a little while longer and check my interface.
Job: Wipe markings. (Party).
Description: Procure sponges from chemical vat 14B (CLUX-17) and wipe the wall and floor markings in adjacent hallways 1 — 8.
Job location: Hallways 1 — 8 adjacent to CLUX-17.
Deadline: Evening end-of-work alarm.
Compensation: 20 sol.
Curious...
Wipe down dirty markings?
We had eight hallways to deal with, and they were all really long.
I looked at the blind guy, who was still sitting there, leaning forward to stretch his back. He looked like he was almost done memorizing his map and was ready to go. He was certainly a very determined type. That just made me want him to join our party even more.
I glanced around the hall and reached to poke the sleeping Yorka, but I suddenly caught a flash of bright orange out of the corner of my eye.
I looked in the middle of the hall. Nothing there. I ran my eyes over the floor below me and around the central bulge. Still nothing. I looked over the four entrances I could see from my position.
Yes. It was an unusual yet oddly familiar silhouette. I felt a pang of recognition that made me stand up and stared into the fog-shrouded passage. It felt like looking into the maw of a beast that was breathing heavily, ready to pounce.
Then a wave of air blew through and lifted the steam clouds, revealing…
There! A few steps back from the entrance, shrouded in steam, I saw the familiar silhouettes. They were tiny. Another one, larger, was behind them, but I could see it was bright carrot-orange, with dark spots. The steam thickened again, covering the creatures lurking at the entrance like a blanket.
There were three small, dark pluxes, and one bigger one with bright orange skin. I assumed it was covered in scales, just like the other ones.
I tried to remember everything I knew about pluxes, every term I could use to describe them.
I thought about the blurred movement I’d seen behind the wall grate in the steam-filled intersection on our way here. Had I seen a glimpse of orange behind the bars, followed by the smaller, darker shadows?
